Suggestions - Advanced French Instruction for already bilingual children??

[Mimicoto]

This is our first year homeschooling - our two children - aged 7 and 11 - attended bilingual (English / French) school from preschool through to this year, and both have grown up speaking both languages. DH is a native French speaker, while English is my maternal language. I do speak French fluently....however, I learned later in life and my knowledge of the mechanics of the language are not strong enough for me to confidently teach my children or assess their progress. I speak and read well, but never received much formal instruction and my writing is pretty awful :-(

 

Our plans to continue their French this year haven't worked out and their French has definitely regressed since we began homeschooling. I want to nip this in the bud before they slide much further. I'm pretty much on my own to figure this out as DH - despite best intentions - simply isn't able to be consistently involved in helping to teach (aside from daily conversation, cultural TV, music etc - of which we already do a fair bit).

 

I am looking for a way to re-incorporate French language instruction into their homeschooling, but am really stumped as to where and how to start. Rosetta Stone et al seem to be primarily about the spoken language (I think?) - I'm really looking to continue the strong grammar, spelling, writing work they began in their earlier years. I looked through the CNED a while ago, and will go back to see if there's anything there that could help.

 

Has anyone else dealt with a similar situation, and if so, how did you address it? Should I simply bring in a tutor to help structure lessons then follow through with them on my own? I'm sure I could benefit greatly from improving my own French skills alongside them! Any thoughts or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

[Nan in Mass]

Arg - just lost my long post. Recapping - we "doubled up" with youngest some years by using history/geography, literature, and grammar French schoolbooks, and reading and discussing TWTM history and lit lists and a few years, doing an English grammar book. Put together with science, art, and music in English, this made a nice homeschool program without making us spend forever doing school. French textbooks are SO SO much easier to use than US ones. Most of the concepts are the same in both languages so you don,t get behind educationally by splitting the day like this. Here is a link to the history:

 

Nope, that was aquatic plants. Ok, I will post this and come back with the link. I lost my post last time I tried to find it mid post.

 

Nan

[Nan in Mass]

http://www.enseignants.hachette-education.com/college/pages/collection/histoire-geographie--adoumie-000000008768-1256023.html

 

Yes, it worked. I found it easy to teach from French Textbooks as long as I had the teacher,s guide so I could see what sort of answer they were asking for when they used a certain phrase. For instance, to do a history lesson, wesat together on the sofa, son read the spread aloud to me with me making him look up a word or two in the French dictionary (real, not French/English) and telling him the rest of the unknown vocabulary, answered the questions orally, and then son went off and wrote the short (paragraph) essay. This improved his English writing skills significantly, by the way. It took a perfectly reasonable amount of time and built up his vocabulary and general knowledge nicely. French textbooks get harder very gradually. We didn,t notice the sudden jumps in expectations we had with US ones. They are nicely divided into daily lessons, one spread a day.they fit in our school year well. They had fairly high expectations, academically, but not unreasonable, I thought, and unlike US textbooks, which just expect you to know some skills, they taught the skills. Not very creatively, perhaps, but solidly, I thought. This history mixed really well with TWTM and followed SOTW nicely.

 

hTH

Nan

[bibiche]

This site. while geared to teachers, has some great suggestions and resources that can work for homeschooling as well: http://forums-enseignants-du-primaire.com/

 

Faire de la grammaire (au CP, au CE1,2, etc.) by Francoise Picot is very good.  For spelling she has books called Je memorise et je sais ecrire des mots.  I highly recommend both series.

 

Ladictee.fr is great for dictees.

[Mimicoto]

Thank you Nan and bibiche.  Nan, the way you describe 'meshing' the English and French instruction dovetails nicely with how we work and how I could see incorporating French into our days.  The transition to TWTM materials and approach has been quite easy for us as the history and arts tracks of the French school system is pretty much the same....the ancients, middle ages and modern times are familiar ground for both children, as are great painters, composers etc...so at least we're not struggling with new content!  :thumbup1:

 

Question - did you both purchase your materials from the French sites you've linked to?  We're currently in the US and access to French language books is requiring some digging...

 

I spent a bit of time on the CNED site last night and see now that they do offer courses 'a la carte'.  It would be a bit more expensive then putting something together myself, but might be a good stepping stone to make life a bit simpler for this newbie-homeschooler (my goodness, this learning curve is STEEP !  :ohmy: :rofl:  ).  This would also include online support from CNED, which might be helpful.

 

CNED also offers a series of courses called 'une petite histoire' - once each for music, art, philosophie, theatre - a book and CD-ROM targeted at my children's age range.

 

My thoughts right now are to enroll them in the CE1 and CM2 French courses offered through the CNED, and supplement it with 'une petite histoire'...the total cost would be equivalent to 2 months of once-weekly tutoring.  Will noodle it over the weekend, look through the materials we have on hand currently and determine what would make the most sense...

 

Still open to any and all comments and suggestions!!!  :bigear:

 

 

[bibiche]

I usually use amazon.fr. Sometimes you can find things on US amazon.  

 

I also have found a lot of useful stuff available for download, often from links in the enseignant forum I linked earlier.  For example, the other day I happened upon some things I printed out a year or two ago (and promptly filed and forgot, apparently) for French and History cycle 3.  I may have gotten them from here: http://jlgrenar.free.fr/spip/spip.php?rubrique1

 

Academie en ligne also has material that is free online and we often supplement with that. 

 

For math try les freres Lyons: http://defimath.ca/ecole-maison/

[Nan in Mass]

Yes, I imagine the learning curve is steep indeed!

 

Math - I forgot math. We did Singapore, then switched to the community college at the pre-calculus point.

 

My children usually read the extra history reading and some of the more fun English lit. during the summer. We tended to travel then, and I'd make a box of reading for each child and tell them they had to read for a few hours a day. They liked this. It was part of their entertainment, believe it or not. TWTM lists are good that way. This gained us some more time during the official school year.

 

We live not far from Boston and accidentally discovered a bookstore that can and will order foreign teacher's guides for a homeschooling family. You can do it in person and you can do it via the phone. I called at the beginning of the summer, we worked out what exactly I needed, and they ordered it and then reshipped it to me.

 

Schoenhof's Foreign Books

76 A Mount Auburn Street

Cambridge, MA 02138

Tel.: 617.547.8855

E-mail: weborders@schoenhofs.com

 

Joan in Geneva also helped me to get things. She was able to send me used books.

 

I think CNED is not at all a bad way to begin. My own French wasn't good enough for me to be able to make this work.

 

Nan

[bibiche]

I like Schoenhof's for browsing but generally speaking it is less expensive to have things sent from France. 

[Mimicoto]

Thank you so much!  All of this is incredibly helpful.  We have a lot of family in France, so we could get help procuring materials through them.  Some (or all) of us will be in France in May, so there's another opportunity.

 

Nan, I love your idea of the summer box - my kids are the same ;-)  I am planning homeschool 'light' for the summer, and already have a box of American lit. ready to read through for this summer....not being American, it's not an area I've studied much.  Thought we could dip our toes in during the 'off' months. 

 

I like the notion of the CNED giving us a ready-made framework to get the ball rolling...I run our (rapidly expanding!) business in addition to homeschooling, and have learned that my capacity to DIY curriculum is limited.  It's been pretty overwhelming, but we're getting there :001_smile:

[Nan in Mass]

I like Schoenhof's for browsing but generally speaking it is less expensive to have things sent from France. 

 

Definitely cheaper to have things sent direct, but I couldn't figure out how to get the teacher's guides, and since my French is not at all good, I had to have the teacher's guides.

 

Nan

[Nan in Mass]

I just remembered that somewhere on the boards is a discussion of the Belgian equivalent of CNED.  I think it turned out to be cheaper?  Or free?  Or something?  You might investigate.

 

Nan

 

ETA -  http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/topic/173127-alternatives-to-french-cned/ has some information on EAD, the Belgian equivalent to CNED.  And http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/topic/529143-ead-starting-to-offer-online-courses/?hl=%2Bbelgian and http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/topic/120415-ead-free-belgian-correspondance-courses-seems-to-be-upgraded/.

 

Here are some threads that have general bilingual homeschooling information that may or may not have EAD references. : )

http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/topic/261054-dual-language-homeschooling/?hl=%2Bbelgian&do=findComment&comment=2606199

[Nan in Mass]

I just edited my post to include some links.

 

Nan

[Mimicoto]

Thanks Nan!  :thumbup1:   I will check it out!

[Emerald Stoker]

Just dropping in to say that we last year took up Nan's suggestion of doing a couple of subjects in French (history/art history/geography and literature/grammar) using French textbooks (though we use Magnard instead of Hachette because they were easier to get here), and it has been brilliant. (Nan is brilliant.) The kids' comfort and facility in French have grown exponentially since we started doing that.

 

We also used dictation books that some other nice person here whose name I no longer remember (started with a J, I think) suggested (La librairie des écoles: La bonne méthode de dictée), which was also very useful for the couple of years we did that.

 

Also useful were the CLE international books Grammaire progressive du français pour les adolescents.

[Emerald Stoker]

Adding: we get some French books from Book Depository (free shipping), some from amazon.fr or amazon.ca, some from chapters.ca, and some from archambault.ca .

[Mimicoto]

Wonderful, Emerald Stoker!  I'm feeling just a bit more confident already with what you've all shared...thank you!  :hurray:

[Loesje22000]

French is required here, but dds motivation was seriously lacking last year, so we switched to Subjects in French too.

( I was inspired by the CM in French thread)

We use Lectures Thematique fromd Hachette and A Mots Conte from Belin.

For the Lectures I am in need of a TM as my French is terrible.

A mots Conte inspired dd to ask if I could buy a French book as she wanted to read the whole story.

 

I also bought Speech, a game to practice (story) telling.

[Nan in Mass]

It was Joan in GE (Geneva) who first suggested I do History/geography and some language arts in French.  She helped me get the books and work out how to do it.  She said some schools there did it.  I have an Irish friend who says they had a period of Irish in school, and then the next period, no matter what it worked out to be, was taught in Irish.  He said it was dreadful when it turned out to be maths, but it was the only way to get the students enough Irish and make it a real language to them.

 

Nan

[Emerald Stoker]

Ah, then bouquets for Joan aussi!

 

It really has been such fun; French textbooks are beautiful.

[Mabelen]

I am hoping my daughter will be taking social studies in Spanish through middle school from next year. She will be with the students who graduate from an elementary school with a dual language immersion program. I already talked with her teacher and we are all very excited. Right now other than just me talking in Spanish as always, we are reading a lot of books, discussing them and she also enjoys BrainPop en español. I am hoping the social studies class will be a big boost here too.

[madteaparty]

http://www.enseignants.hachette-education.com/college/pages/collection/histoire-geographie--adoumie-000000008768-1256023.html

 

Yes, it worked. I found it easy to teach from French Textbooks as long as I had the teacher,s guide so I could see what sort of answer they were asking for when they used a certain phrase. For instance, to do a history lesson, wesat together on the sofa, son read the spread aloud to me with me making him look up a word or two in the French dictionary (real, not French/English) and telling him the rest of the unknown vocabulary, answered the questions orally, and then son went off and wrote the short (paragraph) essay. This improved his English writing skills significantly, by the way. It took a perfectly reasonable amount of time and built up his vocabulary and general knowledge nicely. French textbooks get harder very gradually. We didn,t notice the sudden jumps in expectations we had with US ones. They are nicely divided into daily lessons, one spread a day.they fit in our school year well. They had fairly high expectations, academically, but not unreasonable, I thought, and unlike US textbooks, which just expect you to know some skills, they taught the skills. Not very creatively, perhaps, but solidly, I thought. This history mixed really well with TWTM and followed SOTW nicely.

 

hTH

Nan

 

Nan,

Wondering at what level your DC were when you taught certain subjects in French. Also, is it hard to get the teacher version of the textbook? My DS will be in school in France next year and it occurred to me to get the next level up for when he gets home. I'm going to be in France myself next August to drop him off but not sure where to look--I think textbook sales are done separately from regular book sales?

[Nan in Mass]

We started with 6e, with quite a lot of unknown words on each page. We dutifully looked them up and the number died down fairly fast. My son,s abilities were very spotty so I can,t really tell you where he was when we started. If your son is going to have spent a year in a French school by the time he starts at home, I think you could just start him where he left off when he left the French school. What might happen is that he understands the material but writes his essays at a lower level. A lot of the vocabulary repeats, so even if it is a struggle at first, it will probably get easier quite quickly.

 

Nan

[madteaparty]

We started with 6e, with quite a lot of unknown words on each page. We dutifully looked them up and the number died down fairly fast. My son,s abilities were very spotty so I can,t really tell you where he was when we started. If your son is going to have spent a year in a French school by the time he starts at home, I think you could just start him where he left off when he left the French school. What might happen is that he understands the material but writes his essays at a lower level. A lot of the vocabulary repeats, so even if it is a struggle at first, it will probably get easier quite quickly.

 

Nan

 

Many thanks!! He will only spend 6 months in French school after 2+ years french at home. I was going to continue with next year textbook too (esp. because he repeats 5th grade there).

Do you have specific texts you recommend? I recall an old post of how you did this but cannot find it now. Thank you again

[Nan in Mass]

We used Hachette's Histoire/Geographie 6e to start. I wasn't,t interested in the civics piece. I really liked the book. Sometimes Joan in GE got the teacher,s guides for me, and sometimes I had Schoenhoff,s order them and ship them to me. I never figured out how to get them for myself. You can see samples on the Hachette site. There are other publishers of the same year,s history which are similar because France has a national curriculum, I think. You are meant to finish the whole book. You might want to see which publisher his school uses and use that. I liked Hachette because the questions were pretty easy and there were sample essays in the teacher,s guide, which I needed.

 

Nan

[madteaparty]

We used Hachette's Histoire/Geographie 6e to start. I wasn't,t interested in the civics piece. I really liked the book. Sometimes Joan in GE got the teacher,s guides for me, and sometimes I had Schoenhoff,s order them and ship them to me. I never figured out how to get them for myself. You can see samples on the Hachette site. There are other publishers of the same year,s history which are similar because France has a national curriculum, I think. You are meant to finish the whole book. You might want to see which publisher his school uses and use that. I liked Hachette because the questions were pretty easy and there were sample essays in the teacher,s guide, which I needed.

 

Nan

 

Thanks so much Nan. I am going to be in France myself this August and hope to pick these up. Thanks again!

[beausa]

I am a French mom, with a bilingual 7 year old daughter. We followed the french CNED program and will not recommend it. I now use my home made program.

I found very difficult to follow the CNED program. Not accademically difficult, but found the lesson plan not well organized. Now if you go to France, go to la FNAC and look at the french lesson plan for CP, CE1 and so forth. Some are really well done and way simpler than le CNED.

[beausa]

I second Hachette... that is what I use in complement of a reading/phonic book and story book. The key is too broaden their vocabulary and oral fluency....the rest will follow. Speak speak speak french. Read boooks in French...

[Mimicoto]

Beausa - thanks for chiming in.....are your comments about the 'complete' CNED program or just the 'language studies' portion?  I was looking at the 'a la carte' option which would allow us to do French language studies only.  We speak French daily at home and the children read (and are read to) in French...but since leaving their bilingual school, we've done NO writing or formal study, and that is going to lead to a big gap fairly quickly....thoughts?

[Loesje22000]

Joan of GE uses this:

http://www.ead.cfwb.be/index.php?id=54&cri=1&listDomaine%5B%5D=Français&buttonForma=Rechercher#menuUser

 

They have writing courses.

The French Belgian school systeem count their years differently then in France.

We als have tracking in Secondary level so take a careful look before ordering.

[beausa]

Mimicotp, I bought the A la carte french for CP or 1st grade knowing that my daughter is in 2nd grade. She is fluent in french. We spent 2 or 3 months in france every year and she goes to school there for 1 month or so. I wanted to have her improve her reading and writing in french so she could easily follow the program when we go there. I REALLY found the Cned not suitable for our needs. I did not like the phonic program and how overall the lessons are put together. , I found better phonic, writing programs at la FNaC. I can make you copies of few CNED lessons if you would like to see how it looks.

[beausa]

Mimicotp, I bought the A la carte french for CP or 1st grade knowing that my daughter is in 2nd grade. She is fluent in french. We spent 2 or 3 months in france every year and she goes to school there for 1 month or so. I wanted to have her improve her reading and writing in french so she could easily follow the program when we go there. I REALLY found the Cned not suitable for our needs. I did not like the phonic program and how overall the lessons are put together. , I found better phonic, writing programs at la FNaC. I can make you copies of few CNED lessons if you would like to see how it looks.

[Mimicoto]

This is very good to know, Beausa....how disappointing for you!  We will be in France in just a few months, so I'll be able to get some targeted resources for the kids then to augment what they already have.  Have you ever done their 'une petite histoire' courses?  They look interesting as enrichment activities and would allow me to cover off a supplementary topic while increasing their exposure to French....

[yinanyinu]

We've done the art and music "petite histoire" courses and found them fun, but not sufficient for true music or art appreciation in the higher grades. We did them at CP and it was fine.

 

We have done CNED for many years, from CP-5e, and it suited our purposes perfectly. (In the early years DC did the complete programme to prepare for eventual entry to a French school. Now they do it to reinforce and plug in holes from their school. DH doesn't speak French, but I do and help them with their work.) You can look at academie en ligne to check the material. Perhaps this would be enough to keep your children on track, without buying the programme. I found it to be a good all-in-one offering, not requiring me to cobble together my own materials. I was sent the workbooks, the reading excerpts, as well as the homework papers to be sent back to France for marking. The lessons each day were short and to the point. DD & DS have done other curriculum support books by the various publishers and I still feel most confident in the CNED programme for teaching new material. The others we bought were more like additional exercise books to reinforce the material. I don't know whether the a la carte option requires you to send material back to France for correction.

 

I think CNED requires a teacher (you or someone else), in the sense that the children can't really work through it on their own. The exercises were simple enough but if good writing is the goal, then I needed to sit down with DC and talk about the model and what was expected. However, I remember the writing asked of the children were rather fun and engaging. For example, making up games, recipe for a robot, are some of the ones that stand out.

 

Some criticisms from friends whose children did this programme (mainly French expatriates who wanted their children to keep up with the French curriculum) were that the correction of the homework was strict and discouraging to the children. If you did the complete programme it was a great deal of work. Also, I remember hearing that CP in France is all about learning to read and write (French cursive) so your children might find it dull if they already know how to read and write. And discouraged if they aren't writing the French way and getting feedback that their handwriting isn't up to snuff.

 

Hope that helps somewhat.

[beausa]

Yinanyinu, I am glad you found the cned good for you, you re absolutely right to say that it requires a teacher. I am french with a strong French education. THEY RE 2 things that I didn like with the Cned:

1. The way the lessons are organized...I meant we need to read or have 3 books + the tool sheets from the site to go through one lesson. Why make it so complicated? Why not laying out everything in one book just like most curricum.

2. I am not a big fan of the method global for reading. I do prefere a syllabic or phonic instruction. It works way better for my kids.

 

Glad you like it though.

[Joan in GE]

Hi, I haven't been on at all in the recent past....Nan did a great job with her son and was very dedicated.

 

About the different programs - we used EAD only at the high school level after doing AP French since we didn't have anywhere else to go and it was more as maintenance and for literature analysis (since they don't do AP French Lit any more - just Language)...as literature analysis is the big things for local exams.

 

EAD is moving to online teacher answers is which really useful! Dd gets her answers very quickly! Only recently it was all by post and they use the SLOW post for people outside Belgium....

 

I just thought I'd add that if you get a tutor, it should depend on where you want to go with your French i.e. to Canada or to Europe... (well where you want your children to go) and get a maternal language speaker with that accent...

 

More and more over here, a native accent is highly regarded or should I say, they'll break into English as soon as they hear even just two words with the wrong accent. So if you have a tutor with a funny accent (for the place where you want them to end up) and they pick it up then it's not a good thing. But perhaps since your husband is a native speaker it won't matter as much. But children are funny about hanging on to accents - and highly variable. I've known kids with a native speaking parent and grandparents who still have a strong French accent in their teens (speaking English - while overseas) while others seem to pick up the native accent more easily...very psychological...

[Mimicoto]

Joan, thank you so much for taking the time to respond! I agree with you regarding accent - it's very important to us that our children continue to speak with their native French accent, which is so very different from Canadian French.

 

After much deliberation, we've decided to splurge on a private tutor....there's just no way I can handle this part of their education right now. As luck would have it, just as we were about to make arrangements with the Alliance Francaise, we met French woman who lives locally and teaches French at a nearby IB high school. It will definitely be pricey, but I think it will be the best solution for us....I simply can't instruct them at their level and am at the limit of what I can do time-wise...and DH is overloaded with work. Without a tutor, I'm afraid their French study would fizzle out, which would be an incredible shame (not to mention the squandered investment in 5 years of private school :-((

 

They will spend 1/2 day per week with the tutor (1 hour each, plus 1 hour combined to cover another subject). We'll see how that goes and adjust after a trial period. This way, they'll have structure and focus...and we can just continue to have fun rounding out the French language usage at home through books, music and conversation as we always have :-))