Hobbes Posted July 6, 2016 Share Posted July 6, 2016 (edited) I'm wanting to do more with French this year with my DDs8+6. I'm officially bilingual, but rusty. We live in a French/English bilingual city and our library has tons of resources which I plan to maximize. DD8 has started playing with Duolingo as well. I want to do some systematic French grammar and vocabulary introduction, though. I don't want a time-consuming workbook. I just grabbed GSWF on Kindle, and I'm wondering if anyone used it this past year and has a feel for how it would go over with the early elementary crowd? How did you use it? I thought I might teach each lesson on a blackboard and do the exercises orally, as that seems to work really well for a lot of things here (ex: OPGTR). Edited July 6, 2016 by indigoellen@gmail.com Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ewe Mama Posted July 6, 2016 Share Posted July 6, 2016 I just write the sentences on the board and have the kids take turns translating them. We are usually done in 5-10 minutes. I am contemplating typing out the sentences and having them translate 5 per day to make it more independent, but I rather enjoy my current system as it allows them more pronunciation practice, rather than writing them with a quick oral read-through. We really like GSWF and the other books in the series. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hobbes Posted July 6, 2016 Author Share Posted July 6, 2016 I just write the sentences on the board and have the kids take turns translating them. We are usually done in 5-10 minutes. I am contemplating typing out the sentences and having them translate 5 per day to make it more independent, but I rather enjoy my current system as it allows them more pronunciation practice, rather than writing them with a quick oral read-through. We really like GSWF and the other books in the series. Great, thanks! That sounds exactly like what I want to do. Do you find it's at a good level for your 8yo? I just wasn't sure the grammar level was doable for 8 + 6. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flowergirl159 Posted July 7, 2016 Share Posted July 7, 2016 I have just begun GSWF with my girls, ages 11, 9 and 7. I can't really say how the whole book will go with younger kids as we aren't that far in yet. Ewe Mama, I like your idea of having them take it in turns to translate and using the whiteboard :) 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hobbes Posted July 7, 2016 Author Share Posted July 7, 2016 I have just begun GSWF with my girls, ages 11, 9 and 7. I can't really say how the whole book will go with younger kids as we aren't that far in yet. Ewe Mama, I like your idea of having them take it in turns to translate and using the whiteboard :) Glad to hear it's fitting so far for those ages! I'm going to give it a go. :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tranquility7 Posted July 7, 2016 Share Posted July 7, 2016 (edited) I haven't done GSWF, but I'm a big fan of GSW- series in general. I did GSWL with my DS when he was 6 (took us a year, but we went slower than necessary), then we did GSWS when was 9 (took about 3 mos). DD is 6.5 and I finished GSWL with her about 5 months ago, and we are just now wrapping up GSWS. We tend to do a lot of "grammar discussion" around here. For DS, he was already well into FFL3 when we started GSWL (so he had learned English grammar fairly well before starting GSWL). But for DD, I used the GSWL and GSWS experiences to introduce some grammar concepts to her that we maybe had not yet covered as formally in English yet. I found it worked well for us in both situations. I do, however, recommend using a spaced repetition flashcard system like Anki to review vocab regularly. Keeping the vocab really fresh makes the GSW- experience go so much more smoothly. Edited July 7, 2016 by tranquility7 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tranquility7 Posted July 7, 2016 Share Posted July 7, 2016 Oh, and we also did it all orally. Occasionally for GSWL I wrote it out on the whiteboard so we could analyze the cases more easily, but I have never had to do that with GSWS since the grammar is far simpler (maybe partially because GSWL is already behind us). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hobbes Posted July 7, 2016 Author Share Posted July 7, 2016 (edited) I haven't done GSWF, but I'm a big fan of GSW- series in general. I did GSWL with my DS when he was 6 (took us a year, but we went slower than necessary), then we did GSWS when was 9 (took about 3 mos). DD is 6.5 and I finished GSWL with her about 5 months ago, and we are just now wrapping up GSWS. We tend to do a lot of "grammar discussion" around here. For DS, he was already well into FFL3 when we started GSWL (so he had learned English grammar fairly well before starting GSWL). But for DD, I used the GSWL and GSWS experiences to introduce some grammar concepts to her that we maybe had not yet covered as formally in English yet. I found it worked well for us in both situations. I do, however, recommend using a spaced repetition flashcard system like Anki to review vocab regularly. Keeping the vocab really fresh makes the GSW- experience go so much more smoothly. This is very helpful, thank you. Also, it's good to know that using it orally works well at those ages. I don't really want to add more writing to our day. I tend to be quite comfortable discussing grammar and they are used to that, so I think that will help. And noted about the flashcards. It's good to know that from the beginning. Edited July 7, 2016 by indigoellen@gmail.com Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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