Mme B's Classroom

At one point, the junior/intermediate classes won’t be satisfied with simple units like “L’hiver” or “Cabane a sucre”, which I plan to teach anyways. But older students want something more, with substance, that they can relate to. This year my grade 5-8 classes did a major Hockey unit and they were over the moon that I was able to do something that they actually enjoyed doing.

The first thing that I learned when I started teaching Junior/Intermediates, was that they don’t want to do anything they don’t want to do. Pretty obvious, right. But this is especially true when it comes to learning French. If they don’t see the point in it, or if they can’t relate to the topics, they will rebel and make teaching less than ideal.

Through many, many conversations, I let the class help decide what our next unit would be. The criteria was simple; it had to be in French, related to French culture in some way, and bonus points if it related to the themes we were already studying. We decided as a group (of 81 students), that we wanted to focus on winter sports, specifically Hockey.

Throughout this unit, we start with Le Chandail de Hockey by Roch Carrier. Many students will have team loyality, especially if your town has a local team, so they can absolutely relate to being forced into wearing the wrong jersey.

We explore reading comprehension articles through the History of Hockey, researching their favorite team, and writing a biography of their favorite Hockey Player. For those brave enough to take on this sub-project, I have included Fantasy Hockey team for community-building and authentic speech generation. Students will also be asked to create a comic strip to highlight the vocabulary-learned.

Through December/January the students have been the most engaged I have ever seen them. Students that would normally be quiet and shy, have come out of their shell to showcase their love of hockey. There are also a handful of students, and myself, that know next to nothing about hockey, but are just too shy to speak up and ask. This was a great way to learn about Canada’s favorite sport in a safe environment, free from judgement.

Check out this freebie. I have created a Suggested Unit Plan for this Hockey Unit, as well as how to incorporate it into the overall Winter unit for Junior/Intermediate classes.