Denise Zeller Multimedia in Language Teaching June 29, 2001

One of my favorite fifth grade activities is taking my students to visit the computer lab to explore my Bonjour Classe web site and its various links. There is a section for fifth grade lessons, fourth grade lessons, and miscellaneous links (including the Eiffel Tower web site, the TGV web site, a French dictionary, a currency converter, the photo of the week, and a link to Madame Zeller-to direct questions and/or comments via e-mail.) One of the most popular sites is Où est Loukee?

Students using this page are able to check their comprehension of the following grammatical points:

• making a sentence into a question using est-ce que
• understanding that ne before and pas after the verb creates a negative sentence
• knowing the meaning of the prepositions avec, près, sur & à la/au.

They do this while looking for mon chien, Loukee (my dog, Loukee.) To navigate through the site, students must click on Loukee's nose. As a result of this workshop, they will now be able to click on the audio player in order to check the pronunciation of their answers-as often as they desire-using the QuickTime audio clips that have been embedded in each answer page.

Bonjour Classe has been quite popular with my fifth grade students (277 this year!) It is tailored to the particular building in which I happen to be teaching at the time (the principal, school secretary, fifth grade faculty members, etc.) The novelty of hearing sentences that they understand will no doubt be very appealing to the Montour elementary French students!