Reading a class novel in Year 8 French

 I have mentioned in previous posts (here and here) that I was going to start reading La Rivière à l'Envers as a class novel with my Year 8 class. The books arrived last week, and we've done three lessons on it now, so time to tell you how it's going so far.

First, some notes on why I chose the book. It's often read in the first year of secondary school in France. It's a typical adventure of setting out on a quest, a series of encounters, and a return home. It is imaginative, funny, gentle. It takes place in an imaginary world, but it is a French imaginary world. There are cold old busy market towns, small villages, abandoned towns on the edge of a desert, a coastal region of crepe eaters, a tropical island, and a far off country across the sea.

But beyond this, there are some specific features I want to make use of. There are in fact four books! In novel form there is Tome 1: Tomek and Tome 2: Hannah. Book 2 is not a sequel. Both books tell the same story, one from Tomek's point of view, one from Hannah's perspective. As well as providing strong male and female protagonists, this means I could read an episode from Tomek with the class, and then use the same part of the story from Hannah's perspective for the pupils to work on more independently. 

The third book is the audio book, read by the author Jean-Claude Mourlevat.

And the fourth book? The fourth book is my secret weapon. It is a B.D. (comic book) version of the story. This means I can use the pictures to give pupils an idea of what they are about to read. And I can also use it as an abridged version if I want to move more quickly through the story.

Why am I doing it? For a start, it seems like a great thing to do. I know when I was learning, I was probably the only person in my class who had French books at home. And my own children have also had that opportunity. Then there's the class I am starting with. They have worked before on translating poems and a bizarre mystery quest. They enjoy a challenge and they like to be creative. Working on poems showed a side of them that we don't always see in French lessons - including a love of language and self-expression. This included pupils who I know are reluctant readers.

But as well as instinctively knowing it's an exciting thing to do, I suppose I should evaluate it in terms of language learning. Vocabulary: exciting words to learn, which pupils don't have to learn but will stick in their heads because they love the word. High frequency vocabulary: exposure to texts that aren't made up of topic words, but contain the language that makes language work. Phonics: listening to me or the author reading the book while they follow the text. Confidence in reading: talking them through from what they expect it to say... to words they recognise... to understanding whole sentences. Comprehensible input: processing large amounts of French that we have worked on previously, which they can read and re-read, letting their brain's innate ability to deal with language take over.

I am filming my input for each lesson on a visualiser. This way other teachers in the department can use my lessons with their classes too. I am not going to be making these public because of copyright reasons, but here is one example of what I am doing. Click here if the embedded video doesn't load.

It's the second lesson, so we start by reading through what we worked on last time. In this case, the blurb on the back of the book. Then we look at the prologue, which is a beautiful invitation to the novel. You can see, I read it through. Then ask the class to talk about what they understood. I then show them how it's structured: Things that weren't invented yet, good things they did have, bad things they did have. We read it again and find which things go in which category. Then we read it and enjoy following and understanding the French.

I will use the video at the start of the lesson before getting on with something else. Then I come back to it at the end and re-read the same passage. And re-read it (as shown in the video with the blurb) at the start of the next lesson. I am trying to operate in the zone where there is a fine balance between pupils remembering what the passage says, so they can process the language. And being able to process the language, in order to read what the passage says.

I am deliberately avoiding making lots of comprehension based resources or vocabulary resources. We are concentrating on reading it as a story.

After the video, teachers can choose to get pupils to write down words, or translate sections, or read aloud. And at the start of the next lesson, we will read through the same section again, so pupils can enjoy reading and understanding without worrying about knowing every single word. And the lesson after that, we can listen to the author reading it rather than me, using the audiobook.

I am not going to be able to tackle the whole book in the last few weeks of term, so I am going to use the B.D. picture version of the book to skip some sections. But I will continue next year so whoever teaches the class will be able to use the videos to carry on reading the story. I'm also getting copies of all three books for the school library because there are some pupils who will take them out and enjoy trying to read them independently.

So far it's going well. I am keeping an eye on how much pupils retain from lesson to lesson. I don't mean being able to remember the meaning of every word. I mean remembering what the meaning of the sentence or passage was, enough to be able to process the text when we read it again. It's a fine balance between remembering and processing which is going to be varyingly successful depending on circumstances! I will keep you posted - update here.

Footnote with reference to the title of this Blog The Nice Man Who Teaches Languages. Yesterday when I was talking to the class about what The Nice Man in the Video had said, one of them asked, "Sir, is it you or not?" After a year of teaching them and all those lockdown videos! And another one replied, "Obviously not. Imagine calling yourself The Nice Man" and tutted loudly.

Further and rather mind-blowing footnote: I have just found out that I met the author 30 years ago. I am going to go and lie down in a dark room for a while.