Epiphany is one of the holidays I was lucky enough to celebrate in France and I have to say, it’s one of my favorites. Not because I’m particularly religious, but my goodness do I love that big ol’ puff of almond goodness, la galette des rois. Not to mention the fun little traditions that go along with it!
Since French 2 is when my students learn about holidays in the Francophone world, I do most of my holiday celebrations during that level. Yesterday, we learned about la Fete des Rois and today we “celebrated” it by eating some galette!
When the students walked in, they saw 5 images projected on my SmartBoard but no captions – three kings, a fève (the figure that goes inside of the galette), a galette des rois, a crown, and a little boy under a table. I asked them to imagine how the images were related to one another, which really got their attention and I think they had fun trying to figure out a story to tie everything together.
First, I did a MovieTalk of a Léo et Popi video in which a family celebrates Epiphany by eating a galette des rois. I liked this video for the MovieTalk because I could build some suspense when the little boy opens the bag that his dad brought home – they were dying to know what was inside! It was also fun to watch them begin to realize what was happening when the mom in the video found the fève in the cake. After we did the MovieTalk, we went back to the original 5 images to see how we could better connect them.
Then, the students watched this video that gives some more detail on the holiday and filled in an IPA-style listening comprehension sheet. On the back of the listening comprehension was a quick reading I had typed up based on this slightly more difficult authentic resource.
At the end of the class, we were ready for some output! I put the images back up on the board and the students wrote a short summary of how all the images were related to one another, based on what we read and listened to in class.
Today, we ate some galette that I made at home (relatively easy if you buy packaged puff pastry) and the students then completed a speaking activity in which they had to call my Google Voice number and explain the holiday as though they were living with a host family in France and calling a friend back home to fill them in on what happened. Not totally contextualized, but it was a fun way to get ’em talking and using the past tense, which we’ve been working on for the past several weeks.