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French Fall Classroom Videos List

If you teach French as a second language, you’re probably always on the hunt for videos to make your lessons more lively and relevant for students. To save you time, I’ve put together this list of French fall classroom videos for you.

This is a list of “non-song” videos. For a list of French fall songs, click here.

French fall classroom videos: a time-saving list of French fall-themed videos for your French classroom!

French Fall Classroom Videos List

This list has a little bit of everything, from science-y videos to TV news reports, and more!

So, let’s start with a directed drawing activity: how to draw fall leaves!

Directed drawing activities are useful in the second-language classroom because students need to use their listening comprehension skills to understand the directions.

The drawing gestures will also help with learning French because there’s a movement associated with hearing and processing the language.

Next up is a short extract from a fun cartoon.

Using short extracts can sometimes be better than playing whole episodes because you can get more active language practice out of it.

What do I mean?

For example, you can have students work on inferring (what happened before), and predicting (what happens next).

Kids will most likely not feel overwhelmed by a ton of information and they can focus better because there’s only one situation to watch and pay attention to.

Check this extract out:

When we talk about autumn, it’s almost impossible not to talk about falling leaves.

And there’s a question students will ask: what do leaves change colors and fall?

There are 3 videos for you to choose from to help answer this question.

They’re different in style and in length.

I’d say the first one is the most advanced in terms of language level.

If I were using it in my classroom, I probably would break it down into shorter segments.

Check it out:

Then we have a more simplified and shorter option to answer the same question.

Which one of the them should you use in your classroom?

Well, it’s a matter of which one would go better with your lesson plans and purpose for watching the video.

And there’s a third video option about autumn leaves, which might seem like the one with least classroom use potential, but hear my idea out first.

This is a video with images and captions only.

There’s music, but no narration, so you might be thinking: “Why would that be useful in the classroom?”

Well, you could have students work on speaking fluency!

Have students, in pairs or small groups, read the texts in the “slides” as the video plays.

In the beginning, they’ll probably be speaking too slow for the speed of the video, but that’s okay.

You can change the video playback speed a bit, but then see if students can speak fast enough to create the narration for the video.

You could even record them speaking and play it back over the video to see if it all synchs.

Keep in mind that this specific video wouldn’t work at a beginner-level classroom.

Would you add this activity to your lessons?

Here’s the video:

Looking to play news reports in French to your older kids?

Check out this one: L’automne flamboyant au Québec

One thing I’d ALWAYS do with videos like this is to ask comprehension questions BEFORE watching the video and not afterwards.

That way, students will be watching the video with a goal: finding the answers to the questions.

The number and difficulty of questions will vary according to the level of interest and proficiency of students.

If we just play the videos and then ask questions, many students won’t be able to respond because they can’t remember all the video, or they weren’t paying attention to that specific point in the video. They’ll feel frustrated and so will you.

So here’s the formula:

Introduce the topic of the video with a general knowledge question, such as “What colors do leaves turn in the fall? Where could you see that happening?”
Tell students they’ll be watching a video about the beautiful fall season in Québec.
Ask pre-viewing questions. For the first minute of the video, the questions could be: “Est-ce que Sébastien est pilote?” and “Qu’est-ce un hydravion?”
Play the video.
Have students answer the pre-viewing questions.
Wrap-up with discussion questions related to the topic. For example, “Aimerais-tu voler en hydravion?” or “Aimes-tu les couleurs d’automne?”