Do you use music in the classroom to help students learn French?
Today I’m interviewing Ashley, the teacher-author you might know as Mme R., and she’s a great teacher all around, but what strikes me most is her love of using music in the French classroom.
Ashley is sharing her suggestions, tips, and ideas for using music to engage your students.
This is the first post in a series of interviews, where I’ll be chatting with amazing educators so we can learn their tips and strategies to make our own lessons even more enticing, effective, and fun!
Let’s get right into the interview!
Lucy: Hey, Ashley, we’ve been friends for a while now and I’ve always noticed that you love using music when teaching French as a second language. My first question is: why use music to teach French?
Ashley: I started using music in French when I was teaching an advanced FSL course in the US and didn’t have enough teaching materials. We’ve all been there, right? Anyways, I needed my students to be reading and working on listening comprehension as well, so music really fits in with both of those categories.
Also, I was teaching 100+ kids (up to 180 at most) and managing tasks like passing back papers can take a lot of time.
By playing a weekly song, usually on Monday at the start of class, this gave me time where the class was engaged in something they really enjoyed while I took care of some housekeeping. Plus, I think Mondays are gross, and it was a way to get kids excited about a new week.
L: What grade(s) have you taught? Are there differences in the way you use music in different grades?
A: I taught FSL 8-12, 6-7 French immersion, and then 4-6 exploratory French. I’ve used music with each group, but it has definitely been different.
When I started teaching, I had high schoolers (9-12). It was much harder then, because there was no solid online place to find music like YouTube. I had just moved back to the US from France, so I had a lot of French CDs. They were so excited to listen to music, but I really didn’t have the best selection for teenagers at that time!
As I got access to more songs, I really dedicated myself to finding a song of the week. For my beginners, the goal was exposure to different francophone singers, and I really searched to find people from all different countries. For the more advanced students, we really looked at vocabulary and verbs, and this strengthened my grammar teaching.
After nearly a decade, I moved to middle school French immersion. By that time, finding songs online was so easy, so it really opened up a lot of possibilities.
I collaborated with our music teacher, and for school concerts, she would have them perform a song that included a lot of the elements I was teaching. For example, while we were working a lot with l’imparfait, she worked on the song “On savait” and this really reinforced the verbs they were seeing in class.
I also used songs that aligned with what we were talking about in class, so when discussing the pros and cons of technology, we listened to a song by Stromae and another from Soprano that they really identified with.
Finally, with my 4-6 exploratory classes, I really just wanted them to love French. The goal was not for them to understand it all, but to get used to hearing it, to love it enough that they would go home and play a song for their parents. Again, I found catchy songs where they might understand a few words like “Magic in the air”. Just being able to sing a line or two is really fun for a student who really speaks little to no French when they enter the classroom at the beginning of the year.
L: Do you feel using songs is better for teaching vocabulary, pronunciation, fluency, or all of the above? I guess my question is: what skills should teachers focus on when using songs?
A: I think it can be great for so many things, and you can definitely have a different goal with each song. The goal might be exposure to new words, reinforcement of structures, or simply just that they love the song and it gets stuck in their heads!
If I can find a song that really focuses on structures we are working on, that’s an obvious plus.
For example, when working with si clauses, we listened to a lot of songs that included l’imparfait and le conditionnel. I’d often follow the song with a similar writing prompt, so students practiced by listening to the structures and then producing their own similar sentences using some prompts.
As for pronunciation, this is a big one for beginners! I love when I can find a video with the words across the screen, because they can hear it pronounced while they see it. We all know those silent letters in French can be so hard for beginners. This helps make it stick a little more.
And for fluency, it is an amazing way to expose students to everyday vocabulary that they just don’t see in other class materials. Kids always want to know how people really talk, and music is a great way to pick up new expressions that they need to know to attain fluency, but that they might never see in our teaching materials.
Another thing I love to do before listening to a new artist is make a mini-presentation of the band or singer(s) with a little bit of information about them – where they are from, how they got their start. A lot of French singers came from singing competition shows in France, and it’s fun to watch their auditions if you can find them! I find it’s a great way to introduce different francophone cultures a little bit in a way kids can relate to.
L: Can you give an example of a song that you have used in different ways in the classroom?
A: One of my favorites is “Aux arbres citoyens” by Yannick Noah. I have listened to this for years with students during our environment unit, and they all love it.
It discusses many environmental issues that are so important today, so I usually use it at the beginning of the unit to present the issues we’ll be discussing. The vocabulary isn’t new to students, but it refreshes their memories.
We watch the video and they list all the environmental issues they see. Then, I create a cloze activity with the lyrics where they have to write in a few missing words. After that, we work on the structure “il faut + infinitive,” and I have them list a lot of things we need to do. Eventually in that unit, we’ll move to the subjunctive, so this is sort of a refresher of this before moving to the “il faut que” structure.
L: Are there any DO’s or DON’T’s that come to mind as far as using music in the classroom is concerned?
A: Make sure to watch the videos AND look at all the lyrics. If French is not your first language, it’s a good idea to actually look at the written lyrics just to make sure you’re checking for all the possible words you don’t want students to hear. It’s not always easy to hear them, but your eyes will likely catch a gros mot.
Sometimes the song is very appropriate, but the video might have something questionable, so that is something to keep in mind. If they love the song and go home to look it up on YouTube, even if you didn’t play them the video, they are going to find it.
L: What are your favourite songs or artists for the classroom? And artists do you enjoy listening to in your free time?
A: For me personally, I love Cœur de Pirate, Grégoire, Yannick Noah, Zaz, Ingrid St-Pierre, Les Frangines, Vitaa et Slimane. I have a ton!
My son who is in 6th grade always wants to hear Bigflo & Oli, Kids United, and Soprano, and he’s in charge of the music in the car these days 😉
I listen to Pandora while I’m cooking and just Shazam new songs I love, so I’m always finding new music.
I have so many I love for the classroom. I’ve just created a new blog post with a list of songs I’m loving that are great to play in French class. This list is mainly for secondary, but I have several other lists at my blog that have songs for elementary and secondary students.
L: If you had to give just ONE piece of advice regarding using music in the French classroom, what would it be?
A: You don’t always have to have a goal in mind when playing music.
You can play a song during classroom clean-up, during lunch, a brain break, or if you have an extra five minutes at the end of a lesson. Even though not all of our students will have the same learning style, it is always beneficial to provide students with as many different ways to practice with the language as we can. Auditory learners will benefit, for sure, but it is great reinforcement for students of all learning styles.
L: Thank you so much, Ashley, for sharing your knowledge and expertise about using music in the French classroom!
If you’d like to learn more about Ashley and what she shares about teaching French, check out her amazing blog Mme R.’s French Resources and her TpT store. Also, make sure to stop by her Instagram account and let her know you’ve read and enjoyed this interview.
Thank you for reading!
Merci!
Lucy
Read: Free Online Resources for French Teachers
Read: French Question Words: FREE posters
