Bonjour !  Ça va ?

Note: Again, you are welcome to explore this lesson over the next two weeks, so please use the time you have available to engage with any or all of the resources here, and once you are ready, please use the Google Form linked here and at the bottom of the page to share your thoughts and work with me.

This week we will discussing an important place in New York City that works with leaders around the world to promote peace, safety, and development in all countries of the world.  You can see a photo of it here on the right.  Do you recognize this building?  You may have seen it before from the waterfront near our school’s neighborhood in Brooklyn, since it is just across the river in Manhattan.

Let me tell you about it in this video:

Now we know: that building is the United Nations Headquarters in Manhattan!  Today’s lesson will be all about the UN, or L’ONU in French: an important meeting place for world leaders found in New York City, where we all live.

The Slides presentation I made to use in the video above and the following ones in this lesson can be found here, in case you would like to take a closer look at any of the information in it.

After watching the video, do you recognize the famous room in this photo on the right here?  It is the General Assembly.  What world leaders do you think have been there?  What countries might they represent?

In the first video, you heard me name a few of the reasons why the UN was formed and what the members of the UN do together.  Let me tell you a little bit more about the mission of the UN in this next video, and especially what the UN is doing to support people around the world during our current global health crisis of the coronavirus:

In the video above, you saw some links to information that the UN has put together to support children during the coronavirus pandemic.  You can follow those links by clicking here, here, or here, or by finding them in the Slides presentation.

I didn’t get to mention them in the video, but the UN has also created picture books for children about the coronavirus that you can read online.  Here is one about how the crisis is affecting children. Here is a book about how children can help in the crisis available here in English and here in French.

In the video above I also shared information about the Prezi videos being made by young people around the world in many different languages.  You can find the introduction to the Prezi videos in English here or in French here.  As you saw in the video introduction, you can choose to make your own Prezi video if you like, or you can enjoy watching the Prezi videos available in many languages via those links.

Maybe now you have a guess as to why I chose to teach you about the United Nations.  It’s a place where many languages are spoken, so it’s a perfect topic for Language Workshop, where we explore French and other languages together!  Let me tell you about the languages of the UN in this next video:

After watching that video, can you name the 6 official languages of the United Nations?  How many of them do you speak?  Do you know people in your community who speak any of those languages?

You also saw in that last video what interpreters and translators do at the United Nations.  Why is their job so important at the UN?  How many interpreters and translators do you think work at the UN?  What special skills do they need to do that job?  Do you think that might be a hard job to do?  Why?

Let’s talk about another campaign from the UN: the Sustainable Development Goals, or Les objectifs de développement durable in French.  I will tell you about them in this next video:

Now you have heard an introduction to the Sustainable Development Goals, or SDGs, but you might like to find more information about these important goals for our world.   You can find many resources for students here, with materials available in English and other languages.  You can find information about the goals in French here.  I especially like this storybook about a girl who learns about the SDGs, as well as this list of 170 Daily Actions you and your family can take to support the SDGs.

The UN has also created the SDG Book Club, or Club de lecture in French.  They are continuing to find children’s books that teach how to support the goals.  You can sign up for the book club (via the links above) to find out when they have new titles to share, or you can look in the archives for each of the goals to find titles that have already been shared.  Some of the books are available online, and many of them are available in English, French, and other languages.

Wow!  We have learned so much about the United Nations, its mission and goals, and its languages.  Now let’s think about how you can respond to this lesson.

Please choose one or more of the following activities to respond to the lesson.

Language Sort:

You learned about the 6 official languages of the UN in this lesson: English, French, Spanish, Russian, Arabic, and Mandarin Chinese.  You could choose to do an activity to further explore these languages.  Let me explain it to you first in this video:

Here are the materials I told you about in the video that you will need to do the activity:

a sorting mat you can find here, on which you will sort the cards of words in different languages

and the sorting cards you can find here to cut out and sort on the mat.  You will also need some scissors to cut them out.

As you saw in the video, once you are finished with the sort, it might look at bit like the picture on the right here.

Sustainable Development Goals Project:

Earlier in the lesson, you learned about the SDGs.  All of them are important to make our world a better place for all people in all countries.  Some of the goals might feel especially important to you.  Choose one or more goals that you feel strongly about.  Then:

Have a conversation with a family member or friend about why the goal is important to you.  Remember that there are many resources about the SDGs that you might like to look at to learn more about one or more goals in particular.

Choose a way to tell more people about why you feel so strongly about your goal.  You could:

Write about your goal.  Write a short persuasive piece telling your reader why the goal is important.  Or, you could write a fictional story about a character who learns the important of your goal, sort of like the storybook I shared with you earlier in this lesson.

Make a poster about your goal.  Use pictures and writing to share why your goal is important.

Make a video about your goal.  Use your own voice to persuade others why they should care about achieving your goal also.

Of course, you are most welcome to do any of these projects in English or French!

Once you have had some time to explore the videos, resources, and ideas above, please use this Google Form to share your thoughts and work with me.  Remember that you will have time this week and next for this lesson, so please feel free to take your time to explore the activities.

As I said in my very first video of this lesson, I am sorry that we will not be able to take the field trip to the United Nations that we were planning because of the current health crisis.  However, when it is safe to do so, I would highly encourage you and your families to book an appointment for the children’s tour at the UN to get to visit some of the places you learned about here.  The photo on the right here is from when the 2nd Graders and I took the tour last year, and we got to go inside the Security Council with our friendly multilingual tour guide.

I hope you enjoyed learning all about the UN in this lesson, and I do hope you will be able to visit it one day!  I can’t wait to hear from you about your work.  Bon courage !  A bientôt ! 

Ms. Patterson

Bonjour !  Ça va ? 

2nd Graders, as you know, la Tour Eiffel, or the Eiffel Tower, in Paris, France, is an important symbol of our class.  Over the years in Language Workshop, we have used it to track each class’s progress to earning “surprises,” and we’ve talked a bit about the city of Paris where it is located, and where most people speak French.  But the Eiffel Tower is just one of many famous and interesting places to visit in the city.  This week, I would like to invite you to explore some of those places, as a way to experience more of the culture of the French language.

Note: Once again, this week’s lesson will be for the next two weeks, so please use the time you have available as a family to engage with any or all of the resources here, and once you are ready, please use the Google Form linked here and at the bottom of the page to share your thoughts and work with me.

Maybe some of you have already been to Paris and seen some of the beautiful sights there.  Some of you were even born there!  Some of you perhaps haven’t been there.  Maybe one day you will have a chance to see it in person.  In the meantime, we will be able to take a virtual tour of some of the sights this week.  Here on the left, for example, is the Arc de Triomphe, or the Arch of Triumph, at the end of the widest, longest street in Paris called the Champs-Elysées.

First, let’s take a look at the city of Paris in this video.  You will probably recognize the two monuments in the pictures above, and you might recognize some other places, too.

Did you see the Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe?  Maybe you also saw these famous places:

La cathédrale Notre-Dame, or the Notre Dame Cathedral, which you can see here on the right.  See how tiny the people look at the bottom of the picture?  That gives you an idea how enormous it is!  You may know about a fire that caused significant damage to the Notre Dame just about a year ago.  It’s true that some parts of the structure were lost, but much of it is still there, and there are efforts to rebuild the cathedral.

Sacré-Coeur, or the Basilica of the Sacred Heart of Paris, which you can see here on the left.  This church sits at the top of the highest point of the city, so if you climb all the way up this hill, you have an amazing view of the whole city below you.  I also love the round shapes of the domes.

La pyramide du Louvre, or the Pyramid of the Louvre Museum, which you can see here on the right.  This glass pyramid was designed by Chinese-American architect I. M. Pei.  It stands in front of the Louvre Palace, a very old and grand palace that was once the home of French royalty, and is now the home of Le musée du Louvre, or the Louvre Museum, one of the biggest and most famous art museums in the world.  The glass pyramid is the way to enter the museum.

I’d like to read you a book in French that shows again some of these famous places in Paris, and some others.  You will notice that it’s un abécédaire, or an alphabet book, since each page is naming several things that start with a certain letter.  The book is all in French, so some of you will understand all of it, and some of you might understand just a few words, and that is okay.  If French is still new to you, you might just enjoy looking at the pictures and hearing the language as you watch.

What famous places did you see in that book?  Did you see some of the places in the photos above?  You may have also see some new ones:

Le Centre Pompidou, or Pompidou Center, sometimes also called Beaubourg for the area of Paris where it is located.  This fascinating-looking building contains a large public library, a modern art museum, and a music research center.  Many people like to gather in the open space outside the building, as well as to visit the spaces inside.

L’Opéra Garnier, or the Garnier Opera, sometimes also called the Garnier Palace.  This is one of my favorite places to visit in Paris!  It is a grand old opera house which is still used for ballet and opera performances today.  The inside is just as beautiful as the outside.  This opera house inspired the story of the Phantom of the Opera, which you might know as a story or a musical.

La Joconde, or the Mona Lisa.  I bet many of you recognize this painting by Leonardo da Vinci.  It is one the most famous paintings in the world.  You can see it in person at the Louvre Museum.  Often it is the painting that people most want to see in the museum, so there are many crowds around it!

Le Musée d’Orsay, or the Orsay Museum.  This is another wonderful art museum in Paris with a great collection of paintings and sculptures.  I especially like the building, which was once an old train station.  You can still see the clock from when people needed to know what time it was to catch their train!

If you can imagine, there are even MORE places to see in the city of Paris in this next video!  This video is only in French, so it will be great for those of you who already speak French.  For those of you who are learning French, you might just enjoy listening.  You might also choose to use the “CC” button to turn on the subtitles to better understand what the guide is saying.  You will even hear him speak English a couple of times to some American tourists!

You will probably see again some of the places we’ve already discussed, and you will also see several new things: some of the lovely shops and restaurants around the city, L’Avenue des Champs-Elysées that ends in L’Arc de Triomphe, the village of Montmartre next to the Sacré-Coeur, and the bateaux mouches, or excursion boats, that take visitors along the river Seine to see the sights of the city.

Now you might choose to take a virtual tour of some of these places.

Here you can see a list of tours available in French, or you can see tours available of the same places in English here.  You can visit many of the famous places you’ve already seen above, such as the Eiffel Tower and the Sacré Coeur, as well as some new ones. Choose which ones you would like to visit virtually.  Use your cursor to move around on the virtual tours to see different parts of the structures.  It’s like you’re really there in Paris!

If you’re most interested in Notre Dame, here’s another site with 3 ways to virtually visit the cathedral.

Here is a site in French designed for children to explore the Musée d’Orsay.

I highly recommend using this link to see photos and videos of the inside of the Opéra Garnier.  You can see the beautiful staircases going up and down, the golden structures, and my favorite, the painting by Marc Chagall on the ceiling of the theater space.

You might also want to learn more about some of these places using these links:

Here is a site in English with a list of famous monuments to see in Paris.  Click on the different monuments to see photos and videos of each one from different angles and at different times of day.  It’s fun to see how they look all lit up at night!

Here is a site with even more of the famous sights of Paris.  This site has information in French, but you can translate the page into English using Google Translate if you like.  You can also just enjoy clicking around to see pictures of the different places.

Now it’s time to do a project that blends art with Language Workshop …

Project challenge: #ParisChezVous, or Paris At Home

I shared with some of you during our live sessions last week some of the photos of this challenge.  “Chez” is a special word in French to talk about someone’s house.  For example, “chez Ms. Patterson” means “at Ms. Patterson’s house.”  “Chez vous” means at your house.  How would you say your house using “chez” and your name?

The challenge is to choose a famous place or image of Paris to make at home using different materials.

As you can see, some people have gotten very creative in this challenge!  See the different materials they have used to make the Eiffel Tower in these two pictures?

How about the structure in this next picture?  Do you recognize which famous monument it is?  I’ll give you a hint … it’s a famous cathedral whose name starts with the letter N …

I challenge all of you to give this project a try!  Choose one of the sights we saw in this lesson, and find some materials at home to make it.  As you can see in the photos, you can be creative and use any materials you can find at home!  Try candy, pencils, dried pasta, books, toothpicks … really anything you can find!  See here how the Louvre pyramid was made of Legos?

If you’d like some more inspiration, you can take a look at this collection of projects linked here.  If you and a grown-up would like, you can choose to post your project on social media using the hashtag #ParisChezVous — but please note that not all content on this hastag may be appropriate for 2nd Graders!  You can also choose just to send photos of your project to me, and I will highlight them on our Google Classrooms pages, and on the @PS58proud Instagram account.

Once you have had some time to explore the videos, resources, and ideas above, please use this Google Form to share your work with me.  Remember that you will have time this week and next for this lesson, so please feel free to take your time to explore the activities and try out the challenge.  I can’t wait to see what you come up with!

Bon courage !  A bientôt ! 

Ms. Patterson

Hello 2nd Graders!  Bonjour !  ¡Hola!  As you know, in Language Workshop, we spend a lot of time working on French, but we have also studied other languages together.  We have studied a bit of Spanish together in both the DLP and the FFL classes, and we have studied a bit of the American Sign Language alphabet together, as well as some basic signs.  We have also had community visitors come in to our classes to share their languages and their cultures.  This week I would like to invite all of you to choose a language to study on Duolingo.

First, think about which language you’d like to choose.  There are so many to choose from!  Just take a look at the photos here to see what your options are.

You might want to choose French because it’s a language that you already know a bit of, but would like to learn more of.  Anglophones in the DLP might find this to be a great way to practice their French.

For those of you who already speak French, Spanish, or any other language, this might be an opportunity to discover a third or fourth language.

Discuss with your family: is there a language spoken by your family or your ancestors that you’d like to learn?

Is there a language you don’t know at all, but you are really curious about?  The choice is yours!

Once you choose your language, you can get started on Duolingo for free either on the website or on the app (or you can pay for an account and not have to see ads).  You might ask for help from a caregiver in getting this set up and trying it out for the first time.  After a while, you might be able to play it yourself.  Yes, I said “play,” because Duolingo feels like a game, but you’re actually learning words in a new language!

Spend some time studying your language on Duolingo.  Do you know anyone who speaks the language?  Do you know where the language is spoken?  You and a caregiver might try to find those places on a map, and you might also find the flags of the countries where many people speak the language.

Finally, you may fill out the form on Google Classroom to let me know about your Duolingo experience.  I can’t wait to hear from you!

Bisous,

Ms. Patterson