Megan Helgeson, OWLA Beginning Teacher Chair
French Teacher, Miamisburg High School

When using immersion the first few days of school, there are several guidelines that you should follow when creating your lesson plans. Visit Immersion in Motion for all of the activities that I do in the first week of school.

1. Name Activities
These activities are for you, the teacher, to learn students’ names—not for students to learn each other’s. This way, you avoid the overused and frustrating activity where students have to say everyone’s name who went ahead of them or anything similar. Here are some activities I do to learn everyone’s name by the second or third day:

• Introduce how to say “My name is…” in the TL and have everyone say their name. After each person says their name, encourage everyone to respond with “Hi, (student’s name).”
• Use inside/outside circles. Students say, “Hi, my name is…” 
• Write the letters of the alphabet on the board, saying them as you write them. Then, write whatever you want students to call you on the board. I write “Madame,” then I underline the “A” in Madame and explain that if anyone has the letter “A” in their name, they should stand up. Anyone who stands up says, “My name is…” again. Repeat their name after they say it. Do this for every letter so that students will be standing up for each letter of their name, and you get the repetition of them saying their name and you saying their name each time. 
• Pass an object—I use a bean bag—and again, have students say “My name is…” at random. Repeat this as many times as you want.
• On the second day, you can introduce “What is your name?” and have everyone respond with “My name is…” Repeating the question after each student says their name and encourage students to say the question with you.
• Pass a beanbag. You ask, “What is your name?” and throw the beanbag to students at random for them to say, “My name is…” Students throw the beanbag back to you each time, allowing you to repeat the question and then throw it to the next student.
• Pass a bean bag. This time, students say, “My name is… What’s your name?” then pass it to the next student.
• Use inside/outside circles. Students say, “What’s your name?” Partners respond with “My name is… What’s your name?”

2. Basic Language
Especially for level one, the easier the activities or games, the better. Think kindergarten. The students are babies in the language, after all. You want the students to feel successful as they are dealing with the challenging task of immersion. 

If they don’t understand an activity at first, don’t worry about it. I do an activity on the first day where I show “Ours brun, dis-moi,” then I go through the colors in the video, and have students stand if they like that color. Sometimes, students think I want them all to stand, and it takes several rounds of me asking and them sitting back down for them to realize that they’ve misunderstood. That’s okay!

3. A Lot of Short Activities
All activities should be short, and you should have many activities planned. This keeps them engaged and reduces the amount of English they would be using if there was a lot of downtime. Plus, they don’t know a lot of language anyway, so activities are less likely to take a long time. You can spend 10 or so on an authentic resource—like I do with “Ours brun, dis-moi”—but do multiple activities with that resource to keep it interesting.

4. A Lot of Brain Breaks/Games
Again, keep the downtime to a minimum. After a learning activity, do an easy brain break or game. This will show that your class is going to be fun, even though it may seem difficult due to the immersion. Some brain breaks I do the first few days are:

• A command circle. On the first day, I teach the terms “to the right,” “to the left,” “front,” and “back” (repeatedly for several minutes) before moving on to inside/outside circles, so that I can direct students using the terms they have just learned. During the first few days of school, I create a command circle each day, adding new words to it every day.
• Do the wave.
• Play “Red light, green light.”
• Touch different colors around the room.
• Call out different numbers. Students are grouped in that size.

Doing silly brain breaks also primes students to be willing to be silly in the TL, because speaking in a different language will feel silly to a lot of students if they’ve never been in a language class before.

5. No Computer or Notebook Activities
First, students may not have computers yet or may not be aware that they need a notebook for your class, which you will cover with them during English week. Second, until you train students to act it out, draw it, or use circumlocution, you do not want students tempted to translate anything. Computer use should be rare until that time, which usually takes a very long time.

6. Do Not Go Over School Rules, Even if Your District Requires It
Do not feel obligated to go over school rules even if you are required to. Students are going to learn these rules because they are enforced every day, not because you talked  about them on the first day of school. And how boring would it be to go to every class on the first day and sit through different aspects of school rules! Make your class fun and memorable. And the immersion and games will definitely leave an impression on their first day—your class will be what they tell their parents about, not the other classes where they had to listen to the rules being explained.