Are your high school French students failing to truly learn verb conjugations? Are they relying on technology for a quick conjugation but not internalizing those conjugations?
Welcome to my Verb Card Project. I have been doing this project with my French classes since 2005, and it is just as useful today as it was back then, if not more so. This project requires your students to create their own verb conjugation resource that they will go back to over and over again. Because they are constructing the resource themselves and then using it on a regular basis, they will internalize these verbs.
Why this Project?
Rewind to the beginning of my teaching career. The only internet connection in the classroom was the computer at my desk. My students did not have access to anything but books. Seriously, I began my teaching career using an overhead projector and this project was once upon a time on transparency sheets (if you know what those were)! At that time, the Verb Card Project solved a big problem. I only had one copy of 501 French Verbs to pass around, and the charts in the back of the textbook were limited. With this project my students could put all of the most important verb conjugations they needed on notecards on one handy ring.
Today, when students need a conjugation, they tend to Google for it and they get a quick answer with a verb conjugation chart in the Google summary results. They write it on their paper, and then proceed to forget it as quickly as they found it. Answers at our fingertips do not necessarily lead to retention. Or, maybe they take it a step further and go to a conjugation website, which I am not denying can be an important resource for your students and one you should show them how to use.
While this project originally solved the problem of not having access to resources, I find that today this project solves the problem of overreliance on technology. Because students write out the verb conjugations themselves, because the conjugations are grouped in a logical manner, and because they use their verb cards on a regular basis while completing assignments, connections are made and retention builds.
Okay, so what am I even talking about?
What is this project?
This is a year-long and multi-year project. From a Slide Presentation I put on my Smartboard, students copy down verb conjugations onto colored notecards over the course of the school year. For those students who stick with French past the required years, we add verb tenses each year.
In all, the project covers 7 verb tenses. Each verb tense is color coded with colored notecards. The cards are hole punched at the corners and kept on a metal ring.
I have always been the only French teacher anywhere I have taught, so I carry the project on through multiple levels of French. If you have more than one French teacher at your school, this would be easy to do with everyone on board.
Timeline
I start this project in high school French II. Not that you couldn’t do it in middle school or French I, but unless you are teaching immersion, younger students just don’t know enough verbs yet for this to be worth it.
French II: We copy Present Tense, Passé Composé, and Imparfait cards over the course of the year.
French III: We add Futur and Conditionnel Cards.
French III or French IV: We add Subjontif and Passé Simple Cards. When you add these can depend on your curriculum. I have done it both ways.
Students copy each card themselves over the course of the school year, not all at once. You can do it as a bellringer activity or as part of your lesson. I usually have students copy anywhere between one and three cards at a time.
Storage
I provide a plastic bin for each class period to store their cards in my classroom. They are allowed to take them home to study and complete homework assignments, but I have found that if they have a storage place in my room they are less likely to get lost.
I store them here over the summer as well.
How I Use These on a Daily Basis
This project is not just about making the cards. These cards are invaluable to you as a French teacher! Here are some ways I incorporate them into my classroom routine:
- I encourage students to get their cards out of the bins to use during any class work: written activities out of the book, group speaking activities, writing assignments, homework, etc.
- Any time they would want to look up a verb conjugation online, I encourage them to use the cards. The more they use them, the faster they are at navigating them.
- When a student asks me how to conjugate a verb, I refer them to the verb cards, and even give them hints on where to look.
- I give verb quizzes that cover specific cards. For example: Purple Cards 16 & 17. Students take their cards home to study those specific cards to prepare.
- I have allowed students to use their verb cards on a big test. I circulate the room and flip through everyone’s cards to check for additional cheat sheet material they may have tried to add in.
- In advanced level class when we are reading a text, I ask students to have their verb cards on their desk as a reference. This is especially helpful for texts with lots of passé simple.
What You Will Need
First, you need the Verb Card Project resource from my TPT shop. This product gives you all 84 slides that you will display on a smartboard/screen/projector for your students to copy. I mean, you can use everything I have told you above to recreate a version of this on your own, but I am already 20 years in on doing this with my students. I have refined it and tweaked it, and if you have read this far and are picking up what I’m putting down, I promise it is worth the $8.
Then, you will need:
- 3X5 Notecards – Blank or Ruled
- Purple: 20 Cards x # of Students
- Pink: 8 Cards x # of Students
- Yellow: 11 Cards x # of Students
- Green: 15 Cards x # of Students
- Blue: 13 Cards x # of Students
- Orange: 9 Cards x # of Students
- One Inch Binder Rings
- A Hole Punch
- Bins for Classroom Storage
Final Thoughts
I do take a grade for these, and I do have a list of requirements I use in my classroom for this project. All of that is included in the product in my TPT store.
Sometimes you have a new student mid year, or at the beginning of French III or IV. I keep a stockpile of old verb card projects for this. At the end of the year, I ask any students who are not continuing French if they want to keep their cards (many advanced students actually do) or if they want to abandon their cards with me (many students who were only doing their required language credits leave them behind). I give new students the option of picking a card set from the stockpile or copying their own to catch up with their classmates.
I hope this project helps your classroom routine as much as it has helped mine!