This weekend (October 14-15) I am presenting at FLANC (Foreign Language Association of North Carolina) with my Senegal friends. We are splitting our presentation into two different sessions. The session I am help with focuses on how to incorporate Senegal of the past into the classroom.
Whether or not you can attend FLANC, I am going to share my section of the presentation with you below. In an effort to save paper and trees, I am not going to print off all of the teaching materials, but you will find links to them in Google Documents below.
My presentation focuses on Léopold Sédar Senghor and the influence of griots on Senghor's writings and life. First of all, if you have never heard of Léopold Sédar Senghor, you have been missing out. He was the first president of Sénégal and a world-famous poet. He is also one of the founders of the Negritude movement in literature.
There are numerous ways that Senghor can be incorporated into the classroom, but I focused on two areas: children's literature and poetry.
Senghor was co-author of a book written to teach children in Francophone Africa how to read. The book is called La Belle Histoire of Leuk-le-lièvre. It is very readable and incorporates many wonderful aspects of African literature such as trickster tales, dilemma tales, etc. To utilize this book, I created activities using different aspects of the book for different levles. The documents are linked below by level.
This book is available for purchase at amazon.fr.
Also, it is necessary to include Senghor's poetry in the French classroom. Since his poetry is readily available in French and English, it can be used with all levels of French students. I have included two possible poetry projects and some examples below.
I hope that you find this information useful! Feel free to contact me if you have any questions or suggestions.
No comments:
Post a Comment