International Romance and other Adventures in French

Ha! That title hopefully got your attention. I write this little post to give a shout out to my colleague, Clemence Attard, and her French students for participating in a Google Mystery Hangout with a group of students from Toronto, Canada.


The idea of a mystery hangout is for the students to guess in twenty questions or fewer where the other group of students is from. We connected our students with a room full of students from Canada. The screen serves as an interesting window between two countries. I have to say it was pretty cool to watch two classrooms of kids interact with each other. My colleague enthused about the experience upon its completion. She said her kids were so excited and though only French 1 students, that they held their own in the target language. I've often written about the importance of real audience and the importance of letting students take on the role of expert. This mystery hangout allowed for both of these things to happen.


And finally to boot, one young person from my school outside of Philadelphia, PA exchanged phone numbers and snapchat addresses with a young person from Canada. Love at first sight, international style.

If you want to set one up yourself, get on Google+ and get into this community. People are reaching out all the time looking to connect their classrooms with the outside world.