Want some French Earth Day teaching ideas for your class? You don’t have to take a lot of time to bring Earth Day lessons into your French classroom this spring! Here are some fun things I have done to celebrate Earth Day with my students.
Music for your French class
I love using music in French class! Students get excited about videos, and it’s a great way to introduce them to the francophone world. Here are a few songs I love using when teaching about environmental issues, and they work great for a French Earth Day lesson.
Les enfants du monde – Green Team
Kids will like this one even if they don’t understand all the French, because they will be able to pick up the refrain and it will stick in their heads. If you show videos from Kids United, they will recognize some of the singers, too. It’s a great song to use in the spring, whether you use it for a French spring lesson or for Earth Day.
L’hymne de la Vie – Kids United
My classes ALWAYS love Kids United! This one is all about protecting the Earth, making it a perfect French Earth Day music choice!
Aux arbres citoyens – Yannick Noah
I love to play this one just as we start a unit on the environment and/or Earth Day, because it shows a lot of environmental issues that students are aware of. It gives us a good starting point for vocabulary. We watch the video and I have students jot down all the environmental problems they see. If they don’t know the French words, we start building a list of terms together.
Les enfants de la Terre
This one has amazingly beautiful images and I just think it’s such a pretty song!
Respire – Mickey 3d
I have used this one with my high school classes, and it’s great for advanced groups. Watch it first to make sure it’s appropriate for your students as there is one word you may wish to avoid. 😉
This song is great to have students follow up with a written reaction which I always do as a French Earth Day writing assignment. My students sometimes had to watch it twice to get what happens, but the reaction was always, “WHOA.”
Follow up with easy-to-use writing activities
I usually teach a mini unit environmental issues in the spring, so when it works, I try to do it just in time to do a French Earth Day week. We mainly focus on the issues as a way to review the grammar we’ve been working on, so some of the activities are in le futur simple and le subjonctif.
Here’s a bit of the subjunctive page.
