Teaching French Rallye Games to Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Teaching French Rallye Games to Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

I was the social chairman for my French Club at Cass Technical High School in Detroit, Michigan and wanted to use this club to help improve my speaking skills and learn about French culture.  Everyone in the Club seemed to agree with me, because they let me do this volunteer job for three years.

Before I go into getting items from the French Consulate for the French club, I would like to mention how to use an English book I recently bought to promote speaking activities.  This book is called The Ultimate Book of Homeschooling Ideas: 500+ Fun and Creative Learning Activities - for Kids Ages 3 - 12 by Linda Dobson.  Translate the activity directions into French.  Then, do them in French.  Master one item at a time at the lowest age level and then move on to the next activity.

There are a variety of activities in this book that deal with numbers, the joy of language, chemistry and backyard bugs, social studies and geography, art, and housekeeping and organization games and activities.  People do learn by doing.  If you can add reasoning in French to your club and talking about a variety of topics helps promote fluency and makes learning a language fun for children.  I would definitely use this book for foreign language learning with second-year French students in a club setting.

We had a limited budget for club activities, but I knew that most embassies had cultural sections that gave out educational materials to teachers.  We had a French consulate in downtown Detroit to serve French expatriates working in Michigan that I told my French teacher about.

I volunteered to go to the Consulate and get materials for the Club, so my French teacher could attend her PhD classes at Wayne State University in Detroit.  She already held a master’s degree in linguistics. 

My French teacher called the French Consulate to arrange for me to get the materials.  I would go there about every two weeks with a wheeled cart to pick up various sundry items for the French Club.

My favorite items for the French Club were the special editions of Le Monde that dealt with various aspects of French culture such as:

-decorative arts

-French fashion

-French regions covering history, notable people from the region, famous regional dishes, and wine from the region

-regional French recipes

-French movies

-French singers

-French scientists

-French writers

I preferred Camus to Sartre, because Camus wrote The Plague.  I preferred Betty Shabazz of Nation of Islam to Simone de Beauvoir, but I still took Simone de Beauvoir's material.  I did not belong to Nation of Islam, but I liked how they cared for and educated children in the inner-city of Detroit.

I also liked Louise Michel.  Louise Michel is the only French woman to have a subway station named after her in the Paris Metro besides Abesses in Montmartre.  She was a Socialist childrens' educator, who had lived in French Polynesia and developed many educational theories based on how to educate poor children.  Her work is available only in French, but all of it is on Amazon Kindle.

Naturally everyone in the French Club thought Le Monde was the best newspaper in the world for helping us obtain a valuable job skill in the Detroit job market.

The French Consulate also gave us materials they had donated to them from Renault executives in the suburbs for us.  These were not crappy donations.  These people knew that Cass had a fashion design program and trained industrial artists (advertising artists and political cartoonists for newspapers).  So, we had many back issues of French fashion industry magazines to work with such as Numéro, L’Officiel Femmes, and L’Officiel Hommes.

I also took the promotional travel brochures of different regions (I would not be surprised if some of my classmates went to work for Club Med); mini biographies about famous French scientists, writers, authors, filmmakers; decorative arts and interior design ideas; and so on.

Of course, the Consulate gave us posters of regions in France like the Touraine and Anjou with their many gorgeous castles and gardens.

Once I picked up the materials, the French Club decorated our teacher’s classroom.  We wanted it to look nice.  We had a nice tree house club to play some of the games that the Consulate, churches, and Alliance Française had donated to us.  Even if these games were based on American models we had to speak in French to play them:

-Cluedo (French Clue)

-Monopoly (French Monopoly)

-Trivial Pursuit (French Monopoly)

-Mille Bornes (the French car driving game that requires fast thinking)

We saw that the French used American games, so we brought in our own and played them in French and jokingly called game days “Monte Carlo Casino Nights.”  Some of the games we played include:

-Bingo

-Go Fish

-Old Maid

-Rummy

-Uno

-Black Jack

-Backgammon

-Yahtzee

-Tic-tac-toe

-Poker

-Hearts

-Euchre

-Mini Roulette

-Ouija Boards

European aristocrats play card games and dice games and remain a part of French culture.

We had some donation comic books, which would be called graphic novels today about French classical literature.  These are the stories I remember:

-Notre Dame de Paris (by Hugo)

-The Three Musketeers (by Dumas)

-Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (by Verne)

-Gargantua and Pantagruel (by Rabelais)

-The Count of Monte Christo (by Dumas)

As the Social Chairman, I would read these magazines, special editions of newspapers, and travel brochures and prepare a short presentation that I would give to the Club in French.  I would answer questions in French as well.  If Club members were interested in those topics, they could borrow the magazines, brochures, or newspapers. 

My French teacher had a lending library set up and gave the magazines and other items to French club members to keep track of what we had.

I played Victorian Parlor Games when I was growing up and knew the French played them as well, especially in families with lawyers and accountants.  We played these in French to hone our French skills and our ability to think in a foreign language:

-20 Questions

-I Spy

-Charades

-Who am I?

-Market Basket (Cumulative, alphabetical memorization game)

-What Next? (Story building game)

-Simon Says

-I went to the Mall and Bought (alphabetical memorization games)

-I Spy

We read Le Petit Prince in class, wrote and adaptation of it, and performed it for the younger French students.  I was L’Allumeur – the person who turns the lights on and off.

We went to dress rehearsals of Moliere plays at Wayne State University using our bus passes.  We did not have to pay for this privilege, because we were “focus group” for feedback on the performance.  Cass Tech has an awesome theatre and performing arts program, so the students really know how to do constructive feedback and not “teardown the competitor” criticism.

Our French teacher taught us French Christmas carols as part of our French Club activities.  We walked around all eight floors of our school and sang them. 

The French Consulate also sent us Jacques Cousteau documentaries and a film projector.  I became devoted to preserving the oceans at eighteen, because I understood that even landlocked countries are part of the water cycle. 

I still love the little French Club we had at Cass Technical High School.  We did not have a big budget and used our bake sale money to help the seniors go on a senior trip to Montreal, Canada.  (I had already been there, but did not mind helping other Club members go on this trip.)

Our bake sale taught us to be quick retailers.  We sold everything and knew how to much make and turn a profit.  

By Ruth Paget - Author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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