Teaching Clothing

Teachers on a variety of listservs for language teachers have been sharing ideas for teaching and reinforcing clothing. Here are some of them:

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Students create a paper bag puppet and dress it in 6-8 items of clothing that they create out of cloth or construction paper. They do an oral presentation to the class where they introduce their puppet and describe what it is wearing. They also create a little librito to go along with their puppet that has a picture and description of each clothing item. The students love the project, they get a chance to be really creative (some of these puppets are real works of art), and they are assessed on oral and written presentations. I'd love to take credit for this idea, but I found it on FLTeach a number of years ago, shared by some other generous teacher.

Bruhn, D. Re: [FLTEACH] Ropa. FLTEACH listserv (FLTEACH@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU, 8 Apr 2013).

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I do a fashion show yearly. I allow students to dress up - some become fashionable, some try to dress like an old lady or old man. They have to work with a partner and write what they are going to say about each other. I or a student takes pictures. I put together a slide show with music to watch. The kids love it. As the kids watch, they note and write a sentence about who they find most silly, fashionable etc. and why - using weil. My students love to have my next section of level I students see what they do. I also show previous ones to the classes as a fun activity when they are in an older class - for example in AP - when they did the fashion show as 8th graders.

MacDonald, J. Re: [AATG-L] Fashion Show. AATG-L listserv (aatg@list.iupui.edu, 11 Feb 2013).

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I took [the fashion show idea] a step further by having the students make their own clothing label and a brochure to present their company to the class. That way I also had a nice written portion to display in the hall with my pictures and it made the activity more involved.

Post, A. Re: [FLTEACH] Ropa. FLTEACH listserv (FLTEACH@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU, 8 Apr 2013).

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I have students do a scavenger hunt [on French clothing catalogue websites] for 10-15 minutes: I give them a list of very specific articles of clothing and colors to find and they record the price (so I have a record of if they found the right thing). This helps familiarize them with the sites. Then I have them design an outfit for someone from what they find on the site and write a short paragraph about what the person is wearing.

Anna M. Cartwright. Re: [FLTEACH] Clothing Vocab. FLTEACH listserv (FLTEACH@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU, 25 Apr 2013).

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French teachers can make use of this series of articles about different fashion trends among adolescents: http://www.journaldesfemmes.com/maman/ado/conseil/decodez-le-look-des-ados/bling-bling.shtml

Here are a few more fashion resources that include some documents from the above series and more: http://www.tes.co.uk/teaching-resource/La-mode-Y12-activities-reading-and-listening-6144191

See how another French teacher used the series at http://mmeperkins.typepad.com/my_weblog/2008/12/le-look-la-mode.html