French Super Verbs

I don't know about you, but lately I have been hearing a LOT about the "Super Seven" (credit to Terry Waltz) and the "Sweet Sixteen" (credit Michael Peto) verbs.  I first heard about the concept from my colleague, who heard of it from Martina Bex (see Martina's post, and she links back to the original creators).

If you don't know what I am talking about, the Sweet Sixteen is a set of super high frequency structures that can be used in any language to communicate on a wide variety of topics.  You can get some insane mileage out of these simple structures, and to be honest, it's pretty hard to communicate without them!  Just try telling a story without saying "There are" and "I said" and "He is".  It's pretty tough!  We use these phrases ALL.  THE.  TIME.....but are we really helping the students acquire them early on?  Or do we wait until the textbook says it's time to teach "to be"?

If I were to follow my textbook series to the letter, my students would not learn "I am" until chapter 7!  That's like March.  And they wouldn't even learn "He says" in level 1 at all!  Needless to say, I don't follow my textbook anymore.  Sent them all back to central office, and maaaaaaannnn, it felt good to get rid of them!

Anyway - One of my goals for the year is to focus hard on the Sweet 16 in level 1.  (sure we'll review in other years but I am just wanting to see what my Firsties can do with them!)  I am excited to bring in more Movie Talks (Simon's Cat anyone?) and story asks that can get the kids engaged with these structures that really pack a punch!

There are a lot of world language educators who are posting their Super 7 or Sweet 16 in their rooms.  I never really liked the idea when I was a more traditional teacher.  I thought, 'I don't really care what the posters know, I want to know what the kids know!'  But as I have been following more CI styles for educating, I am seeing that these scaffolds are necessary.  I mean, what is a scaffold for anyway?  You put up the scaffold while you're building the house and then eventually the house stands up on its own, right?  So let's give the kids the support they need and eventually, they'll quit looking at my posters.  Well, that's the hope anyway!

If you're like me, you a) like things to look a certain way, b) hate spending money on classroom stuff that the school should buy for you (but that's a whole other rant!!!), and c) are annoyed that it's so EASY to find stuff in Spanish and kinda hard to find it in French!

So I made my own poster set for the Sweet 16.  You can find it here for free.  I have included 1st and 3rd person singular forms only, and it's color coded.  If you want an editable version, hit me up and I can send you a Power Point version (teachers of other languages, you can easily change the French to the TL of your choice!).  The only thing I ask is that you please don't share my work directly.  Share the link to this blog all you want so your colleagues can download the posters.

I will note that I made some minor changes from the original lists.  I added "Il me/lui faut" because I think it's pretty important and it sets up IOPs for later on.

So I hope you like these posters, and that if you're not already teaching the Sweet 16 that you'll give it a shot this year!