You may have noticed that I don't teach a lot of new grammar in my classes.  I find that it takes students a long time to fully understand a new structure.  Even if it is an idea that they have been taught in the past, it takes a considerable period of time to fully understand the nuances of the idea and begin to change the way they speak and write, incoporating the new structure.  In many cases, students have developed incorrect ways of speaking in earlier years.  The mistakes that they made when they were younger become their "default mode" and they continue to make these mistakes even after studying the correct way to speak or write.  In order to replace these "fossilized" mistakes, I have found it best to spend a long period of time on one grammatical point at a time.

In grade seven we have focussed a lot on the present tense.  We have played a variety games, done writing assignments, kept track of mistakes and had quizzes.  Although this was the main focus in first semeter, I am periodically giving pop-quizzes to help keep what we learned at the front of our minds and memories.  So far this year we have done 10 quizzes.  Many students have learned a lot and continue to retain it in the long term.  Their quiz marks are consistently level 3 or 4.  Other students continue to do quite poorly.  These students should make it a high prioirty to use the tools that I have given them to try to master this verb tense more fully or to ask me for some help.

Similarly in grade eight, we have studied the imparfait verb tense, particularly in relation to the passé composé tense.  These are both past tenses, but are used in different situations.  The nuance of these differences are quite sublte and are therefore quite challenging for English speaking people. We don't really have a parallel structure in English.  I have also been giving pop-quizzes on this structure.  I evaluate the quizzes in two different ways.  I give a mark for the student's ability to identify which verb tense is required in the situation. This mark is labelled with "Usage". I give another mark for the accuracy of the conjugation. This mark is labelled "Conj". This is to help the students identify what they are struggling with and how to correct it. Some students have mastered these structures beautifully. I am so proud of them. Other students have made a lot of progress, but still have some work to do. 

Please check with your child to see how he or she is doing. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me.