Inquiring into phonics and grammar

Spelling is always a challenge in a French Immersion classroom.  It is very important to take the time to do some direct teaching of spelling patterns and phonetic combinations in both languages.  BUT, how might we incorporate inquiry into spelling and phonics?

Well, this past week my student did just that.  It might not be the most impressive inquiry, but hopefully they will have gained some ownership of the concept of spelling patterns for 2 very complex sounds in French [é] and [è].   Here's what we did:

1. I loaded 2 videos from www.imagier.net on our 5 au quotidien page.  These videos simply list words that contain different sounds.  The words appear and are pronounced by a native speaker.  Simple!  
2. My students watched the videos several times. Many of them repeated the words as they listened.  This was somewhat surreal, as it created a sort of bizzar choral piece.  Imagine several children, all wearing headsets,  saying different words containing the same sounds.  
3. After they had listened to the words, we generated a list of different words they had heard and remembered. 
4. We then read each word to determine if it contained [é] or [è].  Here we added a kinesthetic element.  Every time we heard [é] in a word, we used our left arms to make the accent aïgu.  We used our right arms to create the accent grave for words containing [è].  This was very popular and we repeated it several times with words from around the classroom and others that popped into our heads.
5. Once we had determined which words contained which sounds, the students examined the words to see if they could determine the letters that made up each sound.  
6. We created an anchor chart for both sounds. 

We'll see how this goes!  Hopefully it will be helpful for most!