TJHS French students recreate famous works of art

Mrs. Allison Romito, Thomas Jefferson High School Foreign Language Teacher, is finding creative ways for her students to create and apply the language skills they are currently studying online. For a lesson on irregular French nouns and adjectives, Mrs. Romito was inspired by a Smithsonian Magazine article about the Getty Museum in Los Angeles asking the public to recreate famous works of art.

She tasked her French 2 students to take a virtual field trip of the Louvre Museum’s collections and select a piece of artwork that they could recreate at home while writing a short paragraph of their piece incorporating some of the irregular French nouns and adjectives that they reviewed in the lesson. Since the actual lesson is essentially a spelling lesson full of exceptions to the rules of French orthography and a bit dry to cover, this was an ideal opportunity to immerse students in the language while also having fun.

Students really embraced the assignment and even had family members participate. Mrs. Romito has been very impressed with her students’ final pieces and truly grateful for the much-needed laughter and smiles the assignment has brought. “I was hoping this would be a fun activity where the students could step away from the computer for a moment, create something, and maybe, just maybe, forget about the quarantine and have a laugh and a smile, and I think we did just that.”

Kudos to Mrs. Romito for the fun and creative online lesson, and the amazing work by her students!