French ER verb conjugation

French ER verb conjugation can be tricky to teach to students who don’t really understand the concept – most of us don’t spend a lot of time learning to conjugate English verbs, since they are – for the most part – so simple – just two forms, with only one letter difference. This can make it tough for our students to understand what they are doing and why they are doing it in the first place. here are some ideas for how I teach my students, as well as some resources I enjoy using.

Introducing French ER verb conjugation

Many of my students speak Spanish, which is definitely an advantage! I will show them a Spanish conjugation as an opener – or I will tell them some sentences in broken Spanish, not conjugating the verbs. Then I will conjugate the same verb in English, so they see that while the English verb is very simple, the Spanish one has multiple forms with different endings. After that, we go through the French equivalent of whatever verb I’ve chosen.

Once they see what a verb conjugation is, I do several French ER verb conjugations in chart form. I also use Desmos to guide students some conjugations – I give them a chart with 3-4 infinitive verbs across the top and the subject pronouns down the side. I put at least one conjugated form of the verb in each row, so they can use it as a guide. If there are any mistakes, I can easily see them at a glance and walk students through the steps. While Desmos is my preferred tool, you could easily use Nearpod or Peardeck for the same thing.

Helping students remember the French ER verb conjugation endings

Now that they understand what conjugation IS, it’s time to work on remembering the endings. Some of them I will have reinforced through pop-up grammar in stories – I point out very early on that when I do something there will be an -e, but when you do something, there will be an -es, so these endings are probably already in their heads a little bit. But I also sing a very simple song to help them memorize the endings. It’s sung to the tune of “if you’re happy and you know it.” I will sing it a couple of times, then ask them to sing along with the endings part.

Time to practice!

Now that they’ve got the concept and the endings, it’s time to practice! There are a few websites I like to use for practice. Conjuguemos is one of the best ones to just drill with low-stress. They can play as much as they want with the graded practice and games. I warn them that their first attempts will probably be bad – their percentage correct will be low, but it WILL go up over time.

When I assign this activity, I tell them I want to see 5 minutes of practice with at least 25 attempts at 70% or better as their actual assignment. But they can play the graded practice and games as many times as they want before they do the assignment that they will turn in to me.

I also like to use Blooket and Gimkit. My kids love the Blooket games – especially the gold one and the café one. Since it is multiple choice, this is more of a “soft” practice activity – they aren’t coming up with the endings on their own. The gold game is great because students can be competitive even if they aren’t always the quickest to understand the concepts.

Once they are pretty good at the whole conjugation thing, I switch over to Gimkit. Gimkit allows for text response answers, so I will make a set with 4-5 different verbs, so a total of 24-30 responses. You can just use pronouns, or you can set it up with nouns and proper nouns as well. We have a challenge board for the lava game – each class plays the game and I keep track of their best score. They can get pretty competitive!

If you are looking for some resources for teaching and practice that your students can do individually, Frenchified has a few things for you. The Grammar Snacks -er verb lesson walks you through the presentation of -er verb conjugation with a PowerPoint, handouts, and a reading activity that focuses on ER verbs.

The ER verb digital practice game is a self-grading multiple choice game that students can play to practice selecting the correct endings. And the regular verbs hidden pictures activity is self-grading and will reveal a photo as students get the correct answer. It has not just ER verbs, but there is also an activity for IR and RE verbs in that item as well.