When I was young, learning French didn’t come easy to me. I would feel a tightness in my chest and stress in the pit of my stomach. Today, I use yoga to help me process my anxiety, and I use it in my classroom, too. When I’m teaching French to my immersion students, yoga helps them slow down and melt away their nervous energy, which gives them a confidence boost and prepares them for the challenging task of learning another language.
First thing in the morning, after recess, or at the end of the day are great times to try poses. This practice can build classroom community, promote social-emotional learning and movement, and boost vocabulary.
From pose to power
Students who are stressed may have difficulty attending to the academic tasks of a classroom. Pairing language learning with yoga has many benefits:
- It increases focus. When students are engaged in deep breathing and stretching, they can bring their awareness back to the present moment. The brain can tire quickly when learning a new language. Being in the moment can offer a mental reprieve by increasing focus before returning to language learning.
- It enhances memory retention. Stress and anxiety can inhibit memory and learning. Students can increase information processing and memory consolidation by cultivating a more relaxed mind.
- It builds resilience. Staying in a pose requires learners to develop patience and embrace imperfections; it also fosters self-compassion. This can build strength by enabling learners to bounce back from setbacks and approach challenges with a calm and open mindset.
- It helps promote groundedness. Whether used for physical grounding to the earth, breath awareness, stress reduction, or building mind-body connections, yoga poses can translate into a feeling of stability and solidity while navigating the challenges of learning a new language.
- It may help with the pronunciation of the sounds of a new language. According to what I learned in my training as a yoga instructor, deep breathing can bring more oxygen into our muscles and lungs, increasing our ability to articulate and control sounds. I believe that, over time, this can help us build stamina for pronouncing various sounds in another language.
From bending to building
Integrating new poses that are based on a theme is a great starting point. In the fall, we have a natural desire to ground ourselves. Here are some fun, grounding poses for your next fall vocabulary lesson.
La posture de l’arbre
Have students begin by standing tall. Ask them to balance on one leg and to bend their other leg out to the side, resting the sole of their foot either against their ankle with toes on the ground, on their calf below the knee or on their thigh. When they’re ready, they can then stretch their hands up and out like a tree full of leaves. This pose can be used outside to add more fall vocabulary. Students can participate in a fall colour hunt by naming the colours they see (for example: “C’est un arbre avec des feuilles rouges.”), or they can look for various leaves and define their shape and colour (for example: “Cette feuille est en forme de coeur.”). Finally, students can engage in storytelling in French. For example, you could have them do the tree pose and tell a story related to the journey of a tree they see.
Statue d’épouvantail
This pose is a movement break. While you play music, students can dance. When the music stops, students choose a pose and stay in that pose until the music starts again. Have the students freeze in a pose related to the vocabulary you’re working on to increase French language learning. For example, if the category is animals, the students can freeze and name an animal in French, such as un chat or une pipistrelle. These are perfect animal poses for fall and Halloween. This game also allows students to be creative in the pose that they choose.
Le souffle de la citrouille
Students sit cross-legged and pretend to hold a pumpkin. As students breathe in, the pumpkin gets bigger. As they breathe out, the pumpkin gets smaller. This helps students to regain focus. Alternatively, students can sit back to back and synchronize their breathing. When one exhales, the other can say a fall vocabulary word or sentence, encouraging mindful listening.
Which pose will you start with? Adding fun poses to your second-language tool kit can be a great way to start the school year. It can unite your classroom community by helping students relax, reduce stress and improve their focus. Learning another language has never been so fun!
