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History: The Story of VERBATHON Bonjour, my name is Emmanuel Escueta. I am a French Immersion Teacher and am also the creator of this wonderful and exciting language teaching tool called VERBATHON. I would like to share with you a brief history of VERBATHON. My first experience in 1989 as a teacher in Northern Manitoba was a real "baptism of fire." I was teaching Basic French to over 100 students in grades 4, 5, 7, and 8. I had no experience and little resources. I felt like a soldier going into battle without a gun! The challenge was how to motivate the students to learn and have fun in the process! I soon realized that how much my students learned was directly linked to how they perceived the subject or the concepts they had to learn. In other words, I knew I had to change their attitude. It was at this point that I started to create my own resources to try and survive in the classroom. I developed my own games for the classroom and soon enough, I noticed a big change in the way the students viewed learning. VERBATHON and RÉQUEST complemented the activities we did in the class. The results were so positive and the reaction from my students, parents and colleagues was so encouraging. I concluded that if these games are so well received and effective, maybe other teachers and students would benefit. Hence I started to offer VERBATHON & RÉQUEST. I decided to approach different school districts with my ideas and since 1993, I have been doing workshops for several school-based, divisional, regional, and national professional development conferences. I have also participated in several publisher's displays. I continue to develop other materials in my classroom. I have also included RÉQUEST with VERBATHON. This is what I love about being a teacher, I always have students to test ideas on. Not only that, they'll definitely let you know if your idea works or not!!!
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