This part of the website gives detailed advice on using the fusée website with your class, in particular how to navigate round the pupil's section and how the interactive exercises work. You can also go to the Site Map to gain an overview of the entire fusée en ligne site.

Click on one of the headings below to find out more:

The fusée en ligne website works as a useful accessory to the website links listed in the Student's Book. The website links here on the site are updated regularly to keep pace with the ever-changing Internet, ensuring that your pupils are using up-to-the-minute sites with the latest features. Also, using the fusée website allows you to bring together all the links, their accompanying activities and supplementary resources such as the Babelfish online dictionary, as the pupils completing the activities online, and in many cases, have their answers automatically marked as well. For the teacher there is also more in-depth advice on each French website and instructions on how the interactive exercises work, plus free supplementary assessment material to download as well.

fusée1, fusée 2 and fusée3 - the pupils' section of the website

Each stage of the fusée course has a different part of the website with its own links and activities. Pupils should click on the appropriate front cover on the homepage to go to the relevant part of the site for where they are in the course.

(a) The unit pages

Once they get to the opening page for the stage they have chosen, there is a choice of the ten units from that book with a reminder of the topics they cover. By clicking on the unit number or title here they can open a page for that particular unit. All the units are also accessible from the navigation bar at the top of the window. This also contains a "help" feature (called Je comprends!) which explains the various aspects of this section of the site.

On each unit page there is a brief description of the two websites that have been chosen for this unit, which match the topic area of the chapter. You can not access the French websites directly from this page, but have to go via the accompanying interactive activity, which focuses the work on the website. Clicking on the title of the appropriate website will take you to the website activity.

(b) The website activities

The activities bring up a separate page which the acts both as a link to the actual French website and as an interactive answer sheet for the pupils. At the top of the page there is a link which opens the relevant website in a separate window. This means that the pupils can relatively easily shuttle to and fro between the activity and the website - the easiest way to do this, as explained, is using the <ALT> + <TAB> combination on a PC keyboard.

Once the website has been opened, the pupils can start trying to answer the activity's questions. It is a good idea to get them to read through the questions in the activity first, as this helps to focus their attention on one area of websites that are often huge and in which they can otherwise easily get lost. As the activity sheet is designed to be printed out after it has been filled in, the pupils are asked to enter their name at the top of the page.

The questions that follow are in four different styles. The first three styles are all "closed" questions, i.e. where there is only one correct answer for each question. These are all interactive parts of the activity where pupils answer online and have their entries marked by the computer. These three styles of question are:

Multiple-choice questions
Here there are three or more multiple-choice answers given to the question, and the pupils have to check the right answer by clicking in the box next to the appropriate answer. After they've filled in their answer, they can find out if they are right by clicking on the button below. This will return their score, as well as telling them which questions they have got wrong - pupils can then go back and try to get these questions right again (or continue if they get fed up!)

Matching questions
In this type of question, pupils have to match up two lists of words, usually a case of French terms on the website with their English translations. This time pupils choose the matching word or phrase from a drop-down list next to the French phrase - by clicking once on the list and then clicking on their choice in the list that pops up. Again, when all the questions are answered, by clicking on the button under the exercise they can mark their answers and find out which ones they have got wrong - and go back to try to get these ones right again.

Short answer questions
There are a few questions where the pupils can answer with a short English phrase or even one word. For this style of question, the student has to just type into the text box provided for the answer and then click to have it marked. In some cases there will be an opportunity to try again as well.

If there are no open-ended questions in the activity (see below), the option to print out the sheet with all their answers on it is given at the bottom of the page.

Open-ended questions
The last kind of question is different from the other two, in that it is open-ended: the answers will vary depending on what is on the website when you use it, or on how each pupil decides to respond to the question. These questions are not answered online - pupils have to choose either to print off the answer sheets and fill these answers in by hand, or can open the answer sheet into Microsoft Word and complete their answers there before printing out the result. This part of the answer sheet can then be handed in for marking.

NB. This part of the website relies on Microsoft Word being installed on your computer(s).
Also, if your computer(s) use Netscape Navigator or Communicator, when pupils load up the activity sheet into Word, a warning window will probably come up to confirm downloading the page. To proceed, click on "Open it" under the "What do you want to do with this file?" question. This also gives you the opportunity to save the completed activity page onto your computer.

(c) Je comprends! window

As mentioned above, the navigation bar at the top of the screen also contains a
Je comprends! help feature. This is explained on the opening page of each stage of the Student's Book - but it would also be a good idea to point this out to pupils before they start using the fusée website. The Je comprends! window has a short contents list of "frequently-asked questions" (FAQ) about how to use various bits of the site, which act as links to jump to the relevant paragraph in this window.

The Je comprends! feature also contains a link to the Babelfish online dictionary, a page that opens within the same window. This automatically translates between various languages, and is a quick, online way to find the meaning of a unknown French word on one of the websites. It should be emphasised to students, however, that it is quite a basic tool and deals best with single words in their simplest form (i.e. nouns, unconjugated verbs). It also works much better from French to English than in the other direction.

The teacher's section of the fusée website

The teacher's section of fusée en ligne is a fairly self-explanatory guide to making the most of using the fusée course alongside the Internet. The opening contents page of this section lists the various parts and their functions, and each of these then contains relevant guidelines on how best to use that part. General instructions on using websites with your class are given in "How to use the fusée en ligne website/Introduction to using the websites".

The navigation bar
As in the pupils' section of the website, there is a navigation bar at the top of the screen throughout the teacher's section of fusée en ligne. This contains quick links to the different parts of this section of the site. By clicking on the fusée en ligne logo you can return to the homepage of the whole website.

Ordering copies
You can order copies of any fusée component, or an evaluation pack, any time while you are using the teacher's section of the site by clicking on the "Order copies" button in the navigation bar at the top of the screen.

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