In their tenure as French teachers at the Avery Coonley School in Downers Grove, Illinois, the authors have continually sought an effective instructional model for their K-8 students. Their school is blessed to have a stable and historic French program for young learners, and each of their students is required to take French from kindergarten through eighth grade. The program has been in place since the mid 1940s, prior to which German was taught. Because the Avery Coonley School is independent, they have much freedom in designing curriculum and in experimenting with different types of instructional models. In the past six years they have experimented with and honed their approach, and they share their journey in this article. This article describes how the authors used partner conversation as an instructional model. Using the dialogue, students practice the language, which they learn by encountering vocabulary embedded within a meaningful context. As they adopted the conversational model, their working curriculum changed greatly.