Bonne Rentrée: 2019

Today I just wanted to share a quick beginning of the year post. The chronological nature of a blog can make it difficult for new readers to find helpful posts. So, as I did last year, I’ve created this list of links to past posts that included complete unit plans. Keep in mind that these units were not all created or taught in one year. I switch things up based on the curriculum of my current school and the interests of my students. In addition, each post reflects where I was on my journey toward proficiency at the time I wrote it. I have continued to evolve, and you will no doubt improve upon the plans that you find here!

Bonne rentrée à tous!

French 1 Units

Bienvenue à la classe de Français: https://madameshepard.com/?p=752

Bienvenue: Partie II: https://madameshepard.com/?p=789

Ce que j’aime: https://madameshepard.com/?p=855

La Famille: https://madameshepard.com/?p=1110

Bon Appétit pt. 1: https://madameshepard.com/?p=282 (petit déjeuner)

Bon Appétit pt. 2: https://madameshepard.com/?p=321

Bon Appétit pt. 3: https://madameshepard.com/?p=345

Noël: https://madameshepard.com/?p=1282

French 2 Units

Les Loisirs: https://madameshepard.com/?p=1335

Ma Journée Typique: https://madameshepard.com/?p=1340

Halloween: https://madameshepard.com/?p=1387

Mon Look: https://madameshepard.com/?p=1278

C’est quoi, une maison idéale?: https://madameshepard.com/?p=1406

Les Tâches Ménagères: https://madameshepard.com/?p=502

Joyeux Noel: https://madameshepard.com/?p=267

Allons en Martinique: https://madameshepard.com/?p=1424

Les Châteaux (pt. 1)https://madameshepard.com/?p=415

Les Châteaux (pt. 2) https://madameshepard.com/?p=445

Une journée à l’école: https://madameshepard.com/?p=1081

French 3 Units

Bon Appétit: https://madameshepard.com/?p=1193

Education: https://madameshepard.com/?p=111

Les Vacances: https://madameshepard.com/?p=1345

Les Campeurs (Petit Nicolas) https://madameshepard.com/?p=200

Les Animaux de Compagnie: https://madameshepard.com/?p=1261

Les Impressionnistes: https://madameshepard.com/?p=1389

Le Jour de la Terre: https://madameshepard.com/?p=1136

Le Gaspillage Alimentaire: https://madameshepard.com/?p=1287

Joyeux Noël: https://madameshepard.com/?p=1418

Ma Bonne Resolution (La Santé) : https://madameshepard.com/?p=1428

La Préhistoire: https://madameshepard.com/?p=516

Je t’aime: https://madameshepard.com/?p=1589

Je quitte la maison (Petit Nicolas): https://madameshepard.com/?p=1013

French 4/5 Units

Cultural Stereotypes: https://madameshepard.com/?p=80

La Famille dans le Monde Francophone: https://madameshepard.com/?p=1376

Communication et Media: https://madameshepard.com/?p=1397

Le Droit a l’Education: https://madameshepard.com/?p=1450

Les Droits des Femmes: https://madameshepard.com/?p=1469

La Laïcité: https://madameshepard.com/?p=1128

Le Petit Prince: https://madameshepard.com/?p=219

L’Immigration:https://madameshepard.com/?p=880 Click here for the agenda of a more recent version of this unit.

Mixed Levels

First week of school: https://madameshepard.com/?p=1246

Halloween: https://madameshepard.com/?p=897

CSCTFL 2019

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It was such a joy to meet so many virtual colleagues at this year’s Central States Conference. I was grateful for the chance to see old friends and make new ones and I was so inspired by the presentations I attended. It was an honor to see so many attendees at my own session on Saturday morning. (For the record, I didn’t think to take a picture until my presentation was over–those that are leaving did not walk out in a huff!)

For those that are interested, here’s a link to my presentation, “Incorporating Authentic Resources Across the Modes.”

Love is in the Air: A Unit for Intermediate French Students.

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Between a bout with the flu and the arrival of the polar vortex, I am finding time to get caught up on some blogging. In this post, I’m sharing the final unit that I did with my French 3 students last spring. While I had previously shared some of these activities (see this post), much of it is new. While I don’t consider this my best work (this was a crazy time for me as I was preparing for my “next chapter”), there are a lot of activities that you can pick and choose from based on your students’ needs. I would also suggest that you review the texts carefully to make sure they are appropriate for your teaching context.

Here’s a quick summary of the unit, which is outlined in this agenda. You’ll find all resources linked to the corresponding lesson on that document.

Day 1: After presenting an infographic as a hook to the unit, I had the students annotate a second infographic and then discuss it in small groups. Finally, they filled in a graphic organizer comparing perspectives about love in the US and France.

Day 2: We watched a video as a class and then the students discussed a couple of questions based on the video. They then read an article and completed a comprehension guide. Finally we listened to a song and completed a series of activities. This was a block day, so this lesson would take two traditional class periods.

Day 3: After discussing an infographic about girls/boys ideas of first dates as a hook, I had them annotate and discuss a 2nd infographic about men’s vs. women’s expectations of a first date. I used the remaining class time to finish song activities from the previous day. I did a lot of framing for this lesson in order to establish an inclusive environment for all students in my classroom.

Day 4: I once again presented an infographic as a lesson hook before assigning an Edpuzzle and related article.

Day 5: We discussed an infographic and then the students practiced a role play (while I circulated, providing feedback) and then completed a written formative assessment.

Day 6: After answering questions on a video I presented, the students read an article before completing a series of song activities.

Day 7-9: The students read an article about how hormones affect emotions related to love during these days. I supplemented their reading with some Edpuzzles (unfortunately, I was only able to located 1 of these during my search today) and a game of Quizlet Live. While I would not normally recommend spending doing so much reading, these lessons fell during a time that I was missing many students due to high-stakes testing.

Day 10: The students annotated an infographic and then I had pairs perform role plays in front of the class according to the directions given. Finally they watched a video and completed a comprehension guide.

Day 11: The students completed a series of song activities and then read an article and completed a comprehension guide.

Day 12-14: Students read the Petit Nicolas story, Louisette, during this time. As they read, they worked together answering inference-based true/false questions which they supported with details from the text. I also provided a couple of grammar-based activities. After finishing the story, the students reviewed by completing a pair crossword activity before taking a series of assessments on the story. I saved the interpretive listening assessment for the end, as the video is quite different from the written story and I did not want to create any confusion during the other assessments.

Day 15-18: The students watched the film, Molière, during this time, as described on the agenda.

Day 19: The students finished up the film activities and then reviewed the film by completing a pair crossword activity.

Day 20: The students completed an assessment in which they read a review of the film, wrote a review of their own and then completed an Edpuzzle about the movie’s trailer.

As you can see from the agenda, I did not give an overarching IPA on this unit, in favor of a series of performance assessments spread throughout the unit.

Incorporating Music: A Sample Lesson for Intermediate Learners

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In order to prepare for an upcoming workshop, I’ve been creating some materials for using songs in the language classroom. While I incorporated several songs during my last two years in the classroom (I blogged some of my lessons here), I wanted to add a few more ideas for my workshop participants. Fortunately, some awesome language teachers out there have blogged lots of great suggestions for using songs and I relied heavily on ideas shared by others (see bibliography below).

One activity that I hadn’t had time to prepare when I was in the classroom was a Picture Talk with a music video. (Click here for a great explanation of Picture Talk.) In order to demonstrate this strategy, I chose the song, Je te le donne by Vitaa as the video illustrates a sweet story that I thought would be engaging to students. To implement this strategy, I would use the screenshots in this Google Slides Presentation to narrate the narrative depicted in the video. I have included a few questions on the slides, to help guide the Picture Talk. As directed on slide #23, I would not show the actual video until we had discussed the first 22 slides, as a way of building anticipation. While I created this Picture Talk with Intermediate learners in mind, the questions could easily be modified for Novices.

In addition to the Picture Talk presentation, I prepared this document with additional activities that could be used when using this song with Intermediate learners. On the first day, I would lead a short discussion of the pre-reading questions and then play the song (without showing the video). Although not included on the document, I would create a cloze activity for the students to complete as they listened. After going over the cloze activity, I would have the students complete the interpretive activities (B & C). If time permits, I would then have the students complete one of the presentational writing activities, although this could also be assigned for homework.

On the second day, I would have the students do the pre-viewing collaborative storyboard activity in preparation for the Picture Talk. Following the Picture Talk, I would have the students complete the interpersonal and then presentational activities.

For other great ideas on using songs in the classroom, here’s the bibliography I compiled for my presentation:

Do’s and Don’ts for Using Vocabulary Lists

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Recent conversations in my workshops and with my online PLN have me thinking a lot about the role of vocabulary lists in a communication-based classroom. As I look back at my evolution in teaching for proficiency, my use of vocabulary lists has changed significantly. For years I introduced the vocabulary in the textbook by having my students repeat the words on the list and then complete textbook activities, most of which were not communicative in nature. I then assessed my students’ memorization of this vocabulary in isolation through objective-style questions.

As I transitioned away from teaching from a textbook, the role of the vocabulary list changed, too. It became my responsibility to compile a list and share it with my students. Therefore, it was up to me to determine which words and structures my students would need to complete the communicative tasks that I had created for each unit. As you’ll notice from reading my posts, I have created various types of resources to scaffold communicative tasks for my students during the past few years. For my novice students, I often created an illustrated list of key vocabulary items, as well as a list of sentence starters. In other cases, especially with my French 4/5 students, I never quite got around to creating the list–and my students acquired the vocabulary they needed to complete the communicative tasks anyway! So, based on my own experience, here’s my list of Do’s and Don’ts. What would you add?

Do’s and Don’ts for Using Vocabulary Lists

DO wait until you have designed the unit to create the list. It is only after you have selected your authentic resources, customized your NCSSFL-ACTFL Can-Dos, created your communicative activities, designed your summative assessments, etc. that you will know what vocabulary your students will need.
DO wait until your students have received lots of comprehensible input in which the vocabulary is embedded (via authentic resources and/or teacher talk) before providing the list.
DO include sentence starters in which the vocabulary is embedded on your list (rather than just isolated words) to scaffold communicative tasks.
DO provide space for your students to add their own personalized items to the list.
DO create opportunities for students to focus on vocabulary in a communicative context. This Interactive Word Wall is one idea!
DO provide opportunities for your students to practice their circumlocution skills. This pair crossword activity is one of my students’ favorites! (Click here for the sample puzzle.)
DO provide lots of opportunities for your students to use context clues to figure out the meanings of new words. I like to give the students lots of practice for part V of the ACTFL Interpretive Template by typing sentences from an authentic resource and underlining the word whose meaning I think they can guess. I provide multiple choice answers to scaffold this task for my novices.
DO avoid straight L1-L2 translation when creating activities/review games in Quizlet/Kahoot/Gimkit/etc.
DO avoid assessing your students’ memorization of vocabulary in isolation. Instead, assess your students’ overall interpretive, interpersonal and presentational skills.
DON’T be afraid to eliminate the list altogether, especially for Intermediate Mid-High students. Your students will most likely learn the words they need by communicating about a topic throughout the unit.

Please share your Dos and Don’ts in the comments below!

Bonne Rentrée

A New Beginning

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As some of you know, I have decided to transition out of the classroom at the end of the school year. (The photo shows a lovely gift from a student in honor of my retirement.) This was a difficult decision to make and I will miss my students enormously. There are many reasons why I’ve chosen this, my 29th year, to be my last. My grandsons, Oli (born April 25, 2017) and Remy (expected July 8, 2018) are two of the most important ones! (Yes, both my son/daughter-in-law and my daughter/son-in-law have been kind enough to provide me with a baby boy to love on in the past year!)

Although I will no longer have a classroom of my own, my passion for the work of language teaching has not waned in the slightest. I am still passionate about educating and I still plan on pr for teachers. I cannot imagine a life in which I am no longer creating lessons, collaborating with colleagues and providing professional development to other language teachers! It would be painful having to give up my lives work when I really don’t have to! Therefore, I’m happy to announce my next venture, Shepard World Language Consulting, LLC. I have already been invited by several districts to provide professional development and revise curriculum over the next few months and am so excited about this new chapter in my professional life!

I still plan to maintain this blog and will add posts when I have ideas to share. In fact, I hope to add some lessons that I created this spring when I have some time off later in the summer. I do want to let my readers know, though, that I will soon lose access to my Google Drive at school. I have been busy making copies of my materials on my personal account, but it may be some time before I am able to recreate the agendas with hyperlinks to the new copies of each resource. My suggestion to all of you is that if there is anything on the blog that you would like to use, please make a copy of the Google Docs as soon as possible. (Word documents that I created before June, 2016 will not be affected.) Thank you for your patience as I work to update the last two years’ work over the next few months!

Bon Courage to those of you that are in the final stretch of this school year and Bonnes Vacances to those of you who are enjoying some well-deserved rest and relaxation. Please keep in touch if you have any questions on anything that I’ve shared here, or if you’d like to schedule professional development or curriculum revision in your district.

Happy Summer!

Focus on Function in a Unit about Women’s Rights for Intermediate French Students

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As some of you might know, I had the great honor of interviewing Laura Terrill, co-author of The Keys to Planning for Learning (purchase here) as part of a #langbook discussion on Twitter. (Our interview was featured in this podcast.) As I read the 2nd edition of this crucial text, one new understanding that I gained was the vital role that language functions play in teaching for proficiency. I definitely have not been intentional enough in creating opportunities for my students to communicate using various functions, so this was one of my goals in designing my latest unit for my French 4 and 5 students. Here’s a link (Updated 5/24/18: new link) to the agenda for the unit to which the resources I created are linked. A brief description of each lesson can be found below.

Lesson 1: Since the functions of Describing and Asking/Answering questions are typically the mainstays of my communicative tasks (along with a liberal sprinkling of Telling and Retelling Stories), I wanted to pay special attention to the functions of Expressing Feelings and Emotions and Expressing Advice, Opinions and Preferences in designing this unit. Here’s a link to the agenda with the resources for the unit I created with this goal in mind and here is a short description of each lesson:

Lesson 1: In order to introduce my students to a few aspects of sexual inequality in France, I’ll begin the first lesson by projecting a short infographic and leading a brief discussion about relevant cultural practices and perspectives in France and the U.S. Next, I’ll give the students a more detailed infographic and ask them to complete statements expressing their opinions and emotions about facts in their infographic in order to practice the structures they’ll need for these functions. After discussing their reactions to the infographic in small groups, they’ll listen to a video about La Journée de la Femme and respond by filling in a table with details they have understood.

Lesson 2: As a hook for this lesson, I’ll play and discuss a video about La Journée de la Femme. Next the students will listen to part of a video about the history of women’s rights in France and complete a manipulative activity in small groups. Next each student will be given one of two different infographics with important dates for women’s rights in France. After filling in a graphic organizer with their opinions of the most important events in this movement, they will discuss with a partner (who had the other infographic) in order to reach a consensus about the most important dates. I think this activity will provide an important opportunity for the students to engage in the function of Expressing Opinion.

Lesson 3: The hook for this lesson is a video about women’s rights in Tunisia that I will discuss with the class in order to provide background information about the perspectives of another Francophone culture. The students will then complete the manipulative for the second half of the history video before beginning work on a short written presentation about one of the women who played an important role in the women’s movement in France. In order to ensure that the students are focusing on expressing advice and opinions, I have chosen a prompt in which they are writing to the French postal system to nominate one of the women to be featured on a new stamp. After finishing their letters, the students will discuss their choice with a partner in order to try to convince each other that their woman is the most deserving. (Lessons 4 and 5)

In Lesson 6 I will assign the first summative interpretive assessment, an 1jour1actu article about the experiences of women from different generations. Because some of these students will be taking the IB exam, I have used used questions types that are part of this test in my assessment.

In lesson 7 I will turn the focus toward women’s experiences in the workplace. As a hook I’ll present a short video with women’s statements of their experiences and then an infographic with key dates. Next, I will send the students to a website with period videos related to different aspects of the women’s movement, along with the reactions of experts in the field. Although we’ll only be using the videos related to the workplace, there are a wealth of great videos related to other aspects of gender equality here. I’ll have the students select one of the videos to listen to and prepare a short commentary. The next day (Lesson 8) the students will present the video they selected, as well as their commentary, in a gallery-style presentation. Rather than a generic presentational rubric, I have created one that specifically addresses the extent to which the students presented their opinion of the video in order to ensure that they focused on this language function.

Lesson 9: After a short video hook, I will facilitate a brief whole-class discussion of French products, practices and perspectives illustrated in an infographic on sexism in the workplace. Students will then read an article about work equality from 1jour1actu and fill in a Cornell note-taking template. The questions they write will form the basis of a small group discussion on the article.

In Lesson 10, I will project an infographic on sexual harassment and discuss it with the students before assigning an A or B infographic to each student. Students will then discuss the information in their infographics in order to compare details in a “top hat” diagram. The students will then complete a table with information from a video about sexual harassment.

In Lesson 11, I will introduce other types of harassment by discussing an infographic and drawing. I will then have the students discuss a very short film on the topic of harassment at school. In order to facilitate their discussions, I have created an Edpuzzle and embedded discussion questions at various points in the film. The students will then annotate a short article about sexual harassment in Belgian schools and discuss it with their groups.

In Lesson 12 I will give the second summative interpretive assessment–an article about sexism in schools with IB-style questions.

In Lesson 13 I will have the students take a quiz on gender stereotypes (the same quiz I used in this lesson) and discuss their opinions of each item in order to select the correct answers. I’ll give a small prize to the pair with the most correct answers in order to encourage the opinion-giving. We’ll then go over the correct answers in class (this will not be a graded activity). We’ll continue with the topic of gender-based stereotypes in Lesson 14 by completing a short comprehension guide on the answers to the previous day’s quiz and then taking a formative assessment on a video about stereotypes (or playing FluentKey Live as a class).

In Lesson 15 we’ll look at Tweets in which people express how their lives would be different if they were of the opposite gender. (Finding PG-rated Tweets on this topic was not as easy as it sounds!) The students will then read and fill in a comprehension guide about an article on the same topic. Next, the students will write a paragraph of their own expressing how they think their lives would be different if they were a member of the opposite sex.

In Lesson 16, I will have the students sign-up to present one of the political cartoons I have curated about gender inequality. The students will answer a series of guiding questions about their cartoon. In Lesson 17 they will present their caricatures, gallery-style, to their classmates.

In Lesson 18 the students will complete the final summative assessments of the unit. In the interpersonal task they will discuss their opinions with a partner in order to select which of several political cartoons (I will select a few of those I included in the Google Slides) would best illustrate a blog post on the role of women in French culture. As a presentational writing task they will then write this blog post.

I hope that the lessons I have created will allow my students to progress in their proficiency, especially as it relates to expressing feelings and opinions. Let me know what you think!

Le Droit à l’Education: A Unit for Intermediate Mid/High (IB) French Students

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Ahhh, it’s finally my turn to get a snow day! My first goal for the day was to share this unit that I did with my IB students before our holiday break. This is how I addressed the theme of Education with them, click here (New link added on 5/24/2018) for the agenda to which all resources have been linked.

Day 1: In order to introduce our first subtopic, Pourquoi est-ce que certains enfants ne vont pas à l’école?, I began this unit by showing a video from UNICEF to the class. The students then read an infographic about access to education in the world and completed a comprehension guide. Following this interpretive activity, the students completed a “Give One, Get One” interpersonal activity. Lastly, the watched another UNICEF video, for which they completed a comprehension guide.

Day 2: In this lesson the students took notes on a second infographic, using a Six Thinking Hats technique (although I only incorporated five of the hats). Next the students discussed the infographic according to the perspective of the hat they had been assigned. Lastly, they watched a video from 1jour1actu and completed a comprehension guide.

Day 3: The students began by constructing an interactive word wall in their small groups. For this activity, I print one copy of each document (words and arrows) on cardstock for each group. The students place the words face up on their desk and take turns explaining the relationship between two different words and connecting them with an arrow on their desks. After this activity the students were given an infographic about education in Mali. They incorporated information from this document in a letter to the benefactor of their choice in which they asked for a donation to help children in Mali go to school. Here are a few examples of word walls that they created (As you can see, I forgot to copy the arrow cards and had to handwrite some at the last minute-oops!):

Day 4: On the fourth day, the students took an interpretive assessment over the first portion of the unit. For the listening assessment, they completed a comprehension guide for a Les Petits Citoyens video and then answered IB-style questions about an 1jour1actu article.

Day 5: We began the second subtopic, Pourquoi est-ce qu’il y a moins de filles qui sont scolarisées?, by discussing a video and an infographic as a class. The students then annotated another infographic and then discussed it based on their annotations. (Il est intéressant que…, Je n’ai pas compris…, J’étais surprise que.., etc.)

Day 6: The students first watched a video about the education of girls in Guinea and completed a comprehension guide. Next, they read part of a webpage about educating girls and completed a comprehension guide, which they then discussed with a partner.

Day 7: The students wrapped up their investigation of the causes and consequences of the lack of education for girls by reading one of two articles and sharing the information with a partner who had read the other article.

Day 8: The students used the information they had gleaned from the authentic texts to participate in role plays between the parent of a girl in Guinea and a UNICEF volunteer. The students practiced both roles with a variety of partners to prepare them for the following day’s assessment.

Day 9: The students completed an interpersonal speaking and presentational writing assessments on the topic of the education of girls. For the writing assessment, they wrote an interview between a UNICEF volunteer and a Guinean girl’s parent. As they were writing, I called up pairs of students for the role play. (Each student performed with a partner other than the ones they had spoken to the previous day.)

Day 10: I began the final subtopic of this unit–Comment est une école idéale? by passing out a blog post about an ideal school to each small group. The groups completed a graphic organizer with details from their post and then divided the information among their members in order to prepare Google Slides in order to present the ideal school from their reading to their classmates.

Day 11: The students presented the ideal schools from the blog posts and filled in a graphic organizer about their classmates’ presentations. After all of the presentations, I had the students vote for the school they liked the best.

Day 12: Although I ended up running out of time, my intention was that the students would write a description of their own ideal school and submit it to a discussion post on Schoology, our learning management system. They would then have commented on each other’s posts. Although I didn’t have time for this activity, I did assign this interpretive reading assessment (New link 5/24/18) as well as an IB practice speaking assessment using their choice of these two pictures.

I hope you’re staying safe, warm and dry wherever you are!

Image Credit:https://pixabay.com/en/school-africa-child-507977/

Making Learning Visible

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Thursday evening on #langchat we had a great discussion about what had worked well for us in 2017. When I shared that I had begun having my students graph their progress toward proficiency, several people expressed interest. So I thought I’d type up a quick post about what we’ve been doing and what I’ve learned from the process.

I began by passing out this document when I returned the students’ first IPA of the year. Although I am clearly evaluating classroom performance in my assessments, it is important to me that my students see their progress in terms of language proficiency, so I use the proficiency rubrics from the Ohio Department of Education for presentational writing and interpersonal speaking. As the directions on the graph document indicate, I had the students place a dot in the appropriate square for each IPA and then draw a line connecting their dots. I had them use the same graph, but two different colored lines for presentational writing and interpersonal speaking. Here are a few of the graphs from my French 2 classes:

There are a few reasons why I consider the simple task of graphing proficiency/performance progress to be one of my successes in 2017. For one, I LOVED the conversations that I heard among my students as they completed their graphs each time. It is so much more meaningful to hear “I moved up to Intermediate Low 1” than “I got a B.” These graphs are also a great visual for my students. As we transition toward teaching for proficiency (and away from discrete point assessments) some students question “what” they’re learning. These graphs help students to see their progress in a concrete way.

These graphs also inform my instructional and assessment practices. Because nearly every student performed lower on the 3rd IPA, I had to take a long, hard look at this assessment (from this post). My conclusion is that the prompts that I used for the writing and speaking tasks did not encourage the students to stretch in a way that would demonstrate their highest proficiency/performance. Few students ask the variety of questions that would enable them to demonstrate Intermediate interpersonal communication and most did not include the compound sentences, creativity and cultural competence described in the Intermediate descriptors for the presentational mode. I clearly need to either change these prompts and provide additional direction and targeted practice the next time I teach this unit. I also wonder whether some of the results may indicate a lack of evaluator reliability on my part. As with most rubrics, there is a bit of subjectivity and I hope to increase my consistency as I continue to use these rubrics.

Image Credit: http://www.publicdomainfiles.com/show_file.php?id=13489790414892

Madame's Musings

A site about proficiency-based world language instruction