Maison Sweet Maison

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In between the standardized testing and weather days that have plagued my schedule over the past few weeks, my French 1 students have been learning the vocabulary and structures they need to both talk about their homes and understand authentic resources about French homes. Although I would have preferred to introduce this vocabulary in a more contextualized way, I found myself relying on a more traditional format for this unit due to the limited time frame that I had and the amount of vocabulary I wanted to introduce. Because these students had done so much reading throughout their previous unit on food, I wanted to focus on oral activities rather than written texts to reinforce this vocabulary. As a result, I provided the students with a visual vocabulary list of rooms and furnishings (House packet) and then devoted one to two (shortened) class periods reviewing each room’s vocabulary using a variety of (mostly) communicative activities. For each room, I included some or all of the following activities:

A short educational video to present the vocabulary for the furnishings in the room being studied. Because I prepared my list before choosing the videos, the words are not identical. If I teach this unit next year, I may modify my list to mirror the words in the videos, although I do feel the students can benefit from the exposure to additional vocabulary.
A Google Presentation featuring two to three photographs of the “room of the day.” I would project the first room and ask students questions about what they saw in the picture: Il y a un lit? De quelle couleur est le couvre-lit? Qu’est-ce qu’il y a sur la table de chevet? Est-ce qu’il y a un tapis sous le lit ? I would then project the second picture and give the students five minutes to practice describing the room to a partner. I then called on two to three randomly-selected students and asked them to describe the room to the class. I assigned a formative assessment grade and written feedback to the students who were chosen for this informal presentation. Note: I will modify this presentation to include photographs of rooms in French homes, rather than randomly selecting Google Images if I teach this unit again.
After these presentations, the students completed an information gap with a partner to further reinforce their vocabulary acquisition and oral fluency. I used the following three types of information gap activities in this unit:A) Matching: Student A and Student B each have a paper with the same pictures (labeled with either numbers or letters), but in a different order. Students will take turns describing their pictures and sharing the corresponding numbers/letters until they each have a list (on a separate paper) of all of the number/letter matches.B) Same/Different: Student A and Student B each have a paper with several numbered pictures. They discuss each one in order to determine whether it is the same or different on their papers. They then write either “M” for Même or “D” for Différent (on a separate paper) for each item.C) What’s missing: Student A and Student B each have a picture from which some items have been whited out. The students discuss their pictures in order to determine which items are missing from each one.
After the information gap partner activity, I projected a short authentic video which featured the “room of the day.” Due to the difficulty of the videos, I paused them frequently to ask questions using the new vocabulary, but did not expect the majority of the students to understand more than the main idea of the video.
Lastly, I projected an additional room photograph and required the students to write a paragraph describing the room. This paragraph provided an additional formative assessment/opportunity for feedback for these students.

Note: Although I had intended to include household chores in this unit (and this vocabulary is included in the packet), I will not be able to do so before our quarter ends next week. Therefore, I will do a mini-unit on this topic after our Spring Break.

Here’s a link to Google Presentation with the photographs and videos I used in this unit: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1I_vShMkd6RbGkhej8ltMAny-QNnpAb5b6vmpbVeNKc0/edit?usp=sharing

Here’s a document with some of the information gap activities that I used in this unit: Pair Comm. Activities

After these introductory vocabulary activities, the students completed the following learning stations (House Unit Learning Stations):

Computer Station: Students completed a series of interactive activities designed to reinforce the vocabulary for the unit.

Reading Station: Students completed an IPA-style interpretive task based on an authentic blog post comparing French and American houses.

Speaking Station: Students completed two different pair activities at this station. In one, they discussed the respective house pictures in order to identify differences. In the second, they took turns placing the magnets in the rooms on a commercial game and described their arrangement to a partner who placed his/her magnets in the same location. I listened to the students and provided feedback and a formative assessment grade at this station.

Writing Station: Students wrote a written description of their (real or imaginary) homes for a home exchange website. This assignment will serve as the rough draft/formative assessment for the presentational writing portion of their IPA.

After the students have rotated through these stations, they will take an IPA based on the topic of a home exchange: House-Unit-IPA , House IPA Reading

Interpretive Listening: The students will watch a short video—“La maison préférée des Français” and answer English comprehension questions.

Interpretive Reading: The students will read three different descriptions of homes currently listed on a home exchange website and complete an IPA-style interpretive task.

Interpersonal Speaking: Students will discuss the photographs of the homes whose descriptions they read and discuss whether or not they would like to stay in each one and why.

Presentational Writing: Students will write a description of their own home that could be posted on the home exchange website. Students are given the option of describing either their actual or an imaginary home for this task.

Although this unit does not rely exclusively on authentic materials to introduce and practice vocabulary, I think these activities will help the students memorize a significant number of high-frequency vocabulary items. I will be curious to see how the more traditional vocabulary introduction will influence the students’ success on the IPA.

Jour de la Terre (2): Les Espèces Menacées

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In between the endless hours of standardized testing and weather delays, my French 3 students have been working on a unit on the environment. (If you missed the first half of this unit, see this post) While this topic might not be as engaging as others we have studied this year, I think it was important to develop the students’ vocabulary on this subject, as many of them will be enrolled in AP French next year. As those of you who teach AP already know, the environment is an important subtopic for the “Defis Mondiaux” theme that is part of the AP curriculum.

Having completed lessons on global warming, pollution, and preservation, we were ready to move onto the most interesting part of the unit- a series of lessons on endangered animals. I have included a unit about animals in my French 3 curriculum for the past several years and have found that my students, like me, are especially engaged by this topic. While my treatment of the topic was quite simplistic in past years (students chose an animal from Francophone Africa, researched it, and presented it to the class), I wanted to kick it up a notch this year by focusing more on how global perspectives relate to the problem of endangered species.

Here’s the packet of activities that I prepared:Environment Unit – Pt 2

For the first lesson, we watched a Brainpop video about endangered species. I projected the video and played it to the whole class, using the French subtitles for additional scaffolding. I stopped the video frequently to check for understanding and give the students time to answer the written comprehension questions. Although I have previously used English for these questions, we have recently welcomed a new student into our French 3 class who speaks very little English. Having been educated in Rwanda, she is a fluent speaker of French so I am using as much target language questioning as possible. Following the video, the students took the quiz that is included with the video as a formative assessment. The following day, the students read an infographic about poaching and rhinos and completed an IPA-style interpretive task. They incorporated the information in this article into a letter to the government of the Ivory Coast.

After this introduction to some of the causes of animal endangerment, I began preparing the students for an individual research project/presentation on an endangered species. Although I do very little direct vocabulary instruction at this level, I felt that these students would need to develop a bank of shared vocabulary for their upcoming presentations, so I devoted the next couple of days on activities designed to build this vocabulary. On the first day, I gave the students this illustrated vocabulary list:Animal Unit Vocab . I then placed my collection of Beanie Babies on the chalkboard ledge and asked various questions, using the new vocabulary. (Quel animal a une corne? Combien de pattes a l’autruche? Quels animaux ont des griffes? etc.) Next, I divided the class into pairs and gave each pair a Beanie Baby. (If you don’t have a collection of Beanie Babies, pictures of animals would, of course, work just as well.) The students practiced describing their Beanie Baby with their partner for a few minutes, after which I randomly selected students to present their animal to the class for a formative assessment. I concluded this lesson by showing the class the ever-popular Capucine video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RQMVKcNgFw .

I began Day 2 of vocabulary instruction by again placing the Beanie Babies on the chalkboard ledge. This time the students played 20 questions. (Students picked an animal and their partner asked yes/no questions in order to guess which animal they had chosen.) Next, the students completed a pair crossword puzzle communicative activity. For this activity, student A is given a puzzle in which the horizontal answers have been filled in [Pair XW (A)] and Student B is given the same puzzle, but with the vertical answers filled in[ Pair XW (B) ]. (Neither partner has any clues, just a puzzle grid.) The students use circumlocution to provide clues to each other until both students have a completed puzzle. As a follow up to this activity, we played a round of $100,000 Pyramid. For this game I project a Google Presentation on which I have typed four vocabulary words per slide. I divide the class into two teams, and then choose two players from Team 1 to begin. Player A is facing the screen and Player B has his/her back to it. Player A uses circumlocution to give clues to Player B, who earns one point per correct guess in the 60-second time limit.

Now that the students had become familiar with some of the vocabulary they would need to discuss various endangered animals species, it was time to begin preparation for their individual research projects. In order to provide an element of student choice, I downloaded this sign-up sheet (Sign-up Sheet) into a Google Doc that I shared with the class. For homework the students typed their name next to the endangered animal they wanted to research and present. I then gave them one class period to complete the research guide on the front page of this document:Endangered Animal Project. We used the department Ipads for our research, and I circulated among the students to make sure that they were using only French resources. The students will then use this information for the written and oral presentational tasks that are described on the second page of the project document. In order to use my eight classroom computers effectively, the students will be divided into groups and will rotate among these three stations as they prepare for the summative assessments for this unit. Station 1: Students write the rough draft of the written presentational task. Station 2: Students watch a series of videos about endangered animals, which will serve as their interpretive listening grade for the unit (Endangered Animal Videos). Station 3: Students read a series of children’s books about animals. At this station, students choose from several children’s books about animals and complete short interpretive activities designed to further develop their reading proficiency. After each group has circulated among these three stations, they will present the animal they have researched to the class. Lastly, the students will read an article about an endangered animal and complete an IPA-style interpretive task for their unit assessment.

It’s nice to see how much the students have been affected by learning about endangered animals. The decreasing numbers of many of the species really shocked a lot of them and there were plenty who asked about what they could do to help. I felt it was my duty to provide them with resources like the GoFundMe blog which would give them further information on that.

Although the students won’t be presenting for a few more days (more standardized testing!), they’re excited about their work and I’m looking forward to seeing what they come up with!

An “Imperfect” Unit on French Castles (Part 2 and IPA)

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I am happy to report that my French 2 students are enjoying their unit on castles as much as I had hoped they would. While I was surprised by how little background knowledge they seemed to have about medieval history, they have expressed genuine interest in the information they have learned from the readings and videos. Considering that we have had atypical class schedules every day to allow for standardized testing and weather delays, I’d say that their attention in class has been downright formidable!

Because I want the students to become familiar with some castles that I visit when leading student trips, I wanted to include a few lessons on the Renaissance and some specific Loire Valley castles in this unit. So following the lessons which I included in my first post about this unit, I am implementing the lesson included here: Renaissance Lesson

As the document shows, the students will read three pages from a children’s book on the Renaissance (Renaissance p. 4, Renaissance p. 5, Renaissance p. 18) and complete an IPA-style interpretive task. Following this task, they will complete an information gap activity in which they discuss their versions of a royal family tree in order to fill in the missing facts on their copy. Family Tree Speaking They will then write a short biography about the Renaissance king of their choice.

Following this lesson, the students will complete a series of learning stations designed to familiarize them with the Loire Valley castles. Due to the nature of the materials (teacher-made games, manipulatives, commercial video and authentic brochures) I can’t include them here, but I’ve included a short description below:

Listening Station: The students will watch a non-authentic Loire Valley castle DVD from Teacher’s Discovery and answer comprehension questions.

Reading Station: Students will read a series of brochures that I’ve brought home from visits to the Loire Valley and answer comprehension questions.

Castle Identification Station: Students will play a series of games that I’ve either made or purchased which are designed to teach them to recognize various Loire Valley castles.

Speaking Station: The students will converse in order to fill in a graphic organizer with information about various Renaissance kings.

After these stations, the students will complete this IPA about the French Renaissance and Loire Valley castles Castle Unit IPA

Reading: The students will read several pages from a children’s book about Chambord (Chambord pp. 1, 2, Chambord pp. 3, 4, Chambord pp. 5, 6) and complete an interpretive task.

Listening: The students will watch an authentic video and provide details to demonstrate their comprehension.

Speaking: The students will converse in order to fill in a graphic organizer about Francis I.

Writing: The students will write a chapter of Francis I’s memoir in which he describes what his life was like when he was king.

As always, I’m grateful for any feedback on these lessons and materials!

An “Imperfect” Unit on Castles for Novice High Learners (Part 1)

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For most of my teaching career I’ve included a unit on castles in either French 2 or French 3. Most students seem inherently interested in this topic, and each year when I put up the bulletin board the older students comment on how much they liked the unit. When traveling with students, I often choose an itinerary that includes the Loire Valley so that the students are able to visit some of the castles that they learned about.

While a lot of my former activities focused on teaching students to identify various Loire Valley castles and memorize facts about them, I changed the focus this year. Instead, the students will begin by learning about medieval/fortified castles and what life was like during the Middle Ages. Time permitting we’ll also study the Renaissance and the Loire Valley castles, but having five snow days has really taken a chunk out of the time that I had planned to spend on this unit.

As you will see, I am also using this unit to introduce my students to the imperfect tense. These students worked with the passé composé during their school and Martinique unit, so I feel like they’re ready for an introduction to the imperfect. At the same time, I want to give them additional opportunities to become more accurate with the passé composé, so I’ve included activities that will enable them to use each tense, although I won’t be focusing on using them together quite yet.

Here are the lessons that I’ve prepared so far: Castle Unit

#1 Fortified Castles (2 days) Students will read a few pages from a French children’s book (p. 4/5, p. 6/7, p. 8/9) and complete an IPA-style interpretive task. After a short “Focus on Form” activity designed to focus their attention on the verbs in the reading, they will interview a partner about his/her childhood using the verbs that appeared in the reading. They will then complete a Venn diagram comparing their childhood to their partner’s. Next, they will watch an authentic video about medieval castles and complete a true/false interpretive activity. Due to the difficulty of the video, this will be a whole class activity in which I project the video and pause it when necessary to discuss the responses.

#2 Castle Life (2-3 days) In this lesson the students will read another section from the same children’s book (p. 10, 11, p. 12/13, pp. 18,19) and complete another IPA-style interpretive task, along with a corresponding “Focus on Form” activity. They will also interview a partner using the new verbs that were presented in the text. As a follow up activity, they will fill in a Venn diagram comparing their own childhood to that of a child in the Middle Ages. Next, they will watch a video and complete a true/false activity. As with the previous lesson, this will be a whole group activity. Due to the content of the readings in this lesson, I included an additional presentational task in which the students will write a journal entry for a medieval teen who has attended a feast. I hope that by including this activity the students will begin to develop an idea of the differences between the two tenses. I will answer questions as they come up, but will not inductively present a lesson on these differences.

#3 Castle Defense (2-3 days) This lesson will also begin with an IPA-style interpretive task over pages from the children’s book (p. 20/21, p. 22/23, p. 24/25 p. 26/27) . They will then use the information they learned to write a journal entry for a lord whose castle has just been attacked. Next, they will watch another video and complete an information gap in which they describe a series of knight portraits. Following this activity, they will write another journal entry, this time for a knight who has just won a jousting match.

I think these lessons will increase my students knowledge about the medieval period and they might even learn a bit of grammar along the way.

Bonne Fête de Saint-Valentin

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I took a few minutes in between parent-teacher conferences this evening to make a few short interpretive activities to go with some of the Valentine’s Day infographics that I found on Pinterest. Here’s what I came up with:

French 1: V-Day French 1 Infographic

French 2: V-Day French 2 Infographic

French 3: V-Day French 3 Infographic

Note: I’ve placed a few text boxes over the content that I didn’t feel was appropriate for my students. If you do any reformatting of the infographics, you might want to double check that the text boxes are still covering the adult content.

Bonne Fête!

From Theory into Practice: A Novice-level IPA on food and mealtimes.

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So, we all know about best laid plans, right? I had a very detailed (and lengthily) French Food/Mealtime unit all planned out. Then it snowed, and got really cold, and snowed again, and I ended up losing three days of school. Then, the administration moved up the date that our interim progress reports were due. As a result of these changes, my students weren’t going to have any major grades (IPA scores are 80% of my students’ overall grades) on their progress reports if I completed the entire unit as planned. So, I punted and wrote an IPA based on the parts of the unit that we had covered. Since we didn’t get to any of the restaurant activities, the IPA does not incorporate that context, but rather mealtimes in general.

Here’s the IPA Food Unit IPA and a few comments about how IPA’s work in my class.

Interpretive Listening: Although many IPA resources suggest using either an interpretive listening or an interpretive reading, I think it’s important to have both. The challenge for me is that it is difficult to find a written and recorded source that are specifically integrated, especially for Novice learners. For this reason, I am satisfied to find videos that are related to the theme of the unit and comprehensible to these students. On this IPA I included two videos about Trotro l’ane. I use a lot of cartoons with my Novices, because of the support provided by the visuals. I think of all of the cartoons I use, Trotro is probably one of the easiest. The videos are short and the vocabulary and syntax are pretty simple. (Note: These videos seem to come and go a lot, probably because of copyright issues. If the link doesn’t work, try typing in the name of the cartoon in the Youtube search box, you might find the same cartoon from another user.)

As I mentioned in a previous post, the ACTFL guide doesn’t give a lot of direction when I comes to assessing listening on an IPA. While they suggest using the same tasks as for reading, this doesn’t work well in my classroom, where I have to rotate 28 students through the 8 computers in my room. That means that I must limit the amount of time required to complete the listening tasks. Therefore, on this IPA I’ve limited my tasks to several English comprehension questions for each video, as well as a few “Guessing meaning from context” items. I simply cannot give the students enough time on the computers to demonstrate their use of top-down processes such as identifying organization features, author’s perspective, and inferences.

Grading: Because the Interpretive Listening ACTFL Can Do benchmark for Novice Mid students is, “I can recognize some familiar words and phrases when I hear them spoken,” I am quite liberal when assigning a score to this section of the IPA. I do not expect that the students will be able to correctly answer each of the questions that I have included, although I find value in providing items that will allow me to assess my students along a continuum of performance. Therefore, I assigned one point for each correct answer on this section, and then used the following scale to convert these points to a grade in my gradebook. (Note: Each assessment I give is based on a maximum score of 10.) Scale: 15 + = 11, 14 = 10, 12/13 = 9, 10/11 = 8, 8/9 = 7, 5/6 = 6, 4/below = 5 (I don’t give scores of less than 50%).

Interpretive Reading: For this IPA I chose an article about a study on French adolescent eating habits. I liked the cultural content of this article and felt that it would be comprehensible to my students because it incorporated so much of the vocabulary that we had used throughout the unit. When designing the tasks, I incorporated all but the Organizational Features and Personal Reaction portions of the ACTFL template. I omitted Organizational Features, because of the straightforward nature of the article. I did not feel that the way it was organized contributed significantly to any lack of comprehension the students might have. I do not include Personal Reactions, which are written in the target language, as they do not assess the students’ reading comprehension.

Grading: While I have relied heavily on the terminology used in the ACTFL Interpretive Rubric, I have modified the format in order to make it more user-friendly for my classroom. In order to end up with a final score on this section of the IPA, I have assigned a number to each of the descriptors on the ACTFL rubric. (I also added a 5^th descriptor for each section.) I also placed the descriptors in each section, rather than in a rubric at the end, for ease in grading. This way, I can check the appropriate box as I grade each section, rather than flipping pages to find the rubric, or going back and rereading each section when filling out a rubric at the end. When tabulating a final score for this section, I rely on the terminology in the ACTFL Rubric. In my opinion, “Strong Comprehension” deserves an “A.” Because I assign a 4 to the descriptors in this category, an 80% overall would be an “A” on this assignment. Therefore, I graded this portion of my IPA according to the following scale: 32+ = 11, 30/31 = 10, 28/29 = 9, 24-27 = 8, 21-23 = 7, 18-20 = 6, 17/below = 5.

Interpersonal Communication: For this part of the IPA, I called the students up to my desk in pairs, while the class as a whole was working on the interpretive portions of the IPA. The students were given three minutes to talk about their eating habits. I included a few suggested questions in English, to guide their discussion, but I did not expect them to ask or answer those questions exactly. In fact, few of the students would have been able to ask all of those questions correctly. Nevertheless, the majority of the students were able to continue their conversation for the entire three minutes. Although I had given them some time to practice with a partner the day before, I randomly choose their partner for the IPA when I call them up, so that no pair is able to memorize a dialogue.

Grading: I do not find the ACTFL Interpersonal rubric to be well-suited to interpersonal tasks in my classroom. The wording seems much more suitable to an assessment of general proficiency, rather than a performance-based assessment over a specific unit. As a result, I have developed my own interpersonal rubric that I use for my IPA’s.

Presentational Communication: In this portion of the IPA, the students wrote to their hypothetical future exchange student and described their eating habits. Although I usually assign a rough draft and provide feedback, I didn’t have time to do so before this IPA. I was pleasantly surprised at how well they did without this support.

Grading: As with the Interpersonal task, the ACTFL rubric does not seem well-suited to a performance-based assessment, so I’ve developed my own.

There is no doubt that my ideas about developing and grading IPA’s will evolve as I continue to use them, so I’ll continue to post as my understanding increases. In the meantime, I’d love to hear about how you use IPA’s in your classroom!

Resources: When I refer to the ACTFL guide and rubrics, I’m talking about the one you can buy here: http://www.actfl.org/publications/guidelines-and-manuals/implementing-integrated-performance-assessment . You can also see the template and rubrics here: http://education.ohio.gov/getattachment/Topics/Ohio-s-New-Learning-Standards/Foreign-Language/World-Languages-Model-Curriculum/World-Languages-Model-Curriculum-Framework/Instructional-Strategies/Assessment-Guidance-and-Sample-Rubrics/IPA-AppendixF_Rubrics-ACTFL.pdf.aspx

Chaque jour est le Jour de la Terre

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This week my French 3 students began a unit on the environment. This is the first year that I’ve included this unit in French 3, but I thought it was important for the students to learn some of the vocabulary and ideas related to environmental topics before delving into the topic in greater detail next year in AP. I am also using this unit to introduce the subjunctive to these students. As with other grammatical topics that I’ve introduced this year, I’m not teaching this structure for mastery. Instead, I’m introducing the verb forms to the students and creating activities in which these structures will be used. The activities I’ve developed for the unit are all found in this packet: environment unit

Here’s how I plan to conduct these lessons:

Lesson 1: Global Warming (2-3 days) I will introduce the students to the vocabulary associated with global warming by showing a Brainpop video. In addition to being authentic, these videos can be shown with option subtitles (click on the ST button). Although I would not allow the subtitles if I were assessing their listening comprehension, I think they are valuable when introducing the complicated vocabulary associated with this topic. An additional advantage to this resource is that the site includes a quiz based on the video which makes a great formative assessment. Although I will project this video on the screen, it could also be watched individually if students had an appropriate device. After the video, the students will read an authentic magazine article about global warming (Global Warming02072015, Global Warming 202072015). Although I would have liked to incorporate more current articles for this unit (the magazine is from 2007), I chose these articles because a)I had them, b)They are written at an appropriate level for my students, and c)They lend themselves to the types of extension activities that I wanted to include in the unit. I have altered the interpretive task so that the students are using French in the supporting detail portion. My goal is to begin preparing them for next year, when all of their interpretive tasks will be in French only. After the reading, the students will interview a partner about his/her actions related to global warming. As a follow up presentational activity, the students will write a note to their partner with suggestions about how s/he can be more ecological. Before assigning this activity, I will quickly point out the expressions of necessity/wanting and the subjunctive conjugations that I have included at the end of the packet. After the writing, the students will practice a role play in which a teenagers tries to convince his/her parent to adopt some of the suggestions given in the article. In general, I like to choose a pair or two to present their role play after giving the class time to practice. After the role play, I have included two additional videos and a song. I usually like to project any videos that I have at the beginning of the period, so I will probably use these before the end of the lesson—It just depends how far I get in each class period.

Lesson 2: Pollution (2-3 days) As with the previous lesson, I’ll begin this one with a Brainpop video and quiz, followed by an article (Pollution 102072015, Pollution 202072015). After the article, the students will again interview a partner and then write him/her a message with suggestions. I am considering having them write these messages as e-mails/google docs, rather than on paper so that their partner can respond (in writing). Lastly I’ve included another role play and an additional video.

Lesson 3: Preservation (2-3 days) As with the first two lessons, the students will watch a Brainpop video/quiz, read an article (Deforestation 102072015, Deforestation 202072015), interview a partner, write a message, and practice and present a role play.

Although I haven’t yet created all of the materials, these lessons will be followed by a series of activities designed to prepare the students for a culminating project on an endangered animal. Stay tuned for these materials!

From the Midwest to Martinique: A virtual trip for French 2 students

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As I explained in a previous post, I decided to introduce the passé composé with my French 2 students in a different way this year. Rather than explaining the rules for choosing the correct helping verb and past participle, I gave them a series of questions and answers that they used to interview each other and provided input by introducing readings and comprehension questions that were written in passé composé. I had no idea how the students would react to this unit, but I was pleasantly surprised. Nearly all of the students were able to successfully discuss what they had done at school the previous day using comprehensible sentences. While some students made occasional errors in choosing the correct helping verb during their conversations, they were still able to express their meaning. I was somewhat surprised to find that the students were less accurate in their written work. More students totally omitted their helping verbs when writing than when speaking.

Now that the students have demonstrated their ability to communicate using memorized phrases, I thought that it was time to introduce a few rules so that they could begin creating sentences of their own. I struggled a little bit, however, in coming up with a cultural/content context for this next unit. I wanted a context that would provide them with lots of opportunities to narrate past events, without requiring them to include lots of description in the past. (While they are seeing lots of imperfect in the authentic resources, it’s not my intention that they produce this verb form at this time.) It seemed that discussing a vacation might meet these requirements and provide a way of introducing some important new vocabulary items. In order to provide an authentic cultural context for this unit (and to escape, at least virtually, winter in the Midwest) , I have chosen to use Martinique as the vacation destination that these students will learn about. Here’s how I introduced this unit:

Day 1: Students read an infographic about Martinique and complete an interpretive task. In addition, they begin work on a guided note-taking activity designed to introduce them to a few simple rules about forming the passé composé.

Day 2: Students completed an interpersonal activity (Guess Who game) to familiarize them with the vocabulary for activities that people do while on vacation in Martinique. After they played the game for about 20 minutes, I gave them a formative assessment in which I made 10 true/false statements about Nicolas (the first “identity” on the game paper). The students also finished the guided note-taking activity.

This is what I have planned for the rest of the unit.

Day 3: We will watch a short video about Martinique and the students will answer comprehension questions. They will then complete an interpersonal activity in which they describe what they did on vacation to a partner who will select the appropriate vacation pictures. Lastly they will complete a worksheet which requires them to write sentences about what various people did in Martinique.

Day 4: Students will watch another video and then complete a cooperative activity in which they work with a partner to put historical events in chronological order, based on information in each of their articles.

Day 5: Students will read an article about vacationing in Martinique and complete an interpretive task. This will count as the interpretive reading portion of their IPA.

Day 6 and 7: Students will use Ipads to research various places and activities in Martinique for their virtual trip to Martinique. They will then complete a journal of the activities they did each day of their trip.

Day 8 and 9: Students continue working on the rest of their IPA, which includes the following tasks: 1)Presentational Writing: Blog entry about trip to Martinique, 2)Interpersonal Speaking: Discuss trip to Martinique with partner, 3) Interpretive Listening: Video about Martinique.

Day 10 and 11: Students will present their trip to Martinique to the class using a Google Presentation of photographs from their trip.

Here are the resources I’ve prepared for the unit:

Student Resource packet: Martinique vocab & grammar , Student Activity Packet: martinique unit , Guess Who Game martinique_guesswho(rev.) Pair Activity Martinique pair act. Worksheet martinique ws, Manipulatives for history activity: history_manipulative, virtual trip packet: martinique project, IPA: Martinique IPA

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My apologies to anyone who tried to download the IPA from this post: http://wp.me/p4SSyG-56 . I inadvertently linked the wrong document for the sample IPA. I’ve now corrected my mistake in the original post. Please accept my sincere apologies and chalk the error up to my being an overworked, sleep-deprived teacher and not a completely incompetent one. In the future, I’d be eternally grateful to any of you who are willing to take the time to make me aware of any similar, glaring errors !

Bon Appétit : A proficiency-based unit for Novice learners (Part 3)

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As promised, I’ve prepared additional lessons for my French 1 Mealtime unit around the themes of school cafeterias and restaurants. If you’re new to my blog, you can find the materials for the first part of this unit here ( https://madameshepard.com/?p=282) and the second part here (https://madameshepard.com/?p=321).

Here’s a packet with the new activities Mealtime Part 2 and below I’ve written a short description of how I will implement each lesson.

La Cantine Scolaire (2 -3 days) I’ll begin this lesson my playing the authentic video using the projector and pausing it often so that the students can jot down answers. Because understanding details from an authentic source such as this one is considerably above their proficiency level, I’ll invite the more proficient students to share their answers and I’ll add additional support by replaying and, if necessary, repeating the pertinent sections of the video so that all students can complete the task. I don’t generally take a grade on these activities, but I think they’re a good way to engage students at the beginning of a class, provide important (if only partially comprehensible) input, and are a rich source for cultural content. The students will then complete an interpersonal activity in which they interview a partner about his/her experiences and opinions of our school cafeteria. I like to follow up these activities by using the same questions and asking the students to either give their own answer or report back on their partner’s answer. My students continue to struggle in identifying the subject in a question that they hear, so these questions/answers provide additional practice in making this distinction. Although I have not included it in the packet, I would consider having the students write a short paragraph about their own answers to these same questions as a homework/writing assignment. On the second day of this lesson the students will read a comic from Astrapi magazine (Pic et Pik p1 Pic et Pik p2) and complete an interpretive activity. They will then write a list of cafeteria rules based on the language and structures they encountered in the comic. I have designed this presentational activity to introduce the expression Il faut, as well as to use the vocabulary from the comic. Next, the students will interview a partner about his/her behavior in the cafeteria and then write a note explaining how their own behavior is better than their partner’s, so that they will be chosen as Student of the Month. Lastly, I have included two other videos about French school cafeterias. Depending on timing, I might show these videos in a different order than they are presented in the packet.

Le Restaurant (2 days) This lesson posed a real challenge for me. I need my students to be able to use and understand phrases that are specific to ordering restaurant meals, as this was the goal for my unit and will be assessed in the IPA. However, I was not able (during the time I had available) to find an authentic video that I could use to provide input or interpretive communication for these phrases. If you have any ideas, please share!!! Given my time constraints, I resorted to having my students watch a series of educational (not authentic) videos to familiarize them with the phrases they will need to know to order meals. I assigned the first video as homework, so that the students would come to class with a list of the phrases that they would need. I will start the class period with a silly restaurant song, and then have the students practice a guided restaurant dialogue. I have several authentic menus that I will pass out to add authenticity to this activity. The students will then read an infographic (included in packet) about dining out in Paris. On the second day of this lesson, the students will first interview a partner about his/her dining out habits. I will then project the photo (in packet) showing the terms for doneness of meat, before playing the (non-authentic) podcast of a restaurant dialogue. Lastly, they will read an article about making healthy choices when dining out.

After this lesson, the students will be ready for their IPA, which will consist of the following tasks.

Interpersonal: The students will discuss various items on an authentic menu and then place their order with the waitress (Madame, bien sur!)

Interpretive Listening: The students will watch authentic cartoons depicting mealtimes.

Interpretive Reading: The students will complete an interpretive task on an authentic menu.

Presentational Writing: The students will write a message to their future exchange student about their own eating habits.

As always, I’d appreciate any and all feedback on these materials.

Madame's Musings

A site about proficiency-based world language instruction