Le Petit Prince: A Communicative Approach

Although my teaching has evolved considerably over the past 25 years, one constant has been Le Petit Prince.  This novel has been part of my French 4 curriculum nearly every year and I love it more every time I teach it! Fortunately, my family understands my passion for this character, and I now have a wonderful collection of Little Prince memorabilia including jewelry, a lunchbox, and even a pair of hand-painted shoes.  Most of my students grow to love this novel as much as I do and often buy their own copies after they graduate. I was especially touched to receive an e-mail last spring from a former student who wrote to me to share an article he had read about the novel in The New Yorker.  Although I hadn’t realized it when he was in my class, this novel had meant a lot to this student and he was excited about coming across the article years after reading the novel in my class.

Last year, because my French 4 students were placed in the same class as my French 5 students (who had read the novel the previous year), I had to take a short break from my beloved novel.  For this reason, I’m especially excited to teach it this year!  Although I won’t start until January, I’ve spent the last two weekends revamping my materials in order to make sure that my approach reflects my current understanding of best practices.  I’ve included a link to the workbook I created at the end of this post.  Here’s a description of how I’ll teach each chapter. (The information in parentheses refers to the corresponding workbook section.)

#1: Advance Organizer (Part A)

For each chapter I’ve included a question or two related to the theme of the chapter.  The students will discuss these questions in order to prepare for the reading.

#2: Vocabulary (Parts B/C)

I’ll start each chapter by presenting a few key words from the chapter.  I’ve provided pictures for the concrete nouns (and some verbs) and French definitions for the others.  I’ll project the pictures on the screen and ask the questions which incorporate the new vocabulary so that they are familiar with the words before we begin reading the chapter.

#2: Introduction to the text (Part D)

I’ll begin by playing the animated audio version of the text I found on Youtube.  Here’s a link to the Chapter 1 video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvRIccSAHEwk . After they’ve listened, they’ll read the text and answer the comprehension level true/false questions for the chapter. The students will work in groups to read and answer these questions, and we will then go over them as a class.  I have chosen true/false questions here, because I find that they encourage discussion more than other types of objective questions.  When I go over this section, I always ask students to justify their responses with specific details from the text.  They have to explain why the item is either true or false.

#3: Inference Questions (Part E)

In this section, students read inference-based questions and choose whether they agree or disagree with each statement, providing evidence from the text.  I often have the students respond to these individually, and then discuss with their groups.  The nature of the questions encourages both an in-depth reading of the text and lively discussions, as there is often not a clear cut “right” answer.

#4: Role-Ply (Part F)

Next, the students work with a partner on the role-play based on a hypothetical discussion related to the chapter.  These role plays provide additional opportunities for interpersonal communication, as well as help the students to synthesize the material from the chapter.

#5: Key Quotes (Part G)

Lastly, the students discuss a key quote from the chapter and how it relates to their own personal experience.

While I developed these activities to maximize opportunities for interpersonal communication, they can also be adapted for other modes or for assessment purposes.  Because my grading system is based on language skill categories, I include assessments for each skill through this instructional unit. Therefore, I might occasionally have the students work individually on the true/false questions and submit them for an assessment of their accuracy (interpretive reading), rather than discussing them in class.  I might also prepare comprehension questions for the videos, in order to assess their interpretive listening skills. The “Citation Clé” sections can easily be turned into a writing assessment, rather than/after being discussed orally in class. I record interpersonal speaking grades as I circulate among the students each day, but students could also prepare a response to an inference question, quote, or role-play, for an assessment of their presentational speaking.

Here’s a link to the workbook I’ve developed. Le Petit Prince .  Although I condensed it into 25 pages for the purposes of sharing, I will probably add spaces for student responses so that the copy I give them will be considerably longer.  Also, since I just finished this work I haven’t yet seen it in printed form or used it in class you’ll probably find some typos or other errors—please accept my apologies in advance!  I’ll update the link if I find any glaring errors!

I’d love to hear your feedback on these materials, as well as your ideas for this novel.  Please share by adding a comment using the link above!

This week I continued my unit on social media with my French 4/5 students with a lesson on “selfies.” The students are so enthusiastic about this unit that I hate to see it end! I actually had to ask them to discuss more quietly—and they were all staying in the target language! As an added bonus, the lower level students are seeing terms like “Selfie” on the French 4/5 agenda and I have been overhearing comments like “I can’t wait until I’m in French 4 so that I can do fun stuff like that!” What a great unintended consequence of writing my agenda on the board every day!
Here are the activities that I included in this lesson, which took about five days.
1. Selfie infographic: The students a) discussed a series of pre-reading questions in their small groups and took notes so that they could share their ideas with the class as a whole and b) completed a short interpretive activity about the infographic.
2. (Note: 1/5/2017.  This video is no longer available.) The students watched a YouTube video in which a young woman gives advice about taking selfies. Although the young woman spoke rather quickly, the students were successful in answering most of the (English) comprehension questions that I had prepared—I think the silliness of the video motivated them to rewatch the video until they were able to understand most of it!
3. The students read a simple article, “15 Astuces pour reussir un selfie” and completed a comprehension guide based on the template in ACTFL’s IPA manual. (http://www.actfl.org/publications/guidelines-and-manuals/integrated-performance-assessment-ipa-manual-0). This article addressed many of the same topics that the video did, which made it very comprehensible to the students.
4. The students presented their own favorite selfie to the class. I created a Google Doc Presentation and shared it with the students in the class. Each student was responsible for adding his/her selfie to the document on the first day of the lesson. On the 4th day, each student spoke for a 1-2 minutes about his/her selfie. Students who do not take selfies or chose not to share a photo of their own were invited to find a selfie online and add it to the google doc. One student added a selfie taken by a macaque and a few others used celebrity selfies. The students were able to do these short presentations without much preparation and they all enjoyed seeing each others’ pictures.
5. After 3-4 days reading/listening to these relatively superficial texts, the students read a more profound article about selfies and teen girls. For this article I prepared multiple choice questions, but included main idea, author’s perspective, vocabulary in context, and inference questions in order to replicate the type of items they will see on the AP test.
6. The students wrote a persuasive text in which they incorporated ideas from the article they had read—another activity intended to practice the skills they will need on the AP test.
7. The students watched two videos, both of which were about the “Love without Locks” campaign in Paris.
Here’s a link to a document with the materials I used: Selfie-Unit
I’d love to hear about other AP teachers have addressed the technology AP theme. If you’re willing to share your materials (or if you have feedback regarding this lesson), please add a comment or send me an e-mail!

I’m only a little bit embarrassed to admit that I couldn’t wait to plan this lesson. I’ve had so much fun pinning various infographics related to social media, but had never yet created a unit on this theme. Since I didn’t do much with technology in my combined 4/5 AP Class last year, I wanted to make sure I spent some time on it this year. Although my colleague and I plan to cover a few topics related to technology during this unit, I volunteered to develop the first lesson, which focused on social media.
As you’ll see in the document I uploaded below, I’ve included an interpretive reading task (an article about teens and social media) an interpretive listening task (two videos about teens and social media), an interpersonal task (discussion questions and role plays) and two presentational prompts.
I think this lesson will take about 4 days and this is how I have planned each day:
Day 1:
I will begin by projecting a few of the images on this google presentation:
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1W705rnwDJzSdHRfae_Bt4amDhSLQiDaoblpX-EG5PrY/edit?usp=sharing
I will project one, give the students 3 minutes to discuss it in their small groups, and then choose one student to talk about it for a couple of minutes for a formative assessment grade. When I have done similar activities in the past, I instruct the students to describe the image and then explain why it’s funny. After repeating this process with another image, I will pass out a copy of one of the social media infographics I have pinned (see my La Technologie Pinterest board) and have them discuss it in their groups for a few minutes. We will then discuss it as a class. I will ask them questions about what surprised them about the infographic, what their personal experiences were on the topic, and whether they thought there were cultural differences between the U.S. and France on the topic.
After this discussion time, I will have the students begin the interpretive tasks. Because I have 8 computers in my class, I will have all the students begin the reading, and then choose 8 at a time to do the listening. For homework the students will post a response to the first writing prompt on our Moodle site (Because they will comment on each others’ posts, this is actually an interpersonal writing task).
Day 2:
I will repeat the discussion activities by projecting a couple of more images and passing out another infographic. Then I will have the students complete whichever interpretive task they did not finish on Day 1. If any students finish both interpretive tasks, I will have them begin writing their response to the second presentational prompt. For homework I will assign them the task of reading their classmates’ posts from the previous evening and responding to at least two of them with both a comment and a question.
Day 3:
I will project a couple more images from the Google presentation and then have the students discuss the questions from the interpersonal task. I will then divide the class into two groups. One half of the class will work on the Interpersonal Tasks for the rest of the period and the other will complete their presentational writing (#2).
Day 4:
I will project a couple of more images and then divide them into the two groups and have them complete the opposite tasks. By having only half of the class speaking at a time, I am more able to provide feedback/formative assessment than I would be if I had to try and listen to 28 students speaking at the same time. For this evening’s homework assignment, I will have the reply to any comments they received on the interpersonal writing assignment.
I just hope the students have as much fun working on this unit as I did planning it!

Les-Medias-Sociaux

I can think of no better way to expose my upper-level students to authentic language and culture than by showing a well chosen target language film. While my students don’t always appreciate French films in the same way that I do, Intouchables has proven to be just as popular with my students as it has been with the rest of the world. While the R-rating may make it impossible for some teachers to show this film, I included the parental advisory information from IMDB on my permission slip and all parents allowed their children to see the film.
Once I had their permission, second step was to design a unit that would ensure that the students were engaged in all modes of communication as we watched the film. I began this unit with both an Interpretive Reading and an Interpretive Listening task to familiarize the students with the film and the true story on which it is based. When designing the reading task, I did my best to model the types of questions that are used on the AP French Language exam. Thus, the questions are multiple choice and include main idea, supporting detail, contextualized vocabulary, and inference questions. Although I began incorporating these kinds of questions last year, I still struggle to write good questions of this type. Unfortunately, my students seem to have as much difficulty answering these questions as I do writing them and I did not end up counting this task as a grade. I did, however, learn a lot from this process. When I returned the papers to the students, I asked them to highlight the passage where they had (supposedly) found each answer. There were a lot of “Aha” moments during this activity as the students realized why they had made the mistakes they had when they were forced to justify their answers with proof from the text. I will continue to require students to highlight passages when answering multiple choice questions in order to ensure that they are making inferences rather than guesses. Here’s the task as I wrote it, with the caveat that I will make significant changes before using it again—all suggestions are welcome!!! intouchables_reading
Unfortunately, I was not any more successful in designing an Interpretive Listening task that was appropriate to the students at this level. While I wrote an open-ended task, rather than multiple choice, the videos were too difficult for the students to understand independently. After getting feedback to this effect from the first few students to attempt the task, I ended up showing the videos as a whole class activity and stopping to ask questions orally. This worked well, and I think it was valuable for the students to see the real life men behind the characters in the film. Here’s the task I originally designed, in case you’d like to see the videos I chose. (We only watched the first few minutes of the second video.) listening
After these introductory tasks, it was time to show the film. For the next four days, I showed about 30 minutes of the film each day and then gave the students time to discuss the tracks they had watched. Here’s a draft of the discussion questions I started with (film_guide), although I encourage them to use these questions as a springboard to a broader discussion which incorporated their own ideas. I was really happy with how these discussions went and the students seemed to feel good about their ability to engage in these discussions. I circulated among the groups each day, and was able to formatively assess each student by the final day.
When the film was over, I administered an IPA that a colleague and I wrote for the film. As this document shows (intouchables IPA), the IPA included another AP-style reading assessment (on a pair of reviews of the film) a multiple choice listening assessment (on a video in which passersby give their opinion of the film), a Presentational Writing (review of the film) and Interpersonal task (a role-play based on a scene in the film). The students practiced each of the role plays with a partner on the day before the IPA, but were not allowed to choose which role play they would perform or who their partner would be on the day of the assessment. While I don’t yet have all of the data (we began the IPA’s today), the students are demonstrating some improvement in their ability to answer multiple choice questions on the reading (most of which were written by my colleague). I am optimistic that both my ability to write these questions and their ability to answer them will improve with practice. The students were also able to demonstrate comprehension of the video, although there is still, of course, plenty of room for improvement.
I would be so grateful for any feedback and suggestions from those of you that teach AP level students. Do you write AP style multiple choice questions for your interpretive tasks, or more open-ended ones? Are your students generally successful on these questions?
Thanks in advance for your help!