As regular readers may have noticed, I ended up taking a hiatus from blogging this spring. It all started when I welcomed an awesome student teacher to my classroom who was so well-skilled in proficiency-based instructional methods that I didn’t need to create any new lessons for several weeks. Then I decided to relocate closer to family, creating a whirlwind of life changes which including finding a new position, selling a house, buying a new house, moving and setting up a new household. To say it’s been hectic would be an understatement! Anyway, with everything going on, needless to say, I had to put aside my blogging for a few months! However, now that I’m settled into my new home I’m anxious to share some of the materials I’ve been working on for my new students.
Creating units for students that I’ve never met, in a school with a different curriculum and culture than the one I left has been a bit of a challenge. Although I don’t know much about the proficiency level or personal interests of my new students, I can’t wait until August to begin preparing instructional materials for my new kiddos.
Besides, reading Chapter 1 of The Keys to Planning for Learning for #langbook has me thinking about all of the ways I can improve my planning and I’m excited to start implementing some of the ideas that are reinforced in this book.
I decided to start with my French 3 curriculum, since I will have three different French classes this year–half of my school day. In addition to reading The Keys to Planning for Learning, I completed the self-assessment survey provided by the TELL Project before developing this unit. As a result of this self-assessment, I realized I needed to be more intentional in developing daily objectives for my lessons. Although I had previously created Can Do Statements for each unit, I hadn’t provided my students with a clear objective for each lesson. I have therefore included daily performance objectives in addition to the Essential Questions and Can Do Statements for this unit.
Because the first theme in my new French 3 curriculum, “Nourriture,” is so broad, I have broken it down into three topics–breakfast, school lunch, and Francophone specialties. This Google Slide Presentation (updated link 7/3/2018) contains the unit plan as well as links to the materials I’ve created/borrowed for each of the 19 lessons in the unit. I am hoping that this format will improve transitions, encourage the students to work more independently and allow absent students to complete work from home. It will also facilitate sharing this work as I can continue to make edits/correct errors without having to reload word documents to this blog. While I’ve previously shared some of these materials, many others are new, including several Edpuzzle video quizzes that will serve as formative assessments in the 1:1 learning environment of my new school.
While I have not included assessments in the presentation, you can click here for the breakfast IPA and here for the school lunch IPA. As the agenda shows, the students will prepare a presentation, rather than a full IPA as a summative assessment on the Francophone specialty topic.
As always, I welcome feedback on these materials!
Image Credit: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Italian_cooking_icon.svg?uselang=fr