Une Journée à l’école : An inductive introduction to the passé composé for Novice High French students

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One of the most challenging aspects of my growth in standards-based teaching has been to design lessons that allow my students to acquire the grammatical structures they will need to increase their proficiency. While I have found that most of my students will internalize many structures, such as the use of various articles, many verb forms, irregular adjective forms, etc., other structures require a bit more direct attention. It has been my experience that the formation of the passé composé is one such structure. While I understand that this structure would eventually be acquired, I have found that designing lessons that draw the students’ attention to this form and then encourage them to use it to express their own meaning have been effective in improving their overall proficiency. In general, the unit that I shared in this previous post, was very effective in introducing the passé composé to my Level 2 students. As a result of this unit, my students began using the past tense in their speaking and writing, and were able to understand this structure in context when listening and reading. While they continued to make errors in choice of auxiliary and agreement (as expected), they also demonstrated their ability to form this tense in new contexts as the year progressed. In fact, I was happily surprised that this knowledge carried over during the summer and these students were able to discuss their vacations at the beginning of French 3 with no direction instruction or review of the tense. Because this unit was so effective, I will reteach it with only a few modifications.

This unit (click here for the student packet) consists of five different written or recorded authentic texts, each of which is accompanied by an interpersonal and presentational task. I have made a few changes, based on last year’s results. The first of these is that I eliminated the English comprehension questions from the video in lesson 3. I found that completing these questions was very-time-consuming for the students, and providing feedback required too much English on my part. Instead I will pause the video and ask French comprehension during the viewing phase. I will then give the students time for the French true/false questions at the end of the segment. (Click here for a transcript generously provided by Mark Lombardo.) While I included the activities for all three segments in one lesson (they were spread out in last year’s packet), I will most likely intersperse these listening activities among the other lessons to provide variety and increase engagement. The other significant change that I made was to select a different text for the final interpretive reading. The text that I chose last year was quite difficult for the students, and I preferred that they read a less challenging text in order to focus on the new structure. In addition to the lessons in this packet, I may include some of the supplementary activities in the original post, as well as a Movie Talk activity using the video shared by a reader (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEKLEeY_WeQ&feature=youtu.be).

Edited 5/23/18: Link to IPA

4 Suggestions for Assessing Interpersonal Communication with Novice Learners

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As I’ve evolved in my teaching practice, I’ve made significant changes to how I assess oral communication. Here are a few suggestions that have helped me improve my assessment of my Novice students’ interpersonal communication, resulting in increased proficiency among these early language learners.

Suggestion #1: Just do it! It seems that many of my colleagues are hesitant to assess their Novice students’ interpersonal communication. It is their belief that that because these students are entirely dependent on memorized language, no true interpersonal communication can occur. Fortunately, we’ve agreed to disagree on this point! In my opinion, a Novice speaker’s reliance on practiced or memorized language does not preclude her from true communication on an unrehearsed task. While the topics that these learners discuss will be limited to those which have been practiced, they will still be able to demonstrate interpersonal communication when given an appropriate communicative task. In fact, the NCSSFL-ACTFL Can-Do Statements list the following for Novice Mid Interpersonal Communication:

I can greet and leave people in a polite way.
I can introduce myself and others.
I can answer a variety of simple questions.
I can make some simple statements in a conversation
I can ask some simple questions
I can communicate basic information about myself and people I know
I can communicate basic information about my everyday life

Clearly we can expect students to be able to demonstrate an ability to communicate about such basic topics as likes/dislikes, leisure activities, family members, school subjects and supplies, eating habits, etc. While appropriate questions, answers, and rejoinders may be practiced in advance with Novice learners, we can ensure that they are demonstrating actual communication in this mode by creating prompts that prevent memorization of a script. For example, by pairing a student with a classmate with whom he hasn’t yet practiced, we ensure that he is unable to memorize the exact questions he will ask and the answers or rejoinders that he will give. Consider a unit on likes and dislikes, often one of the first topics in a Level 1 curriculum. We might give an assessment prompt such as, “You are choosing a roommate for choir camp and you want to make sure you end up with someone that likes the same things you do. Discuss your likes and dislikes in order to find out what you have in common.” While these students will have practiced expressing their preferences (“I like…”) , asking questions (“Do you like…?), and replying to a partner (“Me, too.” “Not me.” “Me neither.”), they will not know in advance which questions they will be asked or which responses their partner will provide. As a result, each student must be prepared to ask a variety of questions, in order to avoid repeating those asked by his partner. Likewise, working with a new partner will require a student to comprehend his interlocutor’s response (rather than simply memorizing a script) in order to choose the appropriate rejoinder. (“Me neither” is not an appropriate response to a partner who has stated that she likes something, for example.) Furthermore, even Novice learners can make some adjustments in order to clarify meaning for an interlocutor who has demonstrated a lack of comprehension. Requests for repetition are often all that’s needed in order to understand a message, whether because the original speaker is able to correct an error that impeded comprehension or because the repetition enable the interlocutor to establish additional meaning. Clearly, even a task as simple as this one does require the negotiation of meaning which typifies interpersonal communication.

Suggestion #2: Stay out of it! I rely almost entirely on student-to-student interaction for my interpersonal assessments, even for Novice learners, for the following reasons:

In my experience, allowing students talk to each other great increases the quality of the interaction. I have followed the suggestion of Colleen Lee (@CoLeeSensei) who said in a #langchat discussion, “I teach my [students] that your partner not understanding you is YOUR responsibility to clear up!” Nothing is more magical than hearing a level 1 student encourage a classmate by suggesting possible language chunks that would provide the necessary clarification to allow communication to occur. In an early unit this year, for example, one student negotiated meaning by asking C’est ta mère ou ta sœur? when her partner used the incorrect vocabulary word when describing his family photos. This clarification gave valuable feedback to the speaker who had made the error, as well as allowed his interlocutor to stretch beyond the rehearsed statements and questions she had anticipated using during this assessment. As a result of this negotiation, both students are likely to make progress toward proficiency that wouldn’t have been likely had the conversation occurred between a teacher and student.
I have found that being able to talk to a peer, rather than the teacher, greatly reduces the students’ affective filter. A conversation between a teacher and student, regardless of the prompt, is a conversation between an expert/evaluator and a student, which creates a certain level of anxiety in many learners. When a student’s focus is on communicating with a peer, however, she is often able to disregard the presence of the teacher (who is most likely busily taking notes in order to provide feedback to the speakers). As a result of this decrease in anxiety, the quality of the communication is considerably greater than it would have been if the student was speaking to the teacher.
In my opinion, the authenticity of the communication is significantly reduced when one of the speaker’s primary motivation is assessment, rather than comprehension. In a teacher-student interpersonal assessment, the student’s goal is most likely to avoid errors, and the teacher’s is to note them as part of the feedback process. As a result, the communicative content of the conversation often loses its significance.
Lastly, assessing pairs of students saves valuable class time. While I can generally assess all 30 of my students in one class period when listening to two speakers at a time, I would not be able to do so if I were assessing each one individually.

Suggestion #3: Use a great rubric. I love the one from the Ohio Department of Education (http://education.ohio.gov/getattachment/Topics/Ohios-Learning-Standards/Foreign-Language/World-Languages-Model-Curriculum/World-Languages-Model-Curriculum-Framework/Instructional-Strategies/Scoring-Guidelines-for-World-Languages/3-Interpersonal-Rubric_unit_august_2015.pdf.aspx ) because it includes an interculturality component, as well as great descriptors related to the quality of the interaction. The wording in the comprehensibility section makes it clear that some errors are to be expected, even for those students rated as Strong. Knowing that the content and quality of the interaction are as important as accuracy encourages students to make more risks during interpersonal tasks. This risk-taking leads allows the learners to demonstrate greater proficiency than they would if their only goal was to avoid grammatical errors.

Suggestion #4: Don’t forget to incorporate culture. As I discussed in an earlier post, I am experimenting with using role plays in order to incorporate more culture into my novice interpersonal communication assessments. My previous prompts, in which I asked students to discuss their own personal preferences and experiences, often failed to produce adequate evidence of interculturality. On the other hand, I was pleased with the results I had during a recent holiday unit when I assigned a role to each member of the conversation pair. In this assessment, I asked one student to play the role of someone who had traveled to France for the holidays and the other to play the role of someone who had traveled to Canada. When these students discussed the pictures they had “taken” (a Google Slides presentation I prepared), they were able to demonstrate their cultural competence in a comprehensible way, in spite of their Novice proficiency level.

I’ll look forward to hearing what has worked for you when assessing impersonal communication with Novice students!

Integrating Culture Across the Modes: A Noël Unit for Intermediate Low French Students

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I’m taking just a few minutes for a quick share tonight. In an earlier post, I shared some activities that I developed to integrate culture in all of the communicative modes with my Novice Mid students. In this evening;s post I’m including a few lessons I created to do the same with my Intermediate Low/French 3 students. Click here for a packet of activities and keep reading for a short explanation of each lesson.

Lesson 1: In this lesson I played a short video to introduce the tradition of the yule log cake. I then assigned partners and gave each member of the dyad a different article. The students read their articles and filled in the information they could find in the packet. Then they discussed their information with their partner, who had read the opposite article. Although I intended for the pairs to fill out a Venn diagram as described in the packet, due to time constraints the students just discussed their information and filled in the missing information for the questions in the packet. This worked out well, as they did a Venn diagram in the next lesson. Although I didn’t end up assigning the Presentational Activity, I had originally considered adding it, based on timing.

Lesson 2: In this lesson, one partner watched a video about Christmas tree traditions and the other listened to a video on the same topic. They then discussed the information they found and completed a Venn diagram comparing the information in each source. As in Lesson 1, time didn’t permit me to assign the Presentational activities.

Lesson 3: As in Lesson 2, half of the students read an article while the other half listened to a video. I was consistent in assigning A/B roles, so that the students who listened in Lesson 2 did the reading in Lesson 3 and vice versa. After the interpretation phase of the lesson, the students discussed their information and took a pair “quiz.”

Although these activities were challenging, the students remained engaged throughout the three class periods I dedicated to these cultural lessons. Following the third lesson, I introduced the same story project that I described in this post from last year. I did, however, add an interpersonal communication task to the IPA/Learning Stations in which the students used circumlocution to complete these pair crossword puzzles (Partner A, Partner B). My students love these pair crossword puzzles and they were a very effective way to review aspects of French holiday traditions that the students had learned in past years.

Using Cartoons to Assess Interpretive Listening with Novice Learners

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This week’s #langchat discussion about interpretive listening revealed that we language teachers are very diverse in the way we approach this skill, especially with novice learners. Although I reflected at length on the topic of assessing listening in an earlier post, I’d like to specifically address a few of the questions that came up during Thursday night’s discussion.

Question #1: What resources are appropriate for novice learners? While some teachers are hesitant to use authentic resources with early novices, I have found that first semester French 1 students can successfully interpret carefully selected authentic materials when given level-appropriate tasks. My go-to resource for these students are cartoon videos for the following reasons:

These videos were made for novice language learners—young children in the target culture! As a result, the vocabulary and sentence structures are relatively simple and the linguistic input is supported by strong visual cues. This is exactly what our novice learners need.
The wide selection of these videos ensures that there are several choices available for any theme we’ve included in our novice curriculum. My favorites for my Level 1 and 2 students are Trotro, Petit Ours Brun and T’choupi et Doudou, because of the broad range of topics covered and the comprehensibility. I also occasionally use Peppa Pig with my level 2 students. Although originally recorded in (British) English, the French translation was clearly intended for French-speaking children, so I do consider these to be authentic resources. However, the target culture would not, of course, be represented in these videos.
Cartoons are very engaging to my students. They look forward to their turn at the computer and a few students have even mentioned that they have watched additional episodes of the series at home, “just for fun.”
As authentic resources, these cartoon videos often integrate cultural products, practices and perspectives of the target culture. When Petit Ours Brun puts his shoes under the Christmas tree, his grandfather comments on the delicious turkey, and he wakes up to presents on Christmas morning, my students learn relevant cultural practices regarding Christmas celebrations in France.

Question #2: What types of tasks are appropriate for novice learners? I realized as I participated in Thursday night’s #langchat that I have interpreted ACTFL’s descriptors regarding interpretive listening differently than many of my colleagues. The Novice Mid (my goal for level 1) NCSSFL-ACTFL Can-Do Benchmark for interpretive listening reads, “I can recognize some familiar words and phrases when I hear them spoken.” If I understood my colleagues’ responses correctly, many of us may be assessing listening by having students list the words and phrases that they hear. Because it isn’t clear to me how this type of task would demonstrate interpretation/comprehension, I ask students to answer questions to show comprehension of the video, but phrase these questions in a way that the students can use previously-learned words/phrases (along with visual context clues) to respond. This year I am using a multiple choice format for my formative listening assessments using our district’s recently-adopted Canvas learning management system. Although I don’t feel that multiple choice is appropriate for many language tasks, this platform has the advantage of providing immediate feedback to my students. In addition, since creating and assessing them requires a minimal time commitment on my part, I am able to provide more opportunities for listening than I was using other task types. Lastly, this format provides students with additional context clues. Their listening is more purposeful as they are listening for a specific response, as well as to eliminate distractors. While I typically use open-ended question types on my IPA’s, these multiple choice quizzes, which the students complete individually at a computer, provide the majority of my formative listening assessments.

In order to save time, I create these quizzes directly in Canvas, which unfortunately makes them very difficult to share. For the purposes of this discussion, I’ve uploaded a Word document of screenshots from a quiz I made this morning for the video, Trotro et les cadeaux de Noel (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRcv1pVaitY ). As this document shows, the questions that I’ve created enable these Novice Low-Mid students to demonstrate their ability to interpret this text using only previously-learned words and phrases and visual clues. While most of the items assess literal comprehension, I’ve included a few questions that require the students to make inferences and guess the meanings of new words using context clues. Here’s a quick explanation of my thought process for each question.

#1: While each of these questions would be appropriate to the context, my students will probably understand “pour moi” when they hear it. They will also be able to eliminate the 2^nd choice, because they know the word for Santa. Although I’ve used the other question words in class, the students are not using them yet. I included them in the distractors to encourage the students to start thinking about how questions are asked.

#2: This question is a “gimme.” The students know the word for book and have visual clues as further support. I created the question to improve the students’ confidence, enable all students to have some “correct” answers, and to provide more context for further questions. As you can see, I write LOTS of questions, because I find the questions themselves provide important context and help the students follow along with the video.

#3: “Chouette” is a new word for these students, but it appears in a lot of children’s literature/videos and I think they’ll enjoy using it. The context should make the meaning of this word clear.

#4/#5: The students have learned the word “jeux-video” so I think they’ll get “jeu.” Also because Trotro also uses “jouer” I think they’ll understand it’s something to play with rather than listen to.

#6/#7 Students can answer by recognizing the previously-learned words “gros” and “belle.”

#8: Although this question does not assess listening comprehension (the word appears in written form), it does provide a contextualized way to introduce a new vocabulary word.

#9: The students can listen for the word “content” as well as eliminate the distractors based on previously-learned words.

#10: The students have heard “maintenant” repeatedly, but it hasn’t been formally introduced. If they don’t recognize it, they should still be able to eliminate the other choices.

#11: Although the students will not understand the entire sentence in which it appears, they should be able to answer this question by identifying the word “cadeaux.”

#12: I’m curious what my students will do with this inference-based question. They should recognize the phrase, “Moi, aussi” which should enable them to infer that Boubou got the same gift.

#13: The students should recognize the word “jouer” as well as be able to eliminate the distractors based on previously-learned vocabulary.

#14: The students should be able to use the visual context to guess the meaning of this new vocabulary.

#15: The phrase “c’est moi” should enable the students to choose the correct response for this one. As with several other items, I’ve included the transcription of the entire sentence to introduce new vocabulary—the verb “gagner.”

#16: Although my students won’t be able to use the linguistic content to answer this question, I’ve included it to encourage inference based on visual context clues.

#17: I’ll be curious how they do with this one. “Bateau” is an unknown word and although they’ve seen “mer,” I’m not sure they’ll pick up on it. Some might pick out “pirate” but I’ll be curious how many are able to answer this one correctly.

#18: The students have heard “rigolo” and this word even appears in Trotro’s theme song. In addition, they should be able to eliminate the distractors based on previously-learned vocabulary.

While there’s nothing especially innovative about this assessment format, after completing many similar tasks during their first semester of language study most of my level 1 students are pretty accurate when completing this type of formative assessment.

Question #3: How should interpretive listening be assessed? I did want to make a point about grading these formative assessments. Although I do my best to create questions that are mostly at the students’ current proficiency level, with a few items thrown in to encourage “stretch,” I rely heavily on my students’ results to determine how close I came to hitting this target. Therefore, I do not decide how to grade these assessments until I have data on how the class scored as a whole. In other words, this particular formative assessment will not necessarily by worth 18 points. If, for example, the highest score is 16, I might make this the maximum score. For teachers that do not record a score on formative assessments, this isn’t an issue of course. I only suggest that we expect and allow for student errors when assessing interpretive listening (even using objective evaluations) just as we do when assessing the other modes.

I’d love to hear from any of you who are willing to share your experiences and ideas about assessing listening with novice learners!

Image credit: www.gallimard-jeunesse.fr

Integrating Culture in All Modes: A Noël Unit for Novices

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As a result of a recent #langchat discussion, I’ve been reflecting a lot about how to more fully integrate culture into my instructional practices. In an earlier post, I shared the essential questions I developed based on my current units that I will use as a baseline for increasing the focus on cultural competency in my classroom. A greater challenge that I identified as a result of the #langchat conversation, however, is the importance of integrating culture across all communicative modes. While my first thought was that I was that was providing my students with ample opportunities to develop their cultural competence by interpreting authentic materials, this is clearly not enough. Encouraging students to identify the cultural products, practices and perspectives reflected in these authentic resources is only a first step. The cultural knowledge which is gleaned from these interpretive tasks must be carried over into the other modes to maximize student learning. With this goal in mind I’ve begun modifying my Christmas units to provide a greater emphasis on cultural integration in each mode.

My French 1 class, with a targeted proficiency level of Novice Mid, provides the greatest difficulty when it comes to fully integrating culture, especially in the interpersonal mode. The NCSSFL-ACTFL Can-Do’s for this level (which I use to guide my instructional design) are very speaker-centered. Students are expected to communicate basic information about themselves and people they know and communicate basic information about their everyday life. These objectives clearly aren’t appropriate for this cultural unit. As I explained in last year’s post regarding my Christmas lessons, my students come from varied cultural and religious backgrounds and I consider it vital to honor this diversity. Therefore, it clearly wouldn’t be appropriate to design interpersonal activities that require students to interview classmates about their Christmas traditions (and then make comparisons), as I do in units on family, leisure activities, school, etc. In the past, I assigned interpersonal tasks that required students to describe holiday-themed pictures in order to avoid personalized questions in this unit. While these activities helped the students to acquire the new vocabulary, they did nothing to develop the students’ cultural competence regarding Francophone Christmas celebrations. Therefore, this year I’ve decided to use some role-play activities to integrate more culture while at the same time respecting both the cultural diversity and the proficiency level of these learners. While I think that we must ensure that our students are able to express their actual preferences, surroundings, and experiences in the target language, the same memorized phrases which enable communication at this level can be used to play the role of a speaker in another culture. In these role-plays, in which pairs of students play the roles of French-speakers in Quebec and Paris, the students will not only integrate their understandings of the cultural practices of these regions as they relate to Christmas, they will also learn vocabulary and structures that will enable them to participate in authentic conversations in the future.

Here’s the unit plan I’ve developed for this year. Click here for the student activity packet.

Lesson 1: I’ll play this video to introduce the students to some French Christmas traditions and corresponding vocabulary. Then they’ll complete this pair role play activity to practice talking about cultural traditions associated with Christmas. This resource guide will help them interpret the pictures in the role play.

Lesson 2: I’ll start this lesson with the short video about Christmas traditions in Quebec, pausing frequently to discuss. Then I’ll assign this guided role-play. As a follow up presentational writing activity, the students will write a message from the person belonging to the culture they played in the role play to a person from the culture that their partner played. In the message, they will demonstrate their new cultural competence by including appropriate facts and asking relevant questions.

Lesson 3: The students will watch and video and read an article about decorating a Christmas tree. Next they’ll draw pictures showing the steps given in the article, and then present the steps to their partner using their pictures.

Day 4: The students will read an infographic about French holiday eating habits and then interview a partner. Afterwards they’ll complete a Venn diagram comparing French Christmas eating habits to those of their own family during any special celebration.

Day 5-8: The students will spend one day each at these learning stations:

Listening: The students will watch Christmas-themed authentic cartoon videos and complete on-line comprehension quizzes.
Reading: Students will read an article about Christmas traditions in various European countries and then one about Christmas in France and complete comprehension guides.
Speaking: Students assume the roles of a French and a Canadian teen and discuss “their” holiday traditions using a set of pictures. (Noel Speaking)
Writing: Students will write a message about French holiday traditions.

Day 9-10: IPA

Reading: Students interpret an article about Christmas traditions throughout the world.

Speaking: Students assume the roles of a French and a Canadian teen and discuss “their” holiday traditions using the pictures on these Google Slides. Slides #1-#7 will be used by the student from France, and #8-#14 will be for the student from Quebec.

Writing: Students write final draft of writing station.

If time permits, I’ll make some modifications to my French 2 and 3 units , but in the meantime click here for the units as I used them last year.

Le 13 novembre: A Lesson Plan for Novice French Students

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Like many of you, I have spent the weekend processing how to address Friday evening’s terrorist attacks with my students tomorrow. Although I consider myself a planner, this is not a lesson that can be planned. As of this time, I do not know how much my students will understand about what happened, what questions they will have, and to what extent they have been affected by these horrible events. So, although I won’t have a plan, I will have some resources available, and will decide how to implement them based on the needs of my students.

In order to show my students the extent to which people around the world have been affected by the events in Paris, I’ll probably show them these pictures:

http://www.npr.org/2015/11/14/456045436/photos-the-world-responds-to-the-paris-attacks?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=2040

Depending on their interest, I’ll also show this video of Francois Hollande speaking (with English subtitles):http://www.nytimes.com/video/world/europe/100000004036880/french-president-on-paris-attacks.html?playlistId=100000004037210

I think that my students would also benefit from seeing Cecily Strong speak French, in Saturday Night Live’s intro: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJ_hoMig06M

In addition to these audio-visual resources, I have prepared both a French 1 and a French 2 comprehension guide for this Astrapi article: Attentats-Paris

Finally, I will also encourage any interested students to express their condolences here: http://franceintheus.org/spip.php?article7170

In addition to curating these materials for my Novice students, I’ve chosen this post by Rick Steves to share with the families of the students who plan on traveling to France with me in March: http://blog.ricksteves.com/blog/dont-be-terrorized/

Image Credit: Jean Julien

“Je quitte la maison” a lesson incorporating a vintage text into a 21st century classroom.

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As I mentioned in this previous post, a constant in my teaching practice over the years has been the inclusion of several Petit Nicolas stories in my curriculum. Although the stories were written decades ago, I find them ideal for my Intermediate Low’s (French 3 students) for the following reasons:

The author’s conversational writing style provides lots of input on high-frequency vocabulary and structures
Many of the stories have a corresponding cartoon video (on Youtube) that features a similar, but updated story line-great for interpretive listening tasks.
The stories are easy to find—I have most of the collections, so a quick trip to the copy machine provides the text to all of my students; no lengthily Google searches required!
The stories are humorous and engaging to the majority of the students.
My students love the first feature film (They’d probably like the second one, too, I just haven’t bought it yet.)

This week, we read the story called “Je quitte la maison.” I’ve used this story for several years, not only because it’s cute, but also as a contextualized way to introduce my students to the future tense. Click here for the comprehension activities I created for this story (described below).

Day 1: I did a quick introduction of a few new vocabulary items, and then had the students make some predictions about what might happen in the first part of the story. Although I hadn’t yet formally introduced the future tense, my students had seen a few examples, so I could quickly explain the use of the tense in the predictions. I also have a poster in my room as a resource, so I can refer to it throughout these lessons. After the predictions, the students began reading the story and supplying information regarding details of the story.

Day 2: I began the period by verbally discussing the details that the students had provided. The students then discussed the inference questions in small groups, and then as a class. I was really happy with the way that these inference questions led to both a deeper reading of the text and some lively conversations. It was so exciting to see many of the students being able to express their own ideas without relying only on repeated phrases from the story! As a final activity, I had the students fill in possible meanings for the future tense verbs in the sentences I had included in their packet.

Day 3/4: I repeated the Day 1-2 activities with the second half of the story. Although the students felt that the story was very difficult at first, they were all eventually able to construct significant meaning from this authentic text.

After the students had finished the story, I assigned a series of learning stations to facilitate the extension activities I had created.

Listening Station: I intended for the students to interpret the cartoon version of this story that I have used for the last couple of years. Unfortunately, I discovered quite late in the game that this particular episode is not currently available on Youtube, so at the last minute I had to punt by finding other videos on the theme of running away. Due to the time constraints caused by the “missing” video, I created a series of multiple choice questions for these videos directly on Canvas, so I’m not able to share them here. The first video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXIKD2RLRU8) includes interviews and skits (?) about parent-child conflicts, the second (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93y7RNR4ATk) is a child-made video about a runaway (I only had them watch the first 12 minutes) and the third (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4X_-6cnqT4) was a news story about an actual runaway. The feedback from my students is that these videos were very comprehensible and I liked the opportunity to include some current cultural content in the videos.

Reading: The students interpreted an online article with advice for parents of teen runaways and completed an abbreviated comprehension guide. Although I was concerned the article might be too challenging, most of the students found it appropriate to their level of proficiency.

Writing: The students wrote a letter from Nicolas to his parents, in which he explains his plans to run away gain the following day (as suggested in the story).

Speaking: The students completed two separate communicative activities at this station. In the first, a pair crossword, students used circumlocution to provide clues which enabled their partner to complete his/her copy of a crossword puzzle (Puzzle A, Puzzle B). The students really enjoy these activities and they provide an excellent opportunity for the students to create with the language. In the second activity, the students performed a role play between Nicolas and Alceste on the hypothetical next day from the story. I had the students practice both roles with the other members of their group, and then randomly chose pairs and roles for a speaking assessment. While the students didn’t include as many details from the story as I’d hoped they would, they were able to create meaningful, unscripted dialogues. Although I hadn’t expected the students to have any accuracy in terms of the future tense at this point, many of them did use this structure correctly in their role plays.

Integrating Culture – Step 1: Essential Questions

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As the World Language teachers in my district continue to work on revising our curriculum, one of our most important goals is to be more purposeful in teaching our students the products, practices and perspectives of the cultures who speak the languages we teach. In Ohio, where I teach, the role of culture in communication is made clear by the inclusion of an interculturality component in both the performance and proficiency rubrics. As a result of this week’s lively discussion on #langchat, I have realized that my local colleagues and I are not alone in our desire to more fully integrate culture in spite of the challenges inherent in doing so.

While it is clear that cultural knowledge plays an important role in communication, we face certain difficulties as we strive to develop culturally rich lessons for our students. Designing units that address the breadth of our target cultures, are accessible to learners across proficiency levels, and are respectful of our students’ own varied cultural backgrounds is not an easy undertaking. While designing our lessons around authentic resources helps us to infuse our lessons with relevant cultural information, it is often challenging to find appropriate materials that reflect Francophone cultures outside of Europe and North America. As a result, we must sometimes choose between the authenticity of the texts we select as sources of linguistic input and the diversity of the cultural information we present to our students. Furthermore, novice students, whose communicative proficiency may be limited to expressing their own basic needs, may not be able to adequately represent their knowledge of the target culture in the target language. Lastly, the lack of a common culture among our diverse students sometimes makes cultural comparisons nearly impossible.

In spite of these challenges, there is no doubt that it is our responsibility to develop our students’ cultural competence. As a first step to improving my own practices in this area, I looked over this year’s course outlines for my French 1, 2, and 3 classes and listed some cultural essential questions that are addressed by the instructional activities I’ve planned for each one. (I’ve slightly modified the topics since my initial reflection in this post.) For each unit, I identified a general essential question for the topic, as well as some more specific questions that will be answered in the authentic resources I’ve chosen for the unit. While most of the resources I’ve used in the past reflected mostly French culture, my first goal will be to incorporate more materials from other Francophone cultures in order to more fully address these essential questions.

French 1

Why is it important to learn French?

Who speaks French?
How do French people greet each other?

What is school like in a Francophone country?

What school supplies do students need?
How and where do students get their school supplies?
What classes do kids take in Francophone countries?

How do people in Francophone cultures spend their free time?

How much leisure time to people have?
What sports, games and hobbies are popular?
What role does technology play in leisure activities?

What are families like in Francophone cultures?

What members of a family live together?
How common are divorce and blended families?
What are the roles of each member of the family?
What role do pets play in the family?

What is a year like in different Francophone cultures?

What is the weather like at different times of the year?
How does the weather affect people’s activities?
What major holidays are celebrated throughout the year and how are they celebrated?

What are mealtimes like in Francophone countries?

When do people eat each meal?
What do people eat at each meal?
Where do people eat each meal?

Where do people in the Francophone culture live?

What are their homes like?
What are their neighborhoods like?
Where do they go for various activities?
Where might a visitor to their area go and why?

French 2

What is a typical day like for teenagers in different Francophone countries?

When do they wake up, how, and why?
What do they do after school and why?
When do they go to bed and how do they fall asleep?

What do Francophone teens do with their friends?

What do they do when they get together at someone’s house?
What do they do when they go out together?

How do people in Francophone cultures buy their food?

Where do they go to buy food?
What ecological and nutritional values are reflected in their shopping habits?
What dishes are commonly prepared at home?

How do people in Francophone cultures stay healthy?

Where do people go for health care?
What role does exercise play in their daily lives?
What diseases cause the most concern?

What are schools like in Francophone cultures?

What are relationships between students and teachers like?
What role do parents play in the education of their children?
What are the relationships among the students like?

What was it like to live in a castle?

How were castles built?
Who lived in castles?
How did a boy become a knight?
How did castles evolve?
What did people do for fun during medieval times?

What are some things you can do for fun in Quebec?

What is there to do in Montreal?
What do you need if you want to go camping in a provincial park?
What role did the French play in Canadian history?

French 3

What role does travel play in Francophone culture?

Where do people go on vacation?
With whom do they travel?
What vacation activities are popular?

How have educational reforms affected Francophone schools?

How are students graded?
What high stakes tests do students take?
When do students go to school?

How do people form romantic relationships in Francophone cultures?

What role does dating play in forming a relationship?
What role does marriage play in the culture?
Who has the right to marry?
What is a marriage ceremony like?

What role do sports play in Francophone culture?

What sports are popular in various countries?
What teams are popular?
What Francophone athletes play in the U.S.?
What athletic competitions are important?

What is Impressionism?

How did Impressionism develop?
Who are the major artists associated with the movement?
How did Impressionists influence later artists?

What are the ecological challenges in some Francophone countries?

What do people do to conserve resources?
How do economic factors influence conservation efforts in various countries?
What animals are endangered?

What was France like during prehistoric times?

How did early humans live?
What prehistoric sites can people visit?
How are characters from ancient cultures portrayed in literature?

I have a long way to go before I will be satisfied with the degree to which I’ve integrated the diversity of Francophone culture in my instructional practices, but this list of essential questions will give me someplace to start. I’d love to know more about how you integrate culture into your classroom, as well as authentic resources you’ve used to adress any of these topics as they related to French speakers outside of France and Canada.

5 Tips for Grading IPAs

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The first grading period ended in my school this week so there was lots of talk in my department about how time-consuming it is to grade IPA’s. While I am enough of a teacher nerd to actual enjoy creating IPA’s, I cannot say the same for grading them! Here are a few suggestions that have helped me streamline the process and cut down the time I spend on this task.

Assign a rough draft for the Presentational Writing. I often incorporate a series of learning stations before an IPA and one of these stations consists of writing a rough draft for the IPA. Since I have only 8 students at each station per day, the process of providing feedback is less overwhelming. The students benefit from this feedback on this formative assessment and usually do much better on the IPA as a result.
Use rubrics. I began using the Ohio Department of Education rubrics this year and I really like them. Since Ohio has not yet created an Interpretive Rubric, I use the ACTFL rubric, which I’ve modified to meet my needs. (See this post for a detailed explanation.) When grading the reading and writing sections of an IPA, I lay a rubric next to the student’s paper and check the corresponding box, making very few marks on the student’s paper. Since I will go over the interpretive sections with the class, I don’t find it necessary to mark each response on each student’s paper. Likewise, having given specific feedback on the rough drafts, there is no need to do so on this final copy, which I will keep in my files after returning temporarily for feedback purposes.
Avoid math. After I have checked the appropriate box in each section of the rubric, I determine a score for that section of the IPA. (My gradebook is divided according to language skills—reading, writing, listening, and speaking, so each IPA task gets its own score.) I use a holistic system, rather than mathematical calculations to determine an overall score for each task. If all of the checks are in the “Good” column, the student earns a 9/10. If there are a few checks in the “Strong” column (and the rest are Good), the student earns a 10/10. If the checks are distributed between the Good and the Developing column, the student earns an 8. If the checks are all in the Developing column, the student earns a 7. If there are several checks in the Emerging column, the student earns a 6. If a student were unable to meet the criteria for Emerging, I would assign a score of 5/10, the lowest score I record.
Grade the Interpersonal Speaking “live.” I know that many teachers have their students record their conversations and then listen to them later. If this works for you, you have my admiration. I know myself far too well—I would procrastinate forever if I had 30 conversations to listen to when I got home at night! It works much better for me to call up two randomly-chosen students to my desk while the rest of the class is working on the presentational writing. I can usually get most of the class done in one period, in part because I also place a time limit on their conversation— usually about 3 minutes for my novice students and 4-5 for my intermediates. I find that I can adequately assess their performance in that amount of time, and the students are relieved to know that there is a finite period of time during which they will be expected to speak. I mark the rubric as they’re speaking, provide a few examples, and then write a score as they next pair is on their way to my desk.
Use technology for lnterpretive Listening. Each of my IPA’s includes both an Interpretive Reading and an Interpretive Listening. Because I haven’t found the ACTFL Interpretive Template to work well with listening assessments (see this post), I am currently using basic comprehension, guessing meaning from context, and sometimes main idea and inference questions to assess listening. Although I’ve used a short answer format for these items in the past, I am starting to experiment with creating multiple choice “quizzes” on Canvas (our learning management system). I know that other teachers have had success creating assessment items using Zaption and other programs. I’m still reflecting on the use of objective questions to assess listening, but these programs do offer a way for teachers to provide more timely feedback and for students to benefit from additional context to guide their listening.

If you have any tips for grading IPA’s, please share!

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La Quête de Soi: Les sexes et la sexualité: A mini-unit for AP students

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Recently my French 4/5 class explored gender roles as part of the “Quête de soi” AP theme. They were really engaged by this topic, and we had some great discussions. Here’s what we did:

Day 1: As a hook to this mini-unit, I began by showing this video in which the vlogger, Norman, shares his ideas about some gender differences. The students then worked with a partner to complete this quiz (p.1, p. 2, p. 3) from Phosphore magazine. I insisted that they work in pairs, because I wanted to ensure lots of interpersonal communication in this lesson. I offered a prize to the pair who had the most correct answers, so that they would put a lot of thought into their responses.

Day 2: First I quickly went over the correct answers in order to award the prize. Then I assigned a short comprehension guide over these pages (p. 1, p.2, p. 3) which explain the correct responses. After the interpretive activity, I assigned the written response. This packet has all of the activities for this mini-unit.

Day 3: We started this lesson with a lengthily small group discussion about how boys and girls differ in various aspects of their lives. These topics were taken directly from the article (p. 1, p. 2, p. 3, p. 4) that they read after this discussion and completed a serious of inference-based true/false questions about. After responding individually, they discussed their responses in small groups. For homework they participated in an online discussion (on Canvas), in which they wrote about how their life would be different if they were a member of the opposite sex.

Day 4: As an additional interpersonal activity, I had the students respond to a series of controversial statements about how their lives might be different if they were the opposite sex. I gave them 3 minutes to discuss each statement, and had a scorekeeper in each group keep score based on the types of responses his/her group members made. I again gave a prize to the student with the highest score.

The students really enjoyed this mini-unit on a topic which stimulated some great conversations!

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A site about proficiency-based world language instruction