Since my French 3 students are coming to the end of their unit on Education in France, I’ve been working on their next unit—The French and Vacations. Although I was generally pleased with Unit 1, I’m making a few changes in the way that I structure the lessons based on what I learned from my first units.
Unit Design
This vacation unit is designed to address the following Intermediate Mid Can-Do Statements:
Interpretive Reading: I can understand basic information in ads, announcements, and other simple tasks.
• Students will read two infographics, an article about the history of vacations in France, and a web page about vacations in the world.
Interpersonal Communication: 1) I can start, maintain and end a conversation on a variety of familiar topics. Subtopic: I can ask for information, details and explanations during a conversation. 2) I can talk about my daily activities and personal preferences. Subtopic: I can give some information about activities that I did.
• Students will discuss pros/cons of vacation destinations/lodging, a vacation they have taken, their opinions about vacations and a vacation they would like to take.
Presentational Writing: 1) I can write messages and announcements.2) I can write short reports about something I have learned or researched.
• Students will write messages about real, imaginary, and ideal vacations and a report about the history of vacation in France.
Presentational Speaking: 1) I can make a presentation about my personal and social experiences. Subtopic: I can describe a childhood or past experience. 2) I can make a presentation on something I have learned or researched.
• Students will present photos of their actual (or imaginary) vacations, leave a message about an imaginary awful vacation, prepare a presentation about the history of vacation in France, and prepare a presentation about their ideal vacation.
Interpretive Listening: I can understand the main idea of what I listen to for personal enjoyment. Subtopic: I can understand a short YouTube clip.
• Students will watch several cartoon videos in which the characters go on various types of vacations. (These activities are found in a separate document. One will be chosen for each of the lessons and will be included in the lesson handout.)
Unit Plan
I anticipate that each of the four lessons in this unit will take 2-3 days. On the first day the students will complete the interpretive reading task. As they are reading, they will be taking turns using the 8 computers in my room to complete the listening activities. In Unit 1 I played the videos to the class as a whole, but found that this made my lessons too teacher-directed. Students were intimidated by answering my questions in front of their peers and/or struggled to understand what I was asking. I am hoping that by having the students work individually on these tasks they will have the opportunity to listen to the videos repeatedly, and improve their comprehension. In addition, I will be able to use these tasks as formative assessments and will be able to give individualized feedback on their performance. Students will spend any remaining class time working on the written presentational task, which will be finished for homework.
Students will begin the second day of each lesson by completing the interpersonal task. I will circulate among the students as they engage in the discussion, choosing some pairs to assess formatively. I will also call upon students to present the results of their discussions to the class. These students will also be assessed formatively, so that I will have provided specific feedback/a formative assessment for each student by the end of the unit. Students will spend the remaining part of the period preparing for the presentational speaking, and will continue this preparation for homework. On the third day I will randomly choose a few students to present what they have prepared to the class for a formative assessment. The rest of the students will present to a partner who will evaluate them using a peer assessment rubric.
After all of the lessons are completed, the students will complete their summative assessment, an Integrated Performance Assessment. This assessment will similar to each of the lessons, in that it will assess Interpretive Reading (an article about vacations) Interpretive Listening (another cartoon video), Interpersonal Communication (a vacation discussion), Presentational Speaking and a Presentational Writing. I am considering giving the students the opportunity to choose one of the Presentational Writing and Speaking Tasks from the unit and having them revise their original draft/practice their speaking and then using the same prompt for the Summative Assessment/IPA. In this way there would be an element of student choice in the assessment process.
Here is a copy of the documents that I prepared for this unit: vacation unit
Vacation Listening Activities
If you have any feedback for me on this unit, please post a comment above!