{"id":1180,"date":"2016-04-25T14:57:21","date_gmt":"2016-04-25T18:57:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/madameshepard.com\/?p=1180"},"modified":"2016-04-25T14:57:21","modified_gmt":"2016-04-25T18:57:21","slug":"oldies-but-goodies-of-french-film-jean-de-florette-and-manon-des-sources","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/madameshepard.com\/?p=1180","title":{"rendered":"Oldies But Goodies of French Film: Jean de Florette and Manon des Sources"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"film\"<\/a>I have found that one of the best ways to keep my French 4\/5 students engaged at the end of the year is by designing my units around films. The opportunity to watch movies in class is rewarding to the students, who are now able to comprehend much of what they hear in an authentic film.\u00a0 Furthermore, films are rich in cultural content and many provide thought-provoking topics for discussion and written commentary.<\/p>\n

While my film library has evolved over the years, two constants have been Jean de Florette<\/em> and Manon des Sources. <\/em>Although Jean <\/em>is a bit less engaging to some students, they all agree that watching this one is worth it in order to relate to the intrigue of Manon<\/em>.\u00a0 This year\u2019s classes, like many others, felt that these films were the best we had seen this year.<\/p>\n

Although I have created a variety of different activities and assessments to accompany these films over the years, this is a description of what I did this year.<\/p>\n

Day 1:<\/strong> We watched the first 18 minutes of the film.\u00a0 It is typical for me to show about 20 minutes of film in a 48-minute class, as I pause frequent to ask questions about the characters and plot, to ask the students to make predictions, and to discuss language and cultural content.\u00a0 For homework, I created a matching quiz on Canvas in which the students matched one of the new vocab words to its French definition. (Click here<\/a> for \u00a0screenshots of the quizzes I made.)<\/p>\n

Day 2:<\/strong> Students reviewed the vocabulary\/film with a\u00a0word cloud activity. \u00a0(Click here<\/a> for all four word clouds.) Each student has the same word cloud but 6 different vocabulary words.\u00a0 They use circumlocution to describe the words on their list to the partner who highlights them on his\/her copy of the word cloud.\u00a0 I usually use pair crossword puzzles for circumlocution activities, but this was less time-consuming to create, and didn\u2019t require the students to know how to spell the words.\u00a0 Note: There are words in the cloud that neither partner will highlight. After this interpersonal activity, the students took a\u00a0simple true\/false quiz. (Click here<\/a> for the quizzes I used during this film.) \u00a0I have found that if I do not give a quiz over each day\u2019s portion of the film, the absent students will not watch the parts that they missed.\u00a0 Therefore, in order to make them accountable I plan a short assessment for each day.\u00a0 Following the quiz we continued watching the film (18:00-34:00) and for homework there was another Canvas matching quiz.<\/p>\n

Day 3<\/strong>: The students completed another word cloud pair activity and then took a quiz on the previous day\u2019s film excerpt.\u00a0 In order to encourage more critical thinking skills, this quiz required the students to determine whether various hypothetical events were probable.\u00a0 They then had to justify their response with details from the film.\u00a0 After the quiz, we watched the next section (34:00 – 52:00) of the film.\u00a0 For homework they completed an additional Canvas quiz.<\/p>\n

Day 4<\/strong>: After the pair word cloud, the students took a simple vocab quiz.\u00a0 I used some of the same clues to \u201cencourage\u201d those who weren\u2019t doing the practice quizzes on Canvas.\u00a0 We then watched the film.<\/p>\n

Day 5:<\/strong> Because I needed to finish the film (in preparation for a sub on the following school day), I did not prepare a pair activity or quiz, we just spent the period watching\/discussing the rest of film.<\/p>\n

Day 6:<\/strong> The students reviewed the film by discussing the questions for this movie in the text, Cinema for French Conversation<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Day 7-Day 9:<\/strong> The students completed this performance assessment<\/a> for the film.<\/p>\n