With less than two weeks before school starts I\u2019m trying to get my first couple of units planned for each of the four courses that I teach.\u00a0 As I continue on my journey to leave the textbook behind in favor of a proficiency-based approach, I find the beginners (French 1) the most challenging group.\u00a0 There\u2019s something a little scary about being solely responsible for deciding what they need to know at each step along the way!<\/p>\n
As I planned their curriculum for the year, I decided that after a week or so spent on greetings, I would begin by teaching them the vocabulary and structures they would need to talk about school supplies.\u00a0 It seemed to me that if they successfully acquired this vocabulary, it would be an important first step in my maintaining a 90% target language classroom.<\/p>\n
I began the process of planning this unit by choosing the authentic materials that I would use to introduce the vocabulary to the students. As you can see by downloading the link below, I came up with an office supply website, two YouTube videos where teens presented their new school supplies, and a school supply list from a French middle school.<\/p>\n
For each of these resources I developed both Interpersonal and Presentational tasks to reinforce the vocabulary from the Interpretive activity.\u00a0 Each of these tasks will result in a formative assessment, as I will collect and assess the Interpretive tasks (Reading\/Listening), assess some of dyads for the Interpersonal tasks (by spending a few minutes with various pairs as they complete the task), randomly select pairs to orally present the information gleaned from the interpersonal task (Presentational-Speaking), and collect and assess the Presentational Writing task.<\/p>\n