After kicking off the year with a pre-unit on proficiency and then a 8-week unit about Le Moi Unique, I change gears with my French 7 students and do a mini-unit about the film Kirikou. Then, mid-November, it's time for us to jump into our first BIG Novice High unit, all about how our preferences define us. The unit performance objective is "I can have a conversation about what my preferences say about me" and many of the materials come Shelby County Schools' (SCS) excellent unit. I describe this 8-week unit in depth in my unit template, and my daily lesson plans are here. The authentic resources I use for the unit are mostly found on this Pinterest board.
My first big Can-Do was, "I can express preferences about what I like and don’t like to do." All interpretive tasks can be found here. This unit's theme meshes very well with current YouTube trends (search "10 choses sur moi" and you'll see what I mean), so it was easy to find comprehensible authentic resources where French speakers discuss their preferences. K-Boyz TV, pictured above right, was excellent for its clear diction and predictable format. We also returned to the Photos de classe website where students listened again (and again...) to young French speakers describe what they like to do. Adomania also had a helpful video about students' favorite sports, which is a very popular topic in the community where I teach. While Adomania from TV5MONDE is made for language learners and thus not authentic, I felt it was a worthwhile resource for the unit and a big step up from the Discovering French DVDs I'd relied on for so many years previous. There are many infographics on this topic which let students compare their preferences to those of people in French-speaking countries. This led into the Can-Do "I can tell someone what I choose to do after school & on weekends." All interpretive tasks can be found here. Students interviewed one another about their preferences and then learned to ask about frequency and timing of activities using the days of the week. In the past, I'd taught the days of the week in September - but without a purpose. Now that we actually needed them, it was easy to add them to our mix. Students learned to compare and contrast (just with "et" and "mais") their preferences with those of their peers and practiced "leveling up" their sentences to make them complex. Next we expanded our repertoire to talk about what we do before and after school as well as when we're on vacation. There are great YouTube videos where teens discuss their after school routines and film every minute (one example here and another here), which my students devoured. We also studied an Adomania video about a typical school day, focusing on understanding times.
My first big Can-Do was, "I can express preferences about what I like and don’t like to do." All interpretive tasks can be found here. This unit's theme meshes very well with current YouTube trends (search "10 choses sur moi" and you'll see what I mean), so it was easy to find comprehensible authentic resources where French speakers discuss their preferences. K-Boyz TV, pictured above right, was excellent for its clear diction and predictable format. We also returned to the Photos de classe website where students listened again (and again...) to young French speakers describe what they like to do. Adomania also had a helpful video about students' favorite sports, which is a very popular topic in the community where I teach. While Adomania from TV5MONDE is made for language learners and thus not authentic, I felt it was a worthwhile resource for the unit and a big step up from the Discovering French DVDs I'd relied on for so many years previous. There are many infographics on this topic which let students compare their preferences to those of people in French-speaking countries. This led into the Can-Do "I can tell someone what I choose to do after school & on weekends." All interpretive tasks can be found here. Students interviewed one another about their preferences and then learned to ask about frequency and timing of activities using the days of the week. In the past, I'd taught the days of the week in September - but without a purpose. Now that we actually needed them, it was easy to add them to our mix. Students learned to compare and contrast (just with "et" and "mais") their preferences with those of their peers and practiced "leveling up" their sentences to make them complex. Next we expanded our repertoire to talk about what we do before and after school as well as when we're on vacation. There are great YouTube videos where teens discuss their after school routines and film every minute (one example here and another here), which my students devoured. We also studied an Adomania video about a typical school day, focusing on understanding times.
Food is always a topic of interest to my students, so we moved from leisure preferences to eating preferences, again with the help of many authentic resources. My big Can-Do here was, "I can express opinions about food and drink." All interpretive tasks can be found here. We even were able to read a silly rhyming story, La galette de Suzette. I love to mix a children's story into a unit that's full of non-fiction texts because it lets us describe the characters and talk about the order of events in a natural way. We did some interpretive tasks with the story which you can view here. I ended up revisiting food at the end of the year with a mini-unit on ordering at a restaurant (this is a bare-bones lesson plans: can you see how tired I was by June?!). Next year I will group this all together for ease and better flow.
The second part of the unit focused on preferences in entertainment, with the first Can-Do here being " I can tell someone what I read, listen to or watch." There are many infographics on this topic and lots of opportunities for students to personalize their vocabulary and get excited about whatever it is that gets them excited. It's also a great moment for the teacher to get to know more about her students' various passions. Students were ready at this point to justify some of their answers and say why they like what they do, which allowed them to extend their speech. Some of the formative assessments by mode, based on Shelby County Schools' curriculum, included:
INTERPERSONAL: It’s time to find out what you have in common with another classmate. Ask your partner what entertainment (movies, books, music) he/she prefers and answer your partner’s questions about your entertainment preferences. I conducted this as a TALK group speaking task.
PRESENTATIONAL SPEAKING: You have a new neighbor who just moved here from Cameroon. You have asked him to only speak to you in French so that you will have the opportunity to practice your language with a native speaker. When you get home from school, your mother tells you that your neighbor had asked her about your entertainment preferences. You call him to talk with him, but his phone goes straight to voicemail. Leave him a message telling him about your favorite movies, TV shows and music.
PRESENTATIONAL WRITING: The French language paper in Boston is conducting a survey about entertainment choices of both native and heritage speakers of the language as well as of teenagers in Boston who are studying French. Write a ‘letter to the editor’ telling your favorite movies, TV shows, music and books. Tell why you like these types of entertainment.
INTERPERSONAL: It’s time to find out what you have in common with another classmate. Ask your partner what entertainment (movies, books, music) he/she prefers and answer your partner’s questions about your entertainment preferences. I conducted this as a TALK group speaking task.
PRESENTATIONAL SPEAKING: You have a new neighbor who just moved here from Cameroon. You have asked him to only speak to you in French so that you will have the opportunity to practice your language with a native speaker. When you get home from school, your mother tells you that your neighbor had asked her about your entertainment preferences. You call him to talk with him, but his phone goes straight to voicemail. Leave him a message telling him about your favorite movies, TV shows and music.
PRESENTATIONAL WRITING: The French language paper in Boston is conducting a survey about entertainment choices of both native and heritage speakers of the language as well as of teenagers in Boston who are studying French. Write a ‘letter to the editor’ telling your favorite movies, TV shows, music and books. Tell why you like these types of entertainment.
The unit concluded with revisiting preferences but in terms of technology and social media: "I can describe the technology that influences my life." All interpretive tasks can be found here. Most of my 7th graders are very active on social media, but a few aren't at all (usually due to parental restrictions), so keep that in mind before diving into this topic. I needed to ensure that all tasks suited all my students, whether or not they had social media accounts themselves. Students watched a video (see screenshot above) to notice how teens' behavior changed in the presence of technology, read some more infographics, interviewed one another, and made pages on Book Creator to demonstrate their use of technology. You can see my summative presentational writing assessment here and a TALK interpersonal speaking assessment described here.