This third major unit in my French 7 curriculum has as its objective, "I can have a conversation about what makes each of our families unique." Family can be an emotional topic for people of any ages, so I make sure to emphasize that in class we're talking about "family - however each of us chooses to define that." See my unit template, daily lesson plans, and Pinterest board here for the unit's basic bones. Many interpretive tasks for the unit are here. I ended up having to teach this unit in two parts, with a mini-unit on Impressionism in between (due to a field trip to the Boston MFA's Impressionism collection), so you will that the lesson plans reflect this break.
The units begins with the Can-Dos, "I can tell someone about my family and friends" and "I can describe my family and friends." I start off by introducing the class to my family, using a technique that I learned from Amy Lenord where students record what they understand on a table while I speak. Then they share with one another what they heard, and try to record even more information. Next we listen to a non-authentic but comprehensible song by Alain Lelait and learn a fingerplay with family members (Toc toc toc Monsieur Pouce). We also watch a Quick ad and return to Photos de classe to talk about where our families come from. The now-defunct québécois TV show Juliette en Direct had a great website with descriptions of Juliette and her family members. You can access my folder full of screenshots. which students used to complete this interpretive activity since the show's website is no longer functional.
The units begins with the Can-Dos, "I can tell someone about my family and friends" and "I can describe my family and friends." I start off by introducing the class to my family, using a technique that I learned from Amy Lenord where students record what they understand on a table while I speak. Then they share with one another what they heard, and try to record even more information. Next we listen to a non-authentic but comprehensible song by Alain Lelait and learn a fingerplay with family members (Toc toc toc Monsieur Pouce). We also watch a Quick ad and return to Photos de classe to talk about where our families come from. The now-defunct québécois TV show Juliette en Direct had a great website with descriptions of Juliette and her family members. You can access my folder full of screenshots. which students used to complete this interpretive activity since the show's website is no longer functional.
Students did some interpersonal work interviewing one another about their families, and read some infographics (one task here and another here). Check out Madame's Musings for great tasks for family infographics. Since I always like to incorporate literature where possible, students watched a read-aloud of Non et non pas question on Ouftivi and complete an interpretive guide. To practice describing, students created a page about their best friend using Book Creator, following the style of the pages from Juliette en direct. We also studied Stromae's song Papaoutai with a brief processing task. For the summative, students wrote about their family and how it's unique. See scenario and prompt here, adapted from Shelby County Schools' tremendous collection of Performance-Based Assessments.
After a nearly month-long pause (to learn about Impressionism and hold February vacation), we returned to this unit but with a focus on pets. This was a stretch for me because I am really, truly NOT an animal person. However, I was stunned by students' enthusiasm and engagement for this topic. While I know that pets are often a staple for elementary-level teachers, I would strongly encourage middle school teachers to consider addressing this topic in class. I hashed out the early parts of this unit with my colleague, dog-lover Susan Ridker. I love our opener to the unit because it really grow out of an excellent authentic resource that we could build on in many ways: the animal adoption website 30 Millions d'Amis. The SPA site also has great Novice-friendly ads which were engaging to study:
After a nearly month-long pause (to learn about Impressionism and hold February vacation), we returned to this unit but with a focus on pets. This was a stretch for me because I am really, truly NOT an animal person. However, I was stunned by students' enthusiasm and engagement for this topic. While I know that pets are often a staple for elementary-level teachers, I would strongly encourage middle school teachers to consider addressing this topic in class. I hashed out the early parts of this unit with my colleague, dog-lover Susan Ridker. I love our opener to the unit because it really grow out of an excellent authentic resource that we could build on in many ways: the animal adoption website 30 Millions d'Amis. The SPA site also has great Novice-friendly ads which were engaging to study:
You can see most of the tasks that students did in this packet: a webquest for the 30 Millions d'Amis website, research into specific animals available for adoption, and then some interpersonal and presentational tasks that build on that research. Here's a double-bubble map that a student made using the Poplet app to compare and contrast two animals from the site:
Madame's Musings has some great resources for learning about pets, too (isn't Lisa Shepard AMAZING!?). Novice learners need loads of repetition, so this whole pets part of the unit was really a chance to recycle vocabulary and structures from the earlier family n' friends portion of the unit, all while extended and expanding students' language proficiency.