This year, students have been studying and interacting with the French language without a textbook. I shifted a couple of years ago to teaching through thematic units (connected to AP and IB themes) and using authentic resources. Our units give us a lot of time for formative activities, and then we wrap up the unit with summative tasks that the students do in three modes of communication - interpersonal, interpretive, and presentational.
This past quarter, our thematic unit was on Global Challenges, concentrating on environmental, social, and political angles. We used AnswerGarden for brainstorming and then followed up with writing activities on those ideas. We used Google Slides as a group to read articles, highlight the main points and share new vocabulary. We used Flipgrid to respond to prompts about topics pertaining to some of these global challenges. We watched a few video clips and discussed the content in small groups and big groups. We brought some of those topics back to our Uni community setting to discuss such things as recycling, equality/inequality and so on. We studied a French song about immigration and students shared questions about the song. We read and discussed an article about homeless individuals and a group that makes office spaces available for these persons to have shelter at night and access to help with resumes and interview preparation. We watched a video on politics and youth in 5 different countries and discussed where we fit in. For their summative tasks, students worked in pairs on our essential questions to discuss them (interpersonal writing); they worked individually for their interpretive task (view several infographics and determine preferred one and explain why; determine which one is most efficient in its content; then view a video and do corresponding activities); and finally their presentational task was to create a poster inviting people to an event connected to one of the global challenges, with details (when, where, why, etc).
I fully recognize that these thematic units are a huge change from the way they are used to learning, since they don't have ready made lists of vocabulary to study, or specific grammar points, but it is a broader, more engaging and relevant way to explore the language and allow them to grow exponentially. It exposes them to written and audio material that might challenge them a little bit, but I feel like they come out of it stronger for it.
For 4th quarter, our thematic unit will either be about food and hunger OR about visual art/engaged art, and these will tie in well to ideas pertaining to the pandemic and life as we currently know it. I will make this decision before Spring Break is up.
In addition to the thematic unit, we will read a short story about a young Algerian girl who has moved to France with her father and brother. We will discuss immigration, cultural identity, religions freedoms, political issues between France and Algeria, etc. I will be able to share with them my personal connection to Algeria, and my personal experience with the start of the "Decennie noire" that took place in Algeria in the 1990s.
Right after Spring Break, we will be participating in the National French Contest and in an international Poetry competition that my students have taken part in for several years, for French speakers and French learners -
www.poesie-en-liberte.fr/ressources/concours-2021/
While I have not yet met my French 3 students in person, I feel like I have gotten to know them through their oral and written assignments, through our interactions in classtime on Zoom. I am looking forward to getting to know them a little better next year, as we will have one year together under our belt already, and will hopefully be back in the school building!
This past quarter, our thematic unit was on Global Challenges, concentrating on environmental, social, and political angles. We used AnswerGarden for brainstorming and then followed up with writing activities on those ideas. We used Google Slides as a group to read articles, highlight the main points and share new vocabulary. We used Flipgrid to respond to prompts about topics pertaining to some of these global challenges. We watched a few video clips and discussed the content in small groups and big groups. We brought some of those topics back to our Uni community setting to discuss such things as recycling, equality/inequality and so on. We studied a French song about immigration and students shared questions about the song. We read and discussed an article about homeless individuals and a group that makes office spaces available for these persons to have shelter at night and access to help with resumes and interview preparation. We watched a video on politics and youth in 5 different countries and discussed where we fit in. For their summative tasks, students worked in pairs on our essential questions to discuss them (interpersonal writing); they worked individually for their interpretive task (view several infographics and determine preferred one and explain why; determine which one is most efficient in its content; then view a video and do corresponding activities); and finally their presentational task was to create a poster inviting people to an event connected to one of the global challenges, with details (when, where, why, etc).
I fully recognize that these thematic units are a huge change from the way they are used to learning, since they don't have ready made lists of vocabulary to study, or specific grammar points, but it is a broader, more engaging and relevant way to explore the language and allow them to grow exponentially. It exposes them to written and audio material that might challenge them a little bit, but I feel like they come out of it stronger for it.
For 4th quarter, our thematic unit will either be about food and hunger OR about visual art/engaged art, and these will tie in well to ideas pertaining to the pandemic and life as we currently know it. I will make this decision before Spring Break is up.
In addition to the thematic unit, we will read a short story about a young Algerian girl who has moved to France with her father and brother. We will discuss immigration, cultural identity, religions freedoms, political issues between France and Algeria, etc. I will be able to share with them my personal connection to Algeria, and my personal experience with the start of the "Decennie noire" that took place in Algeria in the 1990s.
Right after Spring Break, we will be participating in the National French Contest and in an international Poetry competition that my students have taken part in for several years, for French speakers and French learners -
www.poesie-en-liberte.fr/ressources/concours-2021/
While I have not yet met my French 3 students in person, I feel like I have gotten to know them through their oral and written assignments, through our interactions in classtime on Zoom. I am looking forward to getting to know them a little better next year, as we will have one year together under our belt already, and will hopefully be back in the school building!