Embedded Files
DESCRIPTION: Presented here is an overall unit plan on the theme of "La Maison." It is for French I-II level learners and consists of 11-12 classes of 80 minutes each. It can be adapted to use for middle and high school students. Greater adjustments can be made to use for the elementary level. I led the first class of this unit plan while interning at Middlebury High School with French teacher Michelle Steele.
ANALYSIS/REFLECTION: I designed this using the ACTFL Learning Standards discussed in #7.1. It encompasses a variety of evidence-based instructional activities, assessments and performance tasks over the course of 11-12 classes. There is room for adjustments based on formative assessments and exit tickets throughout the unit. It culminates with a project students have chosen themselves and will present to the class in French, honing their presentational communication skills.
The unit begins with a slide show about the francophone world and homes in fracophone Africa. I would be remiss in not mentioning that thanks to my teaching internship with Madame Steele at Middlebury High School this winter, I was introduced to the ACTFL World-Readiness Standards for Learning Languages as well as numerous helpful resources. She provided invaluable feedback to classes I taught, as well as shared a plethora of information and resources, which helped me prepare this unit plan. The slide show used here is adapted from one she shared with me and I added some slides to it. Other content used, I have researched, selected and have woven it into this standards based unit plan.
I learned much from working with Madame Steele including the importance of assessments along the way in a diversity of forms, many of which I had been doing before, but adding some new ones in such as quick exit tickets. The "Can-Do" statements, which are part of the ACTFL Language Learning Framework are a valuable measure of proficiency for different learners and helps me as a teacher prepare and differentiate lessons as needed to meet students' learning needs to stay on track with these.
There are also specific learning objectives articulated by the goals students will be able to meet according to the ACTFL Standards, which will help me adjust lessons following a variety of formative assessments such as vocabulary assessments, verb reviews, listening exercises, reading (including on-line sources, hand outs and books), written homework, saying what chores students do and do not do, "think, pair, shares," and drawing activities to show knowledge.
Exit-tickets play a role at the end of almost every class in this unit plan and are an opportunity for me to look through them and gauge areas of further instruction and practice to meet learners' needs. For example here is Day 9 and 10 highlighted out of this overall unit plan, pointing out the learning of irregular descriptive adjectives. They are introduced on Day 9 with a worksheet and team activity, and then students are asked to let me know what they learned about this on an exit ticket activity. If I deem more practice is needed, after reviewing the exit tickets, we will begin with an irregular adjective anchor activity following the plan explanation du jour the next class.
Day 9: a) “er” verb quiz w/ regular descriptive adjs. Introduce irreg desc adjs with worksheet. Team activity using these w/ poster boards around room (25 min).b) Wrap up work on projects. Prep for presentations next class. Work on verbal part w/ notecards. (45 min) c) Exit Ticket re irreg adjs HW- practice project presentations
Day 10: a) Go over plan for the day, expectations. (May revisit irregular adjectives with opening anchor activity - such as: Jeu de Baguette*). Hand out question asking support sheet for learners/listeners. Include note taking space for each presentation. (10 min) b) Students present projects on their ideal home. Take questions. Take motor/brain break in between to song, Mama Africa by Angelique Kidjo. Approx 5 mins each presentation. (60 min) c) Closing game re names of household objects/adjs(5 min)
*Jeu de Baguette is a fun way to practice grammar in a group context. I devised this in part, combining techniques from other sources and adding the baguette in for the French flair. It is a learning game that can be modified for any number of learning targets. Thus, to review irregular adjectives I would refer to the worksheet given the previous class and write a number of sentences on the board with blanks for the irregular adjectives. Learners review the worksheet as I do this (about 5 mins). The class is divided up into two teams and I have 2vdry erase markers with small plastic baguettes taped to them. Each team is on either side of the sentence and writes their answer next to the sentence. They then pass the baguette on to the next team member behind them and go to the back of the line. Team members can help each other.
in my French classes at Edmunds Middle School, I was available to help students after school, during their choice block or if they wanted to set up a time before school. The before school option never happened, but I supported a number of learners during their choice block and a few after school.
I definitely will be implementing exit tickets moving forward and this is a new teaching tool I have recently learned of as opposed to other types of formative assessments. This evidence reflects my comprehension of this standard to plan instruction based on information from assessments as well as other sources and systematically adjust plans to meet each student’s learning needs because of the flexibility within each day to revisit content and learning objectives. In the future, I would like to set up a learning objective chart in my classroom for each class where students can self-assess their own learning and evaluate content areas that need more work. I wonder too if individual charts would be helpful for learners and me to refer to, or if it would be better to keep this as an individual learning chart for each student overall, and not do it as a group class measurement tool. I would provide resources to meet the learning objectives and/or help them select learning tasks to work on during class independent work times or for homework.
La Géographie
EVIDENCE #2: Geography focused lesson for French II high school class. Also provided are supporting materials:
1. Madame Steele's feedback to me
2. French class schedule
3. Resources shared / we discussed
4. Notes during my teaching internship
DESCRIPTION: This was a lesson I designed and led with a slide show and other learning activities during my teaching internship during the winter of 2019 at Middlebury High School. it was designed with information and feedback from the classroom teacher with whom I had arranged a teaching internship, Michelle Steele of Middlebury High School. Please view slide show presentation for content and cultural connections. Below that is a worksheet with written feedback from Madame Steele, her French class schedule, resources we discussed, and notes I took during this valuable teaching internship.
My notes Feb 6, 2019 Obs/Student Teaching - Mme Steele Feb 26 & 27, 2019 . Day 2, 3 notes: Student Teaching.MmeSteele.My notes March 6, 2019 Student Teaching Mme SteeleANALYSIS/REFLECTION: For preparation Madame Steele and I discussed in advance the composition of the class, learning goals and diverse resources available to me for the class in terms of technology, art supplies and use of the dry erase board. I was planning instruction based on information from her and adjusted plans during the course of the class as needed to provide further clarification about the learning goals around the land type activity. She provided helpful feedback at the end of the class to meet student's learning needs and offered a couple pointers during class.
Geography is an interdisciplinary discipline in so many ways; it involves math, language, history, literature, and many other curriculum areas. It is a great vehicle for improving French language skills and it is why I incorporate geography lessons into my curriculum often. Lessons with this as an anchor can also be adjusted according to geographic regions, the study of land types, ethnic groups in relationship to their surroundings, the arts and agriculture. The interactive guessing game part of this lesson provided valuable information to me in terms of what knowledge students were gaining and what would be the next steps to bolster that.
While much of this teaching internship involved exploring pedagogical approaches, discussion of diverse French learning standards from the Common Core to the ACTFL World-Readiness Standards for Learning Languages, to the IB (International Baccalaureate Standards), diverse grading approaches, use of authentic content and differentiation, another part of it revolved around the day to day pragmatic aspects of running a digital classroom. Before starting the Peer Review process and taking the Reflective Practice and the Peer Review Portfolio class led by Dr. Juliette Longchamp, through Castelton University, I had little to no experience with using Google Docs which was used for the Peer Review class and my electronic portfolio here. I have since become comfortable with a number of technological tools and how to use them effectively to plan instruction that meets diverse learning needs. Google docs is a useful platform which can be accessed from any computer with an Internet connection and a must-know tool in today's learning environments.
Thus, for this lesson, I made this google slide show first describing the lessons' objectives and our plan after learning how to do this with Madame Steele and one of her students. Several slides, using world maps, show the diversity and vastness of French speaking countries. We also learned words of geographic features and I wrote these on the board to be used for the instructional activity after the interpretive slide show. An important note Madame Steele made to me was to clearly articulate to the students what their learning objectives were, whereas I had used the "objectives" slide as a plan for the day. This pointer helped me become more concise for future lessons I planned and taught here in terms of what the students would be able to do and what knowledge they would gain. I see room for growth in learning more about formulating assessment criteria and sharing that with learners. I had questions about grading and how she accounts for effort and participation. She said she attended a great workshop given by Rick Wormeli, a renowned educator, author and frequent professional trainer. In the workshop he said it was all about mastery and did not grade on effort, which was a new concept for me.
She also said, after the slide show, when I was engaging the class in naming geographical features, that I could have them work together in "think, pair, shares," and give them 30-60 seconds to think before responding. This grouping of evidence illustrates my mastery of this standard as instruction was planned for with my mentor teacher's valuable input and suggestions. As I continue to develop as a teacher, I would love to take some courses on proficiency based learning and how that dovetails with assuring students are aware of the assessment criteria before a lesson begins to help them meet the instructional goals with valuable learning tasks. It would be awesome to attend a training by Rick Wormeli.
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