EVIDENCE #1: Formative Assessment of "ir" verbs for 8th grade French in advance of summative assessment

DESCRIPTION: This was an "ir" verb formative assessment for 8th grade French students at Edmunds Middle School in preparation for the end of 3rd quarter summative assessment. Shown here is the formative learning activity and following that is the first take of this learner's 3rd quarter assessment and then the "retake." I adapted instructional activities in order to specifically help learners hone in on areas for more practice.

ANALYSIS/REFLECTION: In order to help learners prepare for the 3rd quarter assessment, I broke down the verb endings into categories for review. This formative verb assessment was something they knew about in advance and were to study for. The learning objective was to be able to discern subject pronouns, vocabulary and utilize verb conjugations with "ir" endings in the present tense. We reviewed this assessment as a class after I checked them myself to diagnose areas for more content review.

In this way, learners had a clear idea of what to work on for the upcoming summative assessment. I was able to adapt the review learning tasks to best meet the students needs from this information and to support them in future outcomes. This consisted of partner board practice, verbal class review and independent work in their French notebooks. Thus, with the "ir" endings being some of the more challenging, they knew exactly what to focus on. These reviews did not resonate for this student and regarding "ir" verb endings thus a "retake" was permitted.

This article, Beyond Conjugation: 11 Expert Tips to Teach French Verbs to Any Learner, has some wonderful suggestions, and author Eva Dumonteil points out to:

"remember that your classes aren’t exclusively about verbs; at the core, they’re really about communication. If you focus too rigidly on correct verb usage, students may become self-conscious about their French during conversation or written assignments and their learning progress can hit a wall. To avoid this situation, don’t put excessive pressure on your students and don’t expect perfect accuracy from the beginning. Rather than immediately correcting students’ errors, ask their classmates what they think so they can give peer-to-peer feedback. This collaboration process will help the class learn and progress together, " (Dumonteil, Eva. June 2019. Beyond Conjugation: 11 Expert Tips to Teach French Verbs to Any Learner, Fluent U French Educator Blog. Retrieved from https://www.fluentu.com/blog/educator-french/teach-french-verbs/ ).

This is an area I could grow my teaching practice in and look forward to engaging in activities and getting more resources around teaching verb conjugations aligned with best practices as the methodologies have greatly changed since my studies. This evidence reflects my competency in this learning task because of adapting instructional activities, and evaluation of the need for more work on this area in my teaching practice.

EVIDENCE #2: French speaking country project with description, research tips, country details

DESCRIPTION: This was a project for 7th grade French I students at Edmunds Middle School. It had been started in February with the short term teacher right before me. She was French, the parent of a student who volunteered while the district set about hiring someone following advocacy efforts by the Spanish teacher and parents. I continued with it, until it's completion. When I came on as their French teacher, the students were in the process of completing their posters. I displayed them for an upcoming event at the encouragement of the Spanish teacher to help reinvigorate the French program. It was a great jumping off point to delve deeper into French and la francophonie.

ANALYSIS/REFLECTION: From this project, for which students self selected their French speaking country, I realized this was a tremendous instructional activity as an introduction to la francophonie. To further continue on this content path, I thus researched and selected a film we would watch in the near future. This film, The African Doctor, served as an anchor for student inquiry, reflection and complex thinking. Themes found in the film such as diversity, fear, multiculturalism, prejudice and alienation were introduced through class discussions, "turn and talks," and then eventually, after viewing the film, the learners wrote about their impression of the film and its salient themes. (See Teaching Standard #5.1, Evidence #2)

Based on the evidence of this project and pre-assessments we did when this was finished, I determined that this class of 7th grade French students could further propel their learning with project based learning opportunities. Thus , I created several lessons using authentic resources, such as Freedom in Congo Square, a non fiction work of poetry, and the African Doctor, a film. As illustrated in Teaching Standard #5.2, Evidence #2, class participation was robust and even a couple of students who ignored expectations, one in particular, who left class when he wanted to, took part actively.

These learners liked to be social and their French language skills had not played a huge role in the class thus far, as it was more of a world cultures exploration. I decided to shift that focus to French and embed language learning. For their beautiful collages they were to select two words from the text of Freedom in Congo Square, write them in French across their colored piece of paper as a starting point for their visual display of learning. This evidence reflects my practice of adapting teaching approaches to best meet my learner's needs.

Click here for Teaching Standard #9.3