These are resources that I have created for French I-AP.
9 October 2016: La vie contemporaine – Le monde des animaux
In French I at Mount Vernon High, students study animals and how to describe their bodies, actions, habitats, as well as the importance to our lives. The vocabulary and resources are organized on my site and on Jenna Harvey’s site. Students create Abécédaire books, videos, (our YouTube Playlist) and poems (see handout below) that support reading, speaking, and writing skills.
In French 2, I begin with a revision of French 1 with animal and human descriptions as well as the family. Our goal is to move the students from Novice-low writing to Novice-Mid/High by adding recombining learned vocabulary and adding complex statements presented in language chunks. The language chunk I chose was the “If clauses” using the formula, “If my (person) were an animal, he would be a (animal) because they are (adjectives).” This is a fairly complex task because beyond the basic vocabulary of animals and family members, I added in subject pronoun agreement with the animals:
Un cochon = a pig + Ils sont = they are (Masculine)
Une vache = a cow + Elles sont = they are. (Feminine)
Most teachers / curriculum guides do not introduce the “Imperfect-Conditional If Clauses” until French 3 or 4, but given the language chunk and sentences starters, students can manage and adapt them earlier and with more confidence. Students also had to choose adjectives that agreed with the gender of the animal, not the person. For this, I prepared a list of comprehensible vocabulary largely build around cognates and a few new words. (Mes amis et ma famille comparés aux animaux! Handout for students) The adjectives are organized in agreement patterns to introduce the different ways adjectives change. There is even a rap for this system, but I will share that later. Using the template and the guided sentence starters, the students felt confident in choosing the vocabulary and writing complete sentences. They practiced their pronunciation with me and with their partners before recording.
I chose Educreations and ShowMe as digital storytelling platforms because they allow users to adding audio, pictures, and drawings to the slides. We have 18 iPad minis and 30 Chromebooks for the students to use. Each platform was a bit glitchy at times, but the students have been courageous users of technology. They have brainstormed workarounds to issues and have taught each other how to save pictures more effectively.
Two student examples: Isabelle | Stéphane I will post more as the students finish their projects this week.
French I (Jenna Harvey and Catherine Ousselin collaboration) Poetry activity based on Robert Desnos‘ “Une fourmi de 18 mètres”