By Danyelle Quincy Davis
Description: Through this Novice Level Interpretive Listening & Reading Activity, learners will get curious about the French educational system, how levels and grades are organized, and how this compares to their experience.
Semantic Topics:
School, école, Grade Level, niveau scolaire.
NCSSFL-ACTFL World-Readiness Standards:
- Standard 2.1: Cultures – Relating Cultural Practices to Perspectives: Learners use hte language to investigate, explain and reflect on the relationship between the practices and perspectives of the cultures studied.
Idaho Content Standards for World Languages:
- Standard CLTR 1: Investigate, explain and reflect on the relationship between the practices and perspectives of the cultures studied in the target language.
NCSSFL-ACTFL Can-Do Statements & Proficiency Benchmarks:
- Intercultural Communication – Investigate – Novice: In my own and other cultures I CAN identify products and practices to help me understand perspectives.
- Interpretive Communication – Novice: I CAN identify the general topic and some basic information in very familiar and everyday contexts by recognizing practices or memorized words, phrases and simple sentences in texts that are viewed, spoken, written or signed.
Using French:
- I CAN name school levels & grade levels.
- I CAN identify my particular school level & grade level.
- I CAN recognize when others share their school & grade levels in conversation.
CULTURAL COMPARISONS: Using a mix of English & French
- I CAN restate interesting facts about the French system.
- I CAN compare & contrast the French structure to my own experience.
Materials Needed:
Warm-Up
Warm-up: Slide 2
- Quiet Discovery: Resist the temptation to launch into a “teacher explanation” of the image and the information. Take a quiet, curious posture. Point inquisitively and strategicaly between the English and French parts of the image and silently invite learners to offer their interpretations of what they are seeing and reading.
- Throughout the discovery time, spring the sound clips and say the French key words yourself at well-timed moments for learners to repeat, absorb and work into their connection making.
Main Activity
Practice: Slide 3 & Note Taker
- Again, without lots of teacher explanation, play or read the comprehension questions and give learners time to record their answers on the note taker.
- Encourage and model the practice of saying new French words and phrases as you write them. Circulate through the class pointing out, reading and affirming the words that learners have written.
- Play sound clips from slide 2 periodically as appropriate to help the words sink in.
- At the right time, call for learners to share out answers to the first three questions and confirm by circling them or pointing them out on the slide.
- Finish this section by using the final question to draw “I notice” and “I wonder” contributions from students. Give them time to record one or two of these as well in the note taker.
Stretch it!: Slide 4
Wrap-Up
Cooldown: Slide 2
- Play the flyswatter game to build fluency in recognizing the French levels and grades when you hear them. Make it a team competition (between sides of the room perhaps) and differentiate by rotating players through the roles of speaker, swatters and score keepers
Exit Ticket: Slides 1 & 5
As an exit ticket, “question de sortie”, have students guage where they are on the proficiency continuum by speed listing words and phrases that have sunk in during the lesson. Novice Low (1-5 words) Novice Mid (6-10).
End of Activity
- Read Can-Do statements once more and have students evaluate
their confidence.
(Use thumbs up/thumbs down or download our student cards.) - Encourage students to be honest in their self-evaluation.
- Pay attention, and try to use feedback for future activities!
NCSSFL-ACTFL Can-Do Statements:
- Intercultural Communication – Investigate – Novice: In my own and other cultures I CAN identify products and practices to help me understand perspectives.
- Interpretive Communication – Novice: I CAN identify the general topic and some basic information in very familiar and everyday contexts by recognizing practices or memorized words, phrases and simple sentences in texts that are viewed, spoken, written or signed.
Using French:
- I CAN name school levels & grade levels.
- I CAN identify my particular school level & grade level.
- I CAN recognize when others share their school & grade levels in conversation.
CULTURAL COMPARISONS: Using a mix of English & French
- I CAN restate interesting facts about the French system.
- I CAN compare & contrast the French structure to my own experience.
