French Update

French Update 

Bonjour les parents!

The focus of the Histoires en action! program is to develop strong communicative skills through kinesthetic activities and to provide an integrated, drama-based approach systematically designed for students at each grade level. Both oral and written communication skills are emphasized, so that appropriate exposure to the written word and the opportunity to develop reading and writing skills occur throughout the program.

This unit of Histoires en action! builds upon the foundation that is established throughout the previous units.The play for this unit is based on an original story, Le bistro des animaux. In this story, the animals are constantly arguing because each believes that s/he is the best. Louis la grenouille, a character that appeared in a previous story, sees the animals and wants to help. He visits his friend, Alice, to ask her opinion about this dilemma and she suggests that they design a common goal for all the animals. They decide to invite the animals to be part of a project to build a caféwhere eventually all of them will be able to eat, sing, and have fun together. Each animal is approached by either Louis or Alice and all think that this is a wonderful idea. Initially, they are not told that the other animals are participating in the project. When they later realize that they are actually working together, the animals begin to consider the important qualities that each has to offer and, instead of fighting over their differences, they begin to appreciate them.

In this unit, students continue to expand their knowledge of vocabulary through the Gesture Approach, which provides students with different learning styles and intelligences a variety of ways to learn the language. Scripted plays continue to provide an important context for new and previously introduced vocabulary to be learned and further consolidated. Students will be provided with greater opportunity to use the language creatively and further develop their oral storytelling skills. They will have the opportunity for poetry writing in this unit as well as creative story writing. Learning refinements of the language (focus on grammar) continues to take an increasingly larger role at this stage of the program, and the students will be expected to improve in their ability to identify and self-correct targeted grammatical elements. We continue to balance large-group work with small-group, partner, and individual activities. Each play is integrated (both in content and linguistically) with a French song that continues to play an important role in language development. Students are expected to participate in whole-class and partner cooperative poetry and story writing activities.

In this unit, students will:

· view, listen to, and read the play, Le bistro des animaux;

· memorize lines from the story;

· recognize words and their meanings within the context of the play;

· dramatize the play, responding in a personal way;

· read the text to the teacher and each other;

· extract specific information to ask and respond to knowledge and comprehension-based questions orally and in writing;

· manipulate the language in written form through a variety of structured and creative written activities;

· manipulate the language in oral form in structured and creative activities as well as spontaneously with teacher and peers;

· learn to write in rhyme and ensure that rhyming sentences scan correctly;

· compare/contrast and describe characters, settings, and events in the play;

· learn to sing the song Le bistro des animauxand perform the dance;

· identify words and sentences through gesture activities and produce the gestures for the words from vocabulary levels 1A, 1B, 2A, 2B, and 2C;

· demonstrate a good knowledge of associative vocabulary introduced so far from vocabulary levels 1A, 1B, 2A, 2B, and 2C;

· learn to to identfify and produce, orally and in writing, the correct form of double verb constructions (verb plus infinitive) of verbs introduced so far;

· develop an awareness of and be able to identify and produce le passé composé form of verbs introduced so far as well as l’imparfaitforms of verbs used with high frequency in this tense;

· learn to identify the correct form of verbs that have irregular plural forms in the present tense;

· begin to be able to identify other grammatical concepts such as contractions (au, des, and du);

· demonstrate an awareness of and ability to apply spelling rules in French and to spell high-frequency words correctly.

Assessment will take a variety of ways, including anecdotal, performance, and products:

· observation of participation in large- and small-group oral language activities;

· summative assessment of final production of play for an audience;

· ongoing assessment of choral reading and individual reading in small-group play rehearsal;

· ongoing assesssment of the ability to demonstrate knowledge and comprehension of the story;

· assessment of structured written language manipulation activities

· assessment of the ability to use the language creatively and with increasing correctness in spontaneous speech, as well as creative oral and written activities based on the story for the unit;

· assessment in large- and small-group sessions, of students’ vocabulary knowledge through their ability to identify individual words and their associations as well as full sentences, by gesturing and/or naming the word;

· ongoing observation of the developemnt of spontaneous fluency through daily interactions in French among peers and with the teacher.

Homework

Students will be expected to spend five to ten minutes a night reviewing lines for rehearsal and performance, reviewing gestured vocabulary introduced during previous lessons, and practising the song .

If you have any questions, please get in touch with me.

Jazakoum Allah khairan

PDL GESTURED WORD LIST

Le bistro des animaux

Activities 5 & 6

• (le/un) bistro

• (l’/un) éléphant

• (la/une) souris

• (l’/un) alligator

• se bat

• vieux

• vieil/vieille

• (l’)énergie

• (le/un) câble

• secoue

• (l’) air

• apprécie

• chez

• (le/un) bayou

• (la/une) cuisine

• (le/un) bol

• a l’air (de)

• terrible

• (le/un) café

(comme un bistro)

• allons-y!

• étudie

• (la/une) boule

• bâtit

• probablement

• (le/un) plan

• (le/un) toit

• (le/un) miroir

• exagéré(e)

• (le/un) muscle

• (la/une) façon

• applaudit

PDL GESTURED WORD LIST

Le bistro des animaux

• parfait

• répare

• (l’) électricité

Activities 8 & 9

• (le/un) café (quelque

chose qu’on boit)

Activity 10

• d’habitude

• (l’/une) étoile

• (la/une) lune

• le baseball

• le badminton

• le tennis

• le golf

• le basketball

•le hockey

Activity 16

•couvre

Activity 23

•chic

Activity 24

• nettoie

Activity 36

• (le/un) sujet

Activity 41

• ne...plus

Activity 42

• (l’/un) objet

Activity 45

• (la/une) chambre

Activity 47

• (l’/un) adjectif

Activities 51 & 52

• (l’/un) ours

• (la/une) reine

• (le/un) prince

Activities 53 & 54

• (la) Louisiane

• le nord

• le sud

• (le/un) carnaval

• Pâques

• (le/un) défifi lé

• la graisse

PDL GESTURED WORD LIST

Le bistro des animaux

• (le/un) bal

• la viande

• (l’/un) oeuf

• (le/un) beigne

• (la/une) crêpe

• décore

Activity 55

• entre (préposition)

• (le/un) synonyme

Activities 71 & 72

• (le/un) poème

Activity 77

• (la/une) syllabe

Activities 78 & 79

• (le/un) canard

• (la/une) poule

Activities 92 & 93

• (le/un) hibou

• (la/une) solution

Activity 101

• coûte

• vend

• (le/un) dollar

Activities 102 & 103

• (la/une) planète

Tr.Said

French teacher