Assalam alaikoum Dear parents, I hope my email finds you in good health and Eman
This week, your child began a new unit: Le Bistro des animaux.
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 café where 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, and music 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. French is the language used in all classroom
interactions.
At the end of this unit, your child will make another presentation to classes in the school
and to family members. Once again, at-home video support with the accompanying text
is available for your son or daughter as s/he progresses through this unit.
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 specifi c information to ask and respond to knowledge and comprehensionbased
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 animaux and 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
• learn to to identfi fy 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’imparfait forms 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 fi nal production of play and dance 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 development of spontaneous fl uency 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
practicing the song.
If you have any questions, please contact me.
You find in attachment:
The story : Le Bistro des animaux .
List of vocabulary
All activities .
Tr.Said
French Teacher
