Gr 5, unit 3

"Guess Who! ”

From January 2017, the students began a new unit: “ Guess who!”.

This unit aims to help the students to acquire the basics of the people description through new vocabulary about the body parts, health, clothes, jobs and qualities.

Then, they might learn some useful language structures to describe hobbies, preferences and background in general. 
The main focal area for this unit is: "Bienvenue dans le monde des arts!" which means "Welcome in the arts world!"

For sure, the contents and the organization will vary according to the student levels, their needs and interests.  For example for the beginners, the description of the vocabulary ad easy sentences dealing with the main adjectives and actions such as working, going to, speaking with… will be taught. By this way, my objective is encouraging them to interact in simple and rehearsed exchanges, using verbal and non-verbal language. Also, they might use basic phrases to communicate ideas, feelings and information on a variety of aspects of the description.

We will be focused on reading during this unit so students will be able to read different authentic articles and explore, discuss, and meaningfully construct concepts and relaships in contexts that involve real-world problems and projects that are relevant to them. By this way, they will learn subjects which meet their interests such as sport, music, animal...
Depending of their level and by the end of this unit, the students might be able to:

• Create statements and questions based on familiar, often memorized material
• Write a series of statements about a particular topic to express basic understanding
• Apply learned material, though with non-alphabetic scripts/characters or newer structures, errors may occur
• Recognize errors in basic constructions and characters/scripts with guidance
• Show little evidence of structure in paragraph-level writing, where appropriate to the target language
• Write short, simple communications, compositions, descriptions and creative pieces based on personal preferences, routines, common events and other topics
• Add description and detail with guidance and feedback
• Organize ideas in a logical sequence, but may have difficulty linking sentences
• Use example texts to create personalized versions of nonfiction and fiction writing
• Spell most simple and high-frequency words correctly
• Write using complete sentences
• Begins rephrasing and explaining known items to increase vocabulary and use new structures in order to participate more fully in language interactions
• Express needs with increasingly longer structures consisting of multi-word and sentence-length constructions
• Paraphrase oral information with guidance.
• Respond to simple questions in phrases.
• Express themselves with little or no guidance.
• Pronounce more clearly

Here is some of the vocabulary taught during this unit (according to students levels):

- body: http://www.languageguide.org/french/vocabulary/body/

- size and shape: http://www.languageguide.org/french/vocabulary/size-and-shape/

- face: http://www.languageguide.org/french/vocabulary/face/

- hair: http://www.languageguide.org/french/vocabulary/hair/

- Men's clothing: http://www.languageguide.org/french/vocabulary/men-clothing/

- Woman's clothing: http://www.languageguide.org/french/vocabulary/women-clothing/ 

- Wearing clothes: http://www.languageguide.org/french/vocabulary/clothing-wearing-clothes/ 

- Colors: http://www.languageguide.org/french/vocabulary/colors/

- Jobs: http://www.languageguide.org/french/vocabulary/jobs/

JANUARY 2017

Students writing their expectation for this new unit.

 

Students reviewing numbers.

 

After reviewing the main structures and vocabulary, students read some people description to identify the main structures to apply them later on.

Students research about their famous stars in French language and present him or her using easy structures (name, age, place to leave...).

 . 

 .  

Students practicing how to speak about people's mood and feelings.

 .  . 

Students performing short skits while being focused on the pronunciation and people's feelings.

 

Students improving their understanding skills while answering questions about people's occupation.

 

FEBRUARY 2017

Students reviewed the clothes and how to conjugate ER verbs, such as the verb "PORTER", which means to wear.
Then, they improved their reading skills while reading a book online.
http://storybird.com/books/quest-ce-que-tu-portes/?token=p7hmfd 
Click here to listen to their great reading formative assessments:
Batuhan
Liza
Kanika
Fatima and Aadya
Ha Eun
Oona
Teppi
Tanya and Kudzaishe

They have been assessed and they received a personalized feedback to help them improving. 

To have a glance at French culture, they worked collaboratively on a video about fashion in France. 
They focused on their understanding skills by answering some questions.
After, they created a skit by groups using the vocabulary and the key patterns of the video. It was their summative assessment.
  

March 2017

After working on a video about fashion in France and answering some questions to evaluate their understanding, they created a skit to reuse the patterns in the video. They had to performance a common situation: buying clothes in a shop.




Here is their performance that was part of their summative assessments:
Fatima, Kudzaishe and Tania
Batuhan, Teppi and Ha Eun
Kanika and Aadya
Oona and Liza

The students reviewed all the grammar learned, especially how to conjugate ER verbs as well as TO BE and TO HAVE.

 . 

They transposed texts to reuse the verbs conjugated.

They learned how to create YES-N0 questions and used them to make an interview to a star.



During the week of March 21 to March 25, the students celebrate the FRANCOPHONIE FESTIVAL by playing games, discovering some aspects of French spoken countries in the world. 

Finally, students reflected on their own French level and how to improve their achievements. Click here to read some of their personal feed-back.

 

 "Guess Who! ”

On January 11^th, the Grade 5 students began a new unit: “ Guess who!”.

This unit aims to help the students to acquire the basics of the people description through new vocabulary about the body parts, health, clothes, occupations and qualities.

Then, they might learn some useful language structures to describe hobbies, preferences and background in general. 
The main focal area for this unit is: "Bienvenue dans le monde des arts!" which means "Welcome in the arts world!"

For sure, the contents and the organization will vary according to the student levels, their needs and interests.  For example for the beginners, the description of the vocabulary ad easy sentences dealing with the main adjectives and actions such as working, going to, speaking with… will be taught. By this way, my objective is encouraging them to interact in simple and rehearsed exchanges, using verbal and non-verbal language. Also, they might use basic phrases to communicate ideas, feelings and information on a variety of aspects of the description.

We will be focused on reading during this unit so students will be able to read different authentic articles and explore, discuss, and meaningfully construct concepts and relationships in contexts that involve real-world problems and projects that are relevant to them. By this way, they will learn subjects which meet their interests such as sport, music, animal...
Depending of their level and by the end of this unit, the students might be able to:

• Create statements and questions based on familiar, often memorized material
• Write a series of statements about a particular topic to express basic understanding
• Apply learned material, though with non-alphabetic scripts/characters or newer structures, errors may occur
• Recognize errors in basic constructions and characters/scripts with guidance
• Show little evidence of structure in paragraph-level writing, where appropriate to the target language
• Write short, simple communications, compositions, descriptions and creative pieces based on personal preferences, routines, common events and other topics
• Add description and detail with guidance and feedback
• Organize ideas in a logical sequence, but may have difficulty linking sentences
• Use example texts to create personalized versions of nonfiction and fiction writing
• Spell most simple and high-frequency words correctly
• Write using complete sentences
• Begins rephrasing and explaining known items to increase vocabulary and use new structures in order to participate more fully in language interactions
• Express needs with increasingly longer structures consisting of multi-word and sentence-length constructions
• Paraphrase oral information with guidance.
• Respond to simple questions in phrases.
• Express themselves with little or no guidance.
• Pronounce more clearly

Here are some of the vocabulary will be taught during this unit:

Body parts: Head (la tête), Hand (la main), Arm (le bras), Leg (la jambe), Foot (le pied),

Eyes (les yeux), Ears (les oreilles), Nose (le nez), Mouth (la bouche)

Occupations: Waiter (un serveur/serveuse), Teacher (un professeur/ une professeure), Doctor (un médecin/ une médecin), Scientist (un scientifique/ une scientifique)

Stars: Singer (un chanteur/ une chanteuse), Footballer (un footballeur/ une footballeuse), Basketball player (un basketteur/ une basketteuse), Dancer (un danceur/ une danceuse)…

Clothes: dress (une robe), skirt (une jupe), trouser (un pantalon)…

Physical and moral characteristics: enthusiastic (enthousiaste), pessimistic (pessimiste), original (original)…

During the week of January 11 to January 15, the student learned how French people celebrate the end-of-year festivals by watching a short video in French. 
Then, the students discovered our new unit with a brainstorming. They worked by group in English and in French to share ideas about our topic, wich is  "Welcome in the arts world!.








Finally, the students did a memory competition by group. They had to remember common words using all the letters of the alphabet watched in a short youtube document. The kids were so active! 

During the week of January 18 to January 22, all the students did some researches individually on the Internet about a person of their choice who belong to "art world". Painters, writers, dancer, inventors... the students have been very creative and resourceful.
 Two students, Jovenna and Iben shared with us their investigation in an oral presentation.

Besides, the students worked on reading and writing through being focused on spelling. For example, the students learned that to make the sound "o" in French, there are many ways:  "o", "eau" and "au". So they learned common words using these different spellings.

During the week of January 25 to January 29, the students made movies about their own investigation. 
Besides, the students learnt new vocabulary to describe someone physically.
Finally,the students worked on reading and writing through being focused on spelling. For example, the students learned that to make the sound "/in/" in French, there are many ways:  "ein", "aim ","ain","un ","um","im" and finally"in". So they learned common words using these different spellings.

During the week of February 1 to February 5, the students the students learned some new vocabulary to describe people occupation and work place while using an interesting and funny Internet site. Some of them with higher level were focused on specific learning tasks. 

Besides, they began a creative writing task by commenting an extract of a French cartoon, being focused on the characters and the main history to be summarized. A useful exercise to develop new grammar skills and review the vocabulary! We will continue this task next week.

During the week of February 8 to February 12, the students received some clues to improve their writing based on the French cartoon. They also reviewed some grammar rules (how to express the belonging in French, how to conjugate the ER verbs and the use of apostrophe).

During the week of February 15 to February 19, after the students discovered a French song: Adalouse from Kenji Girac. 

And the karaoke version:

And we worked on the meaning and some vocabulary to understand how he describe this pretty girl. This song was released last summer and have been very popular for many French teenagers... especially the girls.
On Friday, we did special activities because of the International Mother Tong Day. It was very fun, wasn't it Luca? 

During the week of February 22 to February 26, the students reviewed all the new vocabulary and main sentence structures to be able to succeed at the formative assessment. During this unit, the focused is put on the reading skill. This mean that they have to develop new skills in reading, understanding a short text and answer some questions. 

After, they completed a learning task in pairs to evaluate their level. Finally, they did their personal formative assessment on Friday. All most all the children have successfully passed it. I am so proud of them!

During the week of February 29 to March 4, the students reviewed how to ask "Yes-No questions" in French and to use them in authentic situations.

During the week of March 7 to March 11, the students worked on learning resources to understand how to ask questions using the following questions words "where", 'why", "when", "who" and "how". After making sure that they all understood the lesson, they had to make a presentation to explain to others one of these questions words. Some groups made movies, other posters. 




After the presentations, the students created questions by groups using the questions words learned and explain others how they did it. 

During the week of March 14 to March 18, the students read French authentic articles about visual artists taken from the magazine for teenagers " le petit quotidien". Then, they answered questions by groups. 





Finally, the children reviewed the unit vocabulary by playing games and doing collaborative activities.
   

Finally, the children watched a short French commentary about people's hobbies.

During the week of March 21 to March 25, the students celebrate the FRANCOPHONIE FESTIVAL by playing games, discovering some aspects of French spoken countries in the world. 

And on Friday, we did a great party with French music famous in all these countries, such as: Raï music (from North Africa: Algeria, Tunisia...), Ndombolo music (from Center of Africa: Congo, Cameroun...), Merengue music (from the French Island in the Carribean: Guadeloupe, Martinique)... So nice!