"Ad" it up!

Ads, whether they are in print, on the radio or on the TV, are a great way to bring in an informational text for analysis. The Common Core Content Standards emphasize the analysis of non-fiction primary source documents of all kinds. You can address ACTFL's 5 C's as well as the CCCS by having students analyze and interpret ads.

French McDonald's ads became a fascinating topic that students wanted to discuss with me both during and after class. This ad incorporates the theme of teenage homosexuality while promoting burgers and fries. This delicate subject matter is unheard of in American TV ads, and the fact that such a mainstream company treats it so matter-of-factly really blew my students away.

Some ideas for how you might use ads such as this one in a mini-unit for your course:
-Have students compare and contrast menu offerings in McDonald's chains in the U.S. and France.
-Have them write and present dialogues with partners about the menus in order to get them using the grammatical funtions you are teaching (imagine ordering, discussing which menu they prefer and why, what they would try if they were in France, etc.)

-Do a little pre-planning with an English or Journalism teacher in your school to teach about the role of advertising and what makes an advertisement powerful.
-View the commercial. Depending on the level fluency of your students, spend a class focusing primarily on the language or on the themes in the commercial.
-Students write a draft of an essay summarizing their thoughts.
-Organize a Socratic Seminar in order to promote analysis of the commercial and comparing and contrasting it to American commercials for the same product.
-Students revise their essays following the Socratic Seminar. Perhaps their thoughts and opinions changed when they heard others' commenting on it!

For my part, since I had a strictly one year language course for juniors, I found this kind of work to be most useful when conducted in English and used to support my goal of cross cultural understanding and comparisons while also supporting the non-fiction interpretation goals of my peers in the English and Social Studies departments. The beauty of the 21st century is that these kinds of ads are so accessible and you can get a lot of value out of one 30 second resource.

Reading, Culture and the CCCS

For five years, I was the only world language teacher in my small public high school. The autonomy was fabulous! I didn't have to use a particular text book, and honestly I seldom incorporated one at all because I prefered to find and create my own materials. I was able to teach students language that felt essential for communication in ways that worked for them and for me. I derived great pleasure from seeing my students enter my course with no knowledge of the French language and leave in June capable of writing paragraphs in French without notes or dictionaries. The feeling of success and accomplishment at seeing my students discover French culture was immeasurable. 

What was challenging about this kind of situation is that I didn't have a world language department with whom to discuss subject-specific issues. That said, I became a member of the English Department. I gained insight into the literacy needs of our students. Those needs were significant. The need for increased ELA instruction and preparation for the social studies state tests led to the eventual cutting of my French 2 course to make room for additional literacy preparation. Naturally I was disappointed, but it would have been unreasonable if I didn't understand that. 

Keeping your world language program alive often requires some creative thinking. In an era of budget cuts and the new Core Curriculum Content Standards, not to mention all of the accompanying standardized tests, world language teachers must find ways to keep their course exciting and relevant while responding to wider curricular needs. 

The need for greater student exposure to non-fiction texts is an invitation to world language teachers to increase students' literacy skills while deepening their cultural capital and knowledge of your subject. 

Some of the ways to do this are:

1. You don't have to reinvent the wheel when incorporating non-fiction. Find out what kinds of routines students are accustomed to in their classes, and you will be able to seamlessly incorporate such strategies in your classes. For example, I learned how to hold Socratic Seminars from a history teacher and how to have a gallery walk from a special ed. teacher. 

2. Find juicy readings! Anytime I see a compelling article on the Francophone world in the NY Times, I hit "save." While I was spending long afternoons holding my newborn son in my arms, I was also reading Bringing Up Bébé and French Kids Eat Everything. Reading selected extracts from one or both books would be a fantastic accompaniment to a foods unit, for example. Students love comparing cultural practices and attitudes, and by high school they start taking an interest in the psychology behind the way that they were raised. Go with it!

3. Go Out on a Limb! If you don't often incorporate English language, non-fiction texts in your classes, you are already trying something new...go all the way with it!  You might consider holding a debate, having an essay contest, creating a game, facilitating a discussion between your students and students abroad using www.epals.com, bringing in guest speakers, creating a skit, having jigsaw activity or gallery walk to create even more depth to your work. The more students dig into a text through various activities and approaches, particularly ones that incorporate different kinds of thinking and appeal to multiple intelligences, the more cultural capital and literacy skills they will gain. 

You are not surrendering to the other departments by incorporating skills that they prize. Au contraire! You are effectively creating value and ensuring relevancy to the wider curricular goals of our times by supporting skills that will help students succeed both in school and in life. By selecting non-fiction readings that support your units, you have final say over the direction you wish to take with this work. Make this an opportunity to provide your students with cultural capital and support your colleagues teaching goals, and you will help secure your department's role in your school.

Reading Skills Activities

I have long aspired to increase the amount of reading my high school French 1 students did. I had a hard time achieving this goal because I had great difficulty coming up with readings that felt interesting and feasible. Sure, fairy tales are available in books and online. They are timeless and can be read on many levels, but talking animals and ogres aren't exactly top of mind for my Brooklyn 17 year olds.

I'm going to hunt down the juiciest and most accessible reads for beginning French students and share them here!

How about this for starters: If your students like CSI, have them  read about and solve a murder mystery! Follow Detective Roger Duflair as he investigates a murder. What I love about this is that they have built in modifications for beginner, intermediate and advanced learners, making it appropriate for both absolute beginners and heritage speakers in your class. I love the way the French use the word "exploitation" to mean "ways to squeeze every last drop of value out of an activity" (my translation, obviously). Polar FLE has tons of great handouts already created, and of course you can modify them to meet your own goals and teaching style. Students can either listen to the story being read as a whole class activity, with you to interpret and guide along the way, or they can listen independently. This kind of activity is perfect for differentiating instruction for your struggling learners, because you can pre-teach and re-teach the lessons you create around this text very easily.

And how about putting on your own French play after completion of this unit?

English isn't Enough!

Talk the Talk is an outstanding publication by the British Academy for the Humanities and Social Sciences advocating for the importance of learning world languages. It highlights the importance of language study for career advancement and for the joy of it with brief interviews with successful polyglots. I love that the interviews are with a diverse group of men and women, some of whom admit to having difficulty with languages at first. Inspire your students and come back to school with a colorful and relevant answer to the question, "Why do I need to learn another language?"

Active Listening Series, Part 7: Heritage Language and Near Native Speakers

How do you keep your heritage language and near native speakers engaged in your course? This is a major differentiation challenge, especially when there is not a separate course for such students. I had the experience of teaching a few heritage speakers each year in a school where there was only a beginner French course. Such students come in feeling quite confident because they understand everything you say in the target language, and any spoken language or listening activity you give them is a piece of cake for them. Instead of finding the course to be an exciting opportunity to share their cultural heritage with other students and to expand their capacity to utilize the language in both formal and informal communicative settings, heritage speakers will often disconnect from the course out of boredom if we aren't there to keep them challenged and interested. But how do you get them to take their speaking and listening to the next level (I will address heritage speakers' reading and writing skills in an upcoming post)?

1. For goodness sake, make it really fun! Differentiating your course for your heritage speakers shouldn't feel punitive for the teacher or the student. Don't make it feel like more work-make it feel like more play! We world language teachers got into our profession because using language as the key to unlocking another culture excites us. Join your heritage speakers on this journey.

2. Make them feel special, not singled out for extra work. Give them some special treatment in the form of really exciting projects, and they will surely enrich the entire class. Make it feel special. Let them use an iPad, a laptop or desktop, or download the tech resource to their smart phone to use with headphones. Some heritage students will long for the "easy A" they could earn by conjugating "to be."

3. Reinforce their heritage. Any time you can refer back to the student's home culture, add to the student's knowledge or better yet, have the student teach you something new, the better.

4. Use The ABC Approach. In her compelling book, Can We Talk About Race?, as well as in her article entitled "The ABC Approach to Creating Climates of Engagement on Diverse Campuses," Spellman College President Dr. Beverly Tatum expounds on three habits of mind that educators must embody: Affirming Identity, Building Community and Cultivating Leadership. These techniques are just as true in primary and secondary schools as they are in post-secondary education.

5. Use technology. Listening to other native speakers is what is going to expand your heritage speakers' vocabulary and range. Find podcasts on topics that grab a teenager's interest (love, relationships, psychology, sports, etc), videos of news reports that relate to the student's country of origin, episodes of a compelling show, music videos, or any other resource you can think of. Before you even get started researching a course of study for your heritage student(s), ask them what their interests are. You are sure to get deeper engagement, deeper learning and better productivity when your students get a choice.

6. Same Rubric, But Go Beyond. We all know that sometimes creating a separate course of study for a few heritage students in the class doesn't feel sustainable or realistic.  Take the rubric you are currently using for the whole class, and offer modifications. For example, if you are doing a unit on clothing and students are creating projects about their favorite looks, you might engage your heritage language students in sharing clothing worn for traditional celebrations and get them to elaborate on their significance. Challenge them to go beyond  and to share their culture with the class.

What have been your successes, challenges and approaches to teaching heritage language students?

Active Listening Series, Part 6: Partner Listening

Partnerships are the core of my French class. Why? Communication occurs when there is a message that is sent and received. With partnerships, everyone gets more of a chance to actively participate and be held accountable for producing writing or speaking and listening. With a class size of 25-30 students, this is crucial for skill development. The partnerships are typically heterogeneous by skill level, although at times I do pair students at the same level. Friendships and positive peer relationships often form between unlikely pairs in my classes because the challenge of learning a new language exposes the vulnerable side of many students. Finally, the classroom setting is an artificial one; one on one or small group conversations are the norm in real life, so I want students to experience that kind of communication in the target language.

One of my favorite techniques is the information gap activity. I love to create them by using students names when I can, and I can tailor any activity to incorporate the vocabulary or grammatical function we are studying. It is a flexible activity that requires exclusive speaking, listening, and writing in the target language. I circulate with my clipboard to ensure that I don't hear any English, and if I do, students lose points. Most students don't "cheat" in this way, because they are motivated by the challenge of engaging in a French conversation with their partner. 

When creating an info gap, ensure that you have a document just for Partner A and just for Partner B. One has information that the other students needs, and vice versa. For example, imagine that students are having a discussion with their sibling or future college roommate about the division of chores. Each student has a list of possible chores, and based on whether they would be willing to complete each chore, they write "oui" or "non" on the checklist. Students take turns asking each other questions, such as "Est-ce que tu acceptes de passer l'aspirateur chaque week-end?" As Partner A listens to Parter B's answers, she makes a note on her checklist about what her partner said. Partner B does the same. Each student must separately complete a summary paragraph stating who will complete each chore.  

Active Listening Series, Part 5: Self-Reflective Listening

Students are used to listening to their teachers and their peers...but they could also use practice listening to themselves! This is not only a strategy that will lead to improved pronunciation, but it will also enhance mindfulness and auto-correction of errors (especially the most common ones that you are TIRED of addressing!).

One way that I have had success with this practice is through the use of voice recordings. Those headphones serve the students well! By recording projects using a VoiceThread, a movie maker or even a simple application like www.voki.com (fun talking avatar!), students can record a prepared text. In theory, they should be doing their best work as they record, since they are producing a project that is visible on the web and is preferably published on a class blog or wiki. But we know that even our best work almost always contains some errors, and learning to reflect upon our work and identify our own strengths and weaknesses is not only a critical academic skill, but a life skill that will serve our students forever.

You will definitely need to model what it looks like to complete a listening evaluation of oneself. You might record a demo project yourself. Using a projector, project the checklist/rubric of requirements for an excellent recording. Demonstrate what it looks like to listen for each element of the checklist. Think aloud. Call on students to assist. Make it a fully interactive reflection session so that students are aware of what you are asking them to do. Make sure they understand that they DO posess the skills necessary to do this. They may use their notebooks, their text books, online dictionaries that offer pronunciation, Quizlets or podcasts you have made...any resource that supports their learning is great.

Give students an opportunity to find their errors, and also to correct them for an improved score on a project. When growth, improvement and self-reflection become clear classroom goals, your students will feel empowered and motivated to speak the target language more mindfully and accurately.