Mr Stephen Collis Teaching Year 8 French (26 Students) in Computer Lab

Exemplar Lesson Plan

Mr Stephen Collis teaching Year 8 French (26 students) in computer lab.

70 minute lesson

Lesson Context: This is the third lesson in a 6-month project where the class creates an imagined universe and documents it in French, from historical encyclopaedia entries to audio interviews and videotaped impromptu role-played conversations.

Special, short and ‘punchy’ language-topic instruction sessions are run regularly with reference to the normal textbook & ‘teacher talk’, followed by student-driven composing, using the new language to bring the imagined world to life.

Aims (these correspond to lesson sections):  To begin the job application process for student roles.  To agree on a name for the class’s imagined world.  To establish the first texts in French authored by the students that describe their imagined world.

Syllabus Outcomes: 4.UL.4 applies a range of linguistic structures to express own ideas in writing - achieved through scaffolded descriptive sentence with "il y a” 4.UL.3 establishes and maintains communication in familiar situations - achieved through rehearsing and recording a descriptive sentence with "il y a” 4.MLC.2 explores the diverse ways in which meaning is conveyed by comparing and describing structures and features of French - achieved by supervised use of dictionaries and an online world reference facility Non-Syllabus Outcomes (use of technology): The students receive help and guidance by the teacher aided by a digital projector screen. Students log in does to their online community at Beyond Borders http://moodle.nbcs.nsw.edu.au/bb, where they use the following tools:

The student… - uses an online ’choice’ tool to make a decision collaboratively with peers. - establishes a personal pseudo-factual wiki based on an imagined world. - composes three job applications in English using a Web form. - brainstorms ideas using a public e-mail forum. - records their voice using "Audacity" software and a headset. - uses a reference website (wordreference.com) to research foreign-language vocabulary.

Language Focus: Use of French for ‘naming’. Passive descriptions with ‘il y a’, numbers, and plural nouns, e.g. “il y a cinq chaises dans le monde” Activities: 20 minutes - To begin the job application process for student roles. Students log in to Beyond Borders:

Students make their final decisions about the three official student roles/jobs they will apply for in order of preference, by browsing the Word document with job titles, descriptions and requirements available via their “Beyond Borders" community

Students fill in the Web form on the Beyond Borders site answering "job application" questions and click on ‘submit’. 25 minutes - To agree on a name for the class’s imagined world. Students are given the challenge of brainstorming names for the imagined French universe that they will be designing and documenting over the next 6 months.

Students post their ideas to the email forum on ‘Beyond Borders’:

The teacher filters the suggestions and adds them to a ‘choice’ facility so that the students can vote: And then students view the results, which are also projected:

Volunteer students start working on a display with this title.

20 minutes - To establish the first texts in French authored by the students that describe their imagined world.

Teacher talk – the teacher projects the structure ‘il y a [number] [plural noun] dans la ville d’escargots’ (‘there are [number] [plural noun] in [universe name]’. Students already have some familiarity with this structure.

Students repeat after the teacher.

Students decide what objects they want to say are to be found in the imagined universe (now named ‘la ville d’escargots’): e.g. ‘il y a cent planches dans la ville d’escargot’ (there are 100 surf board s in Snail City’ Students are shown how to access their personal wiki. This will be their first sentence describing the imagined universe.

Students compose the sentence in their wikis, and then draw up an illustrated version of the sentence to be put up on display.

Finally they record an MP3 file of themselves saying the sentence, to upload to ‘Beyond Borders’, using ‘Audacity’ software:

Evaluation: This lesson was taught on the 27th August.

Student morale was sky-high. Students were aware of how fortunate they were to have access to such a well-equipped classroom. They were looking forward to kicking off the creative process for the project, aware that other ‘Beyond Borders’ participants would be visiting their work online and that their work is likely to be presented at conferences in future months.

We had a visit by the Principal with a guest half way through the lesson. I took the opportunity to remind students one of the permanent class ‘jobs’ will be ‘presenter / tour guide’ whose responsibility it is to greet visitors to the classroom formally and confidently and showcase to them the best work the class has produced.

Strengths of the lesson: - high energy, time-efficient. - this is the first time I’ve used a ‘choice’ facility on Moodle. It worked fantastically for allowing the class to vote, and was dramatic with the final voting graph. - The language use with ‘il y a’ had a nice balance of being both scaffolded, yet with great scope for student initiative. - I was very happy that the lesson was ‘multi-modal’ students were typing, researching, drawing on paper, and recording their voices. - I was conscious that students needed breaks from looking at the monitors and typing. The lesson plan was successful in giving these breaks.

Weaknesses/Opportunities to ‘tune’ the Lesson Plan: - there wasn’t enough time for students to do a thorough job of the online job application. This is of some concern because I want the job titles to have extremely high credibility, which requires student effort in the application process. I don’t want to rush the application process. - similarly the end of the lesson was rushed and about 30% of the students did not have time to create their posters AND record their voices.