Description of Item:The following is a two-week long unit plan for an extracurricular activity taught during the Fulbright English Program summer camp. The unit introduces basic French conversations, which build upon each other so that students end the unit being able to put together a full conversation, as well as French culture. The summer camp is two weeks long. Rationale for Inclusion:While teaching in South Korea as a Fulbright Scholar, I have focused on ESL instruction, though my initial license is for French. As such, to stay up-to-date with my degree, I taught French as a club class at my placement school, and during the summer Fulbright English Program. This unit plan contains examples of Communicative Language Teaching and Cooperative Learning, and is an excellent example of the interactivity that is present in my classroom, whether I am teaching French or English. The Plan:
Photographs and Other Evidence:Reflection (2015):Overall the lessons accomplished what it was intended to: students learned some French phrases and about French culture. However, the class had mixed-level English ability, so it made some of the cultural lessons more challenging. There were several times where I overshot the students' understanding of English in a reading or video. Most of the students enjoyed the lessons and activities, but I know some of the lower-level students struggled. Next year, I plan to include more scaffolding and find more leveled resources to use in the class. I also need to give students more practice time with the vocabulary. Reflection (2016):This year, I had some repeat students, so I was worried that they would be bored in the class. However, since it had been a year since they learned any French, they did not remember as much as I thought they would. As such, they were still quite engaged in the lessons and were also great at helping other students learn. I remembered that last year I had trouble with the varying English abilities, so this year I tried to have more scaffolding in place for lower-level students. I also used Cooperative Learning (CL) this year. Having the students in teams that could help each other with the material and using various CL structures to reinforce material helped the lower-level students and gave my repeat students a chance to help teach others. As a result, the students retained more of the French used in class, and even continued practicing outside of the classroom! If I were to teach this unit again, I think I would try to lessen the amount of material in each lesson to give students more practice with the language. I would also try to use some additional authentic materials, such as videos.
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Katherine Welch
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