Submitted by Jaime Miller
Objectives:
Content:
Students will...
- identify characteristics that describe a particular insect.
- show an understanding of what a cinquain poem is.
Cultural:
Language: Content Obligatory
Students will...
- use various adjectives to describe an insect with words such as long/ue (long), bleu/e (blue), and petit/e (small).
- use appropriate verbs to describe the activities of an insect with words such as sauter (hop), voler (fly), and nager (swim).
Language: Content Compatible
Students will...
- use the sentence J'ai choisi____parce que______. to justify why a particular insect was chosen to be written about.
- use the expressions/questions Je ne comprends pas to ask for clarification when checking their classmate's poem.
- use the modal auxiliary "could" to make suggestions for improvement of a classmate's poem with phrases such as Vous pourriez...
Learning Strategies / Social and Skills Development:
Students will...
- activate background knowledge about the characteristics of true insects to help them complete the tasks.
- analyze different samples of poems to identify similarities among them.
- find and apply the pattern of a cinquain poem.
- brainstorm about possible phrases for the poem.
Time Frame:
1 90-minute period (to be done during Writing Workshop)
Materials Needed:
- Model Cinquain poems
- Overhead projector
- Markers
- White board
- Rough draft paper
- Insect workbook pages 11-13
- Analytic rubric (see Handouts)
Description of Assessment (Performance Project):
Preview: Cinquain poem
- Read a few Cinquain poems aloud (either with overhead or enlarged poems)
- Ask students what similarities they notice about the poems (all have 5 lines, etc.). List these on the white board.
- Explain what a cinquain poem is with the Cinquain explanation sheet (see attachments).
- Read another cinquain poem with the overhead and ask students to come up and underline and say the required components (There is a noun in the first line, etc.)
Focused Learning: Create a poem
- Explain the activity to students:
You will write a cinquain poem about the insect of your choosing. The noun will be the name of your insect. The adjectives and verbs may be ones that we used during the Dichotomous key and Venn diagram activities. You will create complete sentences to describe the insect.
First you will plan for writing your poem using workbook (p. 11), then you will write a rough draft on rough draft paper. After editing your poem yourself, with a friend and finally with a teacher, you will copy a final draft onto page 12 of your insect workbook. When everyone is finished, you will read your poems aloud in small groups.
- Show and explain analytic rubric to students (what they need to pay attention to).
- Students choose an insect and brainstorm possible adjectives, nouns and sentences using page 11 of their insect workbook.
- Students write a rough draft.
- Students revise and edit their poem 1. individually 2. in pairs 3. with the teacher
- Students, after editing the rough draft, copy the final draft onto page 12 of workbook.
Expansion: Reading of cinquain poems
- When all students have completed their final drafts, they will divide into small groups of six and share their poems aloud.
- Students, before reading their poem, need to tell which insect they've chosen and why by using the following language: J'ai choisi____parce que______.
Assessment:
Students' knowledge about the characteristics of insects and their use of French to express those characteristics will be assessed in the creation of the Cinquain poem, through the analytic rubric.
Attachments:
NOTE: some attachments are in PDF form (get Acrobat Reader)Assessment: Insect Cinquain Poem - Laurent needs to put in French