CARLA
Chez moi et dans le monde entier: Exploring our use and relationship with water
Lesson 04: La consommation d'eau ici et ailleur--perspectives sur l'eau

Submitted by Jill Pearson

Objectives:

Content:
Students will...

  • demonstrate an understanding of the wide disparity of per capita water usage across cultures

Cultural:
Students will...

  • gain insight into how other cultures’ practices (how they use water)
  • demonstrate understanding of cultural perspectives different from their own

Language: Content Obligatory
Students will...

  • make comparisons about water usage using the superlative: le plus d’eau, le moins d’eau
  • use reflexive, pronominal, and other regular and irregular verbs in the present and to describe others’ quotidian activities with se laver (les mains, les cheveux, la figure), se brosser les dents, se baigner, prendre une douche, chasser l’eau, laver (les fruits/légumes, etc.), boire, nettoyer, faire la vaisselle, faire la lessive, etc.
  • express quantities in liters using numbers into the hundreds

Language: Content Compatible
Students will...

  • making comparisons using the comparative plus + the adjective proche
  • share opinions using structures like à mon avis, je pense que, and je crois que

Learning Strategies / Social and Skills Development:
Students will...

  • make predictions
  • make inferences
  • take notes
  • work cooperatively

Time Frame:

One 55-minute period

Materials Needed:

  • color copies of pictures for “gallery” hung around the room
  • typed captions in French for pictures

Description of Assessment (Performance Project):

Preview Phase (Into):
I will begin the class by asking students to make comparisons concerning the per capita water use in different parts of the world.  I will have the following written on the board: 

un individu au Canada
un individu aux Etats-Unis
un individu en Afrique sub-Saharienne
une personne au Madagascar
un individu en Inde. 

Students will be instructed to put them in order from the top (most consumption) to the bottom (least consumption) in their notebooks.  We will follow with a short conversation as students state who they believe consumes the most water per day (un individu en/au... consomme le plus d’eau) and who consumes the least (un individu en/au... consomme le moins d’eau). 

Next, students will predict the amount of water consumed by the different countries per capita in liters.  Once students have shared their predictions with a neighbor, I will read off the figures found from www.cycledeleau.org (US- 375 litres,  Canada 326, Indian- 25, Sub-Saharan Africa-15, Madagascar 5.4) and the students can determine who was closer-- plus proche—in their predictions. (Standard 4.2)

Focused-learning Phase:
In this phase of the lesson, students will take a “gallery tour” around the classroom, viewing different pictures dealing with water use in Africa from the Peace Corps "World Wise Schools: Water in Africa" project. 

At first, students will write a short reaction to each picture, writing a question that this picture makes them ask, a hypothesis about what is going on, etc.  I will provide a couple of suggestions for ways to begin their reactions:  Je me demande pourquoi... Qu’est-ce que c’est?  Je remarque que...  C’est ...  They can discuss their reactions with a partner as they circulate around the room, but each student will be responsible for writing their reactions. (Standard 1.1, 3.2)

After students have made their first tour, we will come back together as a group and I will ask students to share some of their reactions.  Next, I will give each student a caption or two and they will need to locate the picture that matches their caption.  Once they have been placed, the students will make a final tour, reading the captions. 

Extension Phase
After placing their caption next to the picture and making their tour, the students will prepare another commentary, making a link between what their picture (the one they had the caption for) shows and the discussion of water usage earlier in the lesson.  How does this picture reflect the numbers we discussed earlier?  What do we learn from this picture about West African society and water usage?  What can we as Americans learn from these pictures?  We will finish the class with a discussion as students share their commentaries. (Standard 1.1, 1.3, 2.1, 4.2)

Assessment:

There will be several opportunities during this lesson to informally assess students.  I will primarily be concerned with seeing how easily students are able to match their caption with the appropriate picture as an interpretive task and assessing their ability to communicate somewhat sophisticated thoughts as they interpret the photos and make commentaries. 

If students are struggling to formulate comments on the sentence level, I will respond by offering more examples of language to use to convey their thoughts and walk them through my interpretation of a photo. 

References and Resources:

Galleries d'image de l'Afrique sub-Saharienne:
(use the following sites to collect pictures)

Links to the specific pictures used in this lesson are provided along with links to general sites where more pictures are available.

http://www.peacecorps.gov/wws/water/africa/countries/mali/ML0112.html


--Namposella, Mali (1999)

http://www.peacecorps.gov/wws/water/africa/countries/mali/ML0117.html

http://www.peacecorps.gov/wws/water/africa/countries/mali/ML0118.html

http://www.peacecorps.gov/wws/water/africa/countries/cotedivoire/CI0325.html

http://www.peacecorps.gov/wws/water/africa/countries/guinea/GN0202.html

http://www.peacecorps.gov/wws/water/africa/countries/gabon/GA0129.html

http://www.peacecorps.gov/wws/water/africa/countries/burkinafaso/BF0528.html


http://www.peacecorps.gov/wws/water/africa/about/index.html

 

Attachments:

NOTE: some attachments are in PDF form (get Acrobat Reader)

Handout 1: Texte pour les photos

A Lesson from the CoBaLTT Project
/cobaltt
Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition
University of Minnesota