Submitted by Marilyn Proulx, Mary Cisar

Objectives:

Content:

Cultural:
Students will:
· compare common exterior and interior features of French and American homes, particularly in relation to the following question: How do the physical characteristics of houses differ in the France and the United States?

Language: Content Obligatory
Students will:
· use vocabulary related to: furniture and rooms of a house · use grammar related to:

Nouns (gender, number)
Articles (gender, number, indefinite vs. partitive vs. definite)
Present indicative verbs
Prepositions of place

Language: Content Compatible
Students will:
· use grammar related to: interrogative structures and pronouns and relative pronouns

Learning Strategies / Social and Skills Development:
Students will:
· use knowledge of cognates to identify new vocabulary (listening)
· use knowledge of context to guess meaning (listening)
· work collaboratively in groups

Time Frame:

one 55 minute class period

Materials Needed:

· Computer with PowerPoint loaded (available through the web, see "Attachments")
· Pencil and paper (optional)

Description of Assessment (Performance Project):

Context:
Students have already learned the floors and rooms of a house or apartment.
Students understand aurally and can produce present tense forms of verbs.

Pre-task:
Students look at pictures of a French apartment, hear, and repeat the vocabulary of lodging (floors of a house, rooms, furniture), and identify each object on the picture.

Task set-up:
Students click through the second portion of the PowerPoint presentation and read the comprehension questions associated with each picture.

During the task:
Students listen to Lucie Differt describe her apartment (sound file contained in the PowerPoint presentation) while looking at the relevant picture of her apartment. The teacher plays the presentation two to three times. Using a printed blank of the apartment layout, students label the pieces furniture mentioned by Lucie.

Post-task:
Students work in pairs or small groups to click through the presentation and answer the questions based on Lucie's description. Alternatively, each group of student is assigned one picture and must answer the questions for that picture only; each group then presents the results of their conversation to another group or to the whole class.

Assessment:

Students produce a floor plan of their own house and label the floors, the rooms, and the furniture. (This product will serve as a resource later, when students will write a letter describing their house.)

References and Resources:

Attachments:

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

Power Point presentation takes students through the listening comprehension activity. It includes directions, questions, and images, with links to the sound files.

Written text of the description of the apartment, which teachers can print out for students, if desired.

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