Submitted by Marilyn Proulx, Mary Cisar

Objectives:

Content:
Students will:
· explain the layout of a home in reference to square meters using standard and non-standard measurement
· discuss the differences between perimeter and area
· use their previous experience with one dimensional drawings to understand floorplans for homes and buildings
· activate understanding of use and needs for various spaces in a home or building (i.e. bedrooms - one per child or do they share? kitchen - does space reflect a place where people just work or work and converse?)
· use written text to compare words to physical objects in a home or building

Cultural:
Students will:
· compare common exterior and interior features of French and American homes, particularly in relation to the following questions:

How do the physical characteristics of houses differ in the France and the United States?
How do these physical differences reflect culturally specific behaviors and perspectives?
How are certain characteristics we might stereotypically call French or American actually the result of other factors (for this lesson: regional differences)

Language: Content Obligatory
Students will:
· learn and practice the following vocabulary within the appropiate context: (i.e., floors of a building, rooms of a house)
· learn and apply grammar as related to:

nouns (gender, number)
articles (gender, number, indefinite vs. partitive vs. definite)
present indicative verbs
prepositions of place
presentational expressions - c'est / Il est / Il y a

Language: Content Compatible
Students will:
· learn and practice the grammar related to:

interrogative structures and pronouns
relative pronouns

Learning Strategies / Social and Skills Development:
Students will:
· use knowledge of cognates to identify new vocabulary (reading and listening)
· use knowledge of context cues to guess meaning for new words, phrases, and concepts (reading and listening)
ÔøΩ work collaboratively in groups

Time Frame:

One 55 minute period

Materials Needed:

· Worksheets for the 2 parts of the lesson (See "Attachments")
· Paper, pencil

Description of Assessment (Performance Project):

Context:
Students understand oral statements and can produce present tense forms of verbs.

For beginning levels, teachers can focus on the sections of the unit pertaining to vocabulary acquisition and simplify the vocabulary, the cultural reading and discussions can be completed in English.

For upper levels, especially in post-secondary, students can complete some or all of the preparatory activities outside of class.

Pre-task:
Students search a pre-selected French website that allows them to scan images of different French houses and choose one they like the best. The pictures are printed out for each student. This activity sensitizes students to regional differences as related to housing, and also engages them personally in the activity.

During the task:
After students have chosen their favorite house, the teacher introduces the vocabulary of floors of a house. Students use this vocabulary to label the parts of their favorite house and to decide which features their house does not have.

Students show their picture to a classmate and each student indicates what is and is not a feature of their favorite French house.

Post-task:
The teacher plays the tape of the listening comprehension activity (Thomas, description of house, Activité 4). The audio file is available in the "Attachments" below.

Students listen and, based on the information in the selection, label the rooms of Thomas's house on the floor plan.

Additional activity: (Activité 4)
This is either a reading activity or a listening activity based on an authentic letter written by a French person who is building a new house. The written version is in the handouts and could be given to students. A digitized version for listening is included in the "Attachments" section. The selection is followed by comprehension questions (see the Handout in the "Attachments").

Assessment:

Teacher verifies that students have correctly labeled their own picture and that the words are spelled accurately.

Teacher verifies that students have correctly labeled the floor plan of Thomas's house (see handouts for Lesson1 in "Attachments")

Attachments:

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

Handouts for Lesson 1

Audio files:

Thomas
Normandin

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