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 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?

Language: Content Obligatory
Students will:
- correctly say and write vocabulary pertaining to a house
- use correctly the following:

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

Language: Content Compatible
Students will:
- use correctly interrogative structures and pronouns, and relative pronouns

Learning Strategies / Social and Skills Development:

Time Frame:

about 15-20 minutes

Materials Needed:

Worksheet (see "Attachments"), which includes directions, questions, image, and link to web site.

Description of Assessment (Performance Project):

Context:
Students have become familiar with the floors and rooms of a house or apartment from Lesson 1. Students understand aurally and can produce present tense forms of verbs.

Pre-task:
Students observe an image of a French apartment building. They hear or read questions that require them to place specific families in specific locations in the apartment building, based on what they learn about what floor the family lives on or which other family they live next to, etc.

During the task:
Students confirm their understanding of the vocabulary and prepositions by placing new families in the apartment building.

Post-task:
Students apply their knowledge of the vocabulary to an authentic apartment building, seen via a web site. They answer specific questions about the location of certain objects/people.

Assessment:

Students examine a French web site that shows an apartment building and answer questions regarding objects/people that are situated on each floor of the building. Teacher checks answers to questions regarding the web site to ensure comprehension (either orally or in writing).

Attachments:

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

Lesson 2 Worksheet(It could also be used as a transparency.)

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