Welcome to your online French class! I'm so, so excited to be teaching you your first year of the French language. Studying other languages has enriched my life more than I ever could have imagined. Learning French opened up the world to me. Thinking back, back, back to my first day of French class, I never would have imagined I’d be here. My freshman year of high school I earned a scholarship to study at an all-girls Catholic high school in Memphis, Tennessee called Immaculate Conception. I don’t think it’s even there anymore. I don’t remember her name (Sister Agnes?), but my first French teacher was a nun. I was not happy to be there. I wanted to learn Spanish because I had recently discovered guacamole and sopa de pollo. Yeah, I know. My childhood world of north Mississippi was a very, very small place. But I landed in French class because the terms of my scholarship dictated that I take French and Latin. And sitting there in that classroom, the boundaries of my world grew wider. Your world will grow larger and richer, too. Around 300 million people around the world speak French. Only 40% of these French speakers live in Europe. The rest live around the globe, especially in Africa: 35% of French speakers live in Africa. Closer to home, we have some French speaking cousins just to our east: there are around 200,000 French speakers in Louisiana. In this, our first blog post and also our syllabus, I will be be outlining the following topics:
MindsetWe will not be afraid to make mistakes. As Sir Ken Robinson says in his TED talk on Creativity in the Classroom, “If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you will never come up with anything original.” Right now, in our minds, let’s just decide we are all prepared to be wrong. It’s impossible to learn a new language without making mistakes. Every mistake is an opportunity to learn something new about the French language. We will be flexible with each other. This year it will be even more necessary than usual to bring open minds and willingness to adapt or change into our learning. The only thing we really know about this school year is that the first six weeks will be online. We will be curious. At least, as much as we can. In my experience, curiosity enriches language learning so much. The way we use it is by linking our own interests to our class. If you love pop music, get curious about French pop musicians. If you love cooking (this was always my biggest one), get curious about French cuisine. If you love fashion, get ready to learn about French fashion. GoalsWe’re going to get you listening, speaking, reading, and writing the French language. Always remembering our flexibility mindset, here is our content calendar for French 1: 1st Semester Unit 1 In what ways is learning another language beneficial?
Unit 2 What do activities and pastimes reveal about a culture?
Unit 3 How does education shape individuals and society?
Unit 4 What activities do friends in other countries do together?
2nd Semester Unit 5 What is the nature of relationships in other cultures?
Unit 6 How is shopping in other countries?
Unit 7 What makes a house a “home?”
Unit 8 How do major world cities tell their stories?
NormsOur new world calls for new norms. Let’s start with what you can expect from me:
And now, what I expect of you:
In an effort to create boundaries where none exist, that is, between home and school/work, here are a few norms for all of us:
List of Tools
Action ListYour First Day Action List
All of the class codes for Remind and Teams are in the HUB. See you in TEAMS! Comments are closed.
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AuthorI'm a Houston high school teacher during the Covid19 pandemic. Welcome to my adapted, socially-distanced, quarantined French 1 classroom. Archives
May 2021
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