Full lesson plans on frenchteacher

In my last post, I wrote about how a resource can become, in effect, a lesson plan once you have established a well-rehearsed set of procedures and activities for running a lesson. On frenchteacher.net I have been adding more full lesson plan resources, with suggested activities supplied in sequence. This may of of use to teachers learning how to plan their lessons. This was the approach I took in my 50 Lesson Plans book. On my frenchteacher site I have a range of full lesson plans, some based on written texts, some task-based, some storytelling based and some based on sentence builders (substitution tables). It's that last type of plan I have been working on lately.

These lesson plans (on the Y9 page) are aimed at students with about three years of French behind them. They consist of two sentence builders, one of which is gapped and which can be used at any point in the sequence, depending on how much help the class needs. As always, the sentence builder ensures the learning goals are transparent and that all the language is comprehensible. (Everything is translated.)

In addition to the two SBs, there is a sequence of activities which can be used or adapted, depending on your preferences and the proficiency of the students. Below is the list I suggest. The topic of the SBs is protecting the environment and talking about the climate emergency.  Note how uncluttered the SB is. This enables you to recycle the chunks many times over, rather than overloading the class with too much language which may be insufficiently rehearsed. 

1.     Explain the aim: by the end of the lesson students will be able to understand and talk a bit about environmental protection and the climate crisis.

2.     Display and give a print-off of the sentence builder on the next page.

3.     Read aloud some example sentences from the SB

4.     Do some choral repetition of selected sentences. Consider ‘delayed choral repetition’ where you wait about 5 seconds before giving a sign for the class to repeat.

5.    Give sentences in English for students to translate (hands up and/or ‘cold called’)

6.    ‘Mind reading’. Think of a sentence from each row which students must guess. (You could indicate after each guess which elements were right, or give hints with gestures, for example.)

7.    Students could then play the same guessing game in pairs.

8.   Tell students to secretly write down 5 things they do. (They need not be true.) In pairs, each student asks yes/no questions to guess what their partner will do.) The first to guess all five is the winner.

9.    Students work individually, writing down a paragraph about what they do. Depending on your class’s skills they could do this by simple copying, using the gapped version of the SB (below) or from memory with no extra scaffolding. With some classes, ask students to add their own original ideas. Move around to support individuals where needed.

10. Students read aloud their description to their partner and/or to the whole class if they are confident enough.

11. Tell the class what you do (about 30-45 seconds). Students take notes in English. Then repeat a few sentences which may be true or false. Students use their notes to tell you if you previously said the activity or not.

12. With all written texts hidden, ask the class what they will do on holiday. Elicit oral or written answers (hands up or cold-called).

13. Optional homework: students record and memorise a one-minute talk about how they protect the environment.

You could add in elements of dictation or play games like Sentence Stealers, Sentence Chaos or simple info gap guessing games. It’s a good chance to reinforce the usual climate messages (especially given the amount of uninformed or dishonest denialism we come across).

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As I mentioned above, the above sequence can be changed. If you are a dedicated EPI (Conti-style) practitioner you may prefer alternatives based on the MARS-EARS sequence. I just select activities which I think might work well with an average class if you are using a more eclectic teaching approach. You'll recognise above one or two specific tasks devised by Gianfranco.

In any case, I always like the principle of starting with receptive work, to get students used to the sounds, spellings and content, before gradually moving to more demanding productive tasks. Some very proficient classes  can move quickly to more productive and communicative tasks.