It was a busy week of learning with all of my French classes. I am still assessing their previous knowledge from other levels of French and building a solid foundation for my French 1s. The pictures above are from live tweets during the day using the hashtag #OMlearns.
In French 2, 3, and AP, we focused on present tense regular verbs (-ER, -IR, and -RE) and the irregular verbs aller, avoir, être and faire. These levels will have a test on Monday where they conjugate the verbs on a traditional paper/pencil test. They had a verbs quiz on Monday using Google forms as well as a Socrative quiz to assess prior learning on verbs and general grammar rules for French.
In French 1, we focused on beginning dialogue and learning phrases including greetings, asking how someone is, asking what someone's name is, asking how old someone is, and goodbyes. We used the site hellomylo.com to reinforce this vocabulary. I really love this site because it includes all aspects of the language - listening, speaking, and writing focusing on vocabulary and grammar. I also like using it because it helps keep my students flexible in learning the language. Languages are very fluid and change daily, therefore students must learn how to adapt and interpret phrases they do not know.
To view my scope and sequence for all levels, including the assignments and resources click here.
I will also be uploading items to the OMHS French site which can be found at bit.ly/OMHSfrench.
One of the things I keep reminding myself as a "techie teacher" is to use instructional technology WITH A PURPOSE. I rarely use all caps in typing, but I feel that this statement requires caps.
On Tuesday, I was trying to figure out how to give an assessment to the upper level French classes to inventory their learning regarding verbs. For me, paper and pencil assessments are easier to use because they require less preparation and they are what I was tested with, so I test with them. However, I had the idea to set up the Google form for a simple paragraph text format to inventory their learning on one spreadsheet. I could have made a form for each class but I ended up manually separating the classes into different spreadsheets. So students took the Google form quiz and I can easily offer them feedback via Kaizena as well as a pdf of their quiz using Autocrat.
I had a standards-based approach to the Google form quiz. The grading was as follows.
Subject + verb = 3 points
example - Je mange. (Meeting criteria of conjugation)
Subject + verb + object = 4 points
example - Je mange un sandwich. (Meeting criteria of conjugation with a bit more detail)
Subject + verb + object + time words + adjectives = 5 points
example - Je mange un sandwich au café hier soir. (Meeting criteria of conjugation with lots of detail)
The students did not have to spell everything correctly nor include all accent marks or make agreement perfectly. The objective was to see what they knew. French 3 and AP were comfortable on their own. French 2 asked more questions about spelling and wanted to know if the sentence was perfect before submitting their quiz.
I think the idea of grades as a data point and not punishment is something new to my students. I want to effectively communicate to them that my responsibility is to learn what they know and teach them more. This idea includes a lot of freedom they are not used to, but my hope is that they can learn about learning, not just learn French in my class.
In French 2, 3, and AP, we focused on present tense regular verbs (-ER, -IR, and -RE) and the irregular verbs aller, avoir, être and faire. These levels will have a test on Monday where they conjugate the verbs on a traditional paper/pencil test. They had a verbs quiz on Monday using Google forms as well as a Socrative quiz to assess prior learning on verbs and general grammar rules for French.
In French 1, we focused on beginning dialogue and learning phrases including greetings, asking how someone is, asking what someone's name is, asking how old someone is, and goodbyes. We used the site hellomylo.com to reinforce this vocabulary. I really love this site because it includes all aspects of the language - listening, speaking, and writing focusing on vocabulary and grammar. I also like using it because it helps keep my students flexible in learning the language. Languages are very fluid and change daily, therefore students must learn how to adapt and interpret phrases they do not know.
To view my scope and sequence for all levels, including the assignments and resources click here.
I will also be uploading items to the OMHS French site which can be found at bit.ly/OMHSfrench.
One of the things I keep reminding myself as a "techie teacher" is to use instructional technology WITH A PURPOSE. I rarely use all caps in typing, but I feel that this statement requires caps.
On Tuesday, I was trying to figure out how to give an assessment to the upper level French classes to inventory their learning regarding verbs. For me, paper and pencil assessments are easier to use because they require less preparation and they are what I was tested with, so I test with them. However, I had the idea to set up the Google form for a simple paragraph text format to inventory their learning on one spreadsheet. I could have made a form for each class but I ended up manually separating the classes into different spreadsheets. So students took the Google form quiz and I can easily offer them feedback via Kaizena as well as a pdf of their quiz using Autocrat.
I had a standards-based approach to the Google form quiz. The grading was as follows.
Subject + verb = 3 points
example - Je mange. (Meeting criteria of conjugation)
Subject + verb + object = 4 points
example - Je mange un sandwich. (Meeting criteria of conjugation with a bit more detail)
Subject + verb + object + time words + adjectives = 5 points
example - Je mange un sandwich au café hier soir. (Meeting criteria of conjugation with lots of detail)
The students did not have to spell everything correctly nor include all accent marks or make agreement perfectly. The objective was to see what they knew. French 3 and AP were comfortable on their own. French 2 asked more questions about spelling and wanted to know if the sentence was perfect before submitting their quiz.
I think the idea of grades as a data point and not punishment is something new to my students. I want to effectively communicate to them that my responsibility is to learn what they know and teach them more. This idea includes a lot of freedom they are not used to, but my hope is that they can learn about learning, not just learn French in my class.