This summer, I had the privilege of teaching a beginner French lab at The Agen Workshop. A lab is a unique class where real students participate, and teachers attending the World Language conference observe various proficiency-based strategies in action. During my previous lab in 2021, I worked with Intermediate-level students, and we had a fantastic time exploring my book, Alice. This year, I had the pleasure of guiding beginners and advanced beginners through their language journey.

In response to requests from several participants, I’m excited to share my plans and materials in this post. I hope these resources will be valuable as you prepare for the upcoming school year.

Note: This class included 10 consenting adults, allowing for a faster pace and deeper exploration than I would use with middle school students. For example, 20 minutes of Personalized Questions & Answers (PQA) would be challenging with 12-year-olds. Nevertheless, the goals, flow, strategies, and materials used remain highly relevant to any beginner classroom.

DAY 1 GOALS

• Get to know each other
• Build trust
• Introduce Manie Musicale
• Evaluate students’ language proficiency

DAY 1 LESSON PLAN

1. TRUST talk in English (15 min)
   • What does it take for you to feel trust in a language classroom?
   • Students share ideas and I write them on the board with their names.
   • Read more about sharing power with students here.
2. How do we feel in French (10 min)
   • Focus on 3 feelings: “happy” “anxious” and “tired”.
   • I used complete sentences such as “I am happy because I am here with you”, lots of gestures, and some personalized questions and answers.
   • We called my mom and sang joyeux anniversaire to her.
   • Comprehension check with eyes closed.
   • Read more about SEL check-ins here.
3. Card Talk and Write and Discuss in French (25 min)
   • They drew something they like on a small piece of paper.
   • I looked at the papers and we talked about it, going slow, using questions.
   • Read more about Card Talk here.
   • I gave them opportunities to “find out” about each other with low-stake speaking
   • We co-constructed a paragraph in French about what we learned about each other.
   • Read more about Write & Discuss here.
4. Debrief in English (10 min)
   • The debrief was led by my thoughtful colleague Anna Gilcher.
   • She asked students “how did Cécile make herself Comprehensible, make you feel Comfortable, and make the content Compelling?”
5. FORMAL BREAK (20 min)
6. Qui est Cécile ? in French (10 min)
   • Now we know a bit more about them, let’s find out about me! We played a simple TRUE/FALSE game.
   • I often referred back to what we had learned about them (E.g. talking about our pets).
7. Introduce Manie Musicale in French (20 min)
   • I prepared a mini Manie Musicale for the week, carefully selecting songs to ensure a balance of female and male artists, a variety of cultural and racial identities, engaging videos, and tracks that would be accessible and motivating for beginners.
   • We read a short intro, I introduced the countries represented and we “travelled” to each country on a map, using my students hobbies (cycling, hiking, swimming).
   • Here is my intro and map, the bracket and the YouTube playlist.
   • Read more about Manie Musicale here.

That’s it for today. Students were super impressed with how much French was used in class and how quickly they were able to communicate. If you look closely at the pictures you will see that while we used a lot of French, I really focused on high frequency structure.

Feel free to leave questions and comments. See you tomorrow for Day 2!