This summer, I had the privilege of teaching a beginner French lab at The Agen Workshop. 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 3 GOALS

• Continue building trust by ensuring students experience success
• Our first Story Listening: students can comprehend a fictional story
• Manie Musicale: let’s expand on the limited definition of a francophone person
• Are they ready to read a beginner book?

DAY 3 LESSON PLAN

1. TRUST talk in French (5 min)
   • I had our trust slide up but I removed the names. Students figured out who had said what.
   • Read more about sharing power with students here.
2. How do we feel in French (5 min)
   • Focus on 6 feelings: “happy” “anxious” “tired”+ “grateful” “confident” “proud”
   • I told them I was proud of them, recycled complete sentences from the day before, asked some personalized questions and answers, and used some more gestures.
   • Comprehension check with eyes closed.
   • Read more about SEL check-ins here.
3. The Mayor of Agen in French (5 min)
   • That day we were all going to the Agen city hall for a reception with the mayor. I was wearing a dress for the occasion as opposed to my usual French T-shirt and of course a few students noticed. I was ready for them: I pulled up the picture we took with the mayor of Agen a few years back and did a quick picture talk, including the T-shirt I had on that day! I was able to make a connection with one of our student’s hobby (bicycling).
   • I LOVE talking about what is happening in our lives using the target language.
4. Story Listening in French (30 min)
   • I told the story of the “Hairy Toe” by S.E. Schlosser. This is one of my favorite stories to tell!
   • After the story, we took a nice brain break.
   • Learn more about brain breaks here.
   • I had a lot of words/phrases left on the board from the story, so I did a simple yet powerful post-story activity: I pointed to a phrase, said it in French, then counted 1 2 3 and they chorally told me what it meant. I then erased the phrase from the board and moved on to another phrase. This builds so much confidence not only in the student themselves, but also in the Story Listening process!
   • Learn more about Story Listening with this podcast episode.
5. Tu preferes…? (5-10 min)
   • After sitting for a while listening to a story, it was fun to get up and move around the classroom with a “This of That” activity. I created the options based on the Personalized Questions & Answers from the previous days.
6. 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?”
7. FORMAL BREAK (20 min)
8. Manie Musicale third match: Magic System vs Stephane Legar (60 min)
   • We had a big reveal of the winner from the first match (Missy D!!)
   • I used this slideshow.
   • We used volleyball reading in teams to read texts. The idea of teams was student-generated and I was there for it!
   • Read more about Volleyball reading here.
   • Songs lyrics can be difficult for Novice learners but what can you teach that is within their reach? With the song Akwaba, we talked about languages in Africa, a cultural and antiracist topic (slides 5-6-7).
   • For each song I had a reflection question they could think about while watching. The question was written in simple language but allowed my students to think critically. They are Novice learners, not Novice thinkers! (I first heard this wonderful quote from Rebecca Blouwolff in 2018)
   • For Akwaba the questions “Combien de langues il y a dans la video ?”
   • For Merci the question was “Où est Stephane dans la video ?”
   • Students voted for their favorite ones on pieces of paper. I collected the papers and once again told them they would find out the winner the next day!
   • All the materials were provided by Manie Musicale (except the map). I adapted the biographies, added the cultural content, and sequenced everything to meet my students’ proficiency levels. Read more about Manie Musicale here.

Another exciting day! And I had finally decided we were going to be reading a beginner book the next day. This promised to be quite the challenge but most of my students looked definitely ready for it. (Again, these are motivated and consenting adults)

Feel free to leave questions and comments. See you tomorrow for Day 4!