Najoua Benothmane
Multimedia Collection
French 1
Learning Goals for spring 2014Unit Food and Restaurant
Theme: Families and Communities
Below: Williamsburg/James County Public Schools Modern Language Course sequence guide for
French
The unit I will be focusing for this collection is “Food and Restaurant”
The goal: teach the students French vocabulary about fruits
I.
VIDEO (Animoto: http://animoto.com/)
1. This website will allow you to create videos using photos, video clips, and music. It is fast, free
and can be shared with everyone. You can custom the video using a style you like. For example,
this “ back to school” is fun as a backdrop for summer pictures
http://animoto.com/create
2. There are styles such as voyage, brilliance, rustic, dance and more. The site is free and the user
just needs to sign in first. A username and a password will be created for future use. Making a
video is very easy. We just need to insert the pictures or video, then choose a style and share it.
You can use the video for anything.
3. This supports student learning relative to my content focus by allowing me to create a video of a
cooking show: making two “ salade de fruits” in the classroom. One using a French recipe with
metric measurement and the other English measurement. The video will be posted on the
classroom website for practice and building background knowledge ( guideline 3.1) .It provides
option for perception as students can view the video as often as they want and stop or rewind it
if needed for better comprehensible input (UDL, guideline 1). It offers alternatives for visual and
auditory information (you can hear or/and see). The video is the second step of the activity, so
the students would have had the opportunity to smell and touch the fruits during the
demonstration at home. With the video, the students can apply the knowledge learned at
home. In conjunction with the demonstration, students will use two written representation
(recipes).
The standards addressed in this activity are comparison (measurement) and difference in
ingredients (fruits existing in France and not USA), connection to other salads such as seafood
salad, connect to other discipline (science and connect home and classroom spaces with the
video or picture to visualize at home. Culture is also represented by the use of French
Vocabulary. &….). The communication are interpersonal and interpretative with the students’
collaboration in making the video. The comparison goals are to compare the French and
American measurement system
4. The educational affordances of this resources are the visual and hearing aspects. In this era of
technology and internet, the students will find it easy to view the video (in French) at his own
pace. It is almost effortless and it’s easier to figure out the meaning of the spoken world as it is
associated with a clue: the image, not like the written word. It provides learning in context. It is
also provides students with disabilities (visual, hearing, language (guideline 2.4)) a better access
to the content by allowing for more freedom in viewing the video (when interested and ready to
learn) and for manipulating that same video (forward, rewind, increase/decrease sounds…)
guideline 2.5.
The constraints of this resource is that it needs a computer or some sort of technology to be
viewed.
II. Art activity: creating a still life using paint
1. Description of the resource:
This activity involve the use of art. The students will learned about French vocabulary for fruits
by making an acrylic painting of fruits, a still life.
Students will paint fruits for our fruit salad. They will use acrylic paint for that project. The
material provided is: paint brushes or sponges, assorted acrylic paint colors, an acrylic paper
canvas, a palette, a plastic cup with water and some paper towels.
Step 1: I will teach them to use a grid to draw their fruits. Students will either bring pictures of
fruits from home or will cut them from cooking magazines. An option will be provided of not
using the grid. If a students has difficulties, he/she will have the option to paint freely as long as
it focus on the theme of fruits. If the students wish to paint more realistically they can use the
grid, or paint in a more abstract manner.
Step: the students will paint the fruits on the acrylic paper. Then cut the shapes of each fruit and
label it on the using the target language. Students will get into groups and correct each other.
The students will then cut the painted fruits in pieces and create that way a fruit salad.
2. This resource allows for increase imagination, freedom, interest, surprise, creativity, motivation.
It engages the students not only artistically but also linguistically. It also connects the body with
the mind, the physical with the intellectual. It provides an excellent vehicle for communication
and allow the hidden to be visible.
3. It support students learning in my field of teaching (French) by creating interest and motivation.
A taste for novelty and a desire for creation. The language is not foreign anymore but rather a
compliment to the communicative activity of painting. The words is not as important anymore
because a visual structure is present for extra comprehensible input and output.
4. The educational affordances are its promotion of a communication other than textual.
Metaphors and ideas can be described in a very easy way.
III. DANCE; THE CLASSROOM BECOMES THE FRUITS SALAD
( ART Alive Virtual Dance Studio (http://www.artsalive.ca/en/dan/dance)
1. This website will allow you to test your knowledge of dance composition” by putting together
beginning, middle and end sequences of dance movement to create your own composition”.
It is free and very easy to use. The dances are ballet, modern dance for men and modern dance for
women. To create a dance, just grab the clip from the composition library, down to your own
composition timeline. Add a start, a middle and an end to your composition. Voila! Just select a music
for the background and watch your creation.
2. This resource is virtual and can be accessed everywhere with a technological devices (computer,
tablets, iPhone…). It develops your music skills and increase your confidence in being more
creative. It introduces a new subject: dance composition
3. It supports students learning in my field by opening door to other subjects. Music and dance are
an international language and French can be used for that activity. Students can create their
own musical podcast, their own dance and match the two to create a show.
4. The educational affordances of this resources are that it can only be accessed with a
technological device. So it limits its use for people that don’t have the resources to access it.
Another limitation is that it doesn’t allow you to post your own music.
IV CREATING A RECIPE BOOK USING Book builder (
http://bookbuilder.cast.org/)
1. This website allows you to “create, share, publish, and read digital books that engage and
support diverse learners according to their needs, interests and skills”.
You can read, comment and rate other users’ books and create your own book as well. It’s free
and you just need a login username, password and an email address.
2. It enables students to create books in epub format, which can be exported to IBooks and
therefore shared with other people. Students can add images, audio files, videos and also write
text.
3. It supports student learning by allowing students to complete tasks that respect every level of
the new and revised Bloom’s Taxonomy. It allows the students to combine multiple ways of
learning: textual, visual, manipulative…In Foreign languages, it can be used to create French
recipes, stories, how to…
4.
The educational affordances of this resources are that it is virtual and can be accessed from
everywhere. It also provides the advantage of an epub document where all information will
preserved and available for readers to access when the final product is available. It’s different
from a pdf file, which is more limited
The constraint is that it is virtual, so a technological device is needed.
V CRAFT: CREATING COLLAGE FOR A FOOD PYRAMID
1. This resources uses manipulative s and critical thinking to build a French food pyramid. The
material used is pictures of fruits from old cooking or health magazines, glue, scissors, pencil
for labeling French words on food pyramids (French fruits), one blank template of food
pyramid for gluing the cut out from magazine and one American one showing the different
food groups. And compare with the American version.
2. The purpose of this activity is to guess where the fruits will be located in the French
pyramid. It allows the students to use another vehicle of expression and the teacher another
mean of representation. It is tactile, visual and textual.
3. It supports learning for my field of teaching by allowing the students to work with an image
and allocate the right word corresponding to that image. It is another support for the
foreign words. It creates interest in the learning process as well.
4. The educational affordance for that resource are its “stress free” aspect. Cutting and
matching seem almost like a game. It uses manipulative and visual skills. It can be done
everywhere and it is relatively cheap. The constraint of this activity is that it is limited in
really helping the students with manipulative and visual preferences and less the hearing
impaired students.
Reflection
With resources such as the ones mentioned above, I will have additional tools to teach
outrageously and provide more access to learning opportunities to a wider range of students.
The video option from Animoto will enable me to create many activities. For example, the
creation of a video for a cooking show will allow the students to visualize the lesson at home,
and learn at their own pace. With this technology, I will be able to demonstrate in the classroom
how to compare measurement and also teach students about French vocabulary (fruit).The live
presentation will target a diversity of students, including the hearing impaired ones. They will
have the opportunity to touch and smell the fruits before cutting them and learn about their
names in French .I will make sure to choose fruits that are fragrant to increase comprehensible
input and allow my students with limited perceptive ability to benefits from the activity. The
students will be provided with two fruits salad recipes. One from a French website and the
other one from an American one. The goal is to teach students differences in measurement for
the same fruit salad. I will then make a video using Animoto to demonstrate “how to make une
salade de fruits”. The video can either be saved on a CD or posted on the classroom website:
Edline. The students can look at it and make their own fruit salad at home (UDL 3.3). Their
homework assignment is to go the Animoto, prepare a fruit salad at home, record it and present
it to the class in the target language or in English, depending on the timing of the lesson. This
activity will develop their critical thinking by teaching them to research data (measurement
here) for the same fact ( salade de fruits here). The UDL addressed in this activity are taste,
touch, hearing, visual and smell. As mentioned, there is an alternative activity for hearing
impaired students which touching and manipulating the fruits at the demonstration. This
activity provides options for perception (guideline 1 with vision: video and live presentation of
the activity/demonstration; text: copies of recipe from internet which can be adjusted in size
and format to reach the visually impaired; touch: The students will have the opportunity to
manipulate the fruits and any materials needed for the recipe. The students with hearing, visual
impairments can that way sense the “objects”, the “steps” necessary for the ultimate goal
(salade de fruits). Hearing will be provided through my voice (explanations of the recipe), the
students’ voices and the students participating and asking questions during the recording of the
session in the classroom. The video can be viewed at the students’ own convenience at home.
Another resource I found interesting is the painting activity. It addresses many UDL, in
particular the visual one. While the painting is drying, the students can use discuss (UDL 2.5/
oral and hearing). A choice is given to use a paint brush or a sponge, painting an abstract or a
realistic fruit. The abstract method will give more confidence and option for some students.
The dance activity will appeal to all learners for its visual, hearing, and gesture aspects (UDL
guideline 1). It includes music (beats and rhythm), touch and smell through the touching and
smelling of real fruits. It will also teach about diversity through metaphor. We are all different in
color, shape and size (like the fruits) but we all represent the whole (the classroom/fruit salad).
If we work together, the result will be wonderful: a tasty salad or a wonderful melody. It is a
metaphor that can teach students to connect ideas, and relate abstraction with concrete (UDL
3.4).
The book activity gives options for reception (role play, textual (book), manipulative (craft with
chef hat), hearing and seeing (video of French market and collaborative activity). Guideline 3 is
represented with the activation of background knowledge about colors and numbers, places
(like fast food restaurant.
The collage activity allows the students to have options for perception as well. It is visual with
the cutting and pasting, textual with labeling, oral with discussion). It provides elimination of
language barriers with the elimination of the word. The pasting and matching is enough to
convey the meaning.
I will definitely use these resources in my classroom and explore other ways to make my
teaching more enjoyable, one that will create interest and motivation and an eager to learn.