Professional Development AP® French Language and Culture L’environnement : quels vœux pour notre planète ? Curriculum Module The College Board The College Board is a not-for-profit membership association whose mission is to connect students to college success and opportunity. Founded in 1900, the College Board is composed of more than 5,700 schools, colleges, universities and other educational organizations. Each year, the College Board serves seven million students and their parents, 23,000 high schools, and 3,800 colleges through major programs and services in college readiness, college admission, guidance, assessment, financial aid and enrollment. Among its widely recognized programs are the SAT®, the PSAT/NMSQT®, the Advanced Placement Program® (AP®), SpringBoard and Accuplacer.
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5 Deuxième étape : “Respire”. 9 Troisième étape : Formulons des vœux. 13 Quatrième étape : La Polynésie française.17 Cinquième étape : Écrivons un poème. 21 Sixième étape : Le Québec.
25 Septième étape : Sada Weinde Ndiaye. 29 Huitième étape : Faisons un exposé en PowerPoint.37 Dixième étape : Le Congrès de Grenelle. 39 Onzième étape : Ce que nous avons appris. 41 Other Summative Assessments.
53 About the Contributors.97 Introduction Geneviève Delfosse Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology Alexandria, Virginia Davara Dye Potel Solon High School Solon, Ohio In the AP® French Language and Culture Curriculum Framework, the topic of the environment functions as one of the recommended contexts for addressing the Global Challenges course theme. Moreover, this topic represents a subject of which the students in our classrooms today are all too aware. Environmental problems increasingly impact the well-being of our planet. Topics related to the environment and living “green” receive global attention.
Community and high school projects around the world have garnered student involvement in environmental activities through recycling programs, environmental clubs and other ecological activities. In this curriculum module, AP French Language and Culture students will have the opportunity to explore real-life environmental issues in several areas of the francophone world. The interdisciplinary nature of this topic will enable students to make connections with findings from their physical and social science courses. By comparing cultural practices and activating knowledge from those classes, students will broaden their world view.
This interdisciplinary topic will invite students to reflect on environmental problems, to investigate concerns about the environment in various regions of the French-speaking world, and to analyze their findings and propose their own solutions to global issues. Introduction to the Instructional Activities This module has been designed to take place over two to three weeks of instruction but includes suggestions of resources and activities (e., a final group project) that could be used to broaden its scope. It is understood that students will use the target language for all activities. Language learning activities take place in context.
The module includes a variety of authentic audio, visual, audiovisual, and print resources (literature, music, film and video, websites), and teachers may choose to do all of the activities in the module or select 1 A Curriculum Module for AP French Language and Culture the ones that are most appropriate for their students and their teaching situation. Students will use their language skills to develop proficiency in all three modes of communication (Interpersonal, Interpretive and Presentational). Many intermediate and upper-level French textbooks include a unit on the environment, and it would be logical to use this module as a supplement to that material. However, the module can also be used without the use of textbook resources.
Each section (étape) of the module has been designed for a class time of approximately 45 to 50 minutes. More About Module Resources The resources in this module were selected to accomplish several important objectives of the AP French Language and Culture curriculum: • Represent francophone areas around the world (France, Quebec, Senegal, French Polynesia), reinforcing the global importance of the French language and the global nature of environmental problems today. • Provide a wide variety of authentic materials for different types of learning activities. Students will work with songs, video clips, Web texts, visuals and literary texts, among others.
• Stimulate the interest of adolescent learners through contemporary music, video clips, online assignments, Web poetry and more. • Enable students to explore various facets of the environmental theme: specific environmental problems, programs that support the protection of the environment, items that are recycled, individual ecological efforts. • Be adaptable for use in many different types of AP classrooms, with varying levels of AP students. A few examples of these resources include: • “Respire,” an award-winning song by the French rock group Mickey 3D.
The topic of the song is the environment and its destruction. The animated video packs a visual punch, communicating its message in a format that will captivate the interest of adolescent learners. • “Sac en plastique,” a short environmental poem from an Internet site whose contributors are mostly teenagers. A commonplace plastic bag twirls and whirls through the air until, abandoned by the breeze, it is picked up and reused.
The lightness of the poetry stands in stark contrast to the gravity of the environmental problem caused by the proliferation of plastic bags. This work will inspire students to create their own environmental poetry. 2 L’environnement : quels vœux pour notre planète ? • “Cela aussi est une prière,” a literary work by the Senegalese author Sada Weïnde Ndiaye. The text transports the reader to a drought-stricken village.
What are the effects of the seven-year drought on the villagers? How do different people react to this catastrophic situation? Is there any hope left for rain? The text holds the answers. • “De l’autre côté de la vie” — a modern, challenging excerpt from the novel La guerre, by Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio, winner of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Literature. Module Assessments Language teachers assess their students formatively on a daily basis as they participate in classroom activities. There are many formative assessments included in this module, some completely informal (e., class discussion of homework) and others more elaborate (e., a series of activities in preparation for the summative assessment in Presentational Speaking).
The module incorporates the use of student grouping for many in-class activities. Students should be placed in groups by the teacher so that the groups include students with different learning preferences and linguistic abilities. Generally, it is advisable to change the groupings periodically using a variety of selection methods so that students can work with different partners. In smaller AP classes, pair work can replace group work.
Though there are no formal prerequisite skills for this module, certainly some prior knowledge of vocabulary related to the environment is helpful. In terms of grammar and syntax, familiarity with the forms and basic uses of the subjunctive mood is also helpful. Objectives of the Module The overall learning objectives of this module are related to four of the “5 C’s,” the goal areas of the Standards for Foreign Language Learning in the 21st Century. As they study this module, students will accomplish the following: • Reflect on environmental issues and share what they already know about this theme from other course work and experiences (Connections) • Use the three modes of communication extensively (Interpersonal Communication, Interpretive Communication, Presentational Communication) • Read, listen to, and view authentic materials from a variety of sources throughout the French-speaking world and make comparisons with their own culture and experiences (Cultures, Comparisons) • Progress through a variety of learning and assessment activities that will target different communication modes and learning preferences 3 Première étape : Nous savons déjà Objectives In the opening stage of the module, students will accomplish the following learning objectives: • Activate previously learned vocabulary on the theme of the environment through in-class discussion (Interpersonal Speaking) • Summarize the content of a video of a popular song (without sound) (Interpretive Viewing) All students know something about the problems concerning the environment.
A short brainstorming session will stimulate their interest. (Note: For the sake of practicality, instructions to be given by teachers to their students are written in the target language.) Part 1 • Nous allons faire une petite activité de groupe. • Prenez deux feuilles de papier-journal et trois feutres, et formez des groupes de quatre élèves. • Pendant cinq minutes, petit remue-méninges pour faire une liste des cinq problèmes les plus importants dans le monde à l’heure actuelle.
Écrivez la liste sur votre feuille. (Écrivez en grandes lettres !) • Vous posterez votre liste quand vous aurez fini. Students will then compare their lists and see that l’environnement is most likely on all the lists. If it is not, the teacher will add it to the discussion.
This will lead to the second longer activity geared toward assessing the linguistic resources students already have to discuss this topic (building on previous knowledge). 5 A Curriculum Module for AP French Language and Culture Part 2: Vocabulary (brainstorming, webbing) The students will brainstorm vocabulary that they already know and organize the words and expressions on a graphic organizer (web). The teacher will show them the web using the board, a transparency or a computer. • Discutez dans votre groupe tout le vocabulaire nécessaire pour parler d’écologie.
• Sur la deuxième feuille, organisez le vocabulaire selon le schéma que je vais vous montrer. Ajoutez des éléments au schéma de base. N’oubliez pas de mettre un article (le, la) pour les noms. • Vous aurez 15 minutes pour cette activité.
• Postez les feuilles sur le mur à la fin. Graphic organizer (web): écologie 6 L’environnement : quels vœux pour notre planète ? Variation on Part 2 (columnar organization) • Discutez dans votre groupe tout le vocabulaire nécessaire pour parler d’écologie. • Sur la deuxième feuille, faites trois colonnes, verbes, adjectifs, noms (substantifs) et essayez de mettre tout le vocabulaire que le groupe connaît dans ces colonnes : n’oubliez pas de mettre un article (le, la) pour les noms. • Vous aurez 15 minutes pour cette activité.
• Postez les feuilles sur le mur à la fin. Note: The organization of vocabulary into columns facilitates work with word families. Example: pollue, pollué(e), la pollution, le (la) pollueur (-euse), polluant Part 3 The teacher circulates and provides a vocabulary item as requested or may tell the students to wait until the end of the activity because another group might know the item and provide it. At the end of the allotted time, students again post their newsprint sheets around the classroom, and the teacher asks students to read the different items and notice the ones that only one or two groups listed.
The teacher handles any difficulties with pronunciation as the vocabulary is presented. Part 4 The teacher then asks for questions from the students using some of the student-generated vocabulary. If un tremblement de terre is on the list and there was recently a major earthquake somewhere, it would make sense to ask: Où est-ce qu’il y a eu récemment un grand tremblement de terre ?