InTASC STANDARD Seven: Planning for instruction: The teacher plans instruction that

supports every student in meeting rigorous learning goal by drawing upon knowledge of content

area, curriculum, cross-disciplinary skills, and pedagogy, as well as knowledge of learners and

the community context.

Name of Artifact: FRE 692 Les Plans

Course: FRE 692 Special Problems

Date: 8 May 2017

ACTFL Standards Addressed: Interpretive Communication: Learners understand, interpret, and

analyze what is heard, read, or viewed on a variety of topics.

Rationale:

The French Revolution is an important event in world history. Its impact is evident in

many places throughout the world. This makes it a perfect topic for content based instruction.

Content based instruction allows students to continue acquiring language while focusing on a

subject other than the language (Shrum & Glisan, 2015). Content based instruction lends itself

well to discourse length texts. This allows students to compare and contrast language features

that rely on context such as the pass compos and the imparfait (Katz & Blyth, 2007). These

features are difficult to observe in shorter texts. In this lesson, students compare the French

national anthem, La Marseillaise, with the American national anthem, The Star Spangled

Banner. The lesson contains multiple levels of instruction in order to allow the students

multiple opportunities to learn the material. This lesson comes late in a unit about the French

Revolution. The students will summarize what they already know about the French Revolution

orally in class prior to working with La Marseillaise. This will reinforce the content the

students already know as well as give the students an opportunity to use the target language in a
meaningful context that is not about language analysis. When the students listen to La

Marseillaise for the first time, they are not listening for comprehension. While the teacher will

ask if there were any words that the students understood, the teacher will also ask about tone and

imagery in the music independent of the words. Then, the teacher will distribute copies of the

words for both the French and American national anthems. The teacher will ask the students to

compare and contrast the two songs in groups of three. This allows more students to participate

in the discussion. It also affords the teacher the opportunity to assess of what individual students

are capable as the teacher circulates the room and listens to the group discussions. The teacher

can determine what vocabulary and grammar concepts have been acquired and which ones may

need to be retaught. This reteaching may occur implicitly or explicitly depending on the needs

of the students. The teacher may wish to work with a text that contains many examples of the

item that needs reinforcing and ask questions to guide the students to notice the features that are

being reinforced in order to allow the students to rediscover the concepts for themselves in order

to make the concept more salient (Brown, 2014).

References

Brown, H. D. (2014). Principles of language learning and teaching A course in second language

acquisition (6th ed.). White Plains, NY: Pearson.

Katz, S. L., & Blyth, C. S. (2007). Teaching French Grammar in Context. New Haven, CT: Yale

University Press.

Shrum, J. L., & Glisan, E. W. (2015). Teachers handbook (5th ed.). United States of America:

Cengage Learning.