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TitleAlien Landing
SourceCASLS Activity of the Week
Body

By Emily Minelli, Standard, Honors, and IB French Teacher at Princeton High School in Cincinnati, Ohio

Balancing input and output, and encouraging interaction, is challenging in the language acquisition classroom. Students may be hesitant to interact when they feel they lack proper command of the language; however, in order for students to authentically learn language, they must become comfortable with interaction. By listening to a stimulus and responding to it, students learn to manipulate language and apply it in unfamiliar situations. Scaffolding offers opportunities for students to gain confidence, and activities that engage the imagination allow students to practice listening, writing, and speaking in a comfortable, low-stakes environment. This activity was developed for students in French II and French II Honors.

Learning Objectives:  Students will be able to:

  • understand, and interpret spoken media in the target language
  • build upon audio interpretation in order to create new verbal and written products that include discussing body parts, physical, and personality descriptions
  • interact by asking and answering basic questions

Modes: Interpretive Listening, Presentational Writing, Presentational Speaking, Interpersonal Communication

Materials Needed:

Procedure:

Input: Listening

  1. Students enter the classroom and the teacher announces that a huge news story has occurred.
  2. Students listen to a radio broadcast (prerecorded by the teacher) that extraterrestrial life forms have been found, and that Earth is attempting to contact these aliens.
  3. The students learn that their French II class has been selected to meet the aliens for the first time!

Output: Writing

  1. In response to what they hear in the radio announcement, students create a drawing of the alien that they encountered and label its body parts.
  2. With the drawing should be a 120-word description of the physical appearance and personality characteristics of the alien.

Output: Speaking

  1. Students introduce their alien to the class in a one-minute presentation. They may have an index card with up to 5 bulleted helpful hints, but should not be allowed to read directly from their written description.

Interaction

  1. Each student must ask at least one question in the target language during the presentations (such as, “What is the name of your alien?”, “Is she nice or mean?”, or “How old is he?”)
  2. Presenters must answer questions in the target language
  3. The teacher will also ask the student one question after their presentation which they answer in the target language
Publishdate2017-04-10 02:15:01