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Session 4: Designing Lesson Plans Using 2 Interactive Technologies
For Session Four:
-Go to and save on your drive as a bookmark C.B. Putnam FL Teaching Using Internet Resources Home Page. We will use this site throughout this session.
Goal One: Plan a Large Scale Email Exchange
Description of Project: for an email exchange with one or more school groups in a region that your class is studying, you and colleagues are to develop a year-long project that will include email exchanges between one or more schools.
As part of the year-long exchange effort, you have agreed that all your FL classes will participate in some way during the year.
You have decided to begin with a class-to-class endeavor, (NOT an individual-to-individual keypal project for now) since this is the first exchange for you and your students. At this point, you are not clear how often and for which specific activities your individual classes will be involved. However, you have agreed that the interaction will include the following:
a Project Exchange via "Our Group's' Web Page by groups of students
-groups of students from participating schools publishing on-line for one another, as the intended audience, and e-mailing or mailing files would share:
-examples of what they are learning in different subjects, with links to related educational activities
-surveys of favorite jokes/riddles/songs/comfort foods/
-summaries and reviews of favorite books, articles or movies;
-a debate forum on selected issues;
-a "scholastic help" section for FL and other subject-related research (to provide needed databases) or to help with queries on a given topic;
-a creative writing art, and arts corner for collaborative projects for the pleasue of sharing;
-an online Book Club: pick a book for both exchange groups to read and discuss online.
-a FL Fun Corner, identifying cool and fun L1 and L2 sites On-Line for non-native speakers and more.
Initiating E-mail Exchanges:
Once you envision a broad exchange, the suggestions above will help you dream up more plans to bring to life with your students. The challenge is in the details, hopwever, in how we launch our projects. Assuming that this is a group's first foray into email exchanges, let's focus on ways we might begin with students new to email.
Goal 1:How to introduce your classes to the notion of class exchanges on the Internet:
-Go to Putnam's "Before Going On-Line: All About Me Practice" Activities for first time users and read for your own use. Discuss the value of reading printed sketches from on-line sources and the usefulness of Pre-Online activities for new technology users.
-Go to Putnam's We all love our Pets (coming soon)and read for your own use. (This activity has students pull up specific web sites devoted to animals, with suggested activities to stimulate FL discussion of pets for all Fl levels.)
-go to On-line sites to copy and adapt for your own use. Read for later adaptation "Your Ideal School" project by teachers from the superb UK Schools On-Line Project. Study their ideas and plans (including useful URLs from French and UK schools) on the subject of "Your ideal School".
-go to Putnam's General Resources and scroll down to read Fast Food menu. Set up a standard format from the choices at the Fast Food site, then return to the UK site to select topics and activities. Begin to plan lessons for an on-line exchange. Be sure to plan proficiency activities for the Web Page On-Line Magazine, in addition to more discrete skill practice for each level you teach.
-go to Putnam's General Resources (in any language site) and click on Fast Food Activities Menu for projects. Select any site and use the format found there as a guide to an email project of your choosing. Discuss and justify using the standard format which includes : a description of activities; target groups; language; subject area or connection; level of technical difficulty; software needed ; other reqs; start and finish of project; frequency of exchange; maximum number of groups; and other comments.
-go to Putnam's Projects Page and to On-line Magazines page (Cyberpresse) sources in French. List and bookmark one site of interest and begin to write up a project using a standard format. Bring back to your group for discussion. Adapt based on help from group, before using in class. Then continue developing additional on-line activities from each category above. Be sure that your over-all yearly plan has real-language projects for each class you teach.
-make an initial list of possible projects for information-exchange and for Web Page magazines. Note intermediate and end goals and specify linking or follow-up activities throughout. Specify student outcomes and adapt each for students at different levels of proficiency.
-go to Putnam's Projects page and visit poetry sites. Create a Grammar Safari activity (find a poem that makes you really picture an event or a person) using an authentic poem (see Imaginet) or excerpt from an age-appropriate on-line source but don't stop there!
Create a class book of favorite poems or excerpts, illustrated to reflect the beauty of each. Encourage students to recreate poetry from an original, as with Défi Poétique collectif which has a group imitiate Fatras by Jacques Prévert.
Create poems using Putnam's FL Form Poems Projects . Share the pattern and results with your exchange group in L1 and in the FL. Create an Foreign language stock of beautiful poems and literary excerpts to create a mood and examples of a form to share with your FL exchange group. Let your students all try their hand at translating a poem from the FL to English, then compare results.
How about Putnam's Sports Project: Rules in French. Pull up this site with a cluster of Web sites explaining in French the rules of more than a dozen sports. From the list, assign a sport to each group or individual who must then explain verbally and visually the basic rules in the FL to classmates. Once the class is familiar with a given sport, an excellent follow-up project is to check the group's knowledge with a knowledgeable exchange class. For example, read up online about soccer. Explain the key rules of the game in the FL. Make a list of questions to ask the exchange group (including vocabulary items and points about the rules). Now explain the game of baseball in English for an exchange class and compare with the French-language sites on the Web.
-go to Putnam's Pen Pals page; find Bulletin boards and forums in the FL; print a copy of the topics to have your students select their favorites for exchanges. Do the same with debate topics. Find On-Line debates in Imaginet and Accroche-toi! found at the Pen Pals page. Use in class (in your FL ) to encourage discussion of the categories to be included in your upcoming Web Page. Be sure to honor students' preferences.