Unit: Bon Apetit

Throughout her career as a high school French teacher, Crystal primarily taught in French and encouraged students to only use French in their speaking and writing. She held a "narrow" view about translanguaging, fearing that allowing students to use multiple languages would hinder their learning of French. Consequently, Crystal did not allow students to engage in translanguaging while in her classroom.

However, with the help of other teachers in Project LEARN, Crystal began to brave up and stretch how she approached languaging in her French 1 classroom. Throughout her focal unit, "Plats du monde Francophone," Crystal encouraged students to use languaging critically and Intentionally. Students now had the opportunity to read instructions in a language(s) of their choosing and could pronounce words in English or Spanish. Furthermore, she created more opportunities for students to collaborate with one another to co-construct their knowledge, which served to build a strong sense of comunidad and confianza in the classroom.

This unit of study focuses on comparing food quality and shopping habits between French and other cultures and students' familial or home countries. Students learned how the experience of purchasing groceries differs based on location and culture. A variety of activities and assignments for this unit are presented below, including Crystal's instructional slides and completed student work.

Plats du monde Francophone Instructional Slides

Setting the Stage: A Comparison of Food Markets in France, Mexico, and the U.S.

Assessment: Qualité de Nourriture 

The culminating assessment for this unit surrounded qualité de nourriture (food freshness) in students' familial or home countries. A core component of this assessment involved students interviewing family members about food freshness and availability in their home countries. In doing so, students' family members were positioned as expert knowledge holders and producers. Moreover, students were given a crucial and creative opportunity to leverage their full linguistic repertoires as they interviewed their family members to complete this assignment. Though students were given guiding questions to assist them in their interviews, many of them became so engrossed in their interviews that they chose to ask additional questions not included on the guide. 

As seen in the examples below, students exercised their plurilingualism to conduct their interviews and take notes on what was shared.  The end result was high levels of student engagement and a unique opportunity for students to connect with family members, such as their parents, on a deeper level.

Final Product and Activity: Gallery Walk 

After interviewing their family members, students created a poster that compared and contrasted their current food habits with the food habits of their family members when they were their age. 

After students completed their posters, they participated in a classroom gallery walk. Each poster was anonymously displayed around the room, and students were given guiding questions in French, English, and Spanish. These questions asked students to use their full linguistic repertoire and to employ their metalinguistic awareness to record similarities, differences, and new things they learned about their classmates' work. Students expressed intrigue and appreciation for their classmates' backgrounds, resulting in a fruitful class discussion afterwards.