Creating Personal Family Trees in French

Erica Viveros, Magnolia High School

As a high school French teacher at Magnolia High School, Erica sought to teach French through real-life scenarios so students could make connections to their everyday lives. After her involvement in Project LEARN, Erica came to view students' plurilingualism as a linguistic resource. Erica began to invite students to use their full linguistic repertoires. Building students' confianza has also allowed for the classroom comunidad to deepen, as students are now eager to participate more in class and learn from one another.

Unit: Ma Famille

Ma Famille unit focused on the ways in which culture shapes familial life and structures. Throughout this unit, Erica scaffolded numerous formative activities and assessments leading to the final project, Mon Arbre Généalogique (My Genealogy Tree). Below, you will find some of the scaffolds from this unit, as well as student work examples.

Unit Slides

In the following slides, you will find brief explanations of some of the activities Erica engaged students in throughout this unit, student work, and Erica's reflections.

Ma Famille Project

Copy of Le Chat famille

Scaffold: Le Chat

In every unit, Erica created a slideshow game for students to play with a partner to help them recognize the unit's core vocabulary. Students had the opportunity to take turns saying correctly saying and/or spelling in French. Since this unit focused on family structures, students had a fun opportunity to build and deepen their understanding of core vocabulary related to family members.

Copy Famille Viveros reading

La Familie de Mille. Viveros

As students learned and practices their core vocabulary for this unit with one another, Erica assessed students' comprehension skills by creating and assigning a short reading activity about her family members. Students read the handout on their own, and, based on their comprehension of the reading, marked true or false for the statements Erica included at the end.

To further assess students' understanding and vocabulary for different family members, students then completed a family tree for Erica's family. This activity not only assessed students' comprehension, but also gave students an additional opportunity to practice recognizing the meaning of target vocabulary in relation to Erica's family members.

Copy arbre geanologique viveros

Final project: Mon Arbre Généalogique

In the culminating project for this unit, students had to create a family tree of their own. In this assessment, students created a physical or digital presentation that introduced themselves and five other family members. Sensitive to the fact that students might not all be comfortable describing their families, Erica also encouraged students to create and include fictional or famous family members in their presentations. Though students had the flexibility to demonstrate their learning using their full linguistic repertoires, they were required to use the correct conjugations of the verb être (be) and the correct forms of the adjectives they used, based on the gender or number of who they were describing. Students were also asked to utilize their previous knowledge or -er verbs and the verb avoir (to have) to describe the things or activities each family member enjoys, their age, and ethnicities. Lastly, students were also required to include a short discussion describing unique characteristics about their family. Apart from these core requirements, students had full creative freedom to design their projects.

Below, you will find two student examples of Mon Arbre Généalogique. These examples showcase students' clear understanding and application of French to describe various family members, as well as core elements of their cultures.

Student B

Rebeca H.

Student C

Izabela P.

Language Reflection

After completing their projects, students were given an opportunity to reflect on the language(s) they used in their presentations. They critically analzed and considered their word choices, particularly within the final reflective piece about their unique family traits. In many of these reflections, students acknowledged the ways in which their plurilingualism helped them complete their projects in French, as well as similarities between languages like French and Spanish. Two student reflections are included below.

Beyond the Target Language

“Project Learn has helped me realize that my students’ use of another language other than French in the classroom is not deterring them from learning the concepts and grammar rules. . . Now, I understand that when students feel comfortable sharing and expressing themselves in their target language they eventually make an effort to stretch their linguistic repertoires and utilize the target language as well.”

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