The first two weeks of school are going to look a little different for me this year.  Our school is changing the master schedule which had a domino effect on our program.  Previously our program was level one over 7th & 8th grade.  It was one of their core classes that they had every day for 50 minutes.  Students had World Language in 6th grade as part of their UA, where they had the opportunity to try French and Spanish before choosing one for 7th grade. 4th and 5th graders may have World Language as a UA, depending on the year.  For this upcoming year, students will have French or Spanish (level one) every other day for 45 minutes over 6th, 7th and 8th grades and 4th & 5th grade will have World Language as part of their UA.  

There will be a few years as we transition and roll out the new/redone curriculum.  I will need to see the impact the schedule change has on retention and acquisition, and how I may need to further modify the curriculum.   

All of this to say… my first two weeks will be about what I typically would do in the first week of school.  So instead I am going to discuss my plan for the first month.  For this year, I will be using the same lessons with my 6th and 7th grades with some modifications.   

6th/7th grade plans:

I like to start them off slow but also diving right into the language from the first day.  I want them to leave the first day feel confident and that they understood. I have the benefit of the incoming students having had me for UA, the 6th grade one year while in 4th grade and the 7th graders for UA the past two years.  This will help move them along a little bit quicker.

Day one:

We will start with what they will need for class (journal, folder, portfolio folder, pencil, chromebook) so they will be prepared with the materials before the following week, expectations, handing out weekly packets (this is a class job, more on those later) and an explanation of the new schedule. Then we will do a reading about classes looking for cognates. 

This year I am trying to purposefully incorporate more speaking, specifically in basic conversation.  Fuego Rapido is a technique one of my Spanish colleagues at the High School uses so I am going to adopt it as well.  When they leave the first day I want them to be able to say hello and introduce themselves.  We will spend a short amount of time on the rapid fire of just bonjour and je m’appelle.  

I then have a short introduction lesson about myself, we will write a summary in our packets, read our summary, have a very short quiz, and then it will be time to collect the packets and pack up.  

This is a lot for the first day but I like to get into the structure of the class right away to set expectations.  I am concerned if there will be enough time for the about the teacher lesson.  We have shorter class time and I didn’t do Fuego Rapido in the past.  If it seems like we will be short on time I plan to modify and write just a couple of sentences on our names. 

Day Two:

 We will expand the Fuego Rapido and I will ask “What is his/her name” and our lesson will be about the class and create class community.  

Day Three:

We will practice our numbers and play a short game after our reading.  This will leave time for some classroom set up: labeling folders, where they go, picking lockers, etc. I think there will be some time for TPR (Total Physical Response) to practice procedures for getting materials from their lockers.

Day Four:

Expand on numbers and expand TPR with more classroom materials and places in the classroom. I will also probably bring in some Fuego Rapido question review on day three and four but I am not expanding on it. 

Day Five:

Day five is where I am really starting to get into the meat of my first unit with emotions and days of the week.  Our new fuego rapido question will be “ça va?” and I will model “ça va bien, ça va, and ça va mal”.  I will probably start with the fuego rapido and then expand on it to specific emotions.  

My students will have already been exposed to a lot of this vocabulary and I am crossing my fingers they remember.  Our reading will be on emotions and then I will talk about how I feel on days of the week and ask them about how they feel. 

Day Six:

We will create the calendar of the month, label the days of the week, count the numbers and put any important events on the calendar for the week (games, activities, etc)

Day Seven:

We will set up our birthdays on the class calendar so we can celebrate when they come around.  I am also planning on having my Kid Grid set up early this year so we can add the birthdays to it immediately.  I am going to give a student a job of reminding us of upcoming birthdays. Our Fuego Rapido question is going to be “when is your birthday”? I will definitely have a supporting slide for this question. 

Day Eight - Eleven:

Today we will be discussing the calendar, important events of the day/week and the weather today.  Students learned weather in UA so I have a secondary plan of introduction to Second Language Acquisition but I am thinking I may need to wait on this lesson, or push weather until October which is probably what I will do.  I like to have learned about Second Language Acquisition and have them do a mini project before Open House so they can show their parents and parents can learn why our class looks different from a language class they may remember. 

My focus for the remaining days will be the lesson on how humans acquire language and how our class will mimic that in some ways. Their project will show in English the various levels of proficiency (Novice Low - Intermediate High) to help them set some realistic expectations for their growth over the year and understand their progress.

8th grade plans:

For my 8th grade a lot of the first couple weeks is a review and expansion on what they already know.  

Day one:

Today’s focus will mostly be on the Fuego Rapido questions “hello, what’s your name, how old are you”, questions we did last year so it will be good review and great practice speaking.  I also want to work with them more on speaking this year.  We will review numbers to 10 and play a short game. We will set up the calendar for September. I think our writing focus will be on the calendar for today.  

Day two:

We will focus on the Fuego Rapido questions about birthdays and add our birthdays to a new kid grid. We will update our calendar with any important dates and events. We will review numbers 0-20 and play a game.

Day three:

Today will be a review of everything from last year in my poster review activity.  They will brainstorm all they remember by category.  For a full explanation see this post.

Day four: 

We will review all of the fuego Rapido questions thus far as well as some others they should remember by filling out a graphic organizer note sheet. This notesheet will help to review many possible answers to the common questions and support them to have conversations on their own. I think I will have them have a short conversation with a partner and then we will write about the information they learned. 

Day five:

Students will have conversations with a partner speed dating style to practice these questions.  I will then do classroom TPR with objects and actions in the classroom.  We will write about these actions “Sally walked to the door.  Bill looked for his journal” etc. 

Day six:

I want to review classes, likes and introduce time (Great way to review numbers!) so today we will discuss the calendar - when they have classes and what time they have classes.  Do they like the classes?  Our writing will focus on this discussion: “Sally has science at 9:30.  Sally loves science class.  Sally feels happy in science class”. 

Day seven:

We will do some reading, have some review of the Fuego rapido questions and then right now I am planning an info gap activity using classes and time.  They have a partial schedule and have to ask the other student what a class is.  I don’t have this activity prepared yet so this may change. 

Day eight-nine:

I am planning a quiz on the reviewed materials to see how they have been doing and so I have a grade in the grade book before we start our novel.  I haven’t decided the format so I left a couple of class days just in case.

Day ten:

Today we are starting our novel of the year: Brandon Brown wants a dog.  I love reading this book.  I love how the kids feel confident having read a chapter book in French and it is such a silly story. I am starting it a little earlier than normal.  We ended 7th grade on stories so starting 8th grade with a novel makes sense.  I also had to make some serious cuts and rearrangements for the new schedule but I wanted to make sure we had time for this novel. 

So that’s it!  That’s my first month of school plan for my level one classes.  I will do another post on my lessons for my UA classes once I have a better idea of how the schedule will look for UA this year.  

I wish you a happy back to school and I hope your first month is filled with fun, smiles and lots of coffee!