Course: Core French

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Core French

This course provides opportunities for students to communicate and interact in French with increasing independence, with a focus on familiar topics related to their daily lives. Students will develop their skills in listening, speaking, reading, and writing by using language learning strategies introduced in the elementary Core French program, and will apply creative and critical thinking skills in various ways. They will also enhance their understanding and appreciation of diverse French-speaking communities, and will develop skills necessary for lifelong language learning.

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  • Department: French
  • Course Developer: The Educators Academy
  • Development Date:
  • Revision Date: 2014
  • Course Title: Core French
  • Course Reviser: The Educators Academy
  • Grade: Grade 9
  • Course Type: Academic
  • Ministry Course Code: FSF1D
  • Credit Value: 01
  • Prerequisite: Minimum of 600 hours of French instruction, or equivalent
  • Ministry Curriculum Policy Document: The Ontario Curriculum, grades 9 and 10, 2014 (Revised)

Overall Curriculum Expectations

Listening

    i. Listening to Understand: determine meaning in a variety of authentic and adapted oral French texts, using a range of listening strategies; ii. Listening to Interact: interpret messages accurately while interacting in French for a variety of purposes and with diverse audiences; iii. Intercultural Understanding: demonstrate an understanding of information in oral French texts about aspects of culture in diverse French-speaking communities and other communities around the world, and of French sociolinguistic conventions used in a variety of situations and communities.

Speaking

    i. Speaking to Communicate: communicate information and ideas orally in French, using a variety of speaking strategies, appropriate language structures, and language appropriate to the purpose and audience; ii. Speaking to Interact: participate in spoken interactions in French for a variety of purposes and with diverse audiences; iii. Intercultural Understanding: in their spoken communications, demonstrate an awareness of aspects of culture in diverse French-speaking communities and other communities around the world, and of the appropriate use of French sociolinguistic conventions in a variety of situations.

Reading

    i. Reading Comprehension: determine meaning in a variety of authentic and adapted French texts, using a range of reading comprehension strategies; ii. Purpose, Form, and Style: identify the purpose(s), characteristics, and aspects of style of a variety of authentic and adapted text forms in French, including fictional, informational, graphic, and media forms; iii. Intercultural Understanding: demonstrate an understanding of information in French texts about aspects of culture in diverse French-speaking communities and other communities around the world, and of French sociolinguistic conventions used in a variety of situations and communities.

Writing

    i. Purpose, Audience, and Form: write French texts for different purposes and audiences, using a variety of forms and knowledge of language structures and conventions of written French appropriate for this level; ii. The Writing Process: use the stages of the writing process – including pre-writing, producing drafts, revising, editing, and publishing – to develop and organize content, clarify ideas and expression, correct errors, and present their work effectively; iii. Intercultural Understanding: in their written work, demonstrate an awareness of aspects of culture in diverse French-speaking communities and other communities around the world, and of the appropriate use of French sociolinguistic conventions in a variety of situations.

Unit Outline

# Unit Approx. Time
1 Les contes de fées 27 Hours
2 C'est Moi! 27 Hours
3 Les films 27 Hours
4 La saga du monde vers 27 Hours
5 Final Examination 2 Hours
Total 110 Hours

Unit Description

Unit 1: Les contes de fées

An introductory unit, students will read, watch and listen to several fairy tales. They will participate in discussions, debates with one another, and reflect upon the stories studied.

Unit 2: C'est Moi!

In this unit, students will share information about themselves, as well as a friend. Using qualifying adjectives, they will write descriptive paragraphs. Reflexive verbs are studied, and the students will create a Facebook page for a celebrity.

Unit 3: Les films

Students will learn about and discuss different movie genres. Students will delve into the horror genre, and create a dialogue between two characters. The passé composé of regular and irregular verbs, personal, direct and indirect object pronouns, as well as the pronouns y and en are studied, in order for students to create a proper email message.

Unit 4: La saga du monde vers

After learning the future simple, students will participate in an online graphic novel study. They will engage in discussions about the story and its characters, and they will maintain a comprehension and reflection journal.

Program Considerations

Assessment and Evaluation

The primary purpose of assessment and evaluation is to improve student learning. Information gathered through assessment helps teachers to determine students' strengths and weaknesses in their achievement of the curriculum expectations in each course. This information also serves to guide teachers in adapting curriculum and instructional approaches to students' needs and in assessing the overall effectiveness of programs and classroom practices.

The Educators Academy's theory of assessment and evaluation follows the Ministry of Education's Growing Success document, and we follow it because it is beneficial to the students. Our teachers design assessment in such a way as to make it possible to gather and show evidence of learning in a variety of ways to gradually release responsibility to the students, and to give multiple and varied opportunities to reflect on learning and receive detailed feedback.

Growing Success articulates the vision the Ministry has for the purpose and structure of assessment and evaluation techniques. There are seven fundamental principles that ensure best practices and procedures of assessment and evaluation by The Educators Academy teachers. The Educators Academy's assessments and evaluations are,
  •   are fair, transparent, and equitable for all students;
  •   support all students, including those with special education needs, those who are learning the language of instruction (English or French), and those who are First Nation, Métis, or Inuit;
  •   are carefully planned to relate to the curriculum expectations and learning goals and, as much as possible, to the interests, learning styles and preferences, needs, and experiences of all students;
  •   are communicated clearly to students and parents at the beginning of the school year or course and at other appropriate points throughout the school year or course;
  •   are ongoing, varied in nature, and administered over a period of time to provide multiple opportunities for students to demonstrate the full range of their learning;
  •   provide ongoing descriptive feedback that is clear, specific, meaningful, and timely to support improved learning and achievement;
  •   develop students' self-assessment skills to enable them to assess their own learning, set specific goals, and plan next steps for their learning.

Assessment is the process of gathering information that accurately reflects how well a student is achieving the curriculum expectations in a course. As essential steps in assessment for learning and as learning, The Educators Academy teachers believe on:
  •   plan assessment concurrently and integrate it seamlessly with instruction;
  •   share learning goals and success criteria with students at the outset of learning to ensure that students and teachers have a common and shared understanding of these goals and criteria as learning progresses;
  •   gather information about student learning before, during, and at or near the end of a period of instruction, using a variety of assessment strategies and tools;
  •   use assessment to inform instruction, guide next steps, and help students monitor their progress towards achieving their learning goals;
  •   analyse and interpret evidence of learning;
  •   give and receive specific and timely descriptive feedback about student learning;
  •   help students to develop skills of peer assessment and self-assessment.

Evaluation refers to the process of judging the quality of student learning on the basis of established performance standards and assigning a value to represent that quality. The Educators Academy Teachers use their professional judgement to determine which specific expectations should be used to evaluate achievement of the overall expectations, and which ones will be accounted for in instruction and assessment but not necessarily evaluated.

Assessment Strands:

The Educators Academy will ensure that student work is assessed and/or evaluated in a balanced manner with respect to the four categories, and that achievement of particular expectations is considered within the appropriate categories.
Knowledge and Understanding (K/U)
Thinking and Inquiry (T/I)
Communication (C)
Application (A)

Evaluation and Reporting of Students' Achievements by Report Cards

Student achievement is communicated formally to students and parents by means of the Provincial Report Card. The report card provides a record of the student's achievement of the curriculum expectations in every course, at particular points in the school year or semester, in the form of a percentage grade. Report cards are issued upon completion of the course. Each report card will focus on related aspects of student achievement. The percentage grade will represent the quality of the student's overall achievement of the expectations for the course and will reflect the corresponding level of achievement. The Educators Academy will record a final grade for every course, and a credit is granted for the course in which the student's grade is 50% or higher.
  •   Seventy per cent of the grade will be based on evaluations conducted throughout the course. This portion of the grade should reflect the student's most consistent level of achievement throughout the course, although special consideration should be given to more recent evidence of achievement.
  •   Thirty per cent of the grade will be based on a final evaluation in the form of an examination, performance, essay, and/or other method of evaluation suitable to the course content and administered towards the end of the course.

Term work will account 70% of the course work
Final Exam would be a value of 30%

Final Assessment and Evaluation = 100%

The teacher will also provide written comments concerning the student's strengths, areas for improvement, and next steps (E–Excellent, G–Good, S–Satisfactory, N–Needs Improvement). The report card will indicate whether an OSSD credit has been earned or not. Upon completion of a course, The Educators Academy will send a copy of the report card back to the student's home school where the course will be added to the ongoing list of courses on the student's Ontario Student Transcript. The report card will also be sent to the student's home address for parents' communication.

Evaluation Instruments/ Strategies

RubricsObservation
ChecklistProject Work
PeerInterviewing
SelfResearching
GroupConferencing

Teaching & Learning Strategies

Students will be involved in a variety of reading, writing, listening and speaking activities. The development of oral communication skills provides the foundation for students to read and write effectively. Students will have opportunities both to listen and to speak French. Vocabulary which is relevant to the unit's work is introduced at the beginning of a unit. The reading activities will help students to build vocabulary, and to develop communication skills. Students will read a variety of written texts which will assist them in learning sentence structure.