L'Habitat Story with Level Threes

This year has been equal parts challenging and rewarding in the classroom. I made a decision early in the summer that I would take full advantage of this opportunity to throw out all the old playbooks and start from scratch.

So here we are, I have dedicated this year to teaching a curriculum that I've written and developed for all levels that focuses entirely on Black faces and voices in the French speaking world.

Here's an example of a story that we did with this particular class who is wrapping up a unit on Les Habitats, in which we studied different habitats and traditional housing among people in the AfroFrancophonie. It was fun, it was reinforcing, it was riddled with some mistakes (for example, in rewatching I'm reminded of how much I struggle with prepositions with places. Also, I told them that "partenaire" could be used to describe a domestic partner, which apparently isn't a thing).

The thing about the mistakes, though, is that, however sappy it may sound, they can just as easily be seen as opportunities to reflect and redirect. For example, in the video you can hear that we have adjusted from what we'd originally referred to as "les pygmées" of central Africa to "les Bakas," because after I did a bit more reading about them I discovered that "pygmée" is considered pejorative language now. So, when I met with them again, I just shared that new insight with them and kept it moving!

I should say, this class is a particularly advanced group who pick up on things super quickly. I feel like that is all the more reason to use comprehensible input, because we get to skip the step of learning the mechanics and just get right into using the language to discuss meaningful stuff.

Anyway, I appreciate you reading and watching. I'm very much looking forward to continuing to share, so please stay tuned!