After attending ACTFL, I was able to implement a few of the things that I learned from the conference and others on Twitter to create a mini unit on hobbies before winter break.
One of the biggest takeaways was to make sure that the unit is relevant to students and has a purpose. Instead of just having students discuss which hobbies they like and dislike, I thought we could go a little further and see what the French prefer as well as learn about la maison des jeunes et de la culture (MJC). For the summative assessments, students completed an interpretive reading and a presentational writing. Students knew the goal from the beginning of the unit, and almost all of my students surpassed my expectations.

In addition, I have been personalizing instruction for my students by offering them some choice in the learning activities that they complete, however, I have not focused on offering choice when it comes to the assessment. My colleague is always pushing me to the next level and I saw what Catherine Ousselin did with her tiered assessments and I decided to give this a try for the presentational writing portion.
I just graded their presentational writing and am so impressed that all but two of my students attempted the higher level task! I believe that the tasks that my students completed and all of the formative feedback that they received helped them be successful on the summative.
Here are a few of the activities that my students completed during this unit.
Move if…
To start the unit, I had students stand in a circle and switch spots depending on what I said. I would display an image and the vocabulary expression and then say “Move if you like to sleep,” “Move if you hate to draw,” “Move if you love to eat,” etc. I would ask some follow up questions occasionally to get students more involved.
Vocab Sort & Interview
Since my colleague and I are slowly moving away from the textbook, I had my students do a vocab sort to make the vocab more meaningful to them. They picked which hobbies they wanted to categorize on the chart. Then they wrote sentences to start practicing using it. To build off of this, students did an either or interview activity and then as a class asked me about my preferences. Finally, students wrote sentences to compare their preferences.
Q&A
At the beginning of every class, we spent a few minutes asking and answering questions about our preferences on different hobbies. At first, the questions were basic and then they were more open ended.
Guided Writing
One of the goals that my colleague and I had for this unit was to get students to justify their opinion. To help them, I created a guided writing activity where it was very structured to begin with and then was more open ended. The last part was questions that they had to answer and I was surprised at how many did NOT justify their opinion. I was able to give them quick feedback and remind them that they should justify their opinion as often as possible. I think that after they saw their feedback, they realized that they should show off as much as possible and that they actually CAN justify their opinion.
Practice Writing
Students also did a practice writing towards the end of the unit to see what they could actually do. I leveled the practice writing, but had them do both parts. They reflected on the activity and I was able to meet with them individually if they had concerns or major mistakes. I gave every student feedback on their work and could tell that they were prepared for the summative assessment.
Writing Brainstorm
To reduce test anxiety, my colleague and I had our students complete a brainstorm sheet where students used images of hobbies and categorized them according to their preference.

Resources From Other Teachers
I am also so thankful to the other teachers who have shared their resources. I used a couple of infographics and activities from Madame Shepard and Madame Blouwolff. Madame Blouwolff has a pyramid activity which my students really enjoyed.