French, Spanish, and Italian City Unit Lesson Planning
If you teach French, Spanish, or Italian, chances are your curriculum includes a unit on the city—and for good reason! This theme is packed with practical, real-world vocabulary that helps students navigate conversations about where they go, what they do, and how they get around town.
But let’s be real… just handing students a vocabulary list or grammar tutorial isn’t an effective way to help them learn. To make the vocabulary and grammar from this unit truly stick, you need resources that are engaging, interactive, and meaningful. After all, when students see the direct connection between what they’re learning and the real world, their motivation soars!
In this post, I’ll share strategies for planning an unforgettable City Unit for your beginner-level language classes. Whether you’re looking for ready-to-use activities, worksheets, or assessments, I’ve got you covered! You’ll find all the materials I reference in my TpT shop—just click on the thumbnails below to explore.
Let’s dive in and make this unit one your students will love!
I’m also including a SPECIAL CITY UNIT FREEBIE toward the end of this post! Continue reading to grab your freebie!
French, Spanish, and Italian City Unit Lesson Plan Ideas: Let’s start with Pacing
The first thing you need to do is to determine how much time you want to devote to this unit. This depends on a host of factors, including: How long are your periods/blocks? What level are your students, and what are the particular learning strengths and weaknesses of your class? Have students studied a language before?
For me and my curriculum, we spend an entire marking period (roughly 9 weeks) on the City Unit, but of course you could condense if you have less time to work with.
Weeks #1-5 - City Unit Vocabulary & Grammar: Students will learn how to talk about the different places in the city, use the verb to go as well as appropriate prepositions and articles to say to the. Students will also learn the prepositions of place to describe where places are located (e.g., next to, in front of, far from, near to, etc.), and adverbs of frequency & sequence to describe how often they go to certain places (always, often, rarely, never, etc.), and the order in which they complete errands in the city (first, next, after, finally, etc.). Importantly, students will also learn means of transportation to describe how they get around the city, and they will be able to give and ask for directions in the city.
Depending on timing constraints, I find that spending around two weeks on places vocabulary, to go, and how to say “to the…” works for me. I’ll then spend a week doing prepositions of place and adverbs, a week doing means of transportation vocab, and then my final “instructional” week on how to give and ask for directions in the city.
Weeks #6-7 - Proficiency-Oriented Activities & Task Cards: Students will incorporate the vocabulary and grammar concepts they have been studying in paired and whole-class interpersonal speaking activities, writing activities, and listening/reading tasks. Students will answer relevant and interesting questions related to the theme of the city through a task card activity (can be done orally or in writing).
Weeks #8-9 - My Ideal City Project: This is an exciting project/presentation in which students design a fictitious city, write a description about it about it, and deliver an oral presentation to their classmates. This project will provide your students with the opportunity to demonstrate how much progress they have made in developing their presentational speaking and writing skills!
Instructional Materials: How will my students learn new vocabulary?
I love giving students a Vocabulary List packed with essential words and expressions in the target language. To make it interactive, they use WordReference or their knowledge of cognates to translate each term into English, turning it into a personalized study tool. This list stays in their binders as a handy reference for class and review. To reinforce learning, students get time to practice with Vocabulary Flashcards, making memorization more engaging. When it comes to grammar and verbs, Grammar & Verb Tutorials break down key concepts in a clear, concise way, helping students use the language more accurately and confidently within the target theme.
It’s helpful to spend some time practicing pronunciation with students. There’s nothing wrong with following the traditional method of “Repeat after me.” Say the target vocabulary out loud and have students repeat after you in unison. Level it up a bit by having students work in pairs, each taking turns saying an expression in the target language and having their partner translate it into English.
Pro Tip: I like to circulate during this phase of instruction and provide students with on-the-spot corrective feedback to help them improve their pronunciation.
You could also create a Quizlet set with the target vocabulary. What I like about Quizlet is that each flashcard has a speaker icon that students can click on to hear the word or expression pronounced out loud. I have students work independently or in pairs to listen to the vocabulary word/expression three times and then pronounce it out loud twice. You can have them do this in class and again for homework to help review target vocabulary and build listening/speaking fluency. (Please note: I do not include Quizlet sets in my resources due to copyright reasons, but they are really easy and quick to make!)
Practice Activities: How will my students practice the new vocabulary?
This is my favorite part of the “instructional cycle” - students using what I’ve taught them in engaging and authentic ways, to be able to accomplish a task, and communicate and/or collaborate with their peers. So much fun! What types of practice activities can you offer your students?
Well, I like to start off with a practice worksheet (or two! I just photocopy them front/back) that has students implement the vocabulary they’ve just learned. I’ll then review the worksheet with students using one of the following methods:
Whole-class review: I project the worksheet(s) on the board and have students come up to the board to fill in the right answers. Sometimes I’ll write the answers in myself, but why rob students of the opportunity to write on the whiteboard?!
Peer review: Students work together to correct each other’s work. When students are done, they can come up to the front of the room and grab an Answer Key that I’ve already printed out, so that they can be extra certain that all of their answers are correct.
Here’s a sample of the types of worksheets and practice games/activities you’ll find in my French, Spanish and Italian City Unit BUNDLES:
I like to give a few practice exercises for students to complete for homework. In my view, students really do benefit from a bit of extra practice at home to further reinforce the work we’ve done in the classroom. The following class, we’ll start with a Do-Now related to the vocabulary, check the homework assignment, and then play a vocabulary-related game.
In the French, Spanish, and Italian City Unit Bundles, I include a bunch of different collaborative activities that students can work on together: Dice Games, Memory Games, Connect Four Games, and more!
Planning for Language Proficiency: How can I help my students become more proficient users of the target language?
Worksheets and activities have their place in reinforcing vocabulary—plus, let’s be honest, some can be pretty fun! But if our goal is to build true language proficiency, we need to go beyond fill-in-the-blank exercises and simple matching games. While these activities help with recall, they don’t necessarily push students to think, communicate, and apply the language in real-world contexts. To make real progress, students need meaningful, interactive experiences that challenge them to use the language naturally and authentically.
To ensure that we are building and supporting our students’ proficiency, it is super important to infuse Reading, Listening, Speaking, and Writing activities into your unit. In my Unit Bundle, you will find a variety of different proficiency activities to help your students progress in the language. For example, I include task cards that can be used as a speaking OR writing activity to help students practice vocabulary, grammar, and sentence construction.
Projects & Assessments!
It’s so important to formatively assess your students throughout the unit, so that you can gather data on student learning as well as prepare targeted interventions to help remediate students’ knowledge gaps. I often like to use Exit Tickets post-instruction to see how much students have acquired and retained during instruction - I use the data to inform what the Do-Now of my next class might address. I also use Quizzes to gather data on learning outcomes and ensure that my students are ready to move on to the next piece of the unit.
Pro Tip: You can also use Exit Tickets as Entry Tickets at the start of class!
At the end of the unit, I always like to give students a chance to utilize the vocabulary and grammar structures they have been working on in order to showcase their learning in a fun, engaging way. This unit lends itself well to a My Ideal City Project, in which students design and describe their own city in the target language. Year after year, this is one of my students’ favorite projects!
This creative and memorable project ensures that you will be able to assess your students' growth meaningfully, fairly, and easily. This resource is a great culminating performance task(s) and summative assessment(s). It comes ready-to-go and only require you to download, print, and copy! However, they are also highly customizable, as they include EDITABLE documents that you can modify to best suit the needs of your students.
Note: These projects also include tools to help students stay organized as they begin working on their project as well as EDITABLE Project Rubrics that you can use to easily and fairly assess your students.
GRAB YOUR FREEBIE!
I hope that this post has given you some ideas for how you can plan your French, Spanish, or City Unit. Whether you are a brand new World Language Teacher or you’ve been doing this for many years, I think it’s always helpful to see what other teachers—who are actually still in the classroom—are doing in their classes to help their students learn the target language.
I’d love for you to check out my World Language City Unit Freebie, which is a great activity that incorporates all of the main vocabulary and grammar topics from the City Unit! Check it out by clicking the image below!
Happy language teaching,
~ Michael
