French, Spanish, and Italian Family Unit Lesson Planning
Most World Language curricula include a thematic unit on Family: la famille, la familia, la famiglia! If you’re looking for a comprehensive unit that contains all of the vocabulary and grammar you need to help your students learn how to talk about their family (including personal descriptions!), then this blog post is for you!
This unit can be super engaging for students, because the vocabulary is so relevant, concrete, and useful. Given that this unit is one of the first that we delve into in our World Language classrooms, it’s important to utilize resources that are effective, engaging, and that help students learn, practice, and ultimately master target vocabulary.
In this blog post, I’m going to share some tips for how you can plan your Family Unit for your French, Spanish, or Italian 1 classes! All of the instructional materials, activities, worksheets, and assessments referenced in this blog post can be found in my TpT shop. Simply click on the thumbnails below to take a closer look!
I’m also including a SPECIAL FAMILY UNIT FREEBIE toward the end of this post! Continue reading to grab your freebie!
French, Spanish, and Italian Family Unit Lesson Plan Ideas: Let’s start with Pacing
Realistically, you need 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 Food Unit, but of course you could condense if you have less time to work with.
Weeks #1-2 - Family Vocabulary: Students will learn how to introduce and talk about the members of their family.
Weeks #3-4 - Grammar (to be, to have, possessive adjectives, descriptive adjectives): Students will learn how to use the verbs to be and to have as well as the possessive adjectives to introduce their family members (e.g. That’s my father. He is ___ years old.). They will also learn commonly used descriptive adjectives to describe their family members.
Weeks #5-6 - Speaking Activities & Task Cards: Students will incorporate the vocabulary and grammar concepts they have been studying in paired and whole-class interpersonal speaking activities. Students will answer relevant and interesting questions related to the theme of family through a task card activity (can be done orally or in writing).
Week #7 - Family Tree Project: Students will create a family tree and then write a composition in which they introduce and describe each of the family members they have selected
Weeks #8-9 - Project/Presentation: Students will plan for, create, and deliver a presentation in front of their classmates in which they introduce and describe themselves and their families, create a visual aid, rehearse their scripts, and ultimately deliver an oral presentation for their classmates.
Instructional Materials: How will my students learn new vocabulary?
I like to provide students with a Vocabulary List containing expressions in the target language. Using WordReference (or their knowledge of cognates), students will complete the list by translating the target language expressions into English. The vocabulary list stays in their binders as reference/study material. I give them some time to practice with Vocabulary Flashcards. Grammar & Verb Tutorials can be used to easily and succinctly teach students how to use the target verbs and grammar skills you want them to learn to be able to communicate more accurately about 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 Family 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 Family 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?
Although practice worksheets and activities are important for vocabulary recall—and we cannot discount the fun and engagement factors in some of these activities, either—they are not the best at building student proficiency. We want our students to be able to use the language contextually and meaningfully, and so filling in blanks on a worksheet or matching an expression with a picture may not really help students move the needle forward in their proficiency.
To ensure that we are supporting and building 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 Family Tree Project, in which students create and label a family tree (real or fictitious!)
This creative project ensures that you will be able to assess your students' growth meaningfully, fairly, and easily, while your students present information about their family.
This resource is a great culminating performance task and summative assessment. It is ready-to-go and only requires you to download, print, and copy! However, it is also highly customizable, as it includes EDITABLE documents that you can modify to best suit the needs of your students.
Note: This project also includes 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 Italian Family Unit. Whether you are a brand new World Language Teacher, or whether 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 Family Unit Freebie, which is a really fun speaking and/or writing activity that incorporates so much of the vocabulary and grammar that I discussed in this post. Check it out by clicking the image below!
Happy language teaching,
~ Michael
