To enforce the aspect of coming and going that exists within a community, both the mobility as well as the ways that mobility affects interactions, I am excited to set up learning centers in the classroom, by language skill: Writing, Reading, Speaking, and Listening. Each center will have several activities that will link back to the particular themes, vocabulary, and linguistic structures we are using. To begin to build a sense of the Francophone world around us, I will label each section as a different French-speaking area; activities within each center will be labeled as sub-parts of that area – countries, cities, or landmarks, depending on the scope of the four main label divisions. I keep going back and forth on whether the centers should have static names or names that change according to need or development, but I've decided that I want the names to change, so I can highlight different areas and explore others more deeply as I see fit.
It is important to consider locations as relative to each other, on a similar scale of existence. So for instance, you don't want to label the writing center Paris and the listening center Canada, as one is a city and the other a country. Instead, you would perhaps name the listening center Montreal. We want to help students understand geographical relatedness, that Paris is a city within France, which is a country within the continent of Europe; and that Montreal is a city within the French-speaking province of Québec, in the much greater country of Canada, which with the United States is a part of the continent of North America. By changing the names of the centers from time to time, we will be able to approach these concepts from different angles and give students multiple opportunities to make meaning of it all.
Since learning centers will be named by francophone locations, we can have students talk about going to France, for example, instead of going to the Writing Center. This gets students using the simple but very useful phrase Je vais (I am going) while also subtly internalizing an eventuality of travel, as they get so used to talking about going places that it no longer seems like such a foreign possibility for them and thus normalizes the idea of a vast global community.
For each center cycle, I will make a passport that indicates all the center options; students will register completion of center work there. For each activity completed, students will write the date and composition book page number that correspond with the assignment. If it is a paired activity, the partner will initial as well. I have done something similar with a sheet of paper, and it was a useful way to keep students on task and accountable; I can only imagine how much more they will enjoy the process with the use instead of a passport! Students will attach completed passports into their dossier for future reference.
