Grade 6 - Acquiring Information

This organizer contains the following sections:
Prescribed Learning Outcomes
Suggested Instructional Strategies
Suggested Assessment Strategies
Recommended Learning Resources

PRESCRIBED LEARNING OUTCOMES

It is expected that students will:

extract specific information from French-language resources to complete authentic tasks
express acquired information in oral and visual forms

SUGGESTED INSTRUCTIONAL STRATEGIES

At this level, students' ability to use French is minimal, but their ability to access information and display it visually (in their own language) is already quite developed. As they apply strategies such as predicting, connecting, and guessing from clues, they experience success and develop confidence in working with French materials.

Have a Francophone guest (or student) demonstrate putting together a pizza. Students have a task sheet on which the steps are written in the incorrect order. Students number the steps in the correct order and match pictures of the ingredients to their French names. Students then make a pizza collage with paper ingredients and give a commentary.
Provide students with French travel brochures about a region. On a task sheet divided into times of day (matin, midi, après-midi, soir), students choose appropriate activities for a family outing and record them using key words and symbols.
Have students look at a selection of age-appropriate articles and reference materials (such as Hibou magazine). From these, students select a topic and create a visual or multimedia display of what they have learned. The display should include some simple labels in French.
Using children's French-language craft books or web sites, have students choose something they would like to make, such as a seasonal ornament. They make the object by reading directions in French and using visual clues.
Have students watch several commercials shown during children's French-language television programs and note information about the names of products, types of product, and if they would purchase them or not. For each piece of information, students note any French words or expressions that helped them gain their information. Students pool their findings and create a classroom chart summarizing the findings.

SUGGESTED ASSESSMENT STRATEGIES

Students at this level may not be able to provide detailed explanations of the information they acquire. Assessment focusses on their ability to discover and use key ideas and overall impressions, along with selected details. Assessment tasks should allow students to represent their understanding in a variety of ways that require minimal use of language.

To assess students' understanding of key information in a cooking demonstration, look for their:
- recognition of vocabulary related to ingredients, utensils, and cooking instructions
- reproduction of some French vocabulary in understandable form
- correct sequencing of steps in the cooking process
As students work with French travel brochures to plan and report on activities that would be done at different times of day, look for evidence that they are able to:
- approach tasks with confidence
- make logical predictions
- use strategies such as previewing, looking for cognates, using text features and context clues, and looking for patterns
- recognize an increasing number of high-frequency words
- focus on key information
- tolerate ambiguity and persevere with a task even though they do not understand all of the material they need
- explain the clues and strategies they used
When students collect information from French-language materials and commercials and represent it visually through displays or collages or by classifying information, look for evidence of the extent to which they are able to:
- identify key topics
- recognize familiar vocabulary
- tolerate ambiguity and persevere with a task even though they do not understand the entire piece
- recognize the purpose or point of view
- include relevant and accurate details

RECOMMENDED LEARNING RESOURCES

Print Materials

Stoddart Colour Visual Dictionary French-English

Multimedia

Acti-Vie 1, 2
Savoir faire: Visages 2

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