Les parapluies de Cherbourg: A Vendredi Vidéo unit for French 1 or 2

Bonjour tout le monde. 

About eight years ago I was teaching 6 of 7 hours and I had all five levels of French. This was not a problem since our program was growing. However,  I quickly found that to keep my sanity I had to find a way to manage my classes so that I didn't spend all of my time creating lessons and grading them. (Let's face it, creating is fun. Grading? Not so much.) A former colleague from a different school came to my rescue and suggested that I start "Vendredi vidéo". (I know some would say Vidéo vendredi, but after conferring with my French friends, they liked this way most.) Anyway....

My colleague had used Filmarobics lessons (https://filmarobics.com/) for years on Fridays when she had the same preps. I thought, why not, and ordered a few to get started. I soon became an addict to them. If you haven't used them, they are great resources. 

As I moved more toward proficiency and I began questioning my motives for showing a film every Friday, I decided the Filmarobics lessons had to go. They taught me what I needed to know and gave me great experience, but I was ready to recreate the wheel. After all, I was down to six classes and four preps!

I feel that doing a film study is very important in a French class. It's great for students to hear a variety of accents, be engaged by a story from week to week, and I could totally exploit the films for my purposes. *insert evil laugh here*

Each lesson (with the exception of a couple when we had shortened schedules) includes a microlistening activity (here), comprehension (vrai/faux), and some writing. They also include a cultural reading that connects to the lesson. I find that adding the contextual component builds students' background knowledge for later courses, like AP French and even some core classes!

My students LOVE Vendredi Vidéo. Since we only do it on Fridays they don't need to ask what we are doing each Friday and they know better than to ask for it on a shortened week with no Friday! I never gets complaints about homework when vendredi video is involved. Generally, students have one week since the due date to turn it in and many finish the same day.

A note about writing in French 2: If your French 1 program wasn't very strong or they didn't focus a lot on writing, prepare to do a lot of modeling for students. Show them how to begin an answer based on some of the words in the question. Also, show them how to beef up their writing by using adjectives. I've seen a lot of progress so far this year.

**Speaking- I do add some speaking activities. Each day I do a daily warm-up where each student speaks and adds to the conversation. Sometimes I have them talk about the film. Other times I have them do a roleplay or call my Google Voice a leave a message regarding a prompt. I really try to use this to give them something to talk about!

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