Did you know that I teach 130 students French language arts? That means that every time I want to assess French writing I have 130 assignments to grade. Yep… That’s a lot. My only way of staying sane is by asking students to do small pieces of writing. Yes, of course, there’s always a time for longer pieces of writing such as creative stories, but I make sure that those are assigned few and far between.
In this article, I will be mainly focussing on assessing French writing for content and for structure, and not for grammar as I will focus on grammar in the next article. The activities that I am suggesting can definitely be used from grades 3-12, you just need to adapt them so that they are appropriate for your kiddos and for their level of French. The assignment can be the same; it’s just that the expectations will be grade level or course specific.
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The following ideas are my top 5 but if you register above you’ll see more ideas that are just as great.
Fan Fiction writing
Fanfiction writing is a great way to help students with creative writing because the characters and their personalities already exist. This type of writing allows students to use their past knowledge and combine it with their own creative ideas to come up with a unique story.
For me this is a long-term activity that I do with my grade 8 French immersion students. We spend one to two weeks planning everything using graphic organizers and then they work on it one day a week for the following 8 weeks. This is the one long writing activity that I do with my grade 8 students in the year.
Informative text writing
Informative text writing can be included in a research type project as you can have the students research a topic and write an informative paragraph about what they have learned.
Informative text writing can also be related to content being covered in other topics such as social studies or science. You can ask the students to summarize their understanding of a specific topic or you can also just have them share information about something that they are interested in or passionate about.
The goal of the informative text is not to assess their knowledge of the content but more so the structure of their paragraph.
Recipe writing
Recipe writing is a fun, short writing activity to focus on imperative verb tense conjugations. You can also use this activity to encourage students to use a synonym dictionary when they are writing out their instructions to ensure that they are not always repeating the same verbs.
I like to use this activity to work on descriptive language as well as they are expected to be creative in their recipe ingredients. When I focus on descriptive language, I also include the expectation that adjectives are properly accorded to their subjects.
This is a nice, short writing activity that touches on multiple grammatical topics but also allows for their creativity and allows them to write in a way that they don’t normally do.
Descriptive paragraph writing
There are many different ways to assign descriptive paragraph writing in class. My favourite way to do this is using my student writing journal. Each day the students do some descriptive/creative writing and I take in their journals once a month. Another way that I do this is I share an image with the students, typically on the Smartboard, and have them write a descriptive paragraph related to the image.
In the younger grades, or more beginner level French classes, this is a great way to practice new vocabulary and new sentence structures. I love to do these around themes and with my older students I prefer to choose political cartoons or thought-provoking images to get them thinking while they are writing a descriptive paragraph.
Script writing
Script writing is a very unique type of creative writing. When writing scripts students need to be thinking about their grammar, the content, as well as aspects of punctuation that are necessary when writing a script.
Ensure that you go over the structure and style that you would like for the students to use in their writing so that they know what the expectations are.
This activity can then be combined as a speaking assessment as you can have the students act out the script once they have completed it.
Writing is definitely my jam when it comes to teaching French. I love being creative in the way that assess French writing and I love being able to see what they come up with.
Just a quick reminder, if you would like more ideas for assessing French writing in class please sign up here and I will send the document directly into your inbox:
In case you missed the last few blog posts, this is part of a series for assessing in the French language classroom, whether it be French immersion, FSL / core French, or a francophone classroom.
If you’ve missed the last three parts of the series, you can check them out here:
Assessing French Verbal Production
Assessing French Verbal Comprehension
Assessing French Reading Comprehension
2 weeks from now we will be delving into the land of assessing French grammar… My absolutely favourite part of teaching French… I know, I’m weird.
I hope you join me! See you then!