A new way to teach foreign languages in school

Duncan Levine

For my senior project, I created a French class curriculum targeted towards a middle school level. The difference between a “standard” foreign language course and the one I created is the teaching methods involved: CRADLE learning and blended learning, as well as a self-paced aspect. While blended learning has already been done in many foreign language classes, it has some downsides to it, like the lack of communication between students during class. In order to make up for this, CRADLE learning is another teaching method included in the curriculum. CRADLE learning put simply is letting students pick a topic and study it on their own in groups for a decent period of time, and then present their findings back to the class.

The course has material planned for 17 weeks (around 1 semester), but with the fast pacing, it can be adjusted to be 3 quarters or potentially a full year. Included in the curriculum powerpoint is a week by week description of the lessons being taught, a syllabus, 2 project descriptions, as well as the rubrics for those projects. For more information and to view the whole curriculum, click here.

If you can’t access certain documents, click below for specific ones:

Week by week lesson descriptions + overall curriculum

Syllabus

Mastery Project #1

Mastery Project #2