Bienvenue à la

classe de français!

Welcome to Mademoiselle Brotsis' 8th Grade

French Class at Ballston Spa Middle School!

Last Updated: January 5, 2009                Site maintained by: A. Brotsis

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Class Information & Expectations:

Classes meet 4 times per week.  During class time, students are expected to be on time, prepared and ready to work.  Classes focus on various communication skills, including speaking, listening, reading and writing in French.  Students are expected to be courteous and respectful at all times.  All classes are held in room 110.  Unit exams will be given upon completion of each unit.  Students will be notified well in advance of all tests and projects.  Writing compositions that correlate with unit topics will be assigned.  Quizzes will also take place regularly.  Students can expect 2-3 nights of homework weekly.  Homework should be done with care and turned in on time.  Late homework will NOT be accepted.  It is the student’s responsibility to make up all work missed due to absence as soon as possible.  Student participation will include reading and storytelling (TPRS) activities, as well as dialogues, role-plays, and oral presentations.  Students should make every effort to practice speaking the target language.

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Contact Mlle Brotsis:

Parents: Please contact me with any questions or concerns regarding your child's progress. E-mail is usually the best way to get a hold of me.

Anastasia Brotsis
Ballston Spa Middle School
210 Ballston Avenue
Ballston Spa, New York 12020
(518) 884-7200 Voicemail Ext. 4872
email: abrotsis@bscsd.org

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Homework:

Homework is assigned two to three nights weekly. Homework should only take 5-10 minutes to complete.  If students do not have a "written" assignment, studying is always a great idea!  Students receive a vocabulary page at the beginning of each unit and should always have it on hand to use for homework help and for studying.  The sheets are always printed in color and should be in your son or daughter's binder (in the vocabulary/verb section). The sheets are also available as PDF formatted files on this website in the Classroom News section.

Daily Homework Assignments*:

Week of January 5th:

* Homework assignments will be updated as regularly as possible.

January 5 - 9 (Monday is now Day 1)

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Grading Policy:
 

Assessments:
            Students will be assessed in class on a daily basis.  Unit exams will be given upon completion of each unit. Students will be notified well in advance of all tests and projects. Portfolio entries that correlate with unit topics will be assigned. Quizzes will also take place regularly. Students can expect 2-3 nights of homework weekly. Homework is expected to be done with care and turned in on time. No late homework will be accepted.  It is the student’s responsibility to make up all work missed due to absence as soon as possible.  Oral presentations will be assigned on a regular basis; therefore, students should make every effort to practice speaking the target language in class.  Active participation and the ability to perform classroom activities will be closely monitored.        

Click here for info on our MIDTERM EXAM!                                           

New York State Proficiency Examination:
            At the conclusion of the 8^th grade school year, students will be taking the New York State Proficiency Exam in the French.  This exam will count as 20% of their final average. The students will be responsible for all aspects of communication in French including speaking, listening, reading and writing. In order to satisfy the High School graduation requirement of one credit in foreign language study, students must take and receive a grade of 65 or higher on the examination. No graduation credit will be given if the student fails the examination.

NYS Proficiency Examination

When? – June during Regents week (June 23, 2008)

Part 1A = Informal Speaking                                        10 pts

Part 1B = Formal Speaking                                           20 pts

Part 2A = Listening in English                                      20 pts

Part 2B = Listening in French                                       10 pts

Part 2C = Listening with Pictures                                 10 pts

Part 3A = Reading with English ?’s                               12 pts

Part 3B = Reading with French?’s                              8 pts

Part 4 = Writing; 2 notes of 30 words                          10 pts

   __________

              100 pts

Part 1A. Informal Speaking = We will assess student performance from around February – June. There is a rubric to help us assess performance.

Part 1B. Formal Speaking = Students will perform 4 communication tasks randomly selected from a bank of 20 topics. They are: Socializing,  Providing and Obtaining Information, Expressing Opinions or Personal Opinions, and Persuading. Each card consists of a brief statement in English to indicate the setting of the communication, the role of the teacher and who is to initiate the conversation. For each conversation, the student must complete 4 utterances or statements. The teacher may make 2 attempts at beginning conversation. If the student cannot make a comprehensible & appropriate utterance, he/she will receive no credit for that task.  If however, they are able to make it past the first utterance, and then they are not able to make a statement, they will simply receive no credit for that utterance. The teacher is able to give 5 points per task: 1 point for each utterance as well as 1 quality point. A quality point means overall fluency, complexity, and accuracy within the scope of Checkpoint A in the NYS syllabus.

  Part 2A. Listening = 10 short listening passages will be read in French with multiple choice questions in English.

  Part 2B. Listening = 5 short listening passages will be read in French with multiple choice questions in French.

  Part 2C. Listening = 5 short listening passages in French with multiple choice answers in picture format.

 Part 3A. Reading = 6 reading selections based on authentic material with multiple choice questions in English.

Part 3B. Reading =4 reading selections based on authentic material with multiple choice questions in French.

  Part 4. Writing = Students will write two notes out of three choices each worth 5 points. The compositions will be evaluated based on word count and a rubric based on a score from 1-4.

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Required Materials:
Students are required to have the following items in class on a daily basis:

	1" RED (if possible) Binder (Notebook) with 5 dividers (Vocabulary/Verbs, Classwork, Homework, Review and TPRS)
	Composition Notebook
	Pens and Pencils
	Agenda
	Looseleaf Paper
	Textbook (Discovering French: Bleu) - The link is to a newer version of our text. Some units may be different than ours! Textbooks normally stay in the classroom, unless students choose to bring them home.

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MIDTERM EXAMINATION:

Students in 8th grade will complete a midterm examination in January 2009. Students will have 2 hours to complete the exam. The midterm consists of a speaking task, 20 multiple choice listening comprehension questions, 40 multiple choice reading comprehension questions (with questions in French and English) and 10 multiple-choice questions on the novel Fama Va En Californie.  The exam will cover all material studied in 8th grade as well as the material covered in 7th grade. The midterm exam will count as two test grades in the second marking period. The exam is patterned after the NYS Proficiency Exam (our final exam) and should be a good gauge for success on the Final Exam.

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LES JEUX! GAMES! (coming soon!)

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