UNIT IDEAS: Description - Physical and Personality Traits Units for Proficiency-Oriented Instruction
March 24, 2025 • 29 mins
The ability to describe people - both physically and by personality - isn't just another vocabulary list in your world language curriculum. It's a pivotal developmental milestone on your students' language journey, marking their transition from me-centered language to a broader world of expression.
Devon Gunning breaks down why description skills serve as the defining characteristic separating novice low, mid, and high levels according to the latest ACTFL Performance Descriptors.
This episode provides age-appropriate strategies for making description relevant and engaging, with practical activities you can implement immediately: celebrity "Guess Who" games, dating app profiles for fictional characters, picture talks, and multimodal matching activities that provide abundant comprehensible input.
For Romance language teachers, Devon offers a refreshing perspective on teaching grammatical gender - skip the extensive rules and instead provide pattern-rich input that allows students to discover the patterns themselves.
Resources Mentioned:
French 1 Physical Descriptions Task Cards
https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/French-1-Physical-Description-Vocabulary-Adjective-Agreement-Games-10690811
Practical Proficiency Curriculum with Units: https://lalibrelanguagelearning.mykajabi.com/practical-proficiency-curriculum-world-language-info
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
What's up?
Que lo que Et salut worldlanguage teachers.
Welcome to the PracticalProficiency Podcast, where we
make the transition toproficiency-oriented instruction
in your world language class ina way that works for you, your
unique context and teachingstyle, and doesn't sacrifice
(00:21):
your well-being along the way.
I'm your host, devon Gunning,the teacher author, conference
host, curriculum creator andconsultant behind La Libre
Language Learning.
This podcast is for thecreative world language teacher
like you who's ready to ditchthe overwhelming pressure of
switching to acquisition-driveninstruction and CI overnight.
(00:42):
You're ready to discover howusing more target language in
class can actually bring you andyour students more joy instead
of adding to your plate.
With practical, authentic anddown-to-earth strategies that
don't require reinventing thewheel or more training, we'll
work together towards the magicof a community-based, target
(01:05):
language-rich classroom, rootedin the power of community and
comprehensible input.
Let's go, hey, hey.
World language teacher, welcomeback.
We are here for an excitingepisode that is a part of our
(01:25):
mini-sode series, all about unitideas.
So get excited.
Think about this as when youneed to have that an idea
session, for when you know youhave a unit coming up and you
want simple ideas for how youcan make it more proficiency
oriented, more fun, more joyful,more practical for how you can
make it more proficiencyoriented, more fun, more joyful,
(01:46):
more practical, and that lovelyplanning session that you wish
you had with your awesomecolleagues, but right here in
your earbuds.
Let's go.
These unit ideas mini-sodes areso much fun for me, so I can't
wait to keep working towardsmore units for you, but if
you're teaching an upcoming unitand you need some ideas for it,
feel free to let me know.
(02:07):
Dm me on Instagram or send mean email.
You'll get an answer fasterthrough email because I do check
that more often.
But let me know what you havecoming up.
You can even text the podcastnow.
Isn't that wild.
I'm so excited about that newfeature.
So contact me to let me knowwhat new units that you have
coming up, and I would love todo a mini-sode about it, but
(02:30):
without further ado.
This one in particular is allabout the skill of describing
and for many of you in level one, that comes through some sort
of either physical orpersonality traits unit.
So let's get into it.
Here are the ideas that I havefor you.
First of all, why do we do thisunit?
(02:50):
It seems an interesting choicefor level one, so I wanted to
give you some context as to whythis is a very common unit in
either your proficiency-basedcurriculum or your textbook.
That claims to be proficiencymay or may not be true TBD
depends on the publisher butthis is a very common unit to do
(03:12):
with level one students or evenlevel twos, if you have not
done it yet.
But here's why.
Let's look first at the languagefunctions for Actful that came
out through the new performancedescriptors released in 2024,
just last year.
They're brand spanking new.
They're so good.
It makes it a lot easier tounderstand what Actful is
(03:32):
expecting of us when we'reworking with students at each of
the different levels.
This skill in particular thatwe're honing in on is the
ability to describe someone orsomething, which is a key novice
skill.
It's one of the big performanceindicating skills on the
(03:56):
performance indicators for anovice, if you can do this
barely, but it's there in listform, you're novice low.
If you can do it barely, butit's there in list form, your
novice low.
If you can do it but with alack of confidence and you need
a lot of scaffolding, yournovice mid.
And if you can do itconfidently in a few maybe not
so original, but in a fewsentences at least.
Then you're a novice high.
(04:17):
So description is the keyindicator of what type of novice
your student is, and it is thekey, central, focal point all
those good terms to describewhat actually is a novice and
what are they capable of doing.
So it's important to have somesort of description unit in your
level one program.
(04:38):
At some point you could bedescribing ice cream, it doesn't
really matter, as long as yourstudents are working towards the
skill of describing somethingin their immediate environment
that they work with or see often.
And for many people that meanswell, why don't we just describe
ourselves and then move forwardinto describing other people?
(04:58):
Because then they can get usedto that third person form which
is so crucial to language andexpression.
And here we are with thephysical and personality traits
unit.
For some people it's justpersonality traits.
It doesn't really matter eitherway that you're going about
this.
If this is something that youare doing, I've got ideas for
you.
So in the actual performanceindicators the language
(05:21):
functions start with the selfand then moving into others and
the environment around them.
So describing other people, theskill of physical and
personality traits fits intothat crucial language function
that your students need to dropto.
I mean move to from being allabout themselves in their
(05:44):
language abilities to startmoving around them into another
sphere, which is describingsomething around them or
describing another person.
So it does become moredifficult the more areas of
spheres you have to jump through.
So there's the self, like me,myself and I.
My immediate environment is thenext one People I know that
(06:06):
whole deal, and then me withother people is a whole nother
sphere, and then the world ingeneral and things in general
and ideas in general, and thenyou go into things and ideas in
multiple timeframes and movesand tenses.
That's a larger area and sphere.
That's a whole tangent that we.
That will show you, though,that how the different levels of
(06:28):
language functions progress.
So for your students to jumpfrom the first one me myself and
I to others, they need to beable to describe, and that's
what this unit does.
So if you got somethingdifferent but still serves that
same function, then go for it.
Doesn't matter.
However, many people have somesort of describing others unit
or even describing themselves,students describing themselves.
(06:48):
It's a really naturaltransition.
So we often miss this incurriculum development, but we
we do this thing where we'relike okay, we need to hit the
skill of students, need to beable to do lists okay, now they
need to be able to do lists.
Okay, now they need to be ableto do phrases.
Okay, now they need to be ableto do sentences.
But where's the transitionbetween those ideas?
(07:09):
How are you supporting them?
From one jump to the other, andthat's where you get a lot of
students who are stuck in thatmiddle ground between phrases
and sentences.
They just can't make that jump.
So describing themselves andothers in the same unit allows
them to do that, because you'reworking with that familiar
language of what they've alreadydone with you for a few months.
Of me myself, I, yo, yo, yo, megusta, je suis that whole deal
(07:35):
of I am.
And then they start moving morewith, like, okay, he, she is,
or they, if you're using themore gender neutral pronoun,
anything like that.
So moving from the self to theother is a nice, natural
transition that this unit can dofor you.
So just to give you somecontext onto why this is really
(07:55):
popular, that's why it can be souseful.
So how can we make thattransition and that description
piece very real, world andcompelling, describing self and
others.
I mean, yeah, it's a very realworld skill.
You don't really have to workhard to make that real world,
because it is Describingyourself and others very
important.
So what about the compellingpiece?
(08:16):
How can we make this wildlyinteresting for students?
That's where the fun comes inand this is where you can really
get a great unit.
So here are some ideas I havefor you.
Why not describe reallyinteresting people and think
first who would be interestingto your students?
Depending on the age group ofyour students, it depends on
(08:39):
what they really, really careabout.
If you're working with youngerstudents, if you're in
elementary school, thendescribing their friends and
family would be really fun forthem Because, again, that whole
moving from the self to peoplearound me, to people in general,
to ideas about people ingeneral like that's the same
(08:59):
growth and development phasethat your brain goes through.
So if you're working with likesix and seven year olds, they
would love nothing more than totalk about themselves and if
you're working with 10 to 11year olds, they really want to
talk about their friends andtheir family.
They're going to have so muchfun with that and maybe a little
bit about like famous people intheir world but and like
(09:20):
favorite characters and moviesand stuff.
But mostly they're going towant to talk about the people in
their immediate environment.
Middle schoolers and highschoolers are absolutely
fascinated by other people.
They do not want to talk aboutthemselves at all.
Why?
It's a weird transition phasefor them.
You know they don't really wanteyes on them.
I mean, some kids will reallywant to talk about themselves,
(09:42):
but in reality, most kids don'treally want to talk like in
depth about what they look like.
That's, think about yourself atage 16.
Did you want to talk a lotabout what you look like?
Probably not.
So give them the same grace ifyou're in that unit.
I like to make this unit aboutother people and really
interesting people.
Since I always worked with highschoolers and occasionally
(10:04):
middle schoolers, but mostlyhigh schoolers I like to do this
unit on famous people and youcan even do why not?
Add more of a social emotionalelement to it and a
sociocultural learning elementto it by talking about famous
people from your target culture.
So this is a great opportunityto dive into that.
(10:27):
There are some really funexamples that you can do with
this.
I'm going to show you at theend.
If you're looking for a donefor you unit, I'm going to show
you some some things that youcan use from my own curriculum
library and you can also justlook at some ideas from that if
that serves you better at thistime.
But I'm going to show you some.
(10:48):
Just click the button and it'sdone for you units that you can
use with this idea in mind.
And all of these are built offof the concept that your
students are going to need tonsof examples written and things
that they can listen to ofpeople, descriptions, what they
look like, what they're into, aswell as all of their
(11:13):
personality characteristics andthings like that.
So I would say, too, that oneof my biggest hints and ideas
for you is that if you are goinginto this unit being like, yes,
this is going to be the unitwhere I teach and really hit on
masculine and feminine, if youteach a romance language, like I
do, then I would caution you tonot spend too much time on this
(11:38):
in the novice area only becausemasculine and feminine is one
of those things that yourstudents are going to need to
revisit multiple times in aspiral program, so your students
will at first be able toexplain the rule to you, because
the rules are fairly simple,honestly, but you know as well
as I do that it does not meanthat they're able to produce the
rule accurately.
So it's better for them tosimply see examples rather than
(12:03):
you explaining to them a tonabout what masculine and
feminine is.
Because, honestly, if you showthem, think of it this way, flip
the script a little bit.
If you gave them fourbiographies, two are men, two
are women, and they'reconsistently spelled differently
(12:24):
.
Each of the same adjectives,they have consistent differences
and they sound differentbecause of, like, the O's and
the A's and all of that, or, youknow, the E's in French.
If that's the case, then yourstudents will eventually pick up
on the idea that, oh, thislooks different.
Whether you're male or female,I am seeing some sort of
(12:44):
difference.
What is it?
And they'll ask you what it is,and you can say, okay, well,
look at the adjective forfriendly, look at the adjective
for artistic, look at theadjective for athletic.
What do you see is on the endof all of these?
Do you see some instances wherethere's not an ending change?
And see if they can figure itout themselves and notice it
(13:04):
themselves first, and then thatcan be your whole lesson of oh
okay, that's the difference.
It will be much more of asuccess, this whole lesson on
grammar, when you're talkingabout masculine and feminine and
adjective agreement, when theyactually care about it, when
they've seen it in context andrealize, oh, this makes a huge
(13:26):
difference in the language.
This is something I should knowabout and pay attention to.
A pop-up grammar would workbetter.
So that would be the way that Iwould approach this whole unit
in general is instead focus onthat skill of students being
able to describe someone, aperson, in a few doesn't have to
(13:48):
be original or unique or evenconnected sentences, but a few
disjointed sentences.
They should be able to describesomeone accurately, and that's
going to involve a little bit ofwork on masculine and feminine,
maybe a little bit of work insome other grammar areas, but
mostly it's going to be aboutexpanding their vocabulary and
(14:08):
expanding their ability to formsentences, which is very
different from accuracy.
They need a lot of input inorder to form sentences.
So that's my spiel on that.
What are some of the activitiesyou can do?
This is the fun part, right?
So if your focus of this unitfor describing people, either
their physical or theircharacter traits.
(14:31):
You should do tons of examplesof you describing other people.
You could describe the studentsthat you have in the room and I
would not do too much of liketheir physical descriptions
unless you're talking aboutsimple things like hair and eye
color.
But you can also do things likeshow.
I mean, every teacher hassomething like this, you know,
like a slide deck of 30 picturesof random celebrities and
(14:54):
you're just describingcelebrities.
Everybody has something likethat.
So keep that in mind.
Do a lot of those.
Do games like Guess who, whereyou're describing celebrities or
famous people or interestingpeople, people in your school.
Anything like that would bereally fun for them.
How much can you do with moviecharacters or at least show
(15:16):
characters, things like that,that they would be familiar with
and you could do a lot ofdescription with?
You can also do all kinds ofgames with like you know who's
the bad guy, who's the good guy,and give do a lot of
description with.
You can also do all kinds ofgames with like you know who's
the bad guy, who's the good guyand give them a bunch of
different circumstances andthings that they could work with
.
I would also say too.
A great way that you can get aton of input with describing
people and help build theirlinguistic capacity to write
(15:39):
sentences through seeing you doit and hearing you make complete
sentences about this is doPictionary with categories of
people and describe things.
Just describe, describe,describe, describe, describe and
see if they can draw betterpictures of it.
I would also do lots oflistening practice.
If you can do, if you can findanything where people are
(16:00):
describing themselves ordescribing each other, that
would be really really helpfuland then a really fun project or
activity that you could do.
That would be absolutelyhilarious.
You can either do it withfictional people or you can have
them pick real people to do, orit could be for them.
Why not?
Is have them do a dating appprofile where they're describing
themselves and makingthemselves look real good and
(16:23):
they could put a picture whatthey like to do.
Or it could be, you know, likefor somebody in their life that
they know you know needs a manor needs a lady friend.
That would be really, reallyfunny.
They would enjoy that.
How much can you do with imageswith this?
Do you have some printouts orany kind of cards that you can
(16:44):
do?
Lots and lots of visuals and doall kinds of tactile
description, things Like can youdo like a Mr Potato type deal
where you bring in Mr Potato andyou list the kind of character,
personality and physical traitsthat the Mr Potato head has and
students have to build it basedoff of what you describe like?
Stuff like that would be so fun.
(17:04):
So those are all differentideas that I have for you on
ways that you can make this unitreally fun and describing
people.
I've even seen an activitybefore that I used to use in my
classroom.
I don't remember who it's buyer.
I would give you the link, butit was something about you had
to.
Oh my gosh, I wish I remembermade it, but it's such a good
idea.
(17:24):
It's a creator on TPT.
If this is you and you'relistening, let me know.
If this is you, I'd love tolink it.
But it was a great activity Iused to use in my classroom
where it was a person, a pictureof, just like a sketch of an
outline of human being, and youwould flip a coin outline of
(17:46):
human being and you would flip acoin for and the coin how many
times you flipped it would givedifferent traits and the people
and your students had to drawthose traits on the body and it
was really, really fun.
Like they would.
Um, they would draw like, oh,the person was tall or was short
or had blonde hair or had curlyhair or had black eyes or had
green eyes, like that it was.
It was interesting.
So you can do things like thattoo.
(18:07):
I would say as well as manypicture talks as you can do,
where you're describing people.
But you're set.
Now here's my favorite finalproject to do with something
like a description unit and aswell.
A note for this is that if thewhole idea of doing physical
traits kind of makes you feellike I don't know if I want to
(18:29):
do that, that's not really thatimportant.
Skip it, it's not thatimportant.
All you're doing is making surethat your students have ways
that they can describe anotherperson, so you don't have to
spend a ton of time on physicaltraits if you don't want to, or
you could even skip some of thephysical traits.
Like you don't like a lot, itcan be difficult in a diverse
classroom to talk about physicaltraits, so you don't, and you
(18:53):
also don't want to be doing alot of things where you're like
talking about what people'sbodies look like in a middle and
high school classroom.
Like it's very hard to do that.
You can just skip it, it'sfine's fine, it's not a big deal
.
It's not like they won't beable to interact with a native
speaker if they don't know howto say their eye color.
That's not that important.
We're just using this as a tool, as a vehicle, to describe
(19:14):
things.
However, character traits arehelpful, so things like you know
, I am artistic, I am shy, I'moutgoing Like that stuff that
they'll want to be able to sayto other people, so I would
include those.
Now, my favorite final projectto do is doing something like an
Instagram profile where theyhave to do it about a famous
(19:37):
person of their choosing I liketo keep it to a Francophone or
somebody from the Latinecommunity or the Hispanic
community and they can do somesort of compare and contrast,
writing with this as well,talking about themselves and
other people, what they have incommon.
But there's also another ideathat I have for you is where you
(19:59):
can also do something like aninterview project or, if you
wanted to make this more of aninterpersonal focus, where you
could have students pair up witheach other and they have to ask
each other questions, maybeeven as that celebrity.
That would be fun.
So check out those ideas andsee if anything really speaks to
you.
Now.
If you're looking for ways tomake this a bit easier on you
(20:22):
from the classroom teacherperspective, I'm going to show
you some ready-made activitiesfor you today so that you can
get started on this right away,especially if you're doing this
unit right now and you're like Ineed some help with this.
So if you're a French teacher,I have an activity that's right
here, ready to go for you, andit is a physical description,
(20:43):
vocabulary card game, as well asa bunch of multimodal
activities to get the job donein your class.
If you're watching the videohere and if you're listening,
I'll give you the link to thevideo below in the show notes.
You can see what some of theseactivities look like.
But what I used to do with thisactivity with my students is
(21:06):
they would get these cut upcards.
One side has a picture of astudent on it and then the other
card, which is actually atotally separate card, has three
written descriptions in verysimple French of what that
person looks like.
So you would match up thedescriptions with those people
(21:26):
and it's like a little guess whogame.
There are 32 full color and 32black and white cards and the
descriptions, yes, still workwith black and white because
they're very genericdescriptions.
They're things like do theyhave glasses, hair, eye color,
all that kind of things.
Are they wearing a ponytail?
It's very simple.
So they have their physicaldescriptions.
(21:47):
This also includes the answerkey.
But the reason I really lovethis activity and why I like to
recommend it to you is becauseit is multimodal.
There is this activity herewhere they have to cut out the
phrases that describes theperson.
Then they have to match it withthat picture.
That's an individual activity,and then there's also a partner
activity where there's listeningand speaking.
(22:09):
There's two different versionshere, where one person has the
descriptions of the people andone other person has the images
and they have to describe theimages to each other and match
them up.
Some of the great benefits ofthis, too, is that all of the
(22:29):
language is ready for noviceLowe's to use.
So, no matter where this comesin your year, it's ready for you
to use, and I would encourageyou to do the same thing.
(22:50):
If you're making this activityon your own is if you're putting
pictures together and matchingit up with the guest who and
doing it yourself, that thelanguage needs to be very simple
for them to be able to workwith this.
I would also say, too, that thefocus is not masculine and
feminine and adjectives and allof that.
The focus really is throughcontext and repetition, which is
the whole point of aproficiency class.
We don't ignore grammar, but weknow that grammar has a smaller
role than we think it does, andit's more about binding with
(23:10):
lots of clear and consistentimagery.
This type of lesson here is oneof those things that you prep
once and then it's ready forever.
You just got to cut out thesets of cards and then it's good
to go make copies for yourclass and you're ready, and it
could be potentially somethingthat goes for even four days of
your class that you could usefor a lot of different things.
(23:31):
So I'm going to show youexactly what this pdf looks like
if you choose to download thishere.
These are the different kidsthat you get to work with, and I
love these cards becausethey're from an artist who does
clip art on TPT, who does animestyle, and they're all middle
school friendly.
So all of these are middleschool kids and teachers, which
is why I loved using thesepictures, and their art is
(23:54):
credited in the resource as well.
So these are the black andwhite versions, so your students
will be able to match these up,and they're fun to match up too
.
And you know like you don'thave to get janky pictures from
the Internet.
You'll have nice, high-quality,clear images with this one here
.
It comes with an answer key,and then here are the questions
specifically that you can lookat and all of the descriptions
(24:15):
that you'll have.
You'll see it's very commonthings that are part of any
French 1 classroom, and thenthere's a lot of practice coming
your way in here, and there'sblack and white copies of
everything as well for easyprinting.
But this one is my favoritepart, which is the InfoGap
activity.
I love InfoGaps.
And then you have La TapetaMush using fly swatter so great
(24:41):
If you are a Spanish teacher.
I want to also show yousomething that is part of my
curriculum the PracticalProficiency Curriculum.
I want to also show yousomething that is part of my
curriculum the practicalproficiency curriculum.
When you're part of this, youget a link to this folder that
has all of these things in it,because I have a unit exactly on
this idea.
So let's take a look at theunit guides and all the things
that are in here is you get aunit guide for this unit,
(25:05):
spanish one.
Unit three, which is famousfamous people.
We talk about famous people andhow to describe them.
So I'm going to show you thisunit guide that you get, which
also comes with functionalchunks and lesson ideas.
Let's look at the unit guide soyou can see what the focus is
for this unit in this unit andthe same is also for French I'm
(25:25):
going to show you thefrancophone version in a minute
but students use vocabulary thatwill help them understand a
person's basic description inlevel in lesson one and then in
lesson two what do students needto understand?
A variety of people'sdescriptions, and you'll see
here the whole list of what'sgoing on in that lesson.
Lesson three students are whatdo they need to describe a
(25:49):
famous person?
And that's where they startgetting into more of the output
focused ideas, and then they'reworking on some conjugation
ideas with you.
And then lesson four is what dostudents need to compare
themselves and others?
So this is where we focus on weand some writing connector
words because they're workingtowards this final project, and
I'll show you down here whatsome of those are.
(26:10):
They're working towards thisfinal project of I can describe
a famous person in detail basedon my research.
This is a novice mid skill andyou will get with this here a
famous people editable biographyslide deck.
So I'm going to show you thishere, where you get 30 plus
(26:33):
different members of the latinolatina latina community in the
simple descriptions that you getto change up if you would like
to.
So this box, this text box, iseditable, where you can change
these up here, and it's avariety of people from a variety
of professions.
So I have here for youactivists, athletes, politicians
(27:02):
, writers, artists the fullgambit.
You get all kinds of people andit'll be some people that your
students know and love and somescientists and other people that
your students might not haveheard of, that they'll be
excited to learn more about.
So this is one of my favoriteresources to make and there's so
(27:22):
much that you can do with this,like you can do picture talk on
picture talk on picture talkwith something like this there's
so much cool stuff that you cando with this, like you can do
picture talk on picture talk onpicture talk.
With something like this,there's so much cool stuff that
you can do.
If you are a french teacher,the same thing is available in
the french and there's a really,really cool lesson plan in here
for you.
That also comes with the withthat vocab card section, which
(27:45):
is I have some readings in herefor you to do, some of those of
biography practices, and I alsohave in here a project for you
to do which is francophonenotable, which has in here a
giant list of famousfrancophones from all over the
world, and then a template foryou to do this actual Instagram
(28:05):
project where your students can,depending on how you want,
phones from all over the world,and then a template for you to
do this actual Instagram projectwhere your students can,
depending on how you want to doit, write all about that famous
person.
So it has the instructions hereand it also has a bunch of
sentence starters and notes forthem so that they won't be doing
this all on their own.
They'll have some language tomake it happen.
(28:26):
And then they have some roughdraft options and and then this
the project is right here andready to go for you, but the
best part is definitely theready made for you list of
famous people from around theworld that your students can
research.
Inside the unit templates, too,there's a bunch of different
ideas for how you can workthrough.
(28:46):
This is the one I want how youcan work through this and jump
into all different ways that youcan focus on this skill here
through the lessons andassessments.
So those are the resources thatI have available for you.
If you'd like to see them inreal time, then check out the
video video.
(29:06):
If you're not already watchingthe video, the link will be
below in the show notes.
But in the meantime, I hopethat you got from this a bunch
of great unit ideas.
If you're doing any kind ofphysical or personality traits,
there's a bunch of resourcesthat I have for you here if
you're looking for somethingthat's done for you, and maybe
even they'll just give you someideas for some things that you
(29:28):
can do in class.
So thank you so much for beinghere for this mini episode, all
about how to use descriptions inyour level one unit, whether it
be about physical orpersonality traits, whatever
that might look like, and I willsee you for the next mini-sode.
Bye for now.
What's up?
Que lo que Et salut worldlanguage teachers.
Welcome to the PracticalProficiency Podcast, where we
make the transition toproficiency-oriented instruction
in your world language class ina way that works for you, your
unique context and teachingstyle, and doesn't sacrifice
(00:21):
your well-being along the way.
I'm your host, devon Gunning,the teacher author, conference
host, curriculum creator andconsultant behind La Libre
Language Learning.
This podcast is for thecreative world language teacher
like you who's ready to ditchthe overwhelming pressure of
switching to acquisition-driveninstruction and CI overnight.
(00:42):
You're ready to discover howusing more target language in
class can actually bring you andyour students more joy instead
of adding to your plate.
With practical, authentic anddown-to-earth strategies that
don't require reinventing thewheel or more training, we'll
work together towards the magicof a community-based, target
(01:05):
language-rich classroom, rootedin the power of community and
comprehensible input.
Let's go, hey, hey.
World language teacher, welcomeback.
We are here for an excitingepisode that is a part of our
(01:25):
mini-sode series, all about unitideas.
So get excited.
Think about this as when youneed to have that an idea
session, for when you know youhave a unit coming up and you
want simple ideas for how youcan make it more proficiency
oriented, more fun, more joyful,more practical for how you can
make it more proficiencyoriented, more fun, more joyful,
(01:46):
more practical, and that lovelyplanning session that you wish
you had with your awesomecolleagues, but right here in
your earbuds.
Let's go.
These unit ideas mini-sodes areso much fun for me, so I can't
wait to keep working towardsmore units for you, but if
you're teaching an upcoming unitand you need some ideas for it,
feel free to let me know.
(02:07):
Dm me on Instagram or send mean email.
You'll get an answer fasterthrough email because I do check
that more often.
But let me know what you havecoming up.
You can even text the podcastnow.
Isn't that wild.
I'm so excited about that newfeature.
So contact me to let me knowwhat new units that you have
coming up, and I would love todo a mini-sode about it, but
(02:30):
without further ado.
This one in particular is allabout the skill of describing
and for many of you in level one, that comes through some sort
of either physical orpersonality traits unit.
So let's get into it.
Here are the ideas that I havefor you.
First of all, why do we do thisunit?
(02:50):
It seems an interesting choicefor level one, so I wanted to
give you some context as to whythis is a very common unit in
either your proficiency-basedcurriculum or your textbook.
That claims to be proficiencymay or may not be true TBD
depends on the publisher butthis is a very common unit to do
(03:12):
with level one students or evenlevel twos, if you have not
done it yet.
But here's why.
Let's look first at the languagefunctions for Actful that came
out through the new performancedescriptors released in 2024,
just last year.
They're brand spanking new.
They're so good.
It makes it a lot easier tounderstand what Actful is
(03:32):
expecting of us when we'reworking with students at each of
the different levels.
This skill in particular thatwe're honing in on is the
ability to describe someone orsomething, which is a key novice
skill.
It's one of the big performanceindicating skills on the
(03:56):
performance indicators for anovice, if you can do this
barely, but it's there in listform, you're novice low.
If you can do it barely, butit's there in list form, your
novice low.
If you can do it but with alack of confidence and you need
a lot of scaffolding, yournovice mid.
And if you can do itconfidently in a few maybe not
so original, but in a fewsentences at least.
Then you're a novice high.
(04:17):
So description is the keyindicator of what type of novice
your student is, and it is thekey, central, focal point all
those good terms to describewhat actually is a novice and
what are they capable of doing.
So it's important to have somesort of description unit in your
level one program.
(04:38):
At some point you could bedescribing ice cream, it doesn't
really matter, as long as yourstudents are working towards the
skill of describing somethingin their immediate environment
that they work with or see often.
And for many people that meanswell, why don't we just describe
ourselves and then move forwardinto describing other people?
(04:58):
Because then they can get usedto that third person form which
is so crucial to language andexpression.
And here we are with thephysical and personality traits
unit.
For some people it's justpersonality traits.
It doesn't really matter eitherway that you're going about
this.
If this is something that youare doing, I've got ideas for
you.
So in the actual performanceindicators the language
(05:21):
functions start with the selfand then moving into others and
the environment around them.
So describing other people, theskill of physical and
personality traits fits intothat crucial language function
that your students need to dropto.
I mean move to from being allabout themselves in their
(05:44):
language abilities to startmoving around them into another
sphere, which is describingsomething around them or
describing another person.
So it does become moredifficult the more areas of
spheres you have to jump through.
So there's the self, like me,myself and I.
My immediate environment is thenext one People I know that
(06:06):
whole deal, and then me withother people is a whole nother
sphere, and then the world ingeneral and things in general
and ideas in general, and thenyou go into things and ideas in
multiple timeframes and movesand tenses.
That's a larger area and sphere.
That's a whole tangent that we.
That will show you, though,that how the different levels of
(06:28):
language functions progress.
So for your students to jumpfrom the first one me myself and
I to others, they need to beable to describe, and that's
what this unit does.
So if you got somethingdifferent but still serves that
same function, then go for it.
Doesn't matter.
However, many people have somesort of describing others unit
or even describing themselves,students describing themselves.
(06:48):
It's a really naturaltransition.
So we often miss this incurriculum development, but we
we do this thing where we'relike okay, we need to hit the
skill of students, need to beable to do lists okay, now they
need to be able to do lists.
Okay, now they need to be ableto do phrases.
Okay, now they need to be ableto do sentences.
But where's the transitionbetween those ideas?
(07:09):
How are you supporting them?
From one jump to the other, andthat's where you get a lot of
students who are stuck in thatmiddle ground between phrases
and sentences.
They just can't make that jump.
So describing themselves andothers in the same unit allows
them to do that, because you'reworking with that familiar
language of what they've alreadydone with you for a few months.
Of me myself, I, yo, yo, yo, megusta, je suis that whole deal
(07:35):
of I am.
And then they start moving morewith, like, okay, he, she is,
or they, if you're using themore gender neutral pronoun,
anything like that.
So moving from the self to theother is a nice, natural
transition that this unit can dofor you.
So just to give you somecontext onto why this is really
(07:55):
popular, that's why it can be souseful.
So how can we make thattransition and that description
piece very real, world andcompelling, describing self and
others.
I mean, yeah, it's a very realworld skill.
You don't really have to workhard to make that real world,
because it is Describingyourself and others very
important.
So what about the compellingpiece?
(08:16):
How can we make this wildlyinteresting for students?
That's where the fun comes inand this is where you can really
get a great unit.
So here are some ideas I havefor you.
Why not describe reallyinteresting people and think
first who would be interestingto your students?
Depending on the age group ofyour students, it depends on
(08:39):
what they really, really careabout.
If you're working with youngerstudents, if you're in
elementary school, thendescribing their friends and
family would be really fun forthem Because, again, that whole
moving from the self to peoplearound me, to people in general,
to ideas about people ingeneral like that's the same
(08:59):
growth and development phasethat your brain goes through.
So if you're working with likesix and seven year olds, they
would love nothing more than totalk about themselves and if
you're working with 10 to 11year olds, they really want to
talk about their friends andtheir family.
They're going to have so muchfun with that and maybe a little
bit about like famous people intheir world but and like
(09:20):
favorite characters and moviesand stuff.
But mostly they're going towant to talk about the people in
their immediate environment.
Middle schoolers and highschoolers are absolutely
fascinated by other people.
They do not want to talk aboutthemselves at all.
Why?
It's a weird transition phasefor them.
You know they don't really wanteyes on them.
I mean, some kids will reallywant to talk about themselves,
(09:42):
but in reality, most kids don'treally want to talk like in
depth about what they look like.
That's, think about yourself atage 16.
Did you want to talk a lotabout what you look like?
Probably not.
So give them the same grace ifyou're in that unit.
I like to make this unit aboutother people and really
interesting people.
Since I always worked with highschoolers and occasionally
(10:04):
middle schoolers, but mostlyhigh schoolers I like to do this
unit on famous people and youcan even do why not?
Add more of a social emotionalelement to it and a
sociocultural learning elementto it by talking about famous
people from your target culture.
So this is a great opportunityto dive into that.
(10:27):
There are some really funexamples that you can do with
this.
I'm going to show you at theend.
If you're looking for a donefor you unit, I'm going to show
you some some things that youcan use from my own curriculum
library and you can also justlook at some ideas from that if
that serves you better at thistime.
But I'm going to show you some.
(10:48):
Just click the button and it'sdone for you units that you can
use with this idea in mind.
And all of these are built offof the concept that your
students are going to need tonsof examples written and things
that they can listen to ofpeople, descriptions, what they
look like, what they're into, aswell as all of their
(11:13):
personality characteristics andthings like that.
So I would say, too, that oneof my biggest hints and ideas
for you is that if you are goinginto this unit being like, yes,
this is going to be the unitwhere I teach and really hit on
masculine and feminine, if youteach a romance language, like I
do, then I would caution you tonot spend too much time on this
(11:38):
in the novice area only becausemasculine and feminine is one
of those things that yourstudents are going to need to
revisit multiple times in aspiral program, so your students
will at first be able toexplain the rule to you, because
the rules are fairly simple,honestly, but you know as well
as I do that it does not meanthat they're able to produce the
rule accurately.
So it's better for them tosimply see examples rather than
(12:03):
you explaining to them a tonabout what masculine and
feminine is.
Because, honestly, if you showthem, think of it this way, flip
the script a little bit.
If you gave them fourbiographies, two are men, two
are women, and they'reconsistently spelled differently
(12:24):
.
Each of the same adjectives,they have consistent differences
and they sound differentbecause of, like, the O's and
the A's and all of that, or, youknow, the E's in French.
If that's the case, then yourstudents will eventually pick up
on the idea that, oh, thislooks different.
Whether you're male or female,I am seeing some sort of
(12:44):
difference.
What is it?
And they'll ask you what it is,and you can say, okay, well,
look at the adjective forfriendly, look at the adjective
for artistic, look at theadjective for athletic.
What do you see is on the endof all of these?
Do you see some instances wherethere's not an ending change?
And see if they can figure itout themselves and notice it
(13:04):
themselves first, and then thatcan be your whole lesson of oh
okay, that's the difference.
It will be much more of asuccess, this whole lesson on
grammar, when you're talkingabout masculine and feminine and
adjective agreement, when theyactually care about it, when
they've seen it in context andrealize, oh, this makes a huge
(13:26):
difference in the language.
This is something I should knowabout and pay attention to.
A pop-up grammar would workbetter.
So that would be the way that Iwould approach this whole unit
in general is instead focus onthat skill of students being
able to describe someone, aperson, in a few doesn't have to
(13:48):
be original or unique or evenconnected sentences, but a few
disjointed sentences.
They should be able to describesomeone accurately, and that's
going to involve a little bit ofwork on masculine and feminine,
maybe a little bit of work insome other grammar areas, but
mostly it's going to be aboutexpanding their vocabulary and
(14:08):
expanding their ability to formsentences, which is very
different from accuracy.
They need a lot of input inorder to form sentences.
So that's my spiel on that.
What are some of the activitiesyou can do?
This is the fun part, right?
So if your focus of this unitfor describing people, either
their physical or theircharacter traits.
(14:31):
You should do tons of examplesof you describing other people.
You could describe the studentsthat you have in the room and I
would not do too much of liketheir physical descriptions
unless you're talking aboutsimple things like hair and eye
color.
But you can also do things likeshow.
I mean, every teacher hassomething like this, you know,
like a slide deck of 30 picturesof random celebrities and
(14:54):
you're just describingcelebrities.
Everybody has something likethat.
So keep that in mind.
Do a lot of those.
Do games like Guess who, whereyou're describing celebrities or
famous people or interestingpeople, people in your school.
Anything like that would bereally fun for them.
How much can you do with moviecharacters or at least show
(15:16):
characters, things like that,that they would be familiar with
and you could do a lot ofdescription with?
You can also do all kinds ofgames with like you know who's
the bad guy, who's the good guy,and give do a lot of
description with.
You can also do all kinds ofgames with like you know who's
the bad guy, who's the good guyand give them a bunch of
different circumstances andthings that they could work with
.
I would also say too.
A great way that you can get aton of input with describing
people and help build theirlinguistic capacity to write
(15:39):
sentences through seeing you doit and hearing you make complete
sentences about this is doPictionary with categories of
people and describe things.
Just describe, describe,describe, describe, describe and
see if they can draw betterpictures of it.
I would also do lots oflistening practice.
If you can do, if you can findanything where people are
(16:00):
describing themselves ordescribing each other, that
would be really really helpfuland then a really fun project or
activity that you could do.
That would be absolutelyhilarious.
You can either do it withfictional people or you can have
them pick real people to do, orit could be for them.
Why not?
Is have them do a dating appprofile where they're describing
themselves and makingthemselves look real good and
(16:23):
they could put a picture whatthey like to do.
Or it could be, you know, likefor somebody in their life that
they know you know needs a manor needs a lady friend.
That would be really, reallyfunny.
They would enjoy that.
How much can you do with imageswith this?
Do you have some printouts orany kind of cards that you can
(16:44):
do?
Lots and lots of visuals and doall kinds of tactile
description, things Like can youdo like a Mr Potato type deal
where you bring in Mr Potato andyou list the kind of character,
personality and physical traitsthat the Mr Potato head has and
students have to build it basedoff of what you describe like?
Stuff like that would be so fun.
(17:04):
So those are all differentideas that I have for you on
ways that you can make this unitreally fun and describing
people.
I've even seen an activitybefore that I used to use in my
classroom.
I don't remember who it's buyer.
I would give you the link, butit was something about you had
to.
Oh my gosh, I wish I remembermade it, but it's such a good
idea.
(17:24):
It's a creator on TPT.
If this is you and you'relistening, let me know.
If this is you, I'd love tolink it.
But it was a great activity Iused to use in my classroom
where it was a person, a pictureof, just like a sketch of an
outline of human being, and youwould flip a coin outline of
(17:46):
human being and you would flip acoin for and the coin how many
times you flipped it would givedifferent traits and the people
and your students had to drawthose traits on the body and it
was really, really fun.
Like they would.
Um, they would draw like, oh,the person was tall or was short
or had blonde hair or had curlyhair or had black eyes or had
green eyes, like that it was.
It was interesting.
So you can do things like thattoo.
(18:07):
I would say as well as manypicture talks as you can do,
where you're describing people.
But you're set.
Now here's my favorite finalproject to do with something
like a description unit and aswell.
A note for this is that if thewhole idea of doing physical
traits kind of makes you feellike I don't know if I want to
(18:29):
do that, that's not really thatimportant.
Skip it, it's not thatimportant.
All you're doing is making surethat your students have ways
that they can describe anotherperson, so you don't have to
spend a ton of time on physicaltraits if you don't want to, or
you could even skip some of thephysical traits.
Like you don't like a lot, itcan be difficult in a diverse
classroom to talk about physicaltraits, so you don't, and you
(18:53):
also don't want to be doing alot of things where you're like
talking about what people'sbodies look like in a middle and
high school classroom.
Like it's very hard to do that.
You can just skip it, it'sfine's fine, it's not a big deal
.
It's not like they won't beable to interact with a native
speaker if they don't know howto say their eye color.
That's not that important.
We're just using this as a tool, as a vehicle, to describe
(19:14):
things.
However, character traits arehelpful, so things like you know
, I am artistic, I am shy, I'moutgoing Like that stuff that
they'll want to be able to sayto other people, so I would
include those.
Now, my favorite final projectto do is doing something like an
Instagram profile where theyhave to do it about a famous
(19:37):
person of their choosing I liketo keep it to a Francophone or
somebody from the Latinecommunity or the Hispanic
community and they can do somesort of compare and contrast,
writing with this as well,talking about themselves and
other people, what they have incommon.
But there's also another ideathat I have for you is where you
(19:59):
can also do something like aninterview project or, if you
wanted to make this more of aninterpersonal focus, where you
could have students pair up witheach other and they have to ask
each other questions, maybeeven as that celebrity.
That would be fun.
So check out those ideas andsee if anything really speaks to
you.
Now.
If you're looking for ways tomake this a bit easier on you
(20:22):
from the classroom teacherperspective, I'm going to show
you some ready-made activitiesfor you today so that you can
get started on this right away,especially if you're doing this
unit right now and you're like Ineed some help with this.
So if you're a French teacher,I have an activity that's right
here, ready to go for you, andit is a physical description,
(20:43):
vocabulary card game, as well asa bunch of multimodal
activities to get the job donein your class.
If you're watching the videohere and if you're listening,
I'll give you the link to thevideo below in the show notes.
You can see what some of theseactivities look like.
But what I used to do with thisactivity with my students is
(21:06):
they would get these cut upcards.
One side has a picture of astudent on it and then the other
card, which is actually atotally separate card, has three
written descriptions in verysimple French of what that
person looks like.
So you would match up thedescriptions with those people
(21:26):
and it's like a little guess whogame.
There are 32 full color and 32black and white cards and the
descriptions, yes, still workwith black and white because
they're very genericdescriptions.
They're things like do theyhave glasses, hair, eye color,
all that kind of things.
Are they wearing a ponytail?
It's very simple.
So they have their physicaldescriptions.
(21:47):
This also includes the answerkey.
But the reason I really lovethis activity and why I like to
recommend it to you is becauseit is multimodal.
There is this activity herewhere they have to cut out the
phrases that describes theperson.
Then they have to match it withthat picture.
That's an individual activity,and then there's also a partner
activity where there's listeningand speaking.
(22:09):
There's two different versionshere, where one person has the
descriptions of the people andone other person has the images
and they have to describe theimages to each other and match
them up.
Some of the great benefits ofthis, too, is that all of the
(22:29):
language is ready for noviceLowe's to use.
So, no matter where this comesin your year, it's ready for you
to use, and I would encourageyou to do the same thing.
(22:50):
If you're making this activityon your own is if you're putting
pictures together and matchingit up with the guest who and
doing it yourself, that thelanguage needs to be very simple
for them to be able to workwith this.
I would also say, too, that thefocus is not masculine and
feminine and adjectives and allof that.
The focus really is throughcontext and repetition, which is
the whole point of aproficiency class.
We don't ignore grammar, but weknow that grammar has a smaller
role than we think it does, andit's more about binding with
(23:10):
lots of clear and consistentimagery.
This type of lesson here is oneof those things that you prep
once and then it's ready forever.
You just got to cut out thesets of cards and then it's good
to go make copies for yourclass and you're ready, and it
could be potentially somethingthat goes for even four days of
your class that you could usefor a lot of different things.
(23:31):
So I'm going to show youexactly what this pdf looks like
if you choose to download thishere.
These are the different kidsthat you get to work with, and I
love these cards becausethey're from an artist who does
clip art on TPT, who does animestyle, and they're all middle
school friendly.
So all of these are middleschool kids and teachers, which
is why I loved using thesepictures, and their art is
(23:54):
credited in the resource as well.
So these are the black andwhite versions, so your students
will be able to match these up,and they're fun to match up too
.
And you know like you don'thave to get janky pictures from
the Internet.
You'll have nice, high-quality,clear images with this one here
.
It comes with an answer key,and then here are the questions
specifically that you can lookat and all of the descriptions
(24:15):
that you'll have.
You'll see it's very commonthings that are part of any
French 1 classroom, and thenthere's a lot of practice coming
your way in here, and there'sblack and white copies of
everything as well for easyprinting.
But this one is my favoritepart, which is the InfoGap
activity.
I love InfoGaps.
And then you have La TapetaMush using fly swatter so great
(24:41):
If you are a Spanish teacher.
I want to also show yousomething that is part of my
curriculum the PracticalProficiency Curriculum.
I want to also show yousomething that is part of my
curriculum the practicalproficiency curriculum.
When you're part of this, youget a link to this folder that
has all of these things in it,because I have a unit exactly on
this idea.
So let's take a look at theunit guides and all the things
that are in here is you get aunit guide for this unit,
(25:05):
spanish one.
Unit three, which is famousfamous people.
We talk about famous people andhow to describe them.
So I'm going to show you thisunit guide that you get, which
also comes with functionalchunks and lesson ideas.
Let's look at the unit guide soyou can see what the focus is
for this unit in this unit andthe same is also for French I'm
(25:25):
going to show you thefrancophone version in a minute
but students use vocabulary thatwill help them understand a
person's basic description inlevel in lesson one and then in
lesson two what do students needto understand?
A variety of people'sdescriptions, and you'll see
here the whole list of what'sgoing on in that lesson.
Lesson three students are whatdo they need to describe a
(25:49):
famous person?
And that's where they startgetting into more of the output
focused ideas, and then they'reworking on some conjugation
ideas with you.
And then lesson four is what dostudents need to compare
themselves and others?
So this is where we focus on weand some writing connector
words because they're workingtowards this final project, and
I'll show you down here whatsome of those are.
(26:10):
They're working towards thisfinal project of I can describe
a famous person in detail basedon my research.
This is a novice mid skill andyou will get with this here a
famous people editable biographyslide deck.
So I'm going to show you thishere, where you get 30 plus
(26:33):
different members of the latinolatina latina community in the
simple descriptions that you getto change up if you would like
to.
So this box, this text box, iseditable, where you can change
these up here, and it's avariety of people from a variety
of professions.
So I have here for youactivists, athletes, politicians
(27:02):
, writers, artists the fullgambit.
You get all kinds of people andit'll be some people that your
students know and love and somescientists and other people that
your students might not haveheard of, that they'll be
excited to learn more about.
So this is one of my favoriteresources to make and there's so
(27:22):
much that you can do with this,like you can do picture talk on
picture talk on picture talkwith something like this there's
so much cool stuff that you cando with this, like you can do
picture talk on picture talk onpicture talk.
With something like this,there's so much cool stuff that
you can do.
If you are a french teacher,the same thing is available in
the french and there's a really,really cool lesson plan in here
for you.
That also comes with the withthat vocab card section, which
(27:45):
is I have some readings in herefor you to do, some of those of
biography practices, and I alsohave in here a project for you
to do which is francophonenotable, which has in here a
giant list of famousfrancophones from all over the
world, and then a template foryou to do this actual Instagram
(28:05):
project where your students can,depending on how you want,
phones from all over the world,and then a template for you to
do this actual Instagram projectwhere your students can,
depending on how you want to doit, write all about that famous
person.
So it has the instructions hereand it also has a bunch of
sentence starters and notes forthem so that they won't be doing
this all on their own.
They'll have some language tomake it happen.
(28:26):
And then they have some roughdraft options and and then this
the project is right here andready to go for you, but the
best part is definitely theready made for you list of
famous people from around theworld that your students can
research.
Inside the unit templates, too,there's a bunch of different
ideas for how you can workthrough.
(28:46):
This is the one I want how youcan work through this and jump
into all different ways that youcan focus on this skill here
through the lessons andassessments.
So those are the resources thatI have available for you.
If you'd like to see them inreal time, then check out the
video video.
(29:06):
If you're not already watchingthe video, the link will be
below in the show notes.
But in the meantime, I hopethat you got from this a bunch
of great unit ideas.
If you're doing any kind ofphysical or personality traits,
there's a bunch of resourcesthat I have for you here if
you're looking for somethingthat's done for you, and maybe
even they'll just give you someideas for some things that you
(29:28):
can do in class.
So thank you so much for beinghere for this mini episode, all
about how to use descriptions inyour level one unit, whether it
be about physical orpersonality traits, whatever
that might look like, and I willsee you for the next mini-sode.
Bye for now.
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