Today's French class was brought to you by the letters A - E - G and A. My grade 8s participated in a digital escape room organized by Cavilam. Our mission was to save the French language from disappearing, and there were a series of puzzles and challenges to complete in order to do so. In my class, I registered five teams with five students on each team. The official instructions indicated that a minimum language level of B1 on the DELF was necessary to participate. My students have not written the DELF, but I would put their competence somewhere around A2 (the progression is A1, A2, B1, B2, C1, C2) I knew going in that this activity would be a significant challenge for the groups.
About midway through the allotted 45 minutes, it was clear that no groups were going to be able to solve all 6 country challenges. This was not surprising to me, and I chose to announce to the class that it was highly unlikely they would win the game. Getting incredulous looks, I went on to make sure they understood that "success" was never the intention with this activity, and that I just wanted them to do their best.
When the time had expired, most groups had successfully solved one out of six series of challenges. And they were excited! We briefly discussed why I would have set them a challenge that I didn't expect them to finish successfully - their answers were astute:
"To give us an experience with different types of French."
"So that we could practice working cooperatively as a group."
"To have fun."
"To learn about French places in the world."
"To practice our reading and listening skills."
They did all of those things for 45 minutes, and persevered even when the task was complex. This will be an idea I return to over and over this year, and I love that we were able to start off with such a great example of a high-ceiling task. So much can be learned, even when we don't "succeed".
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