Write a New Ending - French

(Intermediate-Low level)

Writing task:

Students in a fourth year French class had read a detective story. In pairs, the students were to write a new ending for the story, starting at any logical place. Students shared both the writing and drawing. They were to maintain the integrity of the characters and the story to the point at which they began their new ending. A minimum of 8 panels was required.

The story: Jean Dacier mistakenly intercepts a note meant for someone else, which sets up a meeting with the sender of the note. Jean follows up and meets Catherine, a young model working for a suntan oil company. In addition to her modeling, Catherine is a go-between, who passes information and delivers packets containing what she thinks are vitamins. Actually, the packets actually contain a deadly virus. Her boss is Lemaître. His major accomplice is the baroness, Mme de Bisson, who has a young butler named Toni. Jean Dacier likes Catherine and decides to go along with this mysterious story. He helps Catherine and eventually she comes to like him also. Packets are bought and sold, messages are sent and the four main characters, Dacier, Catherine, Lemâitre and the baroness end up in a villa in St, Jean Cap Ferrat on the Riviera. Dacier and Catherine surprise Lemâitre, who falls, breaks a vial and dies from the deadly virus. The baroness dies in a car crash. Dacier and Catherine appear to be headed for a long relationship. (The story was written for the classroom).


Example Student Responses Ex 1 Ex 2 Ex 3 Ex 4 Ex 5

Evaluation:

  1. Use the holistic rubric (below) to evaluate the student responses. Then use the multitrait rubric (below) to evaluate the work a second time.
  2. Compare the evaluations from each rubric and the feedback that each rubric provides to students.
  3. Consider the points possible from each rubric in light of the effort required to accomplish the task.
  4. What changes would you make to the rubrics to better align them for evaluating a similar task?



New Endings - Holistic Rubric

4

The content of the comic strip-style ending to the story accurately reflects the story to this point and is true to the characters’ personalities and past actions. Ending shows creativity and imagination. Tense use (present, past and future with aller), subject/verb agreement and gender and number agreement are consistently accurate.

3

The content of the comic strip-style ending to the story nearly accurately reflects the story to this point and is mostly true to the characters’ personalities and past actions. Ending shows some creativity and imagination. Tense use (present, past and future with aller), subject/verb agreement and gender and number agreement are nearly almost always accurate with some errors.

2

While some of the content of the comic strip-style ending to the story reflects the story to this point and is somewhat true to the characters’ personalities and past actions, there are some discrepancies. Ending shows less creativity and imagination. Some errors appear in use of tenses (present, past and future with aller), subject/verb agreement and gender and number agreement.

1

There are significant discrepancies between the content of the comic strip-style ending to the story to this point. The characters’ personalities and past actions are not well reflected in the new ending. Ending shows little creativity and imagination. Frequent errors appear in use of tenses (present, past and future with aller), subject/verb agreement and gender and number agreement.


New Endings - Multitrait Rubric
 

4

3

2

1

Content

The content of the comic strip-style ending to the story accurately reflects the story to this point and is true to the characters’ personalities and past actions.

The content of the comic strip-style ending to the story nearly reflects the story to this point and is mostly true to the characters’ personalities and past actions.

While some of the content of the comic strip-style ending to the story reflects the story to this point and is somewhat true to the characters’ personalities and past actions, there are some discrepancies.

There are significant discrepancies between the content of the comic strip-style ending to the story to this point. The characters’ personalities and past actions are not well reflected in the new ending.

Creativity

Ending shows creativity and imagination.

Ending shows some creativity and imagination.

Ending shows less creativity and imagination.

Ending shows little creativity and imagination.

Verb/Accuracy
(present, past and future with aller)

Tense use, subject/verb agreement, and gender and number agreement are consistently accurate.

Tense use, subject/verb agreement, and gender and number agreement are nearly almost always accurate with some errors.

Some errors appear in use of tenses, subject/verb agreement, and gender and number agreement.

Frequent errors appear in use of tenses, subject/verb agreement, and gender and number agreement.

 

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