June Freifelder

ESL World History, 9th Grade

5th Period, 55 minutes
Unit 12: Revolutions, Day 6
OVERVIEW
This is our second of three lessons on the French Revolution after looking at
the American Revolution and the English Civil War. This lesson builds off the
background we laid yesterday in terms of introducing Frances political and
social climate. Students will be introduced to the beginning stages of the
French Revolution and will continue working on creating their own flags to
symbolize revolution in small groups.
ENDURING UNDERSTANDINGS
Conflict resolutions can involve aggression, compromise, cooperation,
and change
People respond to and resolve conflicts in a variety of ways
GOALS/OBJECTIVES
Content Goal: Students will understand the context of the French Revolution
in terms of the economic state the country was in at the time and continue
to develop their understanding of the social structure of the estate system in
place. Students will be introduced to the storming of the Bastille and the
guillotine, and understand their significance in the French Revolution.
Language Goal: Students will continue to use new vocabulary that they
learned yesterday such as estate and assembly, as well as vocabulary
from past units such as monarchy, clergy, and nobility. We will
introduce new vocabulary that pertains to content such as Bastille,
storming, and guillotine by showing pictures and taking notes in the
lesson following this one. Students will also engage in a discussion of
political cartoons and drawing from the French Revolution and use their
developing English-speaking skills to discuss these images.
MATERIALS
Computer cart if students would like to use symbols from google
images or to look at examples of flags online
Large posters of the flags that students started yesterday
Revolution! Powerpoint and smartboard to project slides
Students journals/notebooks for Do Now
Art supplies for flags [in room]
OPENER
We will open by having students complete a graphic organizer of the French
estate system as a review from yesterday and to catch a few students up
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who missed the previous lesson. If students are struggling with instructions,
I will model with the smartboard their task, so they can see what is being
asked of them. I will call on students to move the descriptors into the correct
places on the French social pyramid to review the Do Now. 5-6 minutes
BODY OF LESSON
Whole-class discussion of three images from the French Revolution (1520 minutes)
o Picture 1: Cartoon of the three estates [students have familiarity
from yesterday]
What do you see in the picture?
Who do you think these three people are or who do they
represent?
How do you know?
What are they wearing?
How were the first two estates using/taking advantage of
the third estate?
Show caption, You should hope that this game will be over
soon
What do you think this means?
Which estate do you think made the cartoon?
o Picture 2: Storming of the Bastille [student have no background
knowledge]
What do you think is in the castle-like building?
What is storming? Why are people storming it?
Hint: it is a fortress and prison, not the palace where
the king lives. It has guns and weapons.
Now what do you think the people are doing?
o Picture 3: The Guillotine
What do you think is happening in this picture?
Who do you think is being killed- a revolutionary or a
supporter of the king?
Who do you think is doing the killing?
What else do you see that is interesting about this
drawing?
Who are all the people?
o Slide: Is these anything worth fighting for to the death?
Transition to group work on revolutionary flags. Students will continue
to create a flag that represents revolution and a slogan of five words or
less in groups of two to four. (20-25 minutes)
CLOSURE
2 minutes
Students will be asked to clean up and put away computers. I remind
students that they will be presenting their flags to the class the next day.
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ASSESSMENT/EVALUATION

The Do Now, as per usual, will serve as a spot check to see what
students are understanding from the previous lesson on the estate
system in France and what terms we still have to review before the
culminating assessment.
In the Do Now, students will construct a graphic organizer
independently in their notes which hopefully will make this information
stick and they will be able go back to this Do Now before the
assessment on the Revolution.
With the revolutionary flags, Im hoping to get across the enduring
understanding that, People respond to and resolve conflicts in a
variety of ways, by stressing the importance of symbol and slogan
that people remember which convinces them to join a cause.
Students ability to create their own revolutionary flags may be a
step in showing that they understand this concept.
In this lesson and tomorrows lesson, Im hoping students have enough
background knowledge of the English Civil War, American Revolution,
and French Revolution to compare and contrast the revolutions in a
three-way venn diagram and draw connections to the Enlightenment in
the next few lessons.
ACCOMODATIONS
As noted in the body of the lesson, Im hoping to tap into specific prior
knowledge while discussing this new topic in terms of Frances role in
the American Revolution, the Enlightenments ideology, and the social
hierarchy of the Middle Ages. Hopefully, this makes knowledge more
accessible to students in this lesson. Im also planning to stress
repeated themes and vocabulary across our Revolution unit that
students are familiar with from the English Civil War and the American
Revolution.
I used a similar pyramid chart to represent the social structure of the
three estates with pictures alongside to hopefully promote an
understanding of French society with all learners in the classroom.
Graphic organizers have a tendency to help my lower-level ELL
students.
For the discussion, I tried to scaffold the questions from simple ones
such as, what do you see which would be accessible to the majority
of the class and tried to build up to more complex questions.
For the images themselves, I began with an image which my students
have the background knowledge from yesterday and the Do Now to
help interpret. I will ask leading questions to help students get there,
as well as how to you know to get my students thinking about their
thinking (meta-cognition).
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Working in groups will help lower-level ELL students understand what is

being asked of them in the Revolutionary flag project. Students also
had a chance to brainstorm idea ahead of time and were given
examples. In addition, internet sources should help them generate
more ideas.