Exploring our use and relationship with water: This unit explores the relationship between people (individuals and populations) and water across the world. The lessons begin at a personal level, inviting students to think about how much water they use and how they could conserve water. The unit broadens to national and international/multicultural issues and perspectives as students compare how much water people use in different parts of the world and contemplate why there is such a wide gap.

The unit is a gentle, eclectic introduction to Japanese film. It also draws some comparisons between US films and Japanese films. Students examine US and Japanese film from multiple perspectives. The unit features readings, presentations, and interactive activities. For the culminating project, each student creates a simple website on a Japanese movie that he or she has chosen to watch.

This unit introduces students to the expectations for the behavior of men and women through beliefs and practices present in the Russian culture. After being introduced to the basic idea of gender, students familiarize themselves with a number of gender stereotypes and learn that many people in the Russian culture believe in gender stereotypes staunchly. Nevertheless, a number of current practices for men and women in Russia diverge from these stereotypes, varying significantly by milieu. Students learn about these practices by completing a Webquest and analyzing a text taken off a site for Russian masculine ("butch") lesbians. The culminating project for the unit is a PowerPoint presentation in which students analyze gender-specific normative qualities and behavior norms in advice literature (such as articles in magazines and online and advice books). Students prepare for this final project in the last lessons of the unit by analyzing the typical features of advice texts and discussing the role that various advice texts play with relation to the social beliefs about gender.

Students will explore the history of France during the Middle Ages (about 476 to 1453 A.D.). As they learn about major events during the Middle Ages, they will investigate the topics of governance and leadership, challenges (war, famine, disease) and cultural and artistic creations. They will learn about the impact of events, people and works of literature and art on medieval society, and they will address the question of why medieval heroes and artistic creations are still considered important today.

The main goals of the unit are to develop basic knowledge about insects and to develop the language linked with the theme. Most of the lessons promote the use of cooperative learning strategies and the use of graphic organizers.

Students will use the creative elements of character analysis and improvisation to develop a character for performance. While this unit's theme is the development of characters for performance, its overarching goal is to provide French immersion students with the opportunity to extend their discourse and further develop their speaking skills. This unit does not cover articulation or pronunciation exercises. For this reason these elements of performance are not being evaluated in the unit assessment.

This unit comprises four major lessons which are distinct yet cumulative. In the first lesson, the students will lay the groundwork for their examination of French stereotypes by generating those stereotypes themselves. They may draw, write, or find examples of what they think are "typical" French things. In the second lesson, they will be required to change perspective -- instead of being the examiners, they will be the examined culture. Students will look at various examples of stereotypes of Americans, as shown through websites and books about Americans. Thus, in Lesson 2 they will begin to examine stereotypes and their relationship with truth. In the third lesson, they will shift again to the role of examiners of French culture – the teacher will show movies, books, pictures, and websites which might reflect the same stereotypes the students generated in Lesson 1. This lesson will demonstrate concretely to the students that the image that they have of French people is created and maintained by strong forces in American culture. In the fourth lesson, learners will explore those French stereotypes in order to understand their origins and relationships with daily life and reality in France today. These lessons will culminate in a final multimedia presentation project in which small groups of students working collaboratively will be asked to examine a cultural myth, generalization and cultural reality of French people and show their relationship to French society today.