Nonfiction Comprehensible Input lessons

comprehensible input nonfiction

It’s been a busy summer – I’ve been working to come up with some new ideas and I can’t wait to try them out! This year I’m going to be teaching French 1-2 only. My colleague and I arrange so that we alternate each year, which means only one prep for each of us and we get to see the same kids two years in a row. So far, it’s working for us. Fewer names to learn, we get to know our students better, and we can spend more time prepping for great lessons since we only have one prep!

Anyway….I plan to do a lot of comprehensible input (CI) with my kids but it can get old doing silly stories. I thought – what if I told a non-fiction story, but did the same sort of repetition and CI that I do with the stories? I came up with a topic that I thought would be interesting and developed a set of 4 target structures/words and it all came together nicely. I made a PowerPoint that has lots of repetitions of the target structures and can lead to quite a bit of circling and questioning. And now I have a nice collection of Comprehensible Input nonfiction lesson plans!

What is in each comprehensible input nonfiction lesson?

Nonfiction Comprehensible Input lessons

I’ve written 4 of these comprehensible input nonfiction lessons so far: Paris, Lafayette, Thomas Pesquet (astronaut) and the TGV. They are all super simple French with 4 target structures each, plus a grammar focus and practice. I’ve also made some retell practice sheets – one for writing and one for speaking.

Nonfiction Comprehensible Input lessons
Nonfiction Comprehensible Input lessons
Nonfiction Comprehensible Input lessons

One thing I’ve noticed is that there is a lack of material for the very lowest levels. It’s easy to find something for intermediate or advanced, since they have the vocabulary to understand a wide variety of topics. But for beginners, it’s quite difficult to find nonfiction material. You can see these in my TPT store here.

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