At the end of March our French students participated in the "Le Grand Concours," a national French exam/contest. Overall, students did very well on the exam. I am very pleased with students' results, especially since the exam is heavily based on listening and reading. My hope was that students would place around or above the 50 percentile mark. Since the Grand Concours is a contest, it is rather challenging and students have not been studying French for that long.
We had 72 students participate in the level 1 contest this year with 28% receiving awards and 62.5% scoring at or above my goal score when compared to students across the state and country with similar ages, level, and length of experience. This is exceptional when 34 of the 72 taking the exam were only 7th graders. In 7th grade we had TWO national winners, FIVE in grade 8.
In 7th grade we had 17 students place in the top ten for the state of Maine with a few students tying for 6th, 8th and 10th place. In 8th grade 12 students placed in the top ten with students tying for various places as well.
Again, students did extremely well for their first time participating in a national level contest with no preparation or experience. My congratulations to all students for a fine job!