Welcome to Mr Tellez's Site

Welcome to my Web site! First, a little bit about myself:

My name is Miguel Ramon Tellez and I was born in France in 1958. When my father finished his four-year hitch in the Air Force, he returned to the United States. Being a minority in the sixties, my father was not able to find a job in El Paso, Texas, and decided to go back to Europe as a civilian contractor. He started in France, went to Germany, and finally settled in Spain. For the longest time I considered Spain "home" for I miraculously spent ten consecutive years in Aranjuez, a lovely little town between Madrid and Toledo. At age eighteen, I was lucky enough to attend an American high school at Torrejon de Ardoz Air Base. For the first time in my life, I came into contact with American teachers and fell in love with all of them, especially my US history teacher, Mr. Heck! Upon graduation from high school, I started college as an Electrical Engineering major in El Paso. Due to English being my third language, I did not fair well and I decided to join the Air Force. I can proudly say that I served our beloved country for over twenty years. I married a very positive, supportive and patriotic wife with whom I had two beautiful boys. One just finished a degree at Palo Alto Community College and is currently attending Baylor University; the other one is attending Reddix High School in San Antonio. I also have three stepchildren. My first daughter is a restaurant manager in South Dakota, my second daughter is a Civil Engineer in San Antonio and my son is a doctor at Rush Medical Center in Chicago. I am very proud of all of them. I obtained a Bachelors of Arts with majors in Spanish and in French, and graduated Magna Cum Laude in the fall of 2007 from Texas State University. Learning has never come easy to me for I am dyslexic and I feel like I can really relate to kids with learning disabilities as well. I feel very fortunate to have “landed” with a position at the Academy of Careers and Technologies High School. My hope is, like Mr. Heck, to influence our coming generations in a positive and lasting manner!

Grading system:

Down to business: Grading system - My philosophy is to pass every student! In order to accomplish this task, I grade everything evenly in order for students to may have a weakness in one area can succeed in an other. My grading system is as follows:

Homework/participation 20%

Quizzes/ Oral Grades 20%

Chapter Tests 20%

*Projects 20%

Final Exam 20%

*Projects: Minimum two projects per nine weeks period.

Syllabus: The following syllabus is serve as a guideline for the teacher, it well vary in accordance to the students compositions, overall students prior knowledge and the dynamics and motivation of each class.

French 1

FIRST NINE WEEKS (FRENCH I)

Unit I Lessons 1, 2, 3 , 4

Communication: Greetings and introductions, nationalities, common expressions and degrees of feelings.

Culture: Going back to school, Astérix, Port of France and Martinique Island and Eiffel Tower.

Structure: Accents and pronouns, alphabet and numbers 0- 60, pronunciations and telling time, masculine and feminine nouns and the verb to be (être).

Unit II Lessons 5, 6, 7, 8

Communication: People, family, gender, boys and girls and asking about people and peoples’ names! Asking about age, and nasal pronunciations.

Culture: Friends, girlfriends and boyfriends: Montréal and Québec, the French family and pets and week days.

Structure: How to introduce or point oout someone, how to find out who someone is, numbers from 60 to 100, days of the week, months and dates and the verb to be (avoir).

Unit III Lessons 9, 10, 11, 12

Communication: Expressing wants, hunger, thirst, needs, how much something costs, loans: temperatures and seasons, using the word please, and expressions used in the classroom.

Culture: Food and youth, le café, and French/European money

Structure: Pronunciations: intonations, final accents, and the consonant “r” and the verb to be (aimer), school objects and body parts

Unit IV Lessons 13, 14, 15, 16

Communication: Expressing likes and dislikes, asking who are they? How to ask questions (est-ce que …) and how to answer questions affirmatively and negatively (n’est-ce pas…),

Culture: Week activities, weekend parties, Senegal.

Structure: Using verbs that express likes and dislikes, how to invite friends, how to accept an invitation and how to turn down an invitation; common expressions and words; present tense verbs in the affirmative and negative form with “-er” ending. The verb to do (faire), and verbs + infinitives.

SECOND NINE WEEKS (FRENCH I)

Unit V Lessons 17, 18, 19, 20

Communication: Describing people, objects, personal possessions and “my room”; expression with “avoir” to have, and how to get someone’s attention

Culture: Young French people, Montpellier and Strasburg, friendship and French cars.

Structure: The verb to have (avoir); Definite articles, and definite articles in the negative form, adjectives with names, adjectives describing nationalities; using “c’est”, colors, and the “ch” pronunciation.

Unit V I Lessons 21, 22, 23, 24

Communication: Where do you live? Street names, my city; how to contradict someone.

Culture: Cities in France, Paris, le Café, Versailles.

Structure: The verb to go (aller) and (aller + infinitive), the verb to come (venire), the use of noun + de + noun, the preposition de, and possessive adjectives notre, votre and leur. Ordinal numbers.

Unit V II Lessons 25, 26, 27, 28

Communication: Dressing up, money, and conversations to indicate approval.

Culture: French elegance, shopping centers, dressing up and how young people spend their money.

Structure: Numbers from 100 to 1000, verbs to buy (acheter) and to prefer (préfère) and to put (mettre), and the adjectives “ce” and “quell”; more adjectives such as beau, nouveau and vieux; regular verbs with -ir and -er endings.

Unit V III Lessons 29, 30, 31, 32

Communication: Sports, the calendar year, negative expressions, expressing what events in order – sequencing.

Culture: Leisure time, weekends, French holidays; television and music.

Structure: Expression with (to have) avoir, past tense of –er ending verbs; the verb to see (voir), regular conjugation with helping verbs in the past tense (être, avoir, faire, mettre, et voir); negative expressions with ne…jamais and expressions with quelqu’un and quelque chose.

Unit IX Lessons 33, 34, 35, 36

Communication: Foods, letters –u and –ou, -s and –ss, and –on and om

Culture: French meals, la cantine, Restaurants and French cuisines, and a French picnic.

Structure: Pronouns me, te, nous, vous and le, la and les; articles du and de la, and the verbs vouloir, prendre, devoir, and connaître.

This site was last updated 11/02/07