Moving on with numbers : from 10 to 20.

 I am starting to look at ways to practice numbers to 20 with Year 2 at Culcheth Primary School. This particular class is now in its second year of learning French and have become very confortable with numbers to 10, so to keep them interested and making progress I’m going for ‘bigger numbers’.  I think that particular class is ready!

This is what I’ve done so far: 

• First, I’m not doing a whole 30 min lesson on numbers I’m treating it as a starter/ a warm up after singing our greeting song and personal information Q&As. So every week I’m doing about 5 minutes.

• Number song:

This song is already in my resources for Upper KS2 and children love it! 

As the children are getting more familiar with it,  I like to pause the song and ask the children what number comes next.

• Counting:

In KS1, we have a focus on ‘Harvest’ time in France and we have been talking about sunflowers and grapes and used it to practice counting, colours, etc.

One of the favourite activity of my classes is to count ‘things’ i.e sunflowers in a field, how many grapes on a bunch?

I ask the class how many we should count. They have to suggest a number in French between 0 and 20 and then they can come and count them out loud (with the class joining in) on the interactive whiteboard, marking them with the pen as they go along, then we continue until we counted all the sunflowers, grapes.

With Halloween coming up I thought we could count sweets, here is a PowerPoint of pictures of sweets you can use - if you like.

I like this approach of constantly revisiting things instead of ticking things off as done plus it means you can make your resources last longer – I’ve used the same picture of a sunflower field for the last 3 lessons!

I’d reckon by Christmas most of the children will be able to understand/ remember their numbers to 20.

Game ideas #1

I'd like to start a series of post on game ideas and what games work well in primary MFL. 

I've listed 3 ideas below for games you can do with any year group, any topic, and involve zero preparation (other than flashcards or a powerpoint presentation that you're using to introduce vocabulary) 

• 'Montrez moi' (Show me)

 

It is a very simple game that we used this half term to learn and practice numbers in French from 0 - 10.

 

How we play it : 

The teacher calls a number in French and repeats it a number of times : cinq, cinq, cinq, cinq... This gives them thinking time however when they hear you saying 'Montrez moi' their thinking time is up and they have to show you the correct numbers of fingers.

Then the teacher calls 'Regardez moi' (Look at me) and count out loud and on his/her fingers to reveal the correct number. The children get a point if they got it right.

 

We have also played this game with numbers up to 20, children played in pairs and had to make up the numbers using both their 2 hands.

• Plus vite ! (faster!) : 

We used it to review previously learnt vocabulary such as colours.

 

How we played it : 

The teacher asks for a volunteer who think they can name all the items of a presentation (i.e. colours) correctly. 

Go through the slides of a powerpoint presentation whilst the child name the items. 

The next person is then asked 'plus vite?' (faster?) if they think they can do it faster than the person before them - they reply 'plus vite' (faster) 'pareil' (same) or 'moins vite' (less fast). 

The game continue until nobody can do it faster than the person before.

• Chaud/froid (hot/cold):

We played this game in KS1 to learn and practice colours

 

How we played it : 

Once you have introduced and practiced some colours send a child out of the room whilst you hide a flashcard in the room, ask the child to come back in and the rest of the class helps him/her to find the card by whispering (if 'cold', far away from the card) or shouting (if 'hot', close to the card) the colour : rouge, rouge, etc. 

What about you what games have you played lately?