What went well last week #8

Bonjour, 

These are a few activities that worked really well for me last week. 

This is for me to remember in my practice what games, songs, etc. work and also to share ideas with you. 

Most of the ideas below are really simple, they are tried and tested in various schools and they work!

• ‘Parapluie’ by Alain Lelait   

In KS1 we have been learning about the weather linking it to months of the year and clothes. We’ve been using the ‘parapluie’ song to listen to specific phrases/words. Every time we heard ‘il pleut’ or ‘parapluie’ we had to do our actions for ‘il pleut’ (rain falling down) and ‘parapluie’ (pretending holding an umbrella)

• Saint Valentin

My Valentine activity this year was based around ‘he loves me, he loves me not’ – which in French is ‘ Il m’aime un peu, beaucoup, passionément, à la folie, pas du tout’.(he loves me : a little, a lot, passionately, madly, not a all).

As a class, we worked out what each intensifier meant and I distributed ‘a petal’ to each person whilst saying the rhyme ‘Il m’aime un peu, beaucoup, passionement, à la folie, pas du tout’.

They had to listen carefully for their own intensifier, write it on one side of the petal and on the other side they wrote a sport, a colour, food, family member, celebrity, etc. (We brainstormed words, phrases from a wide range of topic.)

• J’aime, J’adore, Je n’aime pas, je déteste (I like, I love, I don’t like, I hate)

Still on the topic of likes and dislikes with Year 6, for our warm up activity, I wanted to set up a speaking activity as a change from our usual song.

I made a powerpoint with pictures which I knew children would have a strong opinion about and therefore would engage with the activity. The task was to give a simple opinion about each item and continue to do so with different people on the table until the picture disappear and another one was revealed.

I wanted to set this up as a ‘video game’ with different levels of difficulty.

Level 1: to give a simple opinion and ask someone ‘et toi?’ (and you?)

Level 2 : add a reason

Level 3: I’ll introduce the language of argument (i.e. Really? You’re kidding! I disagree! Etc.)  

(This is something I’m experimenting with and it might take a while before we reach level 3…)

• Making fruit salads

Year 5 have been learning about fruits and vegetables and consolidating numbers to 20 in French. Last week, I gave them a budget ‘quinze euros’ for example, they had to do the maths (mentally) and say what they would put in a ‘pretend’ fruit salad. They had to spend all the money and make sure they did not over-spend. 

However, this week we made REAL fruit salads so that was even better!

What about you? What worked well for you recently? 

What went well last week #7

Bonjour, 

These are a few activities that worked really well for me last week. 

This is for me to remember in my practice what games, songs, etc. work and also to share ideas with you. 

Most of the ideas below are really simple, they are tried and tested in various schools and they work!

• Playing corners with weather phrases in Year 2.

I had never played this game before by fear of the chaos it might cause, but it worked really well with KS1 – who are taught in half classes (10-12 children at a time). I will be playing it again particularly with a small group. So I definitively recommend giving this a go.

• Games to play with pictures

Last animal standing:

Each child has a picture of an animal (could be anything, colours, days of the week, etc.) Call out each animal one by one and whoever has the corresponding picture is out and has to sit down. The winners are the last ones still standing before I called out the last animal. I did it first with just the nouns: un chat, un chien, etc. then we repeated the activity a second time but this time they had to listen to the sentences: J’aime...

This is a great listening game and to emphasise on the ‘careful’ listening element I only repeated each sentence twice.

Quiz, quiz, swap:

Play a song whilst children are walking around the classroom with a card/picture - when the music stops, they find a partner and ask each other a question (we practiced: Qu’est ce que tu aimes? What do you like?) then answer, once the conversation is finished they swap their pictures.

Repeat with 4 or 5 different partners.

• Papier – pierre – ciseaux : 

I already posted about this last week – see here. It went down a storm with Years 5 and 6 and I will be continuing playing it as a starter/warm up activity in the next few weeks.

• Lift the flap guessing game: 

I recycled my idea of the ‘lift the flap’ guessing game that I used with Year 5 (see here) with Year 3 who are working on animals and likes/dislikes. We wrote the question on the outside and wrote the sentence and drew a picture on the inside. Volunteers came to the visualizer to present their game and we had to guess what it was before they opened up all the flaps.

• Build your favourite alien from the alien family story (from Janet Lloyd Network): 

After teaching the parts of the head/face we played a kind of ‘beetle drive’ game. Each part had a number: un : la tête ; deux: la bouche, etc. We rolled a big foam dice and drew the corresponding part of the face slowly building the alien face of their choice: le papa, la maman, etc.

It’s leading nicely to making our own portrait gallery of the alien family!!

Another fun week really !!

And you what worked well for you recently ? 

Papier - pierre - ciseaux (rock - paper - scissors)

Bonjour,

Clare Seccombe blogged earlier this week about a powerpoint which behave like a 'random picture generator' and kindly uploaded the powerpoint on ther (amazing!) blog.

It got me thinking about how I could use and adapt this. I was planning a Year 6 lesson on sports and games also trying to incorporate playground games following some ideas that Janet Lloyd had presented at the last Janet Lloyd Network CPD back in November.

And this is what I came up with to introduce the game 'papier - pierre - ciseaux' (rock-paper-scissors). First I'll introduce the 3 actions and explain the rules in French, see my powerpoint below. 

And then, using the 'random picture' powerpoint we'll play round of 'teacher vs. class' before they can have a go in pairs.

Papier pierre ciseaux from Emilie Woodroffe

What went well last week #6

Bonjour, 

These are a few activities that worked really well for me last week. 

This is for me to remember in my practice what games, songs, etc. work and also to share ideas with you. 

Most of the ideas below are really simple, they are tried and tested in various schools and they work!

Writing ‘draft’ tweets

In Year 6, we are learning about sports and hobbies and expressing likes/dislikes. The children practiced giving their opinions (in writing) on sports as if they were tweeting about it – 140 characters no more! 
Who can get the closest to 140 characters? 
Download the template here.

Making songs up

In year 3 we are learning about animals and also trying to speak in sentences and say which animal we like. 
We’ve been singing along to this song to practice ‘J’aime…’ Et toi?’ 

(I voluntarily used the indefinite article as it is the way I introduced the animal : un/une)

Tune: 'If you're happy and you know it'

Then, each table had a verse of the song to adapt and perform adding actions. You can differentiate by giving the 3rd verse to your more able children as there are more words to think about.

Weather/Date

In KS1, we are linking months of the year and weather. The class teacher whom I cover for French, sent me this link and she will use it to follow up my lessons.

Also available in Spanish and Dutch here.

Colours

A few weeks ago,  I ordered some counters and dice to play board games and I received a big bag of 500 colourful counters, I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with them… now I know!

In French club (KS1) we have been doing a lot of work on colours mainly through songs and games (listening/speaking). This week children were using their reading skills to match the word to the colours/counters. Download the template here. 

There are so many other ways of using the counters and I’m sure they will come in really handy.

The counters are from this website: £3.26 for a bag of 500 ! 

What about you? What worked well for you recently?

What went well last week #5

Bonjour, 

These are a few activities that worked really well for me last week. 

This is for me to remember in my practice what games, songs, etc. work and also to share ideas with you. 

Most of the ideas below are really simple, they are tried and tested in various schools and they work!

New greeting songs

• Alphabet song – I don’t normally teach the alphabet but this is a great song to do just that, it is also useful to learn some key sounds in French: ‘A’; ‘I’, ‘U’ , for example.
  

• Salut salut salut – repetitive song and catchy tune, great for starting off the lesson and putting children in the ‘mood’ for French.

In year 4 we’ve just started to look at family through the story of the 'alien family' from the Janet Lloyd Network  – which is always a hit! We added actions and silly voices and acted out the story. We played some cards games to help us remember the names:

• Memory/pairs – with 2 sets of pictures - facing down, can you find the matching pairs as well as saying who it is.

• Montrez moi (Show me) – with 2 sets of picture (facing up) between 3 children, call out a family member and ask the children to show you the correct picture (there are only 2 correct pictures and 3 children so it can get messy!)

In year 5 we are looking at fruits and vegetables and describing them using adjectives: c’est rond, c’est long, c’est gros/moyen/petit. Qu’est ce que c’est? 

We’ve been making up riddles, and making lift the flap games to slowly reveal the fruit or vegetable, here is an example :  

Finally, we've been talking a lot about the importance of pronunciation and using word association or pictures to help us learn new words.Children were having problems with the word 'poisson', pronouncing it 'croissant', also the 'oi' sound (as in poire/pear) was a bit difficult for some of the children when we looked at fruits and vegetables, and in year 4 we were thinking about strategies for remembering family members. 

So, I've made some posters which I'm going to share with my classes this week, hopefully this will help them to start thinking along these lines. 

And you ? What worked well for you recently ?