Our suitcases of learning

In my last post I detailed the idea of packing a suitcase of learning before the summer - inspired by Janet Lloyd (see my last post here). 

I've now 'filled' my suitcases with 5 of my 7 schools - between 4/6 classes in each school... you do the maths :-) 

This provided me with really valuable feedback regarding what children enjoy doing in my lessons and I thought I'd share with you the outcome. 

      

I've compiled the list of the most popular : games, topics, songs and language learning activities. 

• Favourite games: What’s your favourite game to practice new language?

Most popular : 

Boys vs. girls and other team games

Splat

Corners (in the class or in the hall/large space)

Elevens

Stand up bingo

Also mentioned: 

Tour de France board game (on Janet Lloyd network website - simple board game to download also see my post here)

Jaques a dit (Simon says)

Pass the parcel

Bingo

Flashcard games (hide &guess, hot/cold, revealing from a ‘magic bag’)

Mini whiteboard game (responding game)

OXs

Authentic playground games (or adapted from other languages) : Papier pierre ciseaux (see my post here) and ‘café au lait’ (as ‘chocolate’ in Spanish)

Epiphany game (see my post here)

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• Favourite topics:  What did you enjoy learning about?

Most popular: 

Festival (Epiphany) and special events (Tour de France)

Food (fruits & veg, breakfast items, picnic, ice creams)

Animal: including mini-beasts, old Mac Donald had a farm, the very hungry caterpillar.

Flags and countries - We used the 'Mon drapeau' sequence from Lightbulb languages.

Kite festival for European Day of Languages  2014 (see my post here)

Alien family (on Janet Lloyd Network SOW)

Also mentioned:  

Weather

Clothes

Carnival

Town/ cities in France, virtual trip around France and Paris (see my post here) 

All about me (name, age, where you live, etc.) conversation

Months of the year and birthday party

Numbers/colours

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• Songs: What song(s) do you prefer singing? 

Most popular: 

Numbers to 20 (Alain le Lait)

Bonjour, Bonjour, comment ca va? (Alain le Lait)

Months of the year

Jean Petit qui danse

Pomme peche poire abricot

Also mentioned: 

Numbers to 10

Bonjour Madame

Quel age as-tu? Rap

Days of the week

Salut, salut, salut

Alphabet

Tchik Tchak

Check out my Youtube playlists: favourite songs to teach French and Greeting songs for all the links. 

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• Favourite language learning activity: How do you enjoy learning French? What do you like doing most in our lessons?

Most popular: 

Singing songs

Games and quizzes

Creative activities i.e making cards, mini-books, masks etc.

Also mentioned :  

Using new technologies (apps) See the presentation I gave at the JLN Primary Languages conference in June 2014.

Role-plays

Joining in stories

Let's pack our suitcase!

For one of my school it is already time to 'pack our suitcase' this week as this is our last French lesson of the year...

Inspired by a blog post Janet Lloyd wrote a few weeks ago about transition between year groups, we will be packing our suitcase with our favourite... game / song / topic / activity so we can pass it on to next year's teacher. 
I've created a simple powerpoint (you can download it here) to fill in with the class with their favourite activities (including links to videos, etc.). I will email it to their new teacher, ready to use on their first French lesson next year. 

This is what it might look like : 

Tour de France

This half term, in Year 3 we are revisiting talking about where we live and looking at the geography of France.

Last week, we looked at a child friendly map of France such as this one and explored: 

- main cities

- seas and oceans

- bordering countries

- local produces

- ways of travelling to France from England, etc. 

(You could spend a few lessons just using the map - ours is from the Language Stickers Company)

We revised asking and answering : Où habites-tu? J’habite à … but this time as a French national living in Calais, Paris, Nice, etc.

Next week I plan on using Janet’s listening sticks' idea so I’ve made my own ‘listening sticks’ to go with my lesson.

How is it going to work?

Each child has a listening stick with 3 pieces of information on it : a town/city in France or England, a colour and a number.

Start slowly by calling out a city/town, a number or a colour, the children have to listen and wave their stick if they have the information. 

Once the children have ‘warmed up’ start calling 2 then 3 items : ‘J’habite à Lyon’ and ‘trois’; ‘rouge’, ‘dix’, ‘j’habite à Warrington'.

To make it more challenging I’ll also be calling ‘J’habite en France / Angleterre’ so the children have to really listen attentively.

Also, I’m going to start the lesson with this clip of the Tour de France 

(check out Janet's Tour de France page with links and ideas for lessons on the Tour de France) 

It shows the route in 3D and I'll ask the children to try to spot some of the places we talked about last week – finally to tick the ICU box I’ll incorporate some of this event in the game: If the children ear me saying ‘Tour de France’ everybody has to wave their stick as this year’s tour de France will starting and going through England.

Et voilà !! A really simple lesson, which I’m looking forward teaching next week!

La Tour Eiffel

This half term, in Yr 5, we took an imaginary trip to France: 

• We looked at a French ID card and made our own: 

• We explored ways of travelling to France by looking at a child friendly map (similar to this): 

• We discussed what we might see at the airport or on the ferry (using Janet Lloyd Network resources). 

• We took the passport control challenge:
  

Listen to Megan (Yr5) completing the challenge. 

Now we made it to France and we’re going to have a look around Paris using this YouTube video 

also, we’ll go to the top of the Eiffel Tower : 






We will also look at some key facts about the Eiffel tower using this infographic from Pinterest ( I didn't pin this and now I can't find it anymore - however I saved it as a word document if you'd like a copy). 

I’ll ask the children in groups to gather as much information as they can by themselves also using bilingual dictionaries if 

available. 

Depending on the group I might give them some questions to answer instead : 

Finally we’ll all have a go at drawing the Eiffel Tower using this (also from Pinterest) 

I hope you enjoy this sequence, don't hesitate to ask for the resources and let me know how it goes !

----- EDIT : You can download the resources directly from my Google drive, follow the link