I am delighted to tell you that "The Really Useful Primary Language book' has been published . This very useful book has been written by my friends Jayne Wright and Alison Taylor.
This book is for anyone with an interest in primary languages: primary teachers, head teachers, teaching assistants, primary trainee teachers, secondary ML trainees and lecturers. It contains practical strategies, teaching ideas and photocopiable masters. There is a free accompanying online resource which includes French and Spanish sound files for classroom
Having checked the French in this book, I think that it will be a useful reference for primary and secondary MFL teachers. A copy of the flyer is attached and a reduction in price of 20% is currently being offered.
Le 11 novembre, c'est l'Armistice , pour commémorer cet événement les Français ont un jour férié. Mais que se passe-t'il exactement et que connaissez-vous de cette période. Pour cela, j'ai trouvé un texte sur le site de 1jour,1actu, vous y trouverez les renseignements que vous avez besoin. Lisez le texte et répondez aux questions:
La Brioche Dorée organised a competition in May asking people to design a sandwich. This reminded me of an activity I used to do with my year 9 years ago, when students had to design "un sandwich extraordaire".
Students designed and wrote their recipe using the imperative (written task)
They demonstrated their sandwich in class. (oral presentation).
The class followed the instructions (listening task) and commented on the sandwich (Assessment for Learning)
I would like to do this activity again in the future. We can use the Flip cameras to film so that it will be better to evaluate and students can also produce worksheets for other students to do, together with a vocabulary list. They can also produce the film at home using their own camera or mobile phone.
I would then ask the students to look at the winners of La Brioche Dorée competition and ask to compare the winning sandwiches with their own sandwiches- This could lead to a written task using comparatives. "Je préfère le sandwich de .... au sandwich numéro... parce qu'il a l'air..... etc.
This is also a good way of looking at opinions and engage students in Talk. (Use photos of the sandwiches - match with recipe) and comment!!
Why not have a go at creating your own sandwich in French?
Year 9 are looking at Fair Trade. We started our lesson by watching a clip (the first 2 mins 30)- We gave our opinion on the clip that we had watched.
Je pense que le clip est sur....
Il s'agit de......
I gave students the words cut up. This helped them focus on the sound and written words.
Then students were issued with the script. They followed it with a ruler. The aim was to notice pronunciation. I then played it again and put the sound to mute , when I stopped the recording, students had to say what the next word would be.
We then coloured the text according to words we knew (green), cognates and words we thought we sort of knew (orange) and words that we did not know (red). Students had then to find words in the dictionary. Next lesson they will need to share the vocabulary that they have researched with other members of their group.
The next lessons will be spent exploiting the vocabulary, building sentences and discussing the text.
Vous voulez lire des chiffres très vite, savoir combien gagnent les personnes célèbres, alors regardez le site suivant. Vous découvrirez des faits étonnants!!
Year 11 have been looking at the topic of work. the following work has been developed around child labour.
The first task is to watch the clip: les enfants au travail on Mon JT quotidien. The class was divided in two groups depending on their level in French.
One group had to fill in the missing gaps by looking at a list and the other group had to put the sentences in the right order.
Students identified some of the vocabulary that they did not know and work out the meaning from the text. We then identified the vocabulary relating to working the text.
The class was then split into two mixed groups (one in favour of child labour and the other against)and had to use Talk vocabulary to support their argument. They then had to write a small presentation to support their views.
I can't think of "authentic" material without thinking of Jean de Florette who had after inheriting his uncle house moved in to grow "de l'authentique". As a teacher who often disregard the textbook, authentic material is a means of allowing my student to grow more confident in developing their language.
I have always used "authentic" material in my lessons. I have often travelled from France with a car full of empty packages, newspapers and magazines. I have raided Tourist offices, supermarket and my parents'mail for texts that I wanted to use in class. Really nothing has changes except that all these documents are now available more readily and widely. On a daily basis, more and more material is available on the Internet. Things haven't changed, the material is still written by native speakers for communication but the range available would certainly filled more than a car!!!! I am no longer restricted to my little area of France but the world is opened to the language teacher at their virtual fingertips.
You can get overwhelmed by all the resources available and I try to focus on what are the goals of my lessons and what I want my students to achieve. Also you can spend hours looking for material so you need to concentrate on the best way to locate your resource and when located, look at suitability and target audience. Once you have found your material and know that it is suitable for your students, you need to think on how you are going to use it in your lesson.
Reading:
Go through your text and recognise grammatical structures(highlighting verbs, adjectives etc)- cognates, known vocabulary etc.
Identify the key words in the text- look for synonyms, homonyms, what do certain numbers refer to?
Find words with the sound .......
I am reading from a certain point in the text, finish the sentence before me
Sequencing
Listening
Give students some words from the text / song and they have to stand up when they hear it.
Give some students some sentences from the text (they stand at the font of the class) and they have to put themselves in the right order with help from the class.
Find the words in the class
Put the sentences in the right order
Gap fill
For these exercises, I use Teachers pet which creates the exercises for you.
Speaking
Use Talk to discuss the text- Je pense que le texte est facile, difficile, intéressant etc...
Follow up from the text- do a role-play by putting
Writing
Imagine the end
Re-write the text in a different style
For me using Authentic material in the classroom, allow my students to tackle texts which open their eyes to other cultures, keep them informed on world events, show them how language works and is used by millions of people everyday.
So like Jean de Florette, look after your "Authentique" and make sure it produces productive material for our students to progress and for them to grow into confident learners!
Today, I was fortunate to attend a Modern Language Teachmeet in Manchester and did the following presentation on my use of authentic material in lessons.
We have done the perfect. It is used in the past as well. What is the difference?
The imperfect describe an action in the past. You would use was or were in English. (The weather was nice. They were lots of beaches to explore)
It could also something that you used to do ( I used to play a lot of sport when I was your age. I did not use to watch telly all the time.)
How do you form the imperfect tense?
You need to look at the present tense of the verb that you want to use so for I used to play, you would look at to play= jouer in the present tense: Je joue etc. Then look at the nous form- nous jouons. When you have this, remove the nous and the -ons. You are left with the stem jou-
Use this to conjugate your verb and add the following endings:
Nearly all of them. To be: être is the only exception- You use the stem ét- instead.
Can we have some examples?
faire --- nous faisons. Remove nous and ons and conjugate
je faisais
tu faisais
il/elle/on faisait
nous faisions
vous faisiez
ils/elles faisaient
Now listen to this song. It is quite an old song but it tells the story of a young man who used to buy a pain au chocolat every morning at the bakery's. The young lady behind the counter was in love with him ......
Look at the worksheets below- You listen and complete with the appropriate missing verb. You can also cut the sentences and put them in the right order. I am also including the lyrics. To follow up make a cartoon of the song, you can use toondoon or Go animate.
