Building up confidence is important and Year 9 have been working on this. We are starting a project on my local area.
First step, we have looked at different areas on a map of France and researched single geographical words in the dictionary. This helped us build a bank of vocabulary which will help us describe different areas in France.
i.e Marseilles est dans le sud. Elle est sur la mer Méditerranée.
Strasbourg est dans l'est. Elle est sur le Rhin.
We then added more details such as "elle est située", "elle se trouve", "à côté de"
Strasbourg est située dans l'est de la France à côté de l'Allemagne. Elle se trouve sur un fleuve qui s'appelle le Rhin.
We then looked at photos about Strasbourg and thought about what could be added.
Description: il y a, on trouve ...
Opinion: Je pense que, à mon avis ....
adjectives: historique, touristique, pittoresque, beau/belle etc.
Connectives: parce que, mais, car, alors etc
Je pense que c'est un ville historique parce qu'il y a des bâtiments pittoresques. A mon avis, elle est aussi touristique car c'est très joli alors il y beaucoup de touristes dans les rues.
Then the students transferred what they have learnt on other towns and they produced some excellent sentences. The feedback was very positive and the students felt they have developed their written work well.
Next lesson, we will look at the past tense perfect and imperfect and see how it can be used to improve written work further. The students will then produce their own work on their local area.