Ancient Egypt

Year 3 are learning about Ancient Egypt in class. We have linked our lessons to the topic and the children have learnt about the Egyptian Gods.

They learnt the names of the Gods, what they represent and their attributes practising some high frequency verbs in each of the different lessons. At the end of the unit, they created these fantastic posters introducing their favourite God. It is so much fun to learn French and History at the same time!
 

Update: Look at the pupils reading skills when they match the cards about the Egyptian Gods.

Christmas cards

This week the pupils from Marine class in Year 6 have received these amazing cards from one of our French partner schools, École Maurice Tollemer. They loved the decoration on the cards and they were very excited of knowing more about their penpals.

We hope that Marine class' letters arrive soon to the children of CM1-CM2 at École Maurice Tollemer!

Clément Aplati

Our partner school École Maurice Tollemer in Gonneville (France) has sent us Clément aplati to take him to the main London landmarks.

Clément is enjoying a lot his visit to London and his life at Sudbury Primary School! Click here to see his pictures.

Joyeux Noël!

At Sudbury, we like embedding French in school events and assemblies. Last year our French christmas songs were very successful! As a result, the children have asked me for new songs to sing in the Christmas concert this year so here they are:

Years 1 to 3 will sing "Canon de Noël" by Versini

Years 4 to 6 will sing "Noël c'est comme un rythme de jazz" 

We are also writing Christmas cards to our partner schools in Paris and Gonneville! We will post some pictures of them soon.

French christmas traditions

Christmas vocabulary

Colouring, games, stories, songs

Advent calendar with games, vocabulary and songs

L'Âne Trotro et le sapin de Noël

L'Âne Trotro et les cadeaux de Noël

Roman buildings and directions

As part as our cross-curricular curriculum, Year 4 are learning about the Roman Empire in French.
They learnt that France was La Gaule under the Romans and they were thrilled looking at the pictures of the monuments in Nîmes and in Arles.

First, we learned the names of the buildings through flashcards games and actions.
In pairs, the children tested each other´s knowledge.

Then, we extended the language and write sentences using "Il y a / Il n'y a pas". 

We also learned how to ask and give directions in town. Click on the dots to hear some of our role plays and the children´s comments about Roman history.

La famille

In Autumn 1, Year 3 have learnt vocabulary on family members. They have created amazing posters introducing their families! Look at their mastering of the sentence starter voici and the 3rd person singular.

Vocabulary and exercises

Drag and drop 

Spelling

La famille de Nicolas

C'est ma famille (song)

Book hunt in Lille

Madame Rivas has been book hunting again! She enjoys going to the book shops and searching for French resources to use in our cross-curricular lessons.

Furet du Nord, Oxfam books and l'École des loisirs are some of the shops you can find in the centre of Lille. Mme. Rivas bought some books to plan lessons on World War II, Countries project (America), Back in time (Egyptians, Romans), PSHE (back to school, feelings).
We have also new puppets in the classroom: Loupi le loup and Simon le raton. We hope to find the puppet of our favourite French character, Trotro, soon!

Toto voyage à Lille

Our French buddy has been to Lille this half term. He has loved the town center, the vibrant streets, book shops and museums. Toto has also tasted some of the specialities of the region! like les gaufres fourrés (stuffed wafles), la carbonade (beef stew), le maroilles (cheese from the region) et le flemiche aux maroilles. Miam, miam!

Lille is the largest city in the North of France. It is Charles de Gaulle`s birthplace and it is very near the border with Belgium.

Would you like to see how Lille looks like?

La routine de Toto

Year 6 have been learning about les verbes réfléchis and everyday routine.

We played flashcards games, charades, splat and even did some drama reading and performing each of the actions. At the end of the unit the children created some fantastic concertina books talking about their routine.

Our French buddy Toto told us about his journée. Can you tell us about your routine in French?

Ma routine song (atantot.com)

Ma journée (languages online)

Year 5 - Food and opinions

This term, year 5 have been giving their opinions about food and drinks. Some pupils have also extended their sentences using conjunctions like et, mais, aussi, en plus.
They practised role plays in pairs and they created concertina minibooks at the end of the unit.

These are some of the authentic books we read about food and healthy eating.

International project: European Day of Languages postcards

As part of the European Day of Languages activities, Sudbury Primary School has participated in two international projects on the Etwinning platform. 

Pupils from all year groups have written down some beautiful cards talking about themselves, their hobbies and describing London landmarks and customs. We sent our cards to 31 schools across Europe!

The children are so excited, we have been receiving cards everyday! We have received cards from schools in Germany, Turkey, Romania, Poland, France, Spain, Lithuania, Latvia, Italy, Croatia, Portugal, Czech Republic, Bulgaria and Slovenia.

Would you like to listen to some of the languages spoken in Europe? Click on the map and you will learn some useful expressions.

European Day of Languages

It's been a busy week at Sudbury Primary School! We have been celebrating the European Day of Languages!

The European Council established the European Day of Languages to highlight the important value of language learning. This day aims not just to support multilingualism, but also to promote, understand and spread the linguistic and cultural diversity of Europe.

In Sudbury, we learnt some facts and useful information from each country looking at this "Passport to the European Union". 

We also ordered the "Languages take you farther" leaflets. They show common expressions for each European Language and numbers 1 to 10. The children created some posters with words and sentences in the language of their choice.

Our younger pupils have learnt how to say hello in different languages. They have also been looking at flags from different countries.

Do you know the names of the European countries? Play the Euro map-game.

La rentrée

We had a restful Summer and we are now ready for the new school year!

In Year 2 we have been working on class routines and we have learnt the song "Mains en l'air". We love singing it when we finish our tasks and start tidying up.

We have also read two French stories about la rentrée, one with l'âne Trotro and the other one with Loupi le loup.

Mini-books

This year we have created a lot of mini-books on different topics. Years 1 and 2 made mini-books about French stories or songs they read in class, whereas years 4 and 5 wrote their mini-books after
learning about Asia and Africa. Finally, year 6 made some mini-books to practise prepositions with names of countries and reflexive verbs.

Mini-books promote reading, writing and dictionary skills. Children work very hard to write them and illustrate them and they love taking them home!

Madame Rivas was inspired by Clare Seccombe and her amazing mini-books. Visit Clare Seccombe's blog to learn more about mini-books and language learning.

L'âne Trotro

One of our favourite French characters is l'âne Trotro. Children in KS1 and even lower KS2 love his story books and episodes.

I have used Trotro to teach about la chandeleur, Easter, mother's day, father's day, birthdays, summer and winter holidays, Christmas, la rentré, friends, toys, etc...
The language in the story books is really simple, each page has usually a short sentence and the children love the pictures, they are so sweet!

I have created some worksheets on the topic of plants, but I recently bought two activity books and I am planning to use some of the activities about clothing, colours and shapes.

Fiches (Machouteam)

Fiches (Cercle Gallimard de l'Enseignement)

Trotro s'habille

Trotro petit jardinier

Trotro arrose

Trotro part en vacances

Trotro et le sapin de Noël

Trotro et les cadeaux de Noël

Authentic resources

In our language lessons, we love watching French videos and reading French books.

Authentic resources make the lessons more interesting and bring the language to real life. In addition, the current Program of Study aims to ensure that all pupils "understand and respond to spoken and written language from a variety of authentic resources".

Madame Rivas is always searching for these type of resources to keep us engaged and to link French with the whole school creative curriculum.

Authentic materials and CLIL from NoeliaRG

Toto en Provence

Last year in Easter Toto went to sunny Provence, in the South of France. He visited Marseille and Aix-en-Provence.

Did you know that Marseille is the second largest city in Paris? The typical food in Marseille is la boullabaisse, a yummy seafood soup. You can also find handmade soap, Mrs. Rivas favourite is the lavender one :) and eat les navettes (sweet pastry with orange flower flavour).

In Aix-en-Provence, Toto visited a factory of calissons (delicious sweets made of almond), the house of the famous painter Paul Cézanne and the mountain that Cézanne painted 87 times!

 

Les repas de Toto

Qu'est-ce qu'on mange en France?  Qu'est-ce qu'on boit en France?

Our French Buddy Toto is going to show you his favourite food and drinks.

Year 1 are learning about Europe as part of the topic "Countries project". They have created these amazing buntings with the monuments and some of the French food on them.

Book hunt in Marseille

Madame Rivas spent some time book hunting in Marseille last week. There is a big book shop called Gibert Joseph where Mme. Rivas has found some new and second hand books.

Do you know the French painter Paul Cézanne? He was born in Aix-en-Provence. Madame Rivas visited his house and bought these fantastic books to plan some art lessons.

Toto voyage à Paris

Our French buddy Toto traveled to his home town in half term.

Can you name some of the landmarks in Paris?

Which one is your favourite?

                                                               Buntings by Year 1

Interactive map ofParis with short videos 

Les arrondisements de Paris 

Little Paris

Paper city Paris

Eiffel Tower craft

Book hunt in Paris

Madame Rivas went to Paris in half term and bought some French books to read in class.

As you know, we link the school topic to our French lessons (Content and Language Integrated Learning CLIL) so Mme. Rivas wanted to find books related to our next topic: Countries project.

In the topic of Countries project, each year group will look at a different continent. In French we will read about the different continents and countries, learn key facts, traditions, landmarks, typical food, clothes and some geography.
We will be able to practise our dictionary skills and we will also be language detectives searching for context clues!

International Mother Languages Day

This week at Sudbury Primary School we are celebrating the International Mother Languages Day. International Mother Language Day was proclaimed by the General Conference of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in November 1999. The dissemination of mother tongues will serve not only to encourage linguistic diversity and multilingual education but also to develop fuller awareness of linguistic and cultural traditions throughout the world and to inspire solidarity based on understanding, tolerance and dialogue.

The pupils at Sudbury speak a lot of different languages at home and we want to appreciate and promote the use of these mother languages. 

The pupils of Year 5 have created presentations about their mother languages and culture, they have taught songs, poems, numbers etc. in the different languages to the class.

Liza´s poster about Kosovo

Reena and Deeya teaching a chant in Hindi and Gujarati

Jeshvin, who has won a lot of awards in Tamil language competitions, has presented his project about Tamil language. After his presentation, he taught the class a beautiful poem.

Tamil language by Jeshvin from NoeliaRG

Look at Lubcha's map of Bulgaria. Can you name the countries that border Bulgaria?

Nadine has shown some Egyptian money to the class. How are this notes similar and different that the pound notes?

Laura has told the class many interesting facts about Albania and Albanian language.

Albanian poem from Absentarg on Vimeo.

The pupils showed great interest in learning about each other's presentations and everybody felt appreciated and really proud of their heritage.

Update: Mme. Rivas talked about our Mother Languages project in the Network for Languages Conference in November 2015. We hope that other Language teachers were inspired and that they will celebrate IML day next year too!

Celebrating mother tongues from NoeliaRG