Le Noël de Trotro

Year 2 love reading the stories of the donky Trotro.

Yesterday, we read "Joyeux Noël, Trotro". As in the other books of Trotro, the language is very simple, the illustrations are fantastic and the story is very cute.

 After reading the story, the children did a worksheet from Le livre-jeux de Trotro. 

On top of all that, we watched "Trotro et le sapin de Noël" and had some giggles, this episode is so much fun!

Other episodes that you could watch in Christmas / winter time are: 

Trotro aime la neige

Trotro et le bonhomme de neige

Sapins de Noël

Every year we have a Christmas concert at Sudbury. We sing beautiful songs in English and in French.
This year we have chosen two songs about Christmas trees, les sapins de Noël.
Years 4, 5 and 6 will sing "Si tous les sapins" by Versini.

                      

Si tous les sapins de NoeliaRG

We learnt about la liaison in French and practice reading the examples of liaison in the song.

We also put the lyrics in order and played charades to act out and guess the sentences from the song.

Years 1, 2 and 3 will sing "Voici un petit sapin". They have learnt the song with actions too and they will hold a foam Christmas tree decorated by themselves while they sing the song.  

                                  

 

Christmas songs from last year

Christmas songs by Versini

Christmas lights in Paris

Christmas lights in Paris different locations and market

Healthy eating

Year 5 have been learning about food this term.
Our French buddy Toto, told them about some typical French food. Have you tried any of this food?
Qu'est-ce que tu aimes manger? 
Qu'est-ce que tu n'aimes pas?

We looked at some items of food and decided if they were healthy or unhealthy. Then, we extended our sentences saying why.

We also looked at the food pyramid and learnt the names of the different groups of food in French.

The children read an authentic advert and answered some questions in English. They were encouraged to look at context clues to understand the text.

Finally, we created our own healthy meal including some fromage et crudités!

Body parts

Year 4 have learnt body parts in French, remembering also the masculine, feminine and the plural
articles.

The children learnt an authentic French song, Jean Petit qui danse. They loved singing the song and dancing with Jean Petit! Can you sing along and dance with Jean Petit?

                                          

We also read a French story about un monstre effrayant but we are not scared about the monster anymore - Tu ne me fais pas peur! So... go away! Va-t'en grand monstre vert!

In grammar, we looked at the position of the adjective and the adjectival agreement in French.
We learnt that we need to look at the article to know the gender and number of a noun and that the adjective agrees with the noun in gender and in number. It's a bit tricky but Year 4 mastered it and wrote amazing sentences about their own monsters!

Tu aimes le sport?

Year 5 have been giving their opinion about sports and talking about their favourite and least favourite sports.

We first learnt the names of the sports with choral repetition and some flashcards games featuring our French buddy Toto.

The Framework for Languages states that in Year 5, children should understand and express likes and dislikes and join in a simple conversation using good pronunciation. So we decided to take a class survey on the most and the least favourite sport in French.

In the following lesson, Y5 extended their sentences by justifying their opinions. First, we did human sentences to reinforce the word order and then the children wrote their own sentences.

Listen to these super long and amazing sentences! What a fantastic pronunciation Year 5!

Homme de Couleur

Today Year 6 have read the poem "Homme de couleur" by Léopold Sédar Senghor.

We read a brief biography and understand why Léopold Sédar Senghor is an important writer and politician in the history of Sénégal and why we were going to read one of his poems to celebrate
Black History Month.

Before reading the poem, we looked at the different verbs we use in French in expressions like "I am cold, I am hungry, I am scared".

Then, the students had to listen to the story and put the sentences of the poem in the correct order.

We checked our work and read aloud the sentences in French, then, translated them in English.

The children loved the story and demonstrated great reading strategies by looking at pictures, decoding unknown words and trying to understand the meaning of the sentences even if they didn´t know all the vocabulary or verbs.

They also looked at the different verb tenses in the poem and inferred which verbs where in past, present or future tense. In addition, they noticed the different endings for the je form and the tu form. In year 6 we are learning a lot about conjugation!

It was a fun lesson and Year 6 loved the poem and understood the message straight away.

We hope you like the poem too!

Quel est ton caractère?

This term, Year 6 have been doing some description activities.
The National curriculum for KS2 Languages states that children should understand feminine and masculine forms and the conjugation of high-frequency verbs. In addition, children should know how to apply the basic grammar they have learnt to build sentences.

We first looked at the different forms of the adjectives for masculine and feminine and learn how to build sentences using Je suis and Je ne suis pas looking at our negative sandwich structure.

Then, the children wrote these fantastic descriptions of theirselves using Clare Seccombe's pillar portrait template. 

But Year 6 not only know the 1st person singular of the verb être! They applied understanding of the term conjugation to the verb in the 2nd and 3rd person singular. They wrote some famous people descriptions and read them to the class, who had to guess who the famous person was!

Vive la rentrée!

Welcome back to our blog!

We hope you had a lovely Summer and that you are enjoying your first weeks at school.

We have been busy this rentrée des classes at Sudbury. We have watched some videos to recap on our French vocabulary. Some year groups learnt about French school routines and phrases related to school life. Here is the video with Papo the Parrot.

The older pupils have watched Let me introduce myself, where a British student, Ben, meets some children from Marseille. They revised some expressions to greet and introduce themselves and they looked at the streets and the buildings in Marseille, comparing them to the ones in London.

Finally, we have been practising our French classroom expressions so that we keep on speaking French in class!

Have a look at the activities we did for la rentrée last year.

More about speaking in the target language.

Les orteils n'ont pas de nom

Last month most of the students in Year 6 went on their residential trip and we had one French lesson with the few children that didn´t go on the trip.

I planned a lesson around the book "Les orteils n'ont pas de nom", a really funny story where the toes want to decide their own names.

The vocabulary in the book is simple and there is some repetition in each page, so other year groups will be able to understand the story too. You can work on the vocabulary about numbers, fruits, musical notes, letters and colours.

After reading the story, the pupils had to come up with new names for each toe. They could use their imagination to create abstract names, they could use the bilingual dictionary or name them with words that they already know and then, they had to draw and illustrate one foot with the names they had chosen for each toe.

You can adapt the level of this activity easily, as your students can even introduce each toe and include all the structures and vocabulary that they know.

I hope you and your students enjoy this story as much as we did!

Check Natta Lingo´s blog to get more ideas and resources to work with this and many other stories.

Visit from École Maurice Tollemer

Last Thursday our pen pals from Gonneville came to visit us at Sudbury Primary.

We have been writing letters and sending videos to École Maurice Tollemer since November so we were really looking forward to meet them!
In the morning, we held an Assembly where we showed them a presentation about London in English and a presentation about our school in French. We also performed a French poem about London landmarks.

Amarah and Isa showed them our British travelling box and explained why we included each of the items in the box.

The French children presented their Boîte Normande and talked about the gifts, food specialities and leaflets inside. In addition, they sang one song in English and one song in French.

After the assembly, the children played games and talked to each other in French and in English.
The Year 6s used their cocottes (chatterbox) to ask them questions in French.

In the meantime, some of the Year 6 children gave a tour of the school to our guests. The tour was in French and they used expressions like voici la salle sensorielle, ici on développe nos cinq sens.

We then had lunch together, the French pupils brought their own panier-repas (pack lunches) and we played together outside.

We wanted our French friends to experience British traditions, so we also had a cream tea with them (with Squash instead of the tea). They loved scones and shortbread!

It was such a fantastic experience! Lots of intercultural understanding, French and English speaking, fun and friendship between two schools from different countries.

Un très grand merci pour votre visite Maurice Tollemer!

On reste en contact! 

 Denim class with our pen pals

Steel class with our pen pals

Marine class with our pen pals

Azure class with our pen pals

Un peu de géographie

In Summer 1, our school topic is Countries project and geography. Each year group learns about a continent and each class has focused in one country of that continent.

Year 5 have been looking at maps and learning specific vocabulary in French, linking our objectives with the NC objectives for geography "use maps, locate countries, use compass points, build your knowledge about the wider world, identify Equator, Northern Hemisphere, Southern Hemisphere, the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn".

First, we located les pays, les continents et les lignes imaginaires.

Then, we completed some sentences looking at maps and using the new vocabulary.

Click on the white dots to listen to the children.

Year 5 then had some lessons about Africa, as it is the continent they are learning about in class. Watch this space to see the activities we did in French!

Localiser les continents

Où se trouve...? 

Faire glisser: continents et océans

Animals and Onomatopeics

Year 1 have been learning about animals last term.

They learnt their names through flashcard games and actions, then, they learnt the noise each animal make. It was so fun to see that onomatopeics are different in each language!

The children also listened to the story Ours brun, dis-moi and joined in with actions and repetition.

Finally, they created their own fabulous mini-books with the names of the animals and the colours.

La seconde guerre mondiale

Last term the Year 4s were learning about WWII in class, so I decided to teach them about WWII in France.

We first looked at the countries of les forces de l'axe et les forces alliées and their leaders; we then practised Je m'appelle + name of leader, Je suis + nationality.

After that, we learnt about De Gaulle's speech in the BBC, the resistance and the main events of WWII in France.

Finally, we watched an episode of the French series Les grandes, grandes vacances to learn about the French evacuation l'exode and answered some comprehension questions about the cartoon.

Learning about the class topic in French makes our lessons meaningful and more interesting. The children were really engaged and they loved learning about WWII in France. Look at some of their feedback messages!

Game Les grandes, grandes vacances

Coloriages 

Exercise d'association

L'album de Rachel et Hannah

Educational videos and activities (recommended by Pippa Jacobs)