Speaking in the target language

In our French lessons Mme. Rivas explains the learning intention and the success criteria in French. We have been listening to it and reading it for the last two years, so we are used to it and we enjoy having a guess and decoding what it means.

Listening to the lesson in the target language may be daunting, but we have lots of pictures to help us and we are constantly using actions to support our learning and our memorisation.

When the words in French are part of the routine, we start using them without even noticing we are saying "what went well" in French!

In addition, Mme. Rivas picked a fantastic idea from her friend Sylvie Rawlings to encourage us to speak French in class. We have two frames in each group with some of the everyday classroom expressions that we may need to use. Everytime we ask for a pencil, go to the toilet etc... we have to say it in French, but that is ok as we know where to find what we want to say ;)

These are just some examples of how to enhance and improve the use of the target language in the language lessons but we hope they can give you an idea of how we learn and speak French.

Native Languages: Worldblend Project

Today, I took a group of Year 6 pupils to participate in the Worldblend Project at Willesden Green Library. The project and exhibition is about the 130 different languages spoken in the borough of Brent.

Each child wrote a passage of their favourite book, then explained how they learn their native language and why it is important to keep speaking it.

The children thoroughly enjoyed the visit and felt very proud of their native languages, which is something that we promote a lot in our lessons (see how we celebrated Mother Languages Day last year).