mardi 9 décembre

Nous avons décoré et mangé des bûches de Noël (Cadbury's mini rolls + writing icing)
Nous avons aussi mangé des tartelettes de Noël(mince pies) grâce à David. Merci!

We revisited song la belle histoire and linked it to the whiteboard nativity scene
Meant to highlight keywords of text on whiteboard but think I forgot to do that :(

Gave out text and we sang and filled in the gaps!

Then we spent the rest of the time on nasal vowels. (handout) and looked at some French primary school phonics sheets an/en and on

Finally and very briefly heard a song to practise name and "on" nasal sound J'ai un nom, un prénom I've a name, a first name
deux yeux 2 eyes
un nez a nose
un menton a chine-
Dis-moi vite ton prénom tell me quickly your first name
Pour continuer la chanson. to keep the song going
Tu t'appelles ............................ (child says his name)
Bonjour ....................... (class sings his name)

Je vous souhaite un joyeux Noël et passez de bonnes vacances!
On se revoit mardi 13 janvier.

mardi 2 décembre

On a fait des cadeaux de Noël et on les a offerts aux collègues.
(updated doc les cadeaux de Noel now in my Teaching Files >Christmas)

Pupil A: J’ai un cadeau pour B. Viens ici, B

Pupil A : Tiens voilà! (here you are) Joyeux Noël!

B : Merci. Je peux l’ouvrir?
A :Oui, bien sûr.
Class : Qu’est-ce que c’est? Fais voir (let's see)

B : Oh c’est un(e) …
Quelle surprise!
Ce que je voulais! (just what I wanted)
Merci
Joyeux Noël

Puis on a fabriqué des papillons.
On a écouté des chants de Noël et on a fabriqué une guirlande pour décorer la classe.

mardi vingt-cinq novembre

Noël va arriver
More Christmas voc and practising of vocab presentation techniques using mini cards in "my teaching files" under Modules>Christmas as Xmas bingo. PW is valley.
We finished with a Christmas song from Henri Dès entitled Belle Histoire about the Christmas story. Each "pupil" was allocated a key word and had to leap to their feet when it came up accompanied by suitable acting eg the stable, the star. The ox and the ass got plenty of exercise due to the repetition!

Next week, if you have a simple craft idea you are using with your class, can you bring the bits and bobs and we'll try and do it in French.

Here are some craft ideas. How much of your newly acquired Christmas voc can you find here?

For Ann looking for bauble template there is one on this page and this French one

mardi 18 novembre

Parts of the body 

Christmas vocab as example of flashcard presentation

Started the Body topic with traditional song Jean Petit available on youtube

Did head shoulders knees and toes as a very visual way of learning vocab 

Did also a clap dance song.

Tiens voilà main droite

Tiens voila main gauche

Tiens voilà main droite main gauche

Tiens voilà les deux

body related activities bookmarked here

Christmas activities

mardi onze novembre

We looked at BBC's ma France no2 of the video podcasts which deals with alphabet, spelling, playing games.

For date, birthdays etc see this post from module 1 blog

We played happy families and snakes and ladders. 

You can download  both from My Teaching Files, pw valley 

Modules>Family for happy families cards and vocab le jeu des 7 familles

Modules>Number snakes and teddies is pdf of the original Appleworks file 6x6 snakes grid

David brought along Who's who which is a brilliant game to play. You really need enough sets for one between 4. There is an online version on the Chez Mimi site. Click on the man in the doorway. We played on the whiteboard and liked level one best. There are teachers notes and vocab

Next week it will be parts of the body, by special request and maybe a wee start to Christmas!

You can email me by clicking on my profile and then on email!

Table top games

If you have some games such as snakes and ladders, snap, happy families that we can use to practise playing games in French please bring them along on Tuesday!

Toondoo challenge

Go to www.toondoo.com
Log in as UWSclass password craigie
Click on the turquoise TOONS menu and my toons to see what the BEds have been doing. Then, on top right, click create and your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to create a brief dialogue using vocab we have been doing. Try and stick to what you know, spell carefully and if you can get any humour so much the better! Here is one of the BEds. Save and add your name .

Meet young French people

Ayrshire Modern Languages Association (AMLA) is hosting a social evening for Ayrshire's foreign language assistants, French, German, Spanish, Chinese. All interested teachers are invited along.
It will take place in Greenwood Academy, Dreghorn, Irvine on Tuesday 2 December at 7pm. Refreshments will be served.
If you would like to attend please email David Alexander.
alexanderdj@tiscali.co.uk
I'll be there!

Typing French accents (updated)

LTScotland has a page where you can download help sheets. Should surely be OK in school!

Also type and paste here: typeit 

PC Codes here

Macs

e acute é: alt e lift off, then type another e  é 

grave `: alt` the key to the left of z, lift off then type the letter requiring the ` è ù à

circumflex ^ : alt i, lift off, type the letter,  î ô â û

c cedilla ç  alt c

trema ¨ : alt u, lift off, type the letter

For capitals just do alt + shift and same as above, although it is not actually necessary to put them on capital letters except Ç

Day 2

We did quite a lot of work today on Knowledge about language and comparing L1 (English) to L2 (French). This is a big feature in the new CfE outcomes for Modern Languages and is part of Literacy.

We started to look at rules of pronunciation comparing pronunciation of words that are spelt and mean the same as in English. This is a useful exercise and one you could do with pupils. I dictated some words like sport, excellent. We talked about collecting word clouds or families and having one word as the example eg ballet for final -et sound or trois for oi vowel blend.

Then we talked about pre-dictionary skills like paraphrasing - thinking of other ways of saying the  same thing in English eg how old are you?  means the same as what age are you?

Similarly getting to the meaning of idioms like it's miles away = it's far away. 

We talked about how pupils, quite reasonably, expect to be able to translate word for word from English into French. You need to demonstrate that this is not the case.

Try and break a sentence into sense groups or chunks.  eg Do you like dogs? do you like is one chunk and dogs is another. In French, Aimes-tu les chiens?

Get them to count how many words you need in French and English

do you like is 3 words but aimes-tu is 2, dogs is 1 but les chiens is 2

Good morning is bonjour literally good day. There is no literal translation of good morning or good afternoon, just bonjour.

We had a discussion about simple dictionary work that wouldn't be too tedious. We will revisit this topic. Using a bilingual dictionary is in the new outcomes for primary!

For light relief we watched a couple of scenes from the lovely film être et avoir about life in a rural French primary school.

We finished with some Halloween vocab using the material mentioned in a previous post and played table top games like matching, pelmanism and dominoes.

Petit Papa Noel

Here is the link to the carol for Lynda.

Petit Papa Noël

Advent calendar of carols here

Lots of other karaoke gems on the same site 

Bonsoir!

Hallowe'en

For those of you teaching French, here are some hallowe'en ideas. (hope it is not too late!)

I have edited a powerpoint of Halloween flashcards which I downloaded from a very useful site, primarily for teaching English as a foreign language. It is called MES English

On the related tools for educators site I have made some miniflashcards which can be used for matching games. Then there are domino and bingo and board games. You will need a printer, colour preferably.

I have uploaded all of these to my mac.com site called My Teaching files. There is a password - valley. You will find them all in Modules>Halloween and can download them. They are all pdf files apart from the powerpoint. (All the other stuff there is from last year. I will need to have a tidy up)

A mardi! Bon weekend!

aujourd'hui

C'était un plaisir de faire votre connaissance. J'attendrai mardi prochain avec impatience.

Today we did some introductory revision of personal language and as some are teaching the alphabet and pets some games and activities for that. Someone also asked about numbers. Here is what I have bookmarked for numbers on delicious 

Look over personal language: name, age, family for next week

First ICT challenge post a comment below this post - just to say hello!

Welcome

Soyez la bienvenue à la classe de français! Ici sur le blog vous allez trouver beaucoup de renseignements, de ressources et plein d'idées!