What went well last week #8

Bonjour, 

These are a few activities that worked really well for me last week. 

This is for me to remember in my practice what games, songs, etc. work and also to share ideas with you. 

Most of the ideas below are really simple, they are tried and tested in various schools and they work!

• ‘Parapluie’ by Alain Lelait   

In KS1 we have been learning about the weather linking it to months of the year and clothes. We’ve been using the ‘parapluie’ song to listen to specific phrases/words. Every time we heard ‘il pleut’ or ‘parapluie’ we had to do our actions for ‘il pleut’ (rain falling down) and ‘parapluie’ (pretending holding an umbrella)

• Saint Valentin

My Valentine activity this year was based around ‘he loves me, he loves me not’ – which in French is ‘ Il m’aime un peu, beaucoup, passionément, à la folie, pas du tout’.(he loves me : a little, a lot, passionately, madly, not a all).

As a class, we worked out what each intensifier meant and I distributed ‘a petal’ to each person whilst saying the rhyme ‘Il m’aime un peu, beaucoup, passionement, à la folie, pas du tout’.

They had to listen carefully for their own intensifier, write it on one side of the petal and on the other side they wrote a sport, a colour, food, family member, celebrity, etc. (We brainstormed words, phrases from a wide range of topic.)

• J’aime, J’adore, Je n’aime pas, je déteste (I like, I love, I don’t like, I hate)

Still on the topic of likes and dislikes with Year 6, for our warm up activity, I wanted to set up a speaking activity as a change from our usual song.

I made a powerpoint with pictures which I knew children would have a strong opinion about and therefore would engage with the activity. The task was to give a simple opinion about each item and continue to do so with different people on the table until the picture disappear and another one was revealed.

I wanted to set this up as a ‘video game’ with different levels of difficulty.

Level 1: to give a simple opinion and ask someone ‘et toi?’ (and you?)

Level 2 : add a reason

Level 3: I’ll introduce the language of argument (i.e. Really? You’re kidding! I disagree! Etc.)  

(This is something I’m experimenting with and it might take a while before we reach level 3…)

• Making fruit salads

Year 5 have been learning about fruits and vegetables and consolidating numbers to 20 in French. Last week, I gave them a budget ‘quinze euros’ for example, they had to do the maths (mentally) and say what they would put in a ‘pretend’ fruit salad. They had to spend all the money and make sure they did not over-spend. 

However, this week we made REAL fruit salads so that was even better!

What about you? What worked well for you recently? 

What went well last week #7

Bonjour, 

These are a few activities that worked really well for me last week. 

This is for me to remember in my practice what games, songs, etc. work and also to share ideas with you. 

Most of the ideas below are really simple, they are tried and tested in various schools and they work!

• Playing corners with weather phrases in Year 2.

I had never played this game before by fear of the chaos it might cause, but it worked really well with KS1 – who are taught in half classes (10-12 children at a time). I will be playing it again particularly with a small group. So I definitively recommend giving this a go.

• Games to play with pictures

Last animal standing:

Each child has a picture of an animal (could be anything, colours, days of the week, etc.) Call out each animal one by one and whoever has the corresponding picture is out and has to sit down. The winners are the last ones still standing before I called out the last animal. I did it first with just the nouns: un chat, un chien, etc. then we repeated the activity a second time but this time they had to listen to the sentences: J’aime...

This is a great listening game and to emphasise on the ‘careful’ listening element I only repeated each sentence twice.

Quiz, quiz, swap:

Play a song whilst children are walking around the classroom with a card/picture - when the music stops, they find a partner and ask each other a question (we practiced: Qu’est ce que tu aimes? What do you like?) then answer, once the conversation is finished they swap their pictures.

Repeat with 4 or 5 different partners.

• Papier – pierre – ciseaux : 

I already posted about this last week – see here. It went down a storm with Years 5 and 6 and I will be continuing playing it as a starter/warm up activity in the next few weeks.

• Lift the flap guessing game: 

I recycled my idea of the ‘lift the flap’ guessing game that I used with Year 5 (see here) with Year 3 who are working on animals and likes/dislikes. We wrote the question on the outside and wrote the sentence and drew a picture on the inside. Volunteers came to the visualizer to present their game and we had to guess what it was before they opened up all the flaps.

• Build your favourite alien from the alien family story (from Janet Lloyd Network): 

After teaching the parts of the head/face we played a kind of ‘beetle drive’ game. Each part had a number: un : la tête ; deux: la bouche, etc. We rolled a big foam dice and drew the corresponding part of the face slowly building the alien face of their choice: le papa, la maman, etc.

It’s leading nicely to making our own portrait gallery of the alien family!!

Another fun week really !!

And you what worked well for you recently ?