The French Zone

I’m always up for going off piste and abandoning the Scheme of Learning in favour of something else (who isn’t?!). There is so much to explore for us Languages Teachers- we want to immerse the pupils in all the target language country’s festivities, bring the culture to life in the classroom, expose them to the rich language associated with festivals and events. My Spanish colleagues have been going crazy for El Dia de los muertos activities this year and our pupils are in for a treat, which means I’m going to have to rev up what us Frenchies do, nothing like a bit of inter-departmental competition! But in the meantime I’d like to share a few tried and tested things I have done in previous years. Scroll on down for Friday Freebies.

One of the activities I love to do each Halloween is quite simple but the outcome always astounds me: ‘une potion magique’ (or for the older ones ‘un smoothie d’Halloween’- they seem to respond better to this so I ask them to design a Halloween special smoothie for the local shake bar- adding challenge by getting them to describe the health benefits/risks.)

For the magic potion, I teach them some Halloween vocabulary using my Halloween PowerPoint and then let them loose with the bilingual dictionaries and they get stuck into their ingredients search- creating the most vile and disgusting concoctions you could imagine. They always surprise me with their enthusiasm and then the requests for quantity words come flooding in, followed by requests for imperatives. It’s lovely when the pupils want to spontaneously include new structures. Corrections I make as I circulate usually involve adjectival agreement. The finished pieces are often quite accomplished, brilliantly creative and downright stomach churning!

I have included a magic potion worksheet at the bottom of the post- either use it as a lovely visual to display on the IWB as they work in their books, or if you have a generous printing budget then pupils can use to write up their potions and you could create a nice display with them.

The second Halloween freebie I’d like to share with you is a Follow Me game- keep scrolling it’s at the bottom of the post. If you haven’t played before it is quite simple but takes a bit of getting used to with the pupils. Once they are well trained it is a FABULOUS speaking and listening activity. Distribute the cards (I do it at the door as they come in); all pupils sit down; the pupil with ‘START’ stands up and says ‘qui a un chat noir?’; the next pupil (the one with the corresponding card) stands up and says ‘I have a black cat, qui a un vampire?’; then the pupil with the vampire card stands and so on and so on. The last card has ‘FINISH’. It sounds complicated but when you and the class are used to it you’ll love it. Sometimes I just do 15 cards and get the boys to race against the girls etc. to see which team can get through the pack in the shortest time. Or I time the group and get them to try to beat their personal best.

To develop the idea, and if I really want the class to interact with each other I distribute the follow me cards and shout ‘human circle’. Chaos ensues. And when chaos is for all the right reasons, because pupils are strategising, communicating, solving etc. etc. then I get all warm and fuzzy inside #smugteacheralert. So what is the human circle? Using the same cards as in the above paragraph, the pupil with START comes to the front so that pupils know where the starting point of the human circle is. Then I shout ‘c’est parti’ and they have to find their corresponding cards and from a circle which begins with ‘START’ and ends with ‘FINSIH’ and each pupil is in the correct order according to their card. This involves a lot of communicating. I encourage phrases such as ‘je cherche’ or ‘je voudrais’ and ‘c’est moi’ or ‘ce n’est pas moi’. Obviously lots of them whisper in English but I reward use of French with raffle tickets. What is so great is that they usually get themselves into a circle with a few pairs or trios stuck and confused. This is where the natural born leaders will take over in an attempt to complete the circle, directing pupils to move to a different spot etc. I often have to put a time limit on it and say something like ‘you have completed about 5/8 of a complete circle. When they do get it right, the feeling of success and achievement is palpable!

So…what about the ‘something special’ I mentioned last week? Well, I have been working on this for a while now but it is taking a little longer than expected. I have been setting up a ‘shop’ section on my site. I know a lot of you use the links on my posts to purchase my resources through tes.com and tpt.com but if I bring them to you myself I can avoid commission and therefore pass the savings on to you, my subscribers. So, you will be able to find all my resources, right here, at a discounted price. BUT.. on top of that, you will also be getting additonal discounts because you read my blog. And my blog is where I will be publishing special offers and discount codes for you all. I will be uploading all of my 100+ resources over the holidays and ‘cutting the ribbon’ with a MASSIVE discount code for you.

But the Friday Freebies will also remain- I love a giveaway!

Happy Halloween,

Betsy ‘soon to be self-publishing’ Belle

xx

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Friday Freebie time.

I want to give you something that I literally cannot teach without. Keep scrolling, it’s at the bottom of the page.

It’s a little gem of a resource, one that I whip out almost every week. Mostly for younger pupils but I am sometimes forced to shove it under the nose of a sixth former. Grrrrr.

It’s a learning mat. The topic is descriptions.  This resource was screaming out to be created- let’s face it, who of us has a full class who can spell yeux, cheveux and use avoir and être appropriately when describing themselves and other people? Personne?

So I crammed everything on there. Eye and hair colour- naturally. Body type- of course. But here is where it is special- it also gives the pupils the vocabulary to describe the way they look both in more detail and in a more relevant way than our textbooks and outdated PowerPoints allow. For example: ‘I wear braces’; ‘I have pierced ears’; ‘I have blonde highlights’; ‘I have an athletic body’ and even ‘I have a tattoo’ (for which they usually write- with my support- something like je n’ai pas de tatouage mais j’ai les oreilles percées).

Lots of girls where I teach sport a rather defined and thick brow. In fact, some of them shave off their natural eyebrow hair and draw them on instead. I’m not kidding. So these little lovelies can use the learning mat to write ‘j’ai les sourcils épais, je me maquille et j’ai des extensions de cheveux’.

Just before you download this treasure, I need to tell you that I have other learning mats in many other topics. The perfect follow up to today’s Friday freebie is the personalities learning mat. Example sentence they could create from it: ‘Normalement, je suis travailleur et organisé, mais quand je suis fatigué je suis un peu paresseux et très oublieux’.

I hope you love it. I have loads more at my TES shop . Please subscribe if you want Friday Freebies straight to your inbox. Ps. This week’s new subscribers will be getting a special thank you email with a resource attached.

Passez un bon weekend,

Betsy Belle

xx

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So…here I am, a self-proclaimed secondary expert. 10 years I have been doing this secondary thing; honing my craft, fine tuning my skillset. September after September of ‘here’s to getting it right this time’. August after August of calandar watching as the days draw closer and closer to A Level and GCSE results days. INSET after INSET. Course after course. Standardisation after moderation after- well, you get it.

But then my daughter’s school invited me in. ‘We hear you teach French?’ they said. ‘Would you like to come in?’ they said. ‘Nothing fancy’ they said, ‘just something simple, for our European week’ they said. My brain was screaming ‘primary? Little ones? Sitting on a carpet? Nooooooooo!’ But my head started nodding and my mouth started moving and before I knew it I had signed up on the spot. Disaster. I know NOTHING about primary languages.

But they had just unleashed a beast. A competitive beast. So the other mummies in the playground might push fancier buggies. They might rock that skinny jeans and Chelsea boots look a hundred times better than I ever will. But here is my chance to shine. I’m going to be the cool Mum. The one who speaks French. It was time to ram my linguistic abilities down the throats of these 7 year olds and have them running up to me on the playground forever after to practise their bonjours.

So, with the option of hiring a private jet and whizzing them off to Disneyland for the day a little out of my reach, I knew I had to think tactically.

A trip to Lidl for all of the pain au chocolats and brioches I could stuff into my bag for life and a weekend’s worth of self re-training later I was ready. I made up a little story about a boy who goes to sleep at night and dreams of becoming an astronaut. I learnt how to create an e book (thanks here to Joe Dale @joedale) and added some audio so the teachers could use it in the future without me there. I tested it out in my husband who grunted in all the right places. My littlest giggled in all of the places (huge ego boost because the story isn’t even funny) and I chickened out of showing my daughter as her critique can be alarmingly cutting!

The verdict? The pupils loved my story. The teachers loved the opportunity to get some marking done in the corner of the room. And yes, I am delighted to confirm that I am now referred to as ‘the French alien one’ by the little munchkins at pick-up time. Mission accomplished.

Here are the fruits of my labour. Well, this is the cherry on top- available for free via you tube.

The other fruits are available at a very reasonable cost in my TES shop www.tes.com/teaching-resources/shop/betsybelleteachesfrench(I have to find some way of funding all the brioches don’t I?!)

Betsy ‘theFrenchalienOne’ Belle