Monday 7 January 2019

Un pull de Noël



This December, primary children from one of the schools in which I teach French, got involved in designing and painting a snowman sculpture as part of an inspiring Learning Programme supported by Salford City Council: Walking with The Snowman.



Walking with The Snowman was a festive sculpture trail that took place around MediaCityUK, to mark the 40th anniversary of Raymond Brigg’s heart-warming tale, The Snowman.

To learn more about this festive event, please visit the following website:


or follow @TheSnowmanWalk on Twitter.
As part of this exciting event, a snowman themed week was organised in school across all areas of the curriculum.  In French lessons, all KS2 children used their linguistic skills to design and describe a Christmas jumper for their snowman! Pupils were then invited to present their work to the rest of the class.

Y3 children were introduced to some nouns associated with Christmas and recapped basic grammatical rules about gender.  They revised some basic colours and numbers. Finally, they revisited basic grammar rules about forming plural nouns.  They then enjoyed applying this knowledge to design and describe a Christmas jumper for their snowman! Here are some of their fabulous designs and descriptions:





Y4 children were also given the task of designing and describing a Christmas jumper for their snowman… but their additional challenge was to use correct adjectival agreements in the singular form!  Here are some examples of their wonderful work:



Y5 children were instructed to focus on using adjectival agreements in the singular and plural form and/or expressing opinions about their snowman’s Christmas jumper.  Here are some examples of the amazing work that they produced:



Y6 children paid particular attention to using the negative, in addition to correctly using adjectival agreements in the singular and plural form.  Here are some examples of their impressive outcomes:



The children enjoyed tackling the grammatical challenges presented to them in this creative activity in French lessons, and their outcomes (as showcased above) clearly demonstrate the linguistic progression made across each year group.
At the end of the snowman based week in school, a whole school assembly was held, where pupils had the opportunity to share what they had been doing in class with the rest of the school.  Here are a couple of videos that Y3 & Y4 edited to showcase their work:


Here is another video, showcasing work produced by KS2 children in a different primary school:


Some of the children followed on by using their snowman based French work to create a French Christmas card!


Bravo les enfants!
NOTE
For primary language teachers who may wish to plan a similar activity, differentiated templates used to support writing across KS2 can be found here:
There is a lot of grammar involved, so although the support sheets are created with an appropriate learning expectation and outcome of each year group in mind, the author points out that which one you choose will depend on the time you have available, the children’s prior knowledge and their linguistic ability.

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