Wednesday, 5 April 2023
Sunday, 8 November 2020
Mon monstre !
UKS2 children concluded their Autumn Term 1 French topic “Le corps” (The body) by using their knowledge of numbers, body parts and colours to design and describe their own monster and present it to the rest of the class.
Many pupils produced an impressive piece of grammatically accurate written work, including correct positioning of adjectives and adjectival agreements!
Enjoy reading about some of their fabulous fiendish friends:
Bravo les enfants !
Sunday, 13 September 2020
Tour de France 2020
KS2 pupils have made a fantastic start to the new academic year with a “Tour de France” themed French lesson where they focused on recalling and retrieving prior learning.
Watch this short video
clip to see some highlights of what pupils covered in this topic:
If you wish to have a copy of this fully editable resource to use in your own MFL classroom, it is available here:
Tour de France Topic 2020 Madame Birtwistle
You may also find this Tour de France themed playlist on my YouTube channel useful:
Vive Le Tour !
#TDF2020
Monday, 8 June 2020
Mon petit livre de cuisine française / My little French cookbook
French cuisine is one
of France's greatest cultural contributions to the world!
Traditionally, each
region of France has its own distinctive specialities.
Last week, I challenged my KS2 pupils to follow a simple French recipe from my new cookbook resource and make a French dish.
Would you also like
to set your pupils a home learning challenge to cook a French dish? If so, enjoy
this fun, interactive, bilingual cookbook that features 10 classic
French recipes for young chefs to follow (with a little help!) including
starters, main courses and desserts.
There are two
different versions of the cookbook:
An interactive
PowerPoint to use online
French Cookbook interactive PPT
or alternatively a
PDF to print off with QR codes to scan.
I would love to see your
pupils’ culinary creations! Please share your photos on Twitter
@MmeBirtwistle
Bon appétit !
Gallery of photos:
Bravo to Lucia (Y4) in Whitefield, Greater Manchester, who made a lovely French omelette for her lunch!
Credits:
www.marmiton.org
Bitmoji
Monday, 18 May 2020
International Museum Day in 2020 goes digital!
International Museum
Day is an international day held annually on or around 18 May, celebrating
museums and their collections.
Museums may be
temporarily closed, but they remain a source of knowledge and discovery for
many - now through virtual tours in particular.
This International
Museum Day, I challenged my KS2 French learners to develop their cultural
capital by celebrating the inspirational power of the Louvre Museum in Paris
from their home.
Here is their Home Learning Challenge:
Challenge 1: Take a virtual trip to the Louvre Museum in Paris, France and learn about some great works of art from home! Raphael, Mona, and Nabi are 3 cartoon characters who react to some works of art from the world’s largest art museum in Paris, France: “The Louvre”. They invite children (and their parents) to spend one minute with them in front of a painting, sculpture, or antique vase, and to learn a little more about art. Click on the link below to watch some short videos on the Louvre Museum playlist “One Minute in a Museum”:
One Minute in a Museum (The Louvre)
Follow on activity: What was your favourite work of art and why?
Challenge 2: Click on the link below to learn a few facts about The Louvre Museum:
Interesting facts about the Louvre Museum for kids
Follow on activity: Test your knowledge about the
Louvre Museum by clicking on the link below to complete an online quiz:
Madame Birtwistle's Quiz: the Louvre Museum
Challenge 3: Enjoy a virtual tour of the Louvre Museum right from your computer screen:
Virtual Trip to the Louvre Museum
EXTRA CHALLENGE!
Explore another famous French
museum in Paris: The Musée D’Orsay. You can virtually walk through this popular
gallery that houses dozens of famous works from French artists who worked and
lived between 1848 and 1914. Discover artworks from Monet, Cézanne, and
Gauguin, among others:
Follow on activity:
Create a fact file about Monet (or another French
or Francophone artist) and then produce your own masterpiece “in the style of”
this artist!
10 Monet art projects for children
Bonne Journée
internationale des musées !
(Happy
International Museum Day!)
Sunday, 31 March 2019
Bonne Fête des Mères 2019
Last week, KS2 French pupils were busy thinking
about adjectives that best described their mothers. The children then used these adjectives to
create a French themed Mother’s Day pin wheel card or bookmark.
This was an engaging way to focus on an important French
grammar point: adjectival agreements in the feminine singular form!
Here are some examples of their creative work:
Bonne Fête des Mères!
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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