As 2016 draws to an
end, here’s a quick look back at one of the festive French activities that we
did during advent throughout KS2: learning a French Christmas carol called Étoile de Noël (Christmas Star).
Étoile
de Noël is a French Christmas resource from the Joyeux Noël activity pack published by La Jolie Ronde and is available to
purchase here:
At the start of the festive season, our learning
intention was to understand and join in with this French Christmas song.
First of all, we
looked at the title of the song Étoile de
Noël and the children were challenged to work in groups in order to
translate it into English. Some children
quickly translated it correctly by being able to recall the words for "star" and
"Christmas" that they had previously learnt.
They also remembered how the word order can sometimes be different in
French than English so that the literal translation of the song was “Star of
Christmas” but sounded better as “Christmas Star” in English. Other children used a bilingual dictionary to
support them with this task and a few needed visual prompts (teacher pointing
to a picture of a star).
Next, we listened to
the song so that the children could familiarise themselves with this new tune
and they were instructed to listen out for any familiar vocabulary that they
could share with the rest of the class.
Many children could clearly understand the title of the song being sung
at various points within the song and some understood odd words previously
learnt such as la nuit (night) and les enfants (children).
We then built on this
by looking at some more key words from the song. The pupils were instructed to match up pictures
of key words with the written word using bilingual dictionaries if needed. Bilingual dictionaries were not always needed
as some children made links between the French word les enfants with the English word “infants” and commented on how
the French word une ronde looked like
the English word “round” that indeed describes the shape of a circle! Some also recognised toi and moi from general
questioning in our weekly lessons. We
listened to the song for the second time at this point and the children were
instructed to listen out for the key words in the song that we had just
discussed and try to understand the general gist of the song.
Finally, we looked at
the whole lyrics and with a little bit of body language from the teacher, the
children successfully worked together as a class to translate them into
English. We listened to the song for the
third time and the children tried to understand and follow as much of it as
possible.
Before the children
were encouraged to join in singing the song themselves, we spent some time
learning how to correctly pronounce the lyrics, paying particular attention to the French
sound oi. This sound is repeated throughout the song (étoile, moi, toi) and is a tricky sound
to remember how to correctly pronounce.
We looked at examples of other French words that they have already
learnt that contain the same sound: trois,
croissant, noir, oiseau, poisson, oie etc…
The children
thoroughly enjoyed singing along to this French carol and once they were
confident with their singing, they even put their own actions to the song!
Towards the end of
advent, some classes performed this song in front of an audience such as a
school assembly, Christmas concert, carol service etc… What an achievement!
We followed on by
making a star themed French Christmas card in class for the children to take
home and share with their families. The
children wrote their cards in French of course and some even recorded
themselves singing this song and then created a QR code for their families to
scan with a QR code reader app and enjoy listening to over the Christmas
holidays!
Bravo les enfants!
Joyeux Noël!
Bonnes fêtes
de fin d’année!
