French in the Forest School

This week  Year 5 are taking their French lessons outside and used our Manor Way Forest School as their learning space.

As part of the lesson, the children took part in a Sentence Search, where they hunted high and low for French and English translations of different sentences. All sentences contained the verb Jouer (to play) but using different pronouns; the children said it was a fun way to discover and explore French conjugation for the first time.

Here are Aspen and Rowan enjoying their outdoor learning.

Le Français dans le fôret!

Year 4 had the opportunity to experience a dictionary skills lessons outside in our amazing Forest School area last week. In groups they searched the space to find French words for healthy food items, then worked together to find translations in the dictionary. 

"It was great to take our learning outside and get to move about a lot"

"Best dictionary lesson EVER"

French Dictionary Detectives in Year 5

This week Year 5 have been using the set of bilingual French dictionaries to look up new language from English and also to translate infinitive verbs from French into English. As part of their free time and hobbies topic this term, Year 5 have been learning all about infinitive verbs and how they work in French. Now that we know some French examples, we can use them with opinion phrases to help share our likes and dislikes for hobbies and free time activities.

Here are some photos of Hawthorn Class exploring the dictionaries this week.

Year 6 French groupwork on an advanced text

As part of our Year 6 French Fashion topic, we worked in groups to pull apart a text called Paris - la capitale de la mode?

We each had different roles as part of our group work: to try and pick out cognates, to focus on adjectives, to pull out all the proper nouns that do not need much translation and then building the sentences back up to make sense in English.

This is how you too can show understanding of the 'gist' of a text - you do not need to understand every single word, just show you can follow it with some understanding. Focus on what you can understand, rather than stress about what you cannot.

"It's really hard but I love a challenge!"

"It's fun working in groups when we all have a different role in the team"

"I feel like I actually understand a lot more than first thought when we break it down like this"

Year 5 Elm - French translators of the future!

This week Year 5 have been exploring how informative our Collins Primary Illustrated French dictionaries can be and using them to help us translate texts from French into English. We have been learning vocabulary linked to our Anglo-Saxon topic, so we can compare and contrast ancient settlements to modern towns; in our more complicated texts, there were lots of new words that we needed to look up to translate. 

Here are children from Elm Tree Class being dictionary detectives and translators!