This week, children in Years 3, 4, 5 and 6 have been getting back to basics in their French lessons. A key component in language acquisition is frequent exposure to previously learnt words. An important strategy is to exploit vocabulary in a variety of different ways and within different activities. Repetition in this way helps embed the learning and a variety of activities ensures the children enjoy their lessons.

So, after the long summer break, the Prep pupils have been revising their numbers and colours, in French.

In Year 3, children used colour flashcards to remember the words for the various colours and then coloured in their splat sheet. They used the question: “C’est de quelle couleur?” and asked their partner the word for each colour in French.

In Year 4, pupils completed their colour splat sheets and then extended the work by writing full sentences to describe each colour. “C’est bleu”, “C’est vert”, “C’est rose”.

Pupils in Years 5 and 6 have been revising numbers up to 31, in both spoken and written forms. Alain le Lait’s catchy song with its guitar-playing worms helped the children to remember their numbers from last year and reminded them of how the words are spelt. After this, the children played Animal Top Trumps in small groups. How would the pig (Cochon) with its personality (Personalité) score of 27 fare against the tiger (Tigre) with a power score (Puissance) of 31? By the end of the lesson, the children felt more confident in both saying and spelling their numbers in French. They had also learnt a few new animal names.