TOPIC

Welcome to our French class where children enjoy learning and understanding another culture and language. At Saint Paulinus, we strongly believe in the benefit of this and we therefore implement the teaching of French to children from year 3 to year 6. Our children enjoy being creative and expressing themselves. They join in with singing French songs, reciting rhymes and poems, responding to and acting out traditional stories such as “The three little pigs”, “Little red Riding Hood”, etc…. They create mimes, sketches and role-play , imitating accurate intonation and pronunciation. They are given opportunities to read stories for enjoyment and to practice vocabulary and write independently. In summer months, they take part in traditional French playground games such as “les boules”.

A French day will be also organised where children across all key stages will improve their French language and intercultural awareness skills.

Ask your child to sing you a song and to speak a bit of French, you will be impressed and happily surprised.

Reading and writing skills are supported by, and reinforce, the development of oracy. Children become familiar with the relationship between phonemes and graphemes. They apply this knowledge in their reading and spelling. Children understand, read and enjoy different forms of paper and electronic texts, such as stories, poems and messages. They write simple sentences and short texts, often using a frame or model. They develop a basic knowledge of the writing system, spelling and structure of the language.

We use fairy tales as projects in French, such as ” Little Red Riding Hood”, ” Goldilocks and the three bears”, ” the three Billy goats”…Children read and understand the story with the use of mimes, then in groups, they start acting some scenes from the story then build up gradually their confidence to finally be able to rewrite the whole story with their own words.