Bonjour tout le monde. C’est Madame Suzanne ici. Here is a review of French in Term 1.

Kindergarten

The children in the kindergarten continue to amaze us all with their French understandings. Rebecca is joining us in class this Term and excitedly exclaimed “they know so much!”

Greetings, colours and numbers remain a focus. “Bleu” (blue) and “dix” are still firm favourites (they just feel so nice to say) along with “ça va mal” (sad face). Different parts of speech such as prepositions, verbs and nouns form part of our weekly program. Using gestures and songs help us to learn these important words.

Unfortunately we have recently met Pierre who helped us learn how to say “I’m hungry” in French – j’ai faim (jah-fahm). The children very kindly feed him food to make him go back to sleep, however he was a bit rude at times shouting “j’aime” (I like) and “je n’aime pas (I don’t like).

The children are becoming language detectives – listening out for French words and seeing if they can think of an English word that sounds the same. We have discovered there are so many!

Circle = circle, dinosaur = dinosaur, lion = lion, tigre = tiger and léléphant = elephant.

Sid and Mimi continue to join us for stories and puppet shows where the children listen closely to the words they have learnt and used in context.

Each class ends with the children whispering a French word to Sid or Mimi le chat. I wonder what word they will chose?

Ethan proudly shared his Eiffel Tower T-shirt with us in class – what an iconic structure it is. We followed up in the kinder with our own Eiffel Towers – some even had propellers on the top!

Lighthouse

The Lighthouse has been full of French singing, dancing, colour and numbers. Sid has tried his very hardest NOT to teach the children French or indeed how to behave in class – fortunately the Lighthouse are very patient with him and have not given up trying to help him.

The main focus for Term 1 has been to consolidate our vocabulary from kinder and introduce our new friends to the French language. We have used songs, videos, stories and games for oral practice and gestures to help us match words with meaning. We will take these understandings and use them soon in stories and plays. There is much fun to be had with French in the Lighthouse - hopefully Sid will not hold us back.

Lofties

French in the Loftroom jumped back into gear very quickly this Term. After some rapid revision, the children demonstrated to Madame Suzanne that they were ready for some new learning.

We have started a new AIM story titled “La poule Maboule.” The children have been learning the gestures, characters and script from the play and have begun to make their own puppets – either using the AIM templates or creating their own. Within the story they are learning sentence structures and grammar concepts whilst gaining valuable oral practice. Stay tuned for videos of performances.

“Jeudi” is certainly the favourite day of the week in the Loftroom as it is “le jour de Muzzy.” The adventures of Muzzy is a BBC series that supports learning French through an engaging animated story, full of heroes and villains. The children are very much invested in the story and this makes for a rich learning experience. We have returned to Chapter 1 to acquaint the new Lofties with the story and characters and to revisit vocabulary and grammar (Norman is a great help with this).

Sunroom

Making connections has been our focus in the Sunroom so far this Term. We are discovering how, by using our English language knowledge, we can often have a guess at the meaning of a French word or understand the context. We discussed why this is so – the history of language and the origins of English and French – a fascinating topic for linguist enthusiasts.

Oral practice remains a focus with the introduction of a new story titled “Boucles Violettes et les trois ours.” This is a revamped version of the Goldilocks story, full of French grammar, sentence structures and new vocabulary. We hope to share our performances with the Arlington community in due course.

Games, dictation drawing, videos and songs provide opportunities for oral practice and demonstration of comprehension and understanding. We had some wonderful monsters join us in the Sunroom – watch out for Murray’s “les yeux monster” – he is always watching you.

Peppercorns

The Peppercorn class have been busy consolidating their French understandings through games, Movietalks, drawing, songs and translation.

We have begun a new story – “Boucles Violettes et les trois ours” and will soon use our knowledge of sentence structure and vocabulary from this story to write our own plays – I wonder what characters the children will invent? They might include some of their recently designed monsters, created to review different parts of the body. We agreed that Albie might be channelling Picasso in his recent illustration.

Suzanne Banfield

French Language Teacher

suzanne.banfield@preshil.vic.edu.au

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