French News: Quoi de neuf?

Bonjour tout le monde! Hello everyone. Here are some examples of student learning across the school in French this term. 

Prep: The students have taken enthusiastically to their French learning and demonstrate an enthusiasm for learning and trying out new words and expressions. They are fearless mimics at this age and will invariably take pleasure in their successes. We have touched on a wide range of French vocabulary relating to their lives, such as family members, colours, animals, how they are feeling and food. We practice counting to10 routinely and have explored days of the week, months and seasons. To end the term, the students are drawing and labelling a picture of what they have noticed about Spring (Le printemps).

Years 1&2: The students in years 1 and 2 have been consolidating their learning by revisiting and building upon topics such as the weather, the numbers to 21, clothing, and the food they like and don’t like to eat. We have touched on some grammar, including the use of articles in a gendered language (masculine, feminine and plural) and where adjectives are placed in French (mostly after the noun, unlike English).

Year 3: The Years 3 students have explored the use of adjectives in French in more detail, looking at the type of describing words that go before the noun such as size and age. They practised the application of the rule when describing parts of the body and clothing. They have also practiced saying whether they like or don’t like to eat certain foods, using the verb ‘aimer’ and the negative construction ‘Je n’aime pas…’ A common one seems to be ‘Je n’aime pas les choux de Bruxelles’ (I don’t like Brussels Sprouts!)

Year 4: The year 4 students who participated in the Alliance Française Berthe Mouchette Poetry Competition in Term 2 did extremely well and I am very proud of everyone who had a go. Chapeau! (Hats off!). Félicitations (congratulations) to our finalists who are in the running to win the best in the State: Roy Bellis, Charlie Fletcher and Margie Haynes. Results will be sent out next month, fingers crossed!

Years 5&6: The students in the senior unit have recently been creating scripts with a focus on meeting new people and imagining the sorts of questions you might ask to find out something about a potential friend. The hardest part of learning French is arguably the pronunciation, as although we have the same alphabet and have a great deal of vocabulary in common, French words simply don’t sound like they look. The main challenge in this project was to attempt reasonably accurate pronunciation, and some students managed to write a ‘pronunciation guide’ to avoid some of the most common mistakes.