French

Prep 

Students have been exploring the book 'Brown Bear, Brown Bear' (Ours Brun, Ours Brun) in French this term. We have been looking at the names of the animals and will continue to work on colours as well over the next few weeks. Here is a snapshot of the vocabulary we have been learning so far: 

Grade 1/2 

Students have also been learning about animals. We have been looking at the fact that some animals have a very different word in English to French, and some have very similar words. These words, such as 'crocodile' and 'le crocodile' are known as cognates, and although they look the same, they sound very different. We have been noticing that all French nouns begin with either le, la, l' or les and that all 4 of these words actually mean 'the' in English. We have explored the dictionaries and sorted words into these categories to practice noticing the gender of different nouns. 

Grade 3/4 

Students have been looking at food and recipes. We began the unit by watching a cooking video in French on how to make crêpes. Crêpes are a French speciality, but very easy to make. Below I will attach the recipe that I use to make crêpes, they are delicious with a sweet filling such as Nutella or jam, but they are also delicious with a savoury filling such as ham and cheese, or smoked salmon and cream cheese. Yum! 

Bon Appétit! 

CRÊPES

• 250g plain flour
• 250ml milk
• 250ml water
• 3 eggs
• 1 pinch of salt
• 1 tablespoon of sugar
• 1 tablespoon of vegetable oil

Mix the dry ingredients together. Add the wet ingredients and mix together well. You can then use a hand mixer to blend it and get any lumps out, making sure the batter is smooth. The consistency should be like thick water. 

Heat a medium frypan over medium-high heat. When the pan is hot, grease it with some butter or oil. Using a ladle, pour one ladle-full of batter onto the pan, and rotate the pan around so that the batter spreads out and fills the whole base of the saucepan. Cook until it is golden and flip. The crêpes should be nice and thin. Cook for another minute on the other side, and serve. 

One trick is to add ham and cheese into the pan once you have flipped the crêpe, this will heat the ham and melt the cheese. Sometimes, French people will crack an egg onto the ham and cheese and put a lid on the saucepan to cook the egg. There are so many variations of fillings, almost anything works well with this recipe. 

Enjoy! 

Grade 5/6

We have been learning about French bakeries this term in French. Students have been learning the words for sweet and savoury French bakery items, and we have been exploring the language you use to order food at the counter. Students have been doing role plays with a bank of language, creating their own script to enter the bakery, order their food, pay and leave. See below for the vocabulary we have been learning: