French Focus

Bonjour à tous! 

 Another year has flown by!

I’m very excited to let you know that Fairfield Primary School is now connected with an education centre in the village of Laquenexy, in the North-East of France.

An acknowledgement and enormous ‘merci’ to the Le Bras family for their role in supporting FPS to form this connection.

Year 5 & 6 Students

Students have begun making our first connections with children in Laquenexy! Each student in Year 5 & 6 has nominated a pen pal. They then worked hard to draft, revise and publish a letter to a student in Laquenexy. These will then be scanned and sent to our new friends in France. Pictured below are some Year 5 students working on their letters.

Year 6 students will also have the opportunity to participate in a French celebration. The French room will be transformed into ‘un café’ and students will be able to enjoy un croissant et un chocolat chaud (hot chocolate). This will also be an opportunity for our Year 4 students who participated in the Berthe Mouchette Poetry Competition earlier in the year to celebrate their hard work.

Year 3 & 4 Students

This term students learned vocabulary related to ‘la météo’ – ‘the weather’ in French. They explored this vocabulary through flashcards, board games and videos of French weather forecasts. They applied this knowledge to create their own written weather forecast. 

Students then worked as ‘dictionary detectives’ to develop their skills in using a bilingual dictionary. They translated a range of words from English to French and identified whether nouns they located were masculine or feminine.

Year 1 & 2 Students

Students developed their knowledge of days of the week, months of the year and seasons in French. They explored this vocabulary through tasks including songs, drama-based games and learning involving drawing and writing simple French. Students revised numbers and explored numbers to 31 and then learned to write their own birthday in French.

Foundation Students

In term four, students learned the song ‘joyeux anniversaire’ – ‘happy birthday’ in French. Students learned more generally about some celebrations in France and Australia such as birthdays, Halloween and will learn about Noël (Christmas) in coming weeks. They will also be learning ‘bébé requin’ – 'baby shark' in French and learning vocabulary related to family which features in this song ie. papa, bébé etc. 

Wishing you all les ‘bonnes vacances’.

~ Emily Lindsay-Smith, French Teacher