With the introduction of compulsory language lessons in state primaries in England as well as the new national curriculum, September 2014 marked the beginning of exciting times for language teachers and their pupils.
I chose to start the year in Y6 by looking at an authentic poem (viz ‘great literature’) where the children would listen attentively and join in, explore patterns and sounds, make links with English and perform to an audience (their classmates).
The poem we would look at was entitled Le Jour de la Rentrée and contained lots of onomatopoeias so we started off by talking about this in English before I set the scene for the poem. I asked the class to work with a partner to discuss the routines and emotions of the first day back for a young child and his/her parents. They fed back to the class and I wrote up on the board any of their suggestions that were in the French poem. Next, I displayed the French onomatopoeias and the children worked in pairs to match them with the English verbs. They considered words they already knew, cognates and then by process of elimination managed to decode most of them.
We then looked at the poem in full and armed with prior knowledge and now our knowledge of onomatopoeias, were able to work out its meaning. (You can hear French children reading it here.) Next followed lots of repetition: first the children listened to me reading the lines while following the text with them saying the onomatopoeias, leading on to groups repeating lines after me with the rest repeating the onomatopoeias, finishing with groups reading their lines alone or with support. They then worked in their groups on pronunciation and performance before showcasing to the class.
Recording it proved a challenge. Because of timing issues, some voices being louder than others or more difficult lines, I abandoned the idea of doing a live ‘from start to finish video recording’ as I needed more control over editing. This is where the 30hands app came to the rescue as I was able to record a slide at a time with one group, re-recording if necessary, before moving on to the next group.
Here is the final result.