Following on from our work on pronouns which can be found here, we moved on to –er verbs.
I started off by listing some English verbs on the board and got them to use dictionaries to find their French equivalent. I then asked what was the same – er ending – before explaining that the dictionary form of the verb is called the infinitive and it would have the word ‘to’ before it in English. We looked at how the dictionary form needed to change to make sense in English sentences and that the same was true of French. I then showed a PowerPoint explaining what changes need to be made. We then picked a verb we frequently use in the classroom – regarder – and built up the paradigm on the board. (I also asked them to listen out for how many parts sounded the same/different.)
I use actions for most of my language teaching and verbs are no exception, so I taught them an action for the ‘stem’ and each of the endings and then we played mime games to build sentences using pronouns and verbs. In the first instance I said a sentence and the children did the actions before reversing it.
Next, I gave them 2 spinners, one with pronouns and one with verbs in the infinitive, and they had to spin a paper clip around the pencil and write the corresponding phrases on their whiteboards.
Their final task was to pick a verb and use an octopus template to show their knowledge. They came up with some beautiful, and mainly accurate, examples of –ER verbs. The work was further enhanced by a couple of fast-finishers who added extra phrases to photos of their work using PicCollage.
There's the further option of using dictionaries to create both mini-books or sentences combining months and verbs.
