Introduction - getting started

 

Early Start French 1: CONTENTS | HOME

French Starter Pack
CONTENTS:
Introduction
Pronunciation
1 Greetings
2 How are you?
3 What's your name?
Famous people
4 Alphabet
5 Family
6 Numbers 1-12
7 Ages
8 Brothers & sisters
9 Pets
10 Colours
11 Months
12 Numbers 13 - 31
13 Birthdays
14 LDays of the week
15 Today's date
16 Weather
17 Christmas
Consolidation and assessment

Your checklist before you start teaching French:

1

Get support of head, governors, colleagues, parents

2

Review your own language skills, pronunciation

3

Prepare a scheme of work

4

Make contact with a French partner school

5

Get a support network around you

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1

Get support of head, governors, colleagues, parents

If you first have to persuade your colleagues and the school authorities that it's a good idea to teach French to your class, our page Why PMFL? sets out some reasons that you and they may find persuasive.

CILT (Centre for Information about Language Teaching) has produces on-line video clips which give an excellent presentation of the sort of work and standards of results that are possible.
http://www.primarylanguages.org.uk

The French Embassy has linformation that will help you make a case for choosing to teach French as your language.

http://www.ambafrance-uk.org/

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2

Review your own language skills

One of the key areas of concern is pronunciation.

The Early Start course has been carefully designed to give your pupils a firm foundation in language learning by helping them achieve an authentic pronunciation of what they know.

Part of the approach is being able to "read off the page" how a French word should be pronounced. The professionals use "IPA" - the International Phonetic Alphabet. Read more about it HERE.

If you did study French, but need to improve, most areas offer a local adult education course which may prove useful.

If your French is limited or rusty, you need Teachers Talking French. It's an easy to use language booster course for primary practitioners.

As a classroom teacher or a teaching assistant working in Key Stage 2, the course will help you deliver confidently more of your French lessons in French.

How your French will improve
The course consists of a set of 6 audio CDs. You will hear two primary teachers, Andrew and Sophie, working with a pair of expert tutors. The tutors help Andrew and Sophie to develop their vocabulary, grammatical understanding, pronunciation, fluency and confidence.

Click to find out more: Teachers Talking French


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3

Prepare a scheme of work

England: Key Stage 2 Framework for Languages

The Framework document sets out an approach to content and methodology for language teaching in primary schools in England. It isavailable to download from the DfES Standards website at: http://www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/primary/languages/.

 Part 1 - Learning Objectives and
Part 2 - Guidance on implementation)
Part 3 - More detailed planning and guidance will be published in Spring 2007.

Copies can be ordered from the TeacherNet online service for schools at http://publications.teachernet.gov.uk/ or DfES publications at e-mail: dfes@prolog.uk.com, tel: 0845 602 22 60, textphone: 0845 60 555 60 or fax: 0845 60 333 60

See first the summary on this site: KS2 guidelines

Scottish Consultative Council on the Curriculum
Modern Languages 5-14 Guidelines

These have been published for consultation, and the consultation period ended in December 1999. Visit the Modern Languages website for more information.

http://www.svtc.org.uk/modlang/

Official Schemes of Work
for primary schools (KS2) in England & Wales

These materials, the advice to teachers, and the course structure have been carefully designed to fit with various official (but not compulsory) guidelines - see above. The QCA/DFEE publishes schemes of work and a teacher's guide, and you can view and download them from the Standards Site in either Acrobat PDF or MS Word format:

http://www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/schemes3/subjects/primary_mff/?view=get

The non-compulsory schemes have been updated to support those primary, middle and special schools that are currently teaching, or planning to teach, a modern foreign language at key stage 2.

The scheme provides a flexible framework designed to help schools to develop or adapt their own schemes for a 4-year course. It comprises an overview and 24 units for French, and overviews (and similar units for Spanish and German).

Non-specialist class teachers may find some of the suggested work too demanding, but the Scheme of Work does offer a useful benchmark against which to compare what you decide to do - and it does contain some interesting lesson ideas!

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4

Make contact with a French partner school

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5

Get a support network around you

It's good to meet with colleagues who are tackling similar tasks to swap ideas and discuss how to do things better.

You may be lucky to have such a support network if your school is part of a project locally organised by a specialist Language College or a local secondary school or college that is setting out to be a "centre of excellence" for languages and offers to work with its feeder schools; or by your LEA's adviser / consultant,

Even if you are "on your own", there are ways of exchanging ideas with colleagues who are interested in teaching languages to young beginners....

Network by e-mail with others interested in teaching languages:

CILT Primary languages website

www.primarylanguages.org.uk

Sources of on-line advice & info about language teaching
The National Advisory Centre for Early Language Learning (NACELL) website is now here:-

http://www.primarylanguages.org.uk

For primary school teachers & MFL:
Also here, you can join the (very useful) ELL-Forum mailing list, to put you in touch with lots of other teachers and educators interested in early language learning:

Assessment & recording
On the
Primary Languages website you can now find an electronic version of the European Language Portfolio which can be used as a photocopiable record of achievement for Primary pupils learning languages plus a teacher's guide to using the Portfolio.

We recommend this as a potentially very useful record of achievement to pass on to the pupils' next teacher; if properly used, it's a valuable aid to ease transition to secondary school.

You are free to download these documents and use them with your own pupils.

 
European Language Portfolio
(L) Pupil's document & (R) Teacher's Guide

DOWNLOAD the European Language Portfolio from the Resources section of the Primary Languages website.

There are detailed instructions on the web page of how to save and download the documents.
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Contents
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EARLY START French 2
Why PMFL?
Our approach
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