A very successful approach to Writing Assessment and preparation for exam conditions writing at GCSE. Suitable for use at KS3 and in KS4. A3 sheet to be copied for pupils. In exam conditions, pupils fill in the French in column 1. If they don't know a word, they put a cross in the column. This should take 5 minutes. Then allow the pupils to look at their books etc to fill in column 2 for any words they couldn't remember in exam conditions. This should take 5 minutes. Then pupils do the Writing Assessment using ONLY this sheet. They hand the sheet in with their assessed piece so the teacher can see how much was known language (column 1) and how much had to be looked up (column 2). It also acts as a scaffold with pupils having all the ingredients for success ready to put into their writing.

A mystery that will take you exploring the streets of Vesoul on the trail of a master of disguise whose ambitions are plaguing the town. The characters will talk to you in French, but by answering the easy questions, you will pick up the important clues and know where to go next. Click on the links or scan the QR code to listen to what they tell you. Many many thanks to everyone who has recorded a character! There is a powerpoint video tutorial to get you started. You can print out the document as a 24 page booklet, and use your computer to explore the town on Google Streetview. Or you can just open the document on your computer at the same time as Streetview and switch between windows. Let me know on twitter @veverettmfl how you are finding it. I recommend you try it first before using it with pupils. Use it lots. It will go out of date as soon as the Google Street View self driving car takes new photos of Vesoul! NB Google Street View has now been updated. But if you look in the comments at the bottom of this blog post, you can find a link to videos of the route so you can still do the Mystery. https://whoteacheslanguages.blogspot.com/2021/05/the-french-street-view-mysteries.html

This is a lesson for the Computer suite or laptops/tablets to practise writing about Free Time. Pupils work through the activities, dragging the correct words into place. It builds up from small chunks of language to translation of short paragraphs.

Here are the resources from my Languages World 2018 workshop “Equipping Pupils to be Creative” including a French version of the “Going to the Beach” Keep Talking sheet.

French in school / au college speaking activity for KS3 or revision at the start of KS4 to develop spontaneous speaking. Pupils use the sheet to construct long sentences talking to a partner. You can ask them to swap partners, reducing how much they look at the sheet as the lesson progresses. Simultaneous Translation activity: their partner tells them what to say, constructing long sentences using the sheet.

A basic text on en ville / in town in French with too much repetition. Pupils are given a range of alternative expressions to re-draft the piece of writing and improve it. This activity used to be called Pimp my French when the TV show Pimp my Ride was popular. You can give pupils a "budget" - a very precise number of words they have to use to deliver an improved piece of writing to the client. Uses connectives, verb + infinitive, opinions.

This worksheet introduces pupils to the concept of the infinitive, with verbs to be used for talking about my town / en ville. The pupils look for the infinitives, match them to meaning, then insert them into sentences using opinions and je peux (I can). Suitable for KS3 or for revision at the start of KS4.

French my house / ma maison introduction to the perfect tense and the near future in the first person. Pupils sort and match the verbs before seeing them in sentences and then transferring them into their own sentences. Suitable for KS3 or revision at the start of KS4

This is designed to be done in Word on the computer (or as a google doc) but there’s no reason why you shouldn’t print it out and ask pupils to do it on paper. Telling stories about what happened when you went to the beach. Scaffolded with parallel texts and with pupils making their own glossary. Opinions and reasons, imperfect and perfect tenses - no prior knowledge necessary. I use it with Year 8.

Resource for working on the Prevert poem Le Cancre. Resources to make it accessible / focus on the content, not test comprehension. Includes links to YouTube videos of the poem. Good for School Topic or literature/culture independent of currrent topic.

Verb tables with activities for pupils to find the verb they need in the perfect and imperfect. Starts with the verbs in the verb table. Moves on to identifying the ending of other verbs, then to putting the correct ending on. Used in translated sentences to describe what was happening/what happened, using a crime scenario. Stepped activities which are all designed to be doable using the information/language given on the page. Suitable for KS3 or KS4. Includes the Oxford-Cambridge activity where the questionmaster challenges two partners to race to find verb endings on the page. Pupils buzz in when they find the answer.

A keep talking / paragraph builder for talking about table manners and the importance of handling bread correctly in France. Pupils can watch the YouTube video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yRkWCqcoms&list=PL2u4oHkid_n0kAt6WeDWE22QkqG3BNUmF&index=3 first, and then use this sheet to compare France and England and different situations. Example sentences: In France you can use your bread to wipe up the sauce on your plate but you shouldn’t put the bread on the table upside down. In England it is not polite to wipe your plate but you can dunk a biscuit in your tea.

A sentence building style resource to enable your classes to talk/write about songs they listen to in French, going beyond sentences, developing their answers.

The presentation slides from my talk in the Saturday Tech Talk series for teachers of English in Indonesia 20th November 2021. A recording of this talk will be available on Joe Dale’s youtube channel after the event.