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Increasingly many primary schools are including language as part of activity weeks to promote language enjoyment and share cultural insights. Here, Elaine Crothers reports on her school’s enjoyable and motivating French week. French Week at St. Weonard’s, Herefordshire My aim was to cover all our normal areas of the curriculum but to run a French theme throughout. To reduce the workload for staff each teacher agreed to organise two curriculum areas during the week, running the same activity but with different groups of children. The children were put into mixed age groups (year 3 to year 6 in each group) and each group took part in all the activities sometime during the week. In Literacy the children looked at traditional French tales like Cinderella. The sessions included lots of speaking and listening and drama. In Numeracy we did counting in French and learnt the phrases for add, plus and multiply, fois. We used games like snakes and ladders, dot-to-dot, and the rolling of dice to practise number skills. We also studied the currency of the country. Our role play was shopping. In DT we constructed a huge model of the Eiffel Tower out of rolled up newspaper. In Geography we learnt where France is and looked at the diversity of landscapes and climate in different regions. Travel agents were particularly helpful with resources, as was the French Embassy.
Staff and Year 10 pupils from Kingstone Language College spent the whole of Friday with us. During their own French lessons they had prepared and made French games to play with our children, while our staff displayed all the work that had been done throughout the week in the school hall. Parents and friends were invited on the Friday afternoon. We had a huge Show and Tell in the hall where children talked about the displays and their activities. Parents were entertained with French songs and then enjoyed the French food in the café. The week was a huge success. Older pupils ensured younger ones found their way to the right workshops. Pupils were excited and remained motivated throughout. They gathered round the timetable each morning eager to see which activities they would be visiting. They enjoyed working with new people with whom they wouldn’t usually mix and so new friendships were formed. Similarly, the staff enjoyed the opportunity to work with all the children in school. |
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I’d introduced French at school and I thought it would be fun to organise a French week to promote a greater awareness of the French language, life in France, its culture and customs for the children. 
In History we studied one of France’s most famous characters, Napoleon, and each child made his famous hat. For Science we did cookery. We made crêpes and pains au chocolat, ready for our celebration café on the Friday afternoon. We looked at the changes that occur when heating and freezing our delicious fare. For ICT the children used the computers to research all other areas of study. They found information about Napoleon, recipes for French food, pictures of the Eiffel Tower. In Art the children studied the work of Monet and then did paintings in his style. They also did cave paintings after looking at the famous Cave art found in the Lascaux caves. In PE all the children learnt how to play boules. Finally in French we prepared the menus for our French café, we learnt colours and made the French flag, the Tricolore. We also practised songs for the final entertainment on the Friday.