Teaching French Phonics
in
Primary School
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November 2014
Twilight Session
DfE/University of Reading
CPD in MFL
sue@cavelanguages.co.uk
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Objectives
• To explain a method and process for
teaching French phonics in the
primary classroom
• To practise the key sounds of French
in a kinaesthetic way
• To demonstrate classroom activities
to practise the sounds
Why teach phonics?
The representation of sounds through letters is a
code.
Phonics provides the key to break the code and
gives independence to language learners.
Do you explicitly teach this code?
The simultaneous teaching of sound, written
word and meaning can be very demanding for
beginners
napnyugta
nyaralás
Even if you remove the spelling
Examples in Hungarian
Embedding phonics
7 step process
ORACY
Step 1 – Identify and practise the individual sounds in a
words
Step 2 - Blend the sounds to produce the whole word
Step 3 – Connect the meaning of the word to its sound
LITERACY
Step 4 – Identify and practise the graphemes for each sound
Step 5 – Read, say, spell and write the word
Step 6 – Connect the meaning of the word to its written
form
Step 7 – Put words together to say and read a sentence
All the key French sounds can be
encountered through the teaching of
some commonly taught words
• 5 numbers – 0,1,2,3,4,5
• 8 colours – bleu, rouge, jaune, vert, gris,
violet, marron, orange
• Days of the week – lundi, mardi, mercredi,
jeudi, vendredi, samedi, dimanche
• Months of the year – janvier, février, mars,
avril, mai, juin, juillet, août, septembre,
octobre, novembre, décembre
• 3 animals – un chien, une panthère, une
araignée
How to teach 4 colours
Start with the sounds
Step 1 – identify the sounds in the words and
find an action/image to represent the sound
Copyright images from ‘Physical French Phonics’
Step 1
Tip your head back
and pretend to gargle.
Your finger is following
a sports car whizzing
past at great speed.
Bring your arms up to your
armpits and purse your lips as
you pretend that you are a
chimpanzee.
You have just had a big
shock. Place both your
hands on both cheeks.
You have something nasty
on your shoe, your mouth is
open in an expression of
disgust.
Pretend that you are
pumping air into a
bicycle tyre.
Examples in French from ‘Physical French Phonics’
Activities for Step 1
Step 1 – practise the individual sounds
Activity examples:
• You say a sound, the learners do the action – who can be first?
• You do an action, the learners say the sound – who can be
first?
• Say a sequence of sounds and ask the learners to repeat after
a short pause, increase the pause each time
• Play ‘Splat’, you say a sound and the learners splat the
corresponding image
• Using image cards, play bingo by saying the sounds
• Distribute sets of image cards to groups of learners, say a
sound and see which group can show the corresponding card
first
How to teach 4 colours
7 step process
Step 2 – blend the sounds
bl
v
n
Copyright mages from ‘Physical French Phonics’
Activities for Step 2
Step 2 – blend the sounds
Activity examples:
• The teacher ‘bats’ the first sound of the word and
the class ‘bats’ back the next sound, anyone saying
the wrong sound loses a point
• Perform the actions for each key phoneme in the
order in which they appear in the word, the learners
try to guess which word it is
Getting started with phonics
• Become familiar with the phonics of the
language which you are teaching
• Devise actions for key sounds
• Introduce to beginners in Year 3 from the very
first lesson
Resources for teaching phonics
Physical French Phonics – Sue Cave/Jean Haig – Brilliant Publications
Actions and images for each key sound; a step by step approach to
embedding phonics in language learning; video and audio clips to practise
the actions and sounds.
Take 10 Phonics – Dart Education Publications
Sound and video files; activities to practise each phoneme.
Sounds and Words – Lynn Erler/Julie Prince – CfBt Education Trust
Practical classroom examples for French, German and Spanish;
accompanying CD
http://www.rachelhawkes.com/Resources/Phonics/Phonics.php
French, German, Spanish and Italian resources
Follow-up tasks
To do
• Select a sound or sounds to practise
• Try using an action to support the learning and memory
of it
• Try using one of the activities demonstrated
To reflect
• What went well and why?
• What would you do differently another time and why?
To share (at the next session)
• Your reflections on the above
• Any other activities you tried which worked
Don’t forget to share your ideas/thoughts on the discussion board
www.bb.reading.ac.uk
Sue Cave
Please contact if you have any queries.
sue@cavelanguages.co.uk