MFL Activities
Lots of activities, ideas and resources
to use in your MFL lessons.
SKILLS
reading
numeracy
listening
ICT
speaking
writing
dictionary
Sit ‘n’ Spin
Great idea – taken from Pinterest
Trapdoor
Student has to read through guessing the
correct answer. If they get it right they carry on.
If they get it wrong someone else ha to have a
go but start from the beginning. Lots of
repetition – great for listening skills. First one to
the end wins a prize.
Darts
Bought from the 99p Store. I use as a plenary. If
students get the question right they can throw
the dart. Group with the most points wins. A
good one for the boys.
Adjectives
Nice idea when learning adjectives. Students
could do this for homework.
Adjectives (2)
Another good idea when covering adjectives.
Take photo to stick in their books.
Creative Descriptions
Fun way of presenting a piece of writing.
Guess Who
PowerPoint with celebrities’ names translated
into French. Students use a dictionary to help
them figure out who the person is.
e.g. prendre ça = Take That
French - Who am I?
Challenge Capsules
Make tubs with challenges for early finishers.
(You can get about 8 of these tubs in 99p
Store/Poundland)
Guess The Song
A nice starter activity. My students love this one.
PowerPoint with English song titles translated
into Spanish and they have to guess the English.
Spanish Guess The Song
Number Flashcards
Write some random numbers (including
negatives) on the board and stick
flashcards over them. Students are in
teams, they tell you a phrase, you take off
the flashcard and that is the number of
points they get.
Question Chairs
Hide Common Core questions under their
seat and announce 'hot seat' sometime
during the day. Whoever has a question
under their seat has to answer it.
Guess the Word
Everybody standing up. Write a word on a
whiteboard and students have to guess what it
is and write it on their own. They reveal their
boards then teacher reveals theirs. If they have
matched, they can sit down. If not, they rub off
their word and start again.
Phrase of the Week
Give students a word/phrase of the week. If
they use it correctly in context they win a raffle
ticket. One of these is picked out at the end of
each week and this student wins a lolly.
JAUNE BLEU ROUGE BRUN
BLANC NOIR ORANGE VERT
VIOLET GRIS BLEU ROUGE
BRUN BLANC NOIR GRIS
VERT VIOLET JAUNE BLEU
ROUGE BRUN BLANC NOIR
ORANGE VERT VIOLET
Je
regarder
Heads and Tails Sentences
Give students some starts and ends of
sentences and they have to join them
up.
Hier je suis allé
J’ai voyagé
J’ai visité
J’ai mangé
en avion.
un croissant.
en France.
les monuments.
Map speaking activity
Good for talking about places in town, directions
and prepositions. In pairs students have a
different map each and a copy of their partner’s
with some places missing which they have to fill
in by listening to their partner’s
description/asking questions.
Radio App
Download the TuneIn radio app. Click 'By Location' >
Europe > France/Spain then choose either the type of
music (genre) you want to listen to or the area in
France or Spain.
Fortune Tellers
Get your students to make these to practise job
vocab. Good for recap of basic numbers and
colours.
What do you know
about…?
Tell your
partner
everything you
know about…
Ball Repetition
Students throw
the ball around
the room
repeating the
word after the
teacher.
Card Finder
Place flashcards on
the walls around the
room. Say the word in
the TL/English and
students point to the
correct part of the
room.
Miming
Mime a word
and students
shout out in the
target language.
Passez la bombe
Buy a kitchen timer and put it in a
small black box. Put the timer in
the box. When you play, set the
timer for between 1-2 mins, put
into box and say a question you've
covered recently which can have
many different answers. Pass the
bomb to first pupil, who can pass it
on when they've said an answer.
Whoever is holding the bomb
when it goes off has to do a forfeit.
4 Chairs
4 chairs at the front of the class. The rest of class
must ask each in turn a question. If they are
correct the person stays on the chair. If not the
questioner takes place. The 4 still on the chairs
at the exact moment the bell rings gain
points/sweets.
Cups
Students are given a set of cards with vocab
on and they have to put them in the correct
cup.
NOUNS
VERBS
ADJECTIVES
First Letters
Give the students the first letter of each word in a
sentence. They have to figure out what the
sentence is.
JVABDLM
Je vais au bord de la mer.
Weather Wall
Interactive Weather Display
Interactive weather display which
students can easily update or can be
discussed as a starter activity.
Knocking Out Teeth
Divide the class into two teams. Ask individual team
members questions. Draw two big mouths on the
whiteboard, giving each about 8 teeth. If they get it
RIGHT, you erase one tooth from the OPPONENTS
mouth.
Other suggestions:
• Draw sweets and take them away
• Eat up each others’ apples, bananas, ice-creams, etc.
• Draw a person for each; then, with each mistake they make, draw a part of
something around them; if they lose, they end up with a large monster’s mouth
swallowing them.
(1) Mon collège s’appelle
(2) J’aime
(4) Je déteste
les maths
parce que le prof
est
les maths
l’histoire
l’anglais
Ridgewood School.
Hallcross School.
Danum School.
(3) parce que
c’est
ennuyeuse
irascible
méchante
(5) Le dessin est
plus ennuyeux que
(6) Ma matière
préférée est
facile.
intéressant.
amusant.
la géographie
le sport
l’espagnol
(7) parce que
l’histoire
la technologie
les sciences
j’adore apprendre
les langues.
c’est très facile.
Encore Une Fois
Similar to previous. One volunteer to leave the room. Rest of
class agree on answers. The volunteer comes back in and
begins to read and guesses a/b/c. If correct he continues. If
incorrect he must go back to the beginning and guess again.
Every time the volunteer gets the answer wrong, he must go
back to the beginning and class says ”encore une fois”. This
could then be done in pairs.
(1) Mon collège s’appelle
Ridgewood School.
Hallcross School.
Danum School.
Dice Gap Fill
1
2
3
4
5
6
A
Luc
Pierre
Yohan
Thierry
Quentin
Laurent
B
sept
quinze
dix-sept
dix-huit
neuf
six
C
Normalem
ent
Tous les
jours
Une fois
par
semaine
Une fois
par mois
Tous les
deux jours
Quelquefoi
s
D
du pain
grillé
des
céréales
un
du pain
croissant
un pain
au
chocolat
du fruit
E
du jus
d’orange
du thé
du café
du jus
de
pomme
de l’eau
du lait
F
six
sept
huit
neuf
dix
onze
G
H
I
la
ma
la salle à
la
le salon le jardin
cuisine chambre manger
voiture
ma
mon
mon
ma
mes
mon
soeur
frère
copain
famille parents petit ami
savoure
nourriss
délicieux
bon
goûteux
génial
ux
ant
Roll the dice and fill in the gaps of
your paragraph.
A Salut, je m’appelle ________________
et B j’ai ___________ ans.
C _________________________ au
petit déjeuner
D je mange _________________ et
E je bois _______________________ .
F D’habitude je mange le petit déjeuner
à __________ heures G dans
______________ H avec
___________________.
I J’adore manger du pain grillé avec du
beurre et de la confiture parce que c’est
_________________.
Textivate
Textivate
Virtual Teachers
To promote independent learning and
differentiation. Make a PowerPoint slide with
questions related to the task and hyperlink the
answers. Students can click these when they
need to.
Dingbats
Students guess the word/phrase from
the picture on the screen. Good to get
their brains ticking at the start of the
lesson.
Sequencing and Matching
Give students a text and translation cut up.
They match the text with the translation
and put in the correct order.
Trays
Red, amber, green trays for end of lesson.
Students put their book in the correct tray
depending on their level of understanding.
Similar Writing
Students are given two very different texts and
have to find the similarities between the two in
order to help them decide what they need to
include in their own piece of writing.
J’habite avec ma
soeur dans une
petite maison en
Angleterre.
J’habite avec ma
mère dans une
grande maison en
France.
Expert Tables
Choose students who have mastered an aspect
of languages. Other students go and see these
people for help.
Silent reading
Read a book,
story, poem or
newspaper in
the target
language.
Card Racing Game
• Create 7 cards with different tasks.
• Put the pupils into pairs or groups of 3. To
start the game give each group a card and a
mini board.
• They then have to complete the task and
one member of the group brings it to you to
check. Once they have had the answer
checked they get another card.
• The object of the game is to complete all
the cards first, this group wins. Record on a
grid which group has completed which
cards and offer a prize to each member of
the winning group as an inventive.
Paired Gap-fill
• Everybody has the same text but
with different words missing.
• Each pair should be left with two
complete texts.
• Take it in turns to read out a
paragraph. Your partner listens to
your pronunciation and writes the
correct words in the gaps.
HOWEVER YOU MUST NOT LOOK AT
EACH OTHER’S SHEETS.
6 15 19 6 9 0 21 22
6 24 12 22
Students crack the code to guess the
topic of today’s lesson.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M
19 18 6 12 22 11 2 21 25 10 9
5
3
N O P Q R S T U VWX Y Z
16 24 13 17 15 1
0 23 7
4 20 14 8
Find in the text
Students underline/highlight (in different
colours) verbs, adjectives, verbs in the
present tense etc.
Say the next word
Provide students with a text. Read the text aloud
then stop. Students have to say the next
word/next word in the sequence.
Against the clock
Time pupils to read out a
paragraph/sentence.
Gap Fill
Write words/sentences in the board with
letters/words missing. Students have to fill in
the gaps.
___ m’appelle John. J’________ en Angleterre
avec ____ famille.
Let students brainstorm ideas. For example
they could think of alternate endings for
each verb phrase.