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frenchteacher updates

This is one of my regular updates so you know what's been happening at Frenchteacher Towers recently.

Although I never used dominoes as an activity as a teacher, I am told that pupils and teachers enjoy the game so I have started to produce some sets of dominoes at various levels. So far, you'll find three sets in the Y10-11 section (health, holidays and free time) and three sets in the Y7 (beginners) section (classroom objects, family and numbers). If you haven't done the activity before, you need to cut out the dominoes and then pupils work in pairs or small groups, following the usual rules.

In the A-level section there are three new resources since my last update. The first is based on a leaflet we got through our letter box in France about how the local village is applying the new school week in France. The phrase rythmes scolaires is not easy to render in English, but it is about how the week is organised in terms of days and hours. The authentic resource has text, true/false/not mentioned in French and discussion questions. You could use it in a sequence on education or just as a one-off lesson.

Next, in the A-level section, is an adapted and translated (by me with help from Google Translate - a real time-saver!) extract from a book written by a 13 year-old Japanese autistic boy. It should be an interesting ("compelling" - wink at Stephen Krashen!) read. I have added questions in English, nothing more.

There is also a text with exercises on how climate change will affect poorer countries in particular. I have a lot of material on climate change on the site and I do not apologise for this. I would argue that we need to keep hammering this issue home with young people. They might do a bit more about it than we have managed to so far.

For the Y8 section I have created quite a few new Battleships grids for use with Y8s or above. They cover various aspects of the perfect tense. Battleships works great and don't forget, you can make it more communicative by getting pupils to make sentences up from their verbs.

And finally... I have reorganised the Y7 page to make it easier to see how resources are categorised. Coming soon there will be a new look to the site with an enhanced search facility. There are so many resources now, with more to come, that a smarter search method will make sense.

Enjoy the wind-down to the end of term!

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