“One language sets you in a corridor for life. Two languages open every door along the way.”
– Frank Smith
At The Booker School we believe that having a strong foundation in another language sets our students up for success and leads them to become internationally-minded citizens.
Students in the Primary and Middle Years Programmes have 4 French classes every week. These classes follow the transdisciplinary approach taken in the school, meaning what we do in French complements what is being explored in units of inquiry.
While the Middle Years students were delving into food systems and scientific innovations, they learned how to follow and give step-by-step instructions in French. The summative assessment included both written and oral communication. Drawing on their creativity, students became hosts of either a cooking show or science show and made a video demonstrating a recipe or science experiment in French.
We also focus on basic French conversation. Each class starts with questions and answers to help students master the use of the main verbs être, avoir and faire. We also do improvised skits of basic conversational French so students become more and more confident speaking casually in French. They embrace this part of class with great enthusiasm!
In the Primary Years students started the year off with the Transdisciplinary Theme: Who We Are. They made posters about themselves and fictional characters. They also improvised conversations with puppets and used the app Chatterpix to talk about physical descriptions, personalities and hobbies.
For enrichment, students designed and delivered a French lesson to the Early Years class using The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle (La chenille qui fait des trous) as a teaching tool. This was a huge success and we hope to do more of that in the future.
