Classroom Research: Learning about French Sounds

Maximising engagement and collaboration in the FL classroom.

After a discussion about the importance of recognising and producing French sounds, Karen from Cupernham Junior School decided to experiment with her Year 3/4 class.  First the class listened to the song, Léon le Caméléon (from YouTube).  They focused on the sound quality and producing a nasal vowel.  The children then listened again to the song in small groups and built multilink towers by adding a cube every time someone in the group heard the ON sound.  Karen also highlights selected novel French sounds by creating a “Sons de la Semaine” board chart where children add words they encounter with a target sound.  She noticed that the children were incredibly engaged in listening and built some pretty spectacular towers (we saw photographs of multilink towers almost reaching the classroom ceiling!).  Karen also remarked that the children really benefited from teamwork by allocating each group participant a “job”:  sound spotting, block selection, tower creating and problem-solving as the towers got taller!