I bought this lovely story from Little Linguist at York St John’s for our ALL Primary Languages Show in 2019… I have finally got round to writing about it and am using it with all my classes in December 2020!
Extra resources on French websites: click here or click here.
Language of text: French
Type of text: picture book
Author or source: Bénédicte Guettier, les lutins de l’école des loisirs
Intended age of students: Key Stages 1/2
Source reference: 9782211216449
Approaches:
You can simply read the story aloud to children without any preparation and for a bit of fun – with the illustrations, they will understand what it is about straight away!
On second reading, do get the children to join in: pretend to be Father Christmas, repeat what is on each page after you and join in with actions, pretending to get dressed!
Then you need to choose what you want to focus on: the words for clothes, the varied verbs, the adjectives to describe the items of clothing, the conjunctions…
Rationale:
As mentioned above, you may choose to use it as a Christmas story to introduce Christmas related vocabulary; you may exploit the vocabulary or the grammar in it. Even though it is a very short and simple story, it is language-rich and as such can be exploited in many ways, depending on which aspect of it you want to focus on – one thing at a time!
Outcomes:
As a result of working on this story, the children will have seen vocabulary and structures that they are familiar with, but in context.
You may use it to introduce how “-ill” often makes a /y/ sound in French (habille, maillot).
They will have practised their Christmas vocabulary, their clothes, their verbs, their adjectives and/or a couple of conjunctions!
Topics or themes:
Christmas, clothes
Grammar:
high-frequency vers in the 1st person; adjectives, position of and agreements
How much time required:
1 lesson
Like the look of it? Click here to buy it from Little Linguist!
Click here for more about the orignal story: “Je m’habille et… je te croque !
Click here for more Christmas stories… and please add your own favourites in the comments below!
Finally, before you leave, please click here to receive my new resources (and more) regularly straight in your mail box!
Nathalie