La chauve-souris

I bought this adorable book, La chauve-souris, from Little Linguist in the summer of 2021 – click here to get your own copy!

Name: La chauve-souris

Language of text: French Type of text: pop up picture book Author or source: Kimiko, published by l’école des loisirs Intended age of students: Key Stage 1/2 Source reference: 9782211085687 This very attractive and colourful pop up book tells you the story of a day… I mean of the night in the life of a bat. I love how it starts with “bonsoir”, then when the bat goes to sleep it says “bonjour”! It can be read to little ones as they will enjoy looking at the bright coloured pictures and opening the flaps, moving the book around etc. They will also love joining in with “hou ouou !” It will help them learn about bats. With all children, before the second reading we will agree on some actions to join in with as I read each double page, eg flapping wings, drawing a tower in the air etc. With older children, I want to read it all the way through a couple of times then focus on key nouns 1st (like château, nuit, amies, soleil) then key verbs. Depending on how long they have been learning French, they might recognise quite a few familiar words. I will ask them to spot them and write them down on their little white boards, then we will go through them together. Alternatively, I will show them the text on each page and get them to be language detectives, eg what is the French word for “wings”, “tower” etc?

Rationale:

I want to use this book because it is beautiful, simple, effective, and can also be exploited at all levels, with children from the age of 3 to 11. It is a great story to share around Halloween without being “Halloweeny” – which I am not a big fan of (!) some schools don’t allow anyway.

Outcomes:

Young children will learn that a bat is called “chauve-souris” (= bald mouse), will be amused and most likely remember it! They will see greetings in context. Older children will see great examples of complex sentences in context and will hopefully be able to analyse them. They will all enjoy learning about the bat and learning some French words and phrases (like “j’ai sommeil”) along the way.

Topics or themes:

Halloween; greetings; how to say “my name is” in French

Grammar:

complex sentences using “quand” & “où”

How much time required to read La chauve-souris:

1 lesson

You can buy the book on LittleLinguist by clicking here.

Are you looking for another story for Halloween? Then click here for my suggestions!

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Nathalie