Yr 5 Tropical Rainforest in French

[John Sly]

CLIL Yr 5 La foret tropicale humide
I am currently preparing and teaching a year 5 geography unit on the Tropical Rainforest to be delivered in French. I will be happy to share this as a resource when it is complete (Dec 08). Is anyone else doing something similar?

[Jayne Jackson]

Haven't visited the site for what seems like an eternity but when I discovered you were planning this inspirational cross-curricular unit, couldn't help wanting to introduce you to my friend 'Vincent the frog!' He's a cute little fella that's sure to delight your learners and will help to reinforce numbers with a 'rainforest' twist! Here's a link to a youtube video in which he presents numbers 0-9 but if you search for other related presentations you should find that he introduces all the numbers to 100 in smaller chunks of 10 at a time. He also 'teaches' the alphabet (both majuscules & minuscules). Hope they're useful for you.
P.S. As Jo has mentioned above, www.mediaconverter.org is a great site for converting videos to wmv format for playing offline in school.

[John Sly]

Thanks Jayne. Do you have to subscribe to these or is there another way of downloading them. I need to improver my downloading skills from you tube. More 1st draft resources are on the way. The unit should be ready by January.

[Jayne Jackson]

The media converter site couldn't be easier to use!
First you need to copy the URL link of the youtube video clip you wish to convert and then just paste it into converter tool on the opening page of the site. Click next and choos whichever format you wish to convert to (I usually select wmv) - continue clicking next, ignoring all the technical bits and the converted file will be ready for you to download in a couple of minutes while you wait.
There's a limit of 10 conversions a day but otherwise there are few restrictions on the site and best of all, it's free to use (unless converting files of over 100MB).

[Jo Rhys-Jones]

Just found this link thanks to Mme Perkins to a Zoo with fantastic website in French - might be useful to explore?
http://www.zoo-palmyre.fr/ and another lovely one is the Monreal Biodome site which has a virtual museum where you can click on the Tropical rainforest link
http://www2.ville.montreal.qc.ca/biodome/mvc/integration/content.html

[Sarah Presley]

I came across this site when googling for ideas on La Forêt Tropicale. I teach in a secondary school but have recently started delivering lessons to the year 6 in one of our local feeder primary schools. I wanted to offer more than a "bolt-on" French lesson so set out to follow the year 6 SOW - hence my search. I am really keen on the ideas that have been shared already and can hopefully share a few of my own. I have prepared a lesson focusing on the animals of the Rainforest which involved matching the photo to the name and description of a selection of mammals, birds and reptiles. I will upload a copy of the cards and worksheet when I am in school.

[Jo Rhys-Jones]

thanks for your help Sarah - looking forward to sharing ideas!

[John Sly]

Hi Jo

Sorry it's been so long. Please seemy reply to Sarah. I'm running a workshop in December and may find the time to do some more work on this then.

[John Sly]

Hi Sarah
Thanks for being involved. I'm in the middle of preparing a year 5 Assembly in French on the rainforest so some of the poedagogy is on hold. I'm contemplaing some large eight sided dice with pictures of animals and statements of activities. I'll upload a few files but it's all
very organic at the moment.

[Sarah Presley]

Hi John
Very imaginative assembly, am most impressed! It's often easy to forget the fun you can have without end of KS3 and GCSE targets breathing down your neck.
As promised, I've attached the work I did with my year 6 classes. I had the "jigsaw pictures/text" made into laminated cards which the pupils matched in groups. They then had to justify their choices, pointing out cognates and words they had already learnt (colours). The follow-up activity covered the same vocabulary but ensured that all pupils had understood the work, giving them evidence of the work for future reference. (I only see each group for an hour on a 3 week rota so continuity is a real issue).

[John Sly]

Thanks Sarah. I'll keep you updated on progress. I'm hoping to let complete a whole unit on this so that next year's year 5 will be taught this topic entirely in French. I've some more resources that I'm adapting and will post these soon.

[rebecca]

Hi John,

I would love to see your rainforest resource: we have just started teaching topics this year and the kids are keen to have their French lessons related to these. I taught a unit on space in the autumn using materials from the West Sussex Grid and it was very popular.

Would you be able to re-send the ppt.s? They loaded with an error on the page. Very many thanks,

Rebecca

[John Sly]

Very much a work in progress Rebecca but I'll send you some ppts etc. My e-mail address is [e-mail] E-mail me thereand I'll send them to you. If I upload on to the site you may have the same problem again.

John