Choral storytelling fun with 'The Enormous Turnip' in French

[Jo Rhys-Jones]

 Last weekend was the second ILILC (ICT Links Into Languages Conference) held at the University of Southampton, and the free 'Show and Tell' held on the Saturday night was hugely entertaining. One of the highlights of the evening for me was a presentation by Clare Seccombe, talented MFL teacher and webmistress of MFL Sunderland.

  

Clare demonstrated how she tells the story of 'Le navet énorme' (the enormous turnip a.k.a. le gros navet or even L'énorme navet) together with her Year 3 class to encourage even the weakest children to recite and join in with retelling the entire story. And in the conference room of the Highfield House Hotel, Clare soon not only had all the teachers joining in, but the bar staff too.

 

Clare told the story in French, but it could be done in any language using the same technique. She began by introducing the key vocabulary and developing a gesture that we would all use whenever we said each particular word or phrase. This part is absolutely crucial to aid memorisation for the younger learners in particular - worked very well on the bar staff by this point too I might add.

 

Clare has generously uploaded not only the lesson plan, but all the resources including the flashcards and the script on her site see Unit 2 lesson 7.

 

If you'd like to try something similar in Spanish or German the NGfL (Northumberland Grid for Learning)has resources for El Nabo Gigante and Die grosse Nube which could be similarly adapted and simplified. Meanwhile Sparklebox has free masks to print out and make to role-play the story. A longer version of the story, recorded in a soundfile (not simplified) has been made available here by La Petite Ecole - French Immersion School. Thank you to the lovely Francisco Aparicio for sharing this alternative version too lenavetenorme.ppt

 

As for the rest of the conference, if you were unable to attend, or perhaps you did attend but want to know where you can hear the sessions again and download the resources, check out the ILILC webpage and maybe we'll see you next year!