Teaching pupils how to talk about French family members helps them with third-person form, says Amanda Barton…
A lot of MFL teaching in the early stages focuses on using the first person only. Teaching your children how to talk about their families – either their own or a fictitious family – is a good way of getting them to practise using the third-person form.
French family members lesson
They learn how to say what various family members are called – il s’appelle, elle s’appelle – and to practise using the possessive adjective ‘my’, which is determined by the gender of the noun, eg Mon père s’appelle Charlie.
The examples in this lesson are given in French but the activities can be used with any language.
What they’ll learn
- The vocabulary for various family members in French
- Use the correct word for ‘my’
- Introduce people using the third person form
- Apply their knowledge of English to decode unfamiliar words in French
Dr Amanda Barton is a freelance writer who has taught MFL in primary and secondary schools. She is co-author of Teaching Primary French and Teaching Primary Spanish (Bloomsbury).
