Year 5
The children are introduced to the phrase il y a which opens up the opportunity to use prepositional sentence starters, such as Dans le sac il y a.... Dans ma chambre il y a.... Dans le placard il y a and Chez moi il y a.... This allows the children to use previous learning from Year 4 to create sentences such as Chez moi, il y a une grande grenouille verte et un petit mouton rouge.
The children use this newly aquired sentence structure to write a scafolded poem about Paris. This also gives them the chance to use a bilingual dictionary to find their own nouns for the poem.
By the time the children reach Year 5, they are becoming so familiar with the language that they are beginning to find connections and patterns in French and are starting to manipulate sentence structures. The year starts with a mini project based on the book Va t'en grand monstre vert, which opens up the opportunity for learning lots of new vocabulary related to the body, as well as new and unusual adjectives. The children have opportunities for decoding work using bilingual dictionaries and they work independently to describe their own imaginative monster! They also decribe the monster's character, which encourages them to use the verb conjugation être.
In Year 5, the children share and learn facts about major French cities. This develops into learning new vocabulary about features within a town, such as une église and un hôpital. They are then able to build sentences such as Dans ma ville il y a une gare, mais il n'y a pas de patinoire. The children design their own town and write a detailed description of it. The verb conjugation aller is introduced, so that the children can communicate sentences such as nous allons au cinéma or ils vont à l’école.