Recently, I’ve received several enquiries about using Clicker for teaching French or Spanish as a second language. In this series of blog posts, I am looking at the different activities offered in our Clicker: MFL packages. Take a look at the previous blog posts in this series: Introducing new vocabulary with Clicker MFL and Building simple sentences with Clicker MFL.
In this blog post, I will explore resources that can be used for reading comprehension, including a final activity pupils can use to demonstrate what they’ve learnt. These resources and approaches can also be applied to the same topic in Spanish 1.
Reading comprehension
The three activities highlighted with a green band are for reading comprehension. The first introduces the text, the second is a listening and speaking activity based on the text, and the third provides support for children to produce written answers to questions based on the text.
The first reading comprehension activity is called ‘Lis l’histoire’. This is a short piece of text using vocabulary previously covered and introducing new verbs related to how the different animals move.
For each page of the text, there is a speaker icon which you can click to hear the text. You can then discuss with children what they think the new vocabulary might mean based on information provided by the accompanying image, our existing knowledge of those animals and near cognates in the text. You could also discuss and practise the pronunciation of the new vocabulary.
In ‘Ecoute et répond’ children can practice answering questions about pets they own. They are provided a speaker icon to hear the question played for them as many times as needed. They will then need to build an appropriate answer based on the images displayed on the page, before giving a personal answer at the end.
They can use the language from the text in ‘Lis l’histoire’ to structure their answers. The first page offers an opportunity to practice by clicking the images. This plays the question and displays the suggested response. This can be done as a class activity before children make their own recordings on the following pages.
The last green activity supports children in producing answers to questions about what the different animals do. Learners are provided scaffolded vocabulary to use to answer the question displayed at the top of the screen. Children are expected to use vocabulary introduced throughout the unit in their answers. They can write and record their answers in any order.
Final activity
The final activity is different for each topic area and gives children an opportunity to use what they’ve learnt more creatively.
For ‘Les animaux’, children can create their own book about animals. They can choose pictures of the animals, considering what colour the animals are. Once they’ve chosen, children can use the included writing grid to build their own sentences. They can write about what the animal looks like and how it behaves, and then record themselves reading their sentences out loud. This is a lovely summary of what the child has learnt throughout the topic.
If you need more support in using these activities and developing these skills further, Teacher Notes guides you through the resources available.
In the next blog post, we’ll look at using French 2 to develop the language we’ve learnt in French 1, and using Clicker: MFL to create your own MFL resources.
To use the French and Spanish resources in Clicker, see our licensing options for Clicker MFL: French and Clicker MFL: Spanish.
If you have a particular topic you would like some help with, you can contact us via phone at 01604 671691 or email at info@cricksoft.com.
