Recently, I’ve had several enquiries about using Clicker for teaching French or Spanish as a second language. In this series of blog posts, I have been looking at the different activities offered in Clicker: MFL French and Spanish.
Take a look at the previous posts in this series, Introducing new vocabulary with Clicker MFL, Building simple sentences with Clicker MFL, Reading comprehension and assessment with Clicker MFL, and Extending language skills with Clicker MFL.
French and Spanish 1 support learners in building basic vocabulary for different topic areas. French and Spanish 2 gives children the opportunity to build on this vocabulary and go into greater detail. This final blog post looks at Clicker MFL: Stories. These resources help pupils to learn the target language through traditional stories.
Stories offer three traditional tales written in the target language. These are lovely resources for increasing children’s exposure to a range of language in a format they’re familiar with, making it easier to access new vocabulary and structures.
The stories included are Jack and the Beanstalk, Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty.
On the main page of Stories, you can choose to read each tale in the target language by selecting L’histoire. You can access the accompanying activities by selecting Les activités. The activities for each story are organised similarly to the activities in the other parts of Clicker MFL.
Red-banded activities introduce the characters from the selected story, yellow activities introduce key nouns encountered in the story, green activities assess children’s comprehension, and the blue activities allow children to access a simplified version of the text and re-write the story for themselves. All of the activities work to build children’s comprehension of the story in the target language by introducing and reinforcing key vocabulary and structures in manageable chunks.
The character activities introduce the names of the characters in the target language and adjectives related to those characters. It also supports the child in using these words in sentences and identifying key verbs related to the main characters in the stories.
The noun activities start with a Matching Set where children match a key word to the image taken from the story. This is followed by a hidden picture activity, which is a fantastic whole-class plenary activity for recapping new language. Noun genders for the key words are then reinforced with Range les mots. Finally, children can practise using the vocabulary they’ve learnt in sentences using a writing grid.
The reading comprehension tasks build children’s comprehension of the story in the target language. Throughout all of these activities, practice pages and support are offered to help build children’s confidence and ensure success.
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 that you would like some help with, you can contact us via phone at 01604 671691 or email at info@cricksoft.com.
