Part C: Describing animals

Planning your lessons

Part C builds on your work in previous chapters. C1 talks about what animals eat, which brings in language children learnt in Ch.3.1, “Bonne santé” and before.

C2 introduces French terminology for animal body-parts, building on Ch.3.2, “Les parties du corps” and later chapters.

To round off this unit, C3 builds on how children described mini-beasts in Ch.3.4, and imaginary monsters and people in Ch.3.2 - using adjectives for size, numbers of particular body parts, colours. Describing animals gives more scope to develop this.

Activities

Warm up

Talk in French with the children and the class puppet about some of the foods pupils already know.

Watch film C1: animal diets

❑ Watch film C1 which looks at “who eats what” in the Zoo, using categories that may be familiar to children from your work in Science (“un carnivore”, etc.). Each diet is represented by an icon in the film and flashcards.

New Words And Phrases

C1: Animal diets un granivore un herbivore un frugivore un carnivore un piscivore un omnivore qui mange quoi? who eats what?

- grain eater

- herbivore

- fruit eater

- carnivore

- fish eater

- omnivore la tortue géante mange de l’herbe the giant tortoise eats grass ce perroquet mange des grains et des fruits this parrot eats grain(s) and fruit il est granivore et frugivore it is a grain- and fruit-eater la panthère de neige, qu’est-ce qu’elle mange? the snow leopard, what does it eat? est-ce qu’elle mange de la viande ou du poisson? does it eat meat or fish? diet for each animal. You can also see an explanation of each icon.

C1: Who eats what?

Film C1: “Le panda roux est un frugivore et un herbivore”

More animals are introduced, including subspecies (e.g. Emperor Tamarin as a type of monkey) which are not meant to be part of the key vocabulary.

Get used to the sounds

❑ Echoing: Show the ‘Animal diets’ e-flashcards, which display icons representing the typical

Pupils echo the words, e.g. “Le rhinocéros blanc mange de l’herbe. Il est herbivore”. Pay attention to pronunciation of “key sounds”, and repeat until phrases are familiar.

Respond with understanding

❑ Show the same e-flashcards, with sound OFF, but text ON: children read out the sentence, then check pronunciation with the recording.

Key Sounds

Listen and enjoy copying these typical sounds: where have you heard them before?

as in... piscivore, carnivore, heard before in diabolo, reptile as in... frugivore heard before in genou, mange as in... quoi, heard before in poids, oiseau [as in the English: wet] as in... herbivore seen before in hauteur, poids

Now switch sound and text OFF; ask children to make a statement about that animal’s diet (it needn’t be identical to the text display), e.g. “Le rhinocéros blanc mange de l’herbe”

❑ Play “true or false?”

Show the flashcards again with sound and text OFF. You make a statement e.g. “la panthère de neige est carnivore”. Pupils say “oui” if this is correct and “non” if incorrect.

❑ Play “diet sorting game”

For this activity, children need space to move around the room. Give each child an animal card. Ask them to find out what their animal’s diet is, and then go around the room to find someone to pair up with who has the same diet, so they can go food hunting together. Note that some animals eat more than one type of food, so have a wider choice of partners.

Watch film C2: animal body parts

❑ Film C2 builds on Ch.3.2 “Les parties du corps“ and Ch.3.3, “Les petites bêtes“; it introduces some new words for animal body parts so children can describe zoo animals quite fully, using familar French structures.

Film C2: “Les oiseaux ont des plumes.”

You can use this film to re-look at classifying animals: it gives some key characteristics of mammals, reptiles and birds.

Get used to the sounds

❑ Echoing: Show the ‘Describing animals’ e-flashcards, Children echo the names of each animal body part.

You can then move on to look at the sentences which describe characteristics of reptiles, mammals and birds followed by individual animals:

Pupils echo, e.g. “La tortue géante a une carapace” Repeat this several times, paying attention to pronunciation of “key sounds”, until children are confident saying the descriptive phrases. NOTE: the shell of a snail is “une coquille” and the shell of a tortoise is “une carapace”. They are two different kinds of shell: “une coquille” envelops the soft body of a creature whereas “une carapace” is more like armour - a hardened skin that follows the contors of the animal.

C2: NEW WORDS

C2: Animal Body Parts la queue les pattes (f) le cou la corne la carapace les moustaches (f) le bec les griffes (f) les poils (m) les plumes (f) les écailles (f) les ailes (f) les serres (f)

- tail

- legs, feet or paws

- neck

- horn

- shell (of tortoise)

- whiskers

- beak

- animal claws

- hairs (i.e. fur)

- feathers

- scales

- wings

- bird of prey claws

C2: Identify & classify zoo animals les oiseaux ont des plumes birds have feathers le perroquet a des plumes the parrot has feathers les reptiles ont des petites pattes reptiles have little legs les rayures (f) les pois (m)

- stripes - spots le zèbre a des rayures noires et blanches the zebra has black and white stripes

Respond with understanding

❑ Show the same e-flashcards, with sound OFF, but text ON: children read out the sentence, then check pronunciation with the recording.

Watch film C3: my favourite animal

❑ In film C3 some French children describe their favourite animal from the Zoo visit, mainly using familiar French structures.

Children may prefer to watch each child’s contribution separately, then share what they understood: ...what was this child’s favourite animal? ...why did they like it?

Key Sounds

Listen and enjoy copying these typical sounds: where have you heard them before?

as in... piscivore, griffes l’animal, reptile heard before in diabolo, piscine as in... cou, moustaches heard before in genou, bouche, où est [as in the English: to eat ] as in... queue heard before in bleu, Europe, yeux as in... écailles, rayures heard before in yeux as in... poil, poids, oiseau heard before in bois, poisson

(Listen to the native speakers - try to copy their typically French sounds.)

Film C3: “Le rhinocéros a deux cornes.”

This is also a round-up of the whole unit, bringing together parts A, B and C.

In particular, it starts to bring together what children are able to say to describe an animal rather than just name it.

Respond with understanding

❑ Guess what’s my favourite animal?

One child thinks of their favourite animal, and says something about it to the rest of the class, e.g. “Il mange de l’herbe”. The class have one guess at what animal is being described. If they don’t get it, the child continues describing, e.g., “Il a quatre pattes”, “Il pèse trois tonnes”, “Il a deux cornes”...

The winner is the child who managed to give the most pieces of information before having their animal guessed.

❑ “Guess who?”

Lay out all the animal flashcards face up, so all the children can see. Ask them to guess by elimination which animal you are secretly thinking of, by asking questions.

Encourage diverse and imaginative questions; ranging over diet, habitat, where they live in the wild, size, weight and physical features. Suppose you have chosen “un zèbre”; if they ask, “A-t-il une queue?”, you say “Oui” and remove all those cards where the animal does not have a tail. To start with you could involve children in this selection; take each card in turn and ask, “A-t-il une queue?” - removing that card if the answer is “Non”. Carry on asking questions until only ONE card is left. Change roles depending on children’s confidence. Winners are the chooser who holds out for most questions, and the guesser who guesses in the fewest.

CROSS-CURRICULAR ACTIVITIES

❑ Survey - ICT:

Pupils can find out from each other what are their favourite animals. Children can record the results of their survey on a spreadsheet and display it as a graph. You could ask a French school to do a similar survey, swap results, and talk about and compare the two sets of results.

❑ Design a new animal:

Ask children to work in pairs or small groups to design their own strange new animal. Tell them to use a “Frankenstein” approach, taking body parts from other creatures, e.g. ‘the body of a zebra, and the head of a rhino...”. Chidren prepare a picture or model of their new animal, then make sentences in French to say which body parts of which animals they had, e.g. “Mon animal a le corps d’un zèbre, la tête d’un rhinocéros”

They write these sentences under their picture, and present their work to the whole class.

C3: NEW WORDS

C3: My favourite animal: teacher questions

Quel est ton animal préféré? What is your favourite animal?

Est-ce que tu peux décrire ton animal préféré?

Can you describe your favourite animal?

Pourquoi? Why? Comments on ‘my favourite animal’ il est ... en voie de disparition it is ... endangered

...gentil (m)

...gentille (f)

...intelligent (m)

...intelligente (f)

...doux (m)

...douce (f)

- nice

- intelligent - soft

❑ Make a presentation about animals: Pupils can complete their display of pictures of animals both in a zoo and in their wild habitat - labelled in French. They could make a video or multimedia presentation, to show to an audience of parents, other classes, your local secondary schools’ MFL teachers or a French partner school.