How Parents and Carers Can Help – MFL

How parents can help

You don’t have to be able to speak French to support your child with their learning at home. Simply talking to your child about what they have been learning in their language lessons and asking them to teach you some key words or phrases is a fantastic way of helping children recall previous learning. Perhaps they have a younger sibling or other family members that they might want to teach some key words to as well?

Hunt for bilingual books at the library

Many libraries have a bilingual book section where children might find simple stories in French. They can have a go at reading the French parts whilst you provide the translation in English.

Keep your eyes open when out and about in town or the supermarket.

Challenge your children to find French products on the supermarket shelves and see if they can read the packaging or work out exactly where the item is from. Do they recognise any ingredient names in French? Perhaps they could make their own list of things to buy in French. When you are walking around town, children might also try and spot words in English that have been borrowed from French (café, restaurant etc.)

Encourage older children to create a resource for younger pupils in the school to use.

This could take the form of a ‘Knowledge Organiser’ (which presents all the vocabulary for a particular unit of work), a game or a poster with key words on it.