Teaching Phonics in French

Getting ready to teach the more complex sounds in French?  Do your students already have a good phonetic base of the vowels and consonants?  This was the position I found myself in as I started Grade 2 French Immersion last September.  I needed a way to increase my student’s knowledge of the more complex French sounds while at the same improving their vocabulary and their ability to spell words phonetically.  My “Mon cahier des sons” series was born out of this need.   Read on to find out how I use phonics within my French Immersion classroom.

Day One:  Introduction of the French Sound of the Week

We begin by introducing the words. Each week, I provide my students with a word list focusing on one specific sound.  I teach some sounds over a couple of weeks due to the number of ways certain sounds can be spelled, as well as the words that are available.  I want the words we use each week to be practical and I include a variety of high frequency words whenever possible.

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I first review the sound we are focusing on and then provided clues so that students can guess the word.  We have white boards and my students sit with their whiteboards and use their phonetic knowledge and the sound of the week to try and spell the word.  We then spell each word together.  Each week, I send home the word list  allowing students the opportunity to practice at home.

Day Two:  Guess my sound?

My students love this game!  I make two copies of the word list and cut the words apart.  I tape one to the back of each student and they go around asking clues to help them guess their word!

Day Three: Sentence Writing with the French Sound of the Week

For this challenge, students are encouraged to create three sentences using as many words from our word list as they can.  Sentences need to make sense and be grammatically correct.  I have my students underline the target vocabulary and then read their sentences aloud, leaving out the underlined words.  This is a great activity to practice inferencing!

Day Four: French Sound Review

Reviewing previous complex sounds taught is so important to continue developing student’s French phonetic awareness.  Each week, I choose 6 sounds that we have previously learned and using the anchor images from my French Sounds Poster Pack assign each a number.  My “étoile du jour” rolls the die to determine which sound we have to find.  Students are then sent into the classroom to find a word with the target sound and write it on their white board.  Once each student has a word, they return to our meeting area and we share the words.  The ultimate goal of the game is to write a word that no one else has.  One by one students share their word.  If no one else has the same word, they earn a point!  After playing a few rounds, the student with the most amount of points wins the game.

Day Five: “Mon cahier des sons” booklet and Word Wall Additions

Each package in the “Mon cahier des sons” series includes a booklet with seven activities.  The booklet is designed to be photocopied front to back on two pages.  I included a variety of activities focusing on the specific French sound of the week.  Activities included tracing the words, filling in the blanks, read and draw activities and a wordsearch.

We also add the Word Wall cards to our word wall.

I have a really large space for my word wall but, you could also put a hole in the corner of the cards and place them together with a binder ring.  That way students could just get the words that they need.  Each package also includes a full page sheet which you could put into personal dictionaries for students to reference.

Interested in trying “Mon cahier des sons” out?  The complete package for the sound “om”, is available as a freebie from my TPT store!  Click on the picture below to download this fun freebie!