Teacher's pages

Can you spell ET?

• ET is an abbreviation for the French word for alien - un extra-terrestre.
• The cartoon depicts the current craze of the cartoon characters - collecting alien bouncing balls. Children could compare the items they collect with the aliens collected by the characters.
• The names of the ET-balls are intended to be as alien as the creatures themselves and are each composed of two single letter sounds; letters A, O, I, E, J, G, H, U, are included in the list of names.
• In En France you could draw children's attention to the sounds of the letters in French, particularly of the vowels that are easy to confuse, such as I and E.

• Children can learn to spell their own names, and to guess the names of characters in the cartoons or other children in the class as they are spelt out: this provides reinforcement of the question Qui est-ce?

• The text message reads:
  salut / guy / ça va bien / au revoir / roller

• Children can use the activity sheet to invent their own text messages; these could be written on a small graffiti whiteboard on display, for other children to solve.
• Children can learn the alphabet using a made-up or well known tune, such as Twinkle Twinkle (this is also a traditional French tune - Ah! vous dirai-je maman): they can progress from spelling their own names to spelling names of famous people for others to guess.
• They can sequence French words into alphabetical order in data banks and wordbanks, such as those with greetings, names, numbers and classroom nouns.
• Children set up and maintain a class dictionary using IT or sets of file cards.
• Progress to spelling using accents and letters in upper case - majuscule, or lower case - minuscule, e.g. Léa = L, majuscule; e, accent aigu; a, minuscule.