French Teaching Resources. Le Tour de France. Cyclisme. Cycling.

I have made this series of resources to help the students to understand the excitement, challenges, history and prestige of this incredible event and to teach them facts and vocabulary associated with Le Tour De France. It features YouTube videos, colourful slides, dominoes and a plenary board game.

The second slide states:
Objectif: To to learn facts and vocabulary related to the Le Tour de France. it is divided into All, Most and Some.

Slide 3 acts as both the lesson hook and the warmer task: the students watch the fantastic DailyMotion (French version of YouTube) video (6 mins) showing highlights of the 2015 Tour and note down any facts and French vocabulary they already know.

Slide 4 gives instructions on how to use the dominoes whereby the students match the 2 halves of sentences about Le Tour. There are also dominoes in English to support younger/weaker students:

All : Put the English and French dominoes into the correct order.
Most : AND Perfect Pronunciation Challenge!
Some : AND Quick Fire Questions! * Here the students quiz each other about the phrases: French to English, English to French, spellings….
Extra Challenge: Don’t use the English dominoes and translate the French!

Examples of dominoes phrases:

Il y a 21 étapes réparties sur une période de 23 jours.
La course couvre près de 3 500 kilomètres.
Le coureur avec le meilleur temps total est le leader de la course et porte le maillot jaune.

Slides 5 to 16 reveal the answers.

The students will now watch an excellent 10 minute YouTube video explaining the Tour de France. This has brilliant graphics, but the narration is in English so I have written a worksheet with 17 multiple choice questions in French. Examples:

1. 3500 kilomètres est approximativement la distance entre New York et…
A. Chicago.
B. Las Vegas.
C. Los Angeles.

6. Les courses de nuit ont été abandonnées à cause…
A. du danger.
B. de la tricherie.
C. du froid.

To prepare thoroughly I first instruct the students to work in teams to translate the questions.

The answers are on the first two pages of the worksheet.

Slide 18 has the board game which you should print off. Also in the resources are templates for dice and a cyclist template which the students can colour in and use as their counter. There are a series of multiple choice question cards to print off which cover all the information taught in the lesson.
The students should answer the question correctly before being allowed to shake the die. Weaker students could be shown the questions (covering the answer below) and you may allow them to translate the question and possible answers into English together too.

Slide 19 allows time for reflection.