I designed this beautiful unicorn speaking mat for my GCSE students in order to bring a little bit of magic into their examination. The aim of this mat is to help students answer the first question: “Qu’est-ce qu’il y a sur la photo”. There are four stages, which will help students of all abilities to speak for 40-60 seconds on this question alone. As this is the very first question, answering well usually gives them a bit of a confidence boost. This is the unicorn magic. The template needs printing in A3 in colour from Powerpoint. Students then need to fold it, so that only one section shows at one time. I found it particularly useful with less able students who prefer to have less writing in front of them. This is now a free resource. Kindly leave some feedback if you decide to use it with your students.

All the French tenses explained. This is a resource to print in A4 in colour.

Here are some checklists with examples that I give to my students in order to motivate them to attempt higher level of writing (also works for speaking). Tenses, structures are in categories and include examples. I also added some GCSE levels as an indication of complexity. Best of all, it’s a free gift to you all for supporting my work.

One-page activity to get your AS / A-Level students to talk to each other after holidays.

This is one my student’s favourite activity. You start on the smiley face, and climb on the family tree until you find the person described. For example: La fille de la fille de la mère de mon père It’s always easier to start backwards (you may want to tell your students about this): **Start with yourself, find your dad, his mother (your grandmother), her daughter (you aunt), and finally her daughter: your female cousin. **

All the numbers to 99 in French in an easy-to-understand model. Enjoy

10 French Target Language Posters for your classroom In this file you will find 10 target language posters for your classroom. Print them on A3 in full colour, have them laminated and you are good to go.

10 German Target Language Posters for your classroom In this file you will find 10 target language posters for your classroom. Print them on A3 in full colour, have them laminated and you are good to go.

After the Great Success! of The Unicorn Talking Mat, I would like to share with you today The Amazing Grammar Snake. It is a one-page PDF document with interactive links that you can share with your students. The blue links point to online grammar notes. The green links point to easy online application exercises (from languagesonline.co.uk and a couple of BBC Bitesize) The gold links point to more complex exercises from colanguage.com That covers all the grammar points to GCSE, and can be used from Year 7 to Year 11, possibly beyond.

10 Spanish Target Language Posters for your classroom In this file you will find 10 target language posters for your classroom. Print them on A3 in full colour, have them laminated and you are good to go.

I give this one to my students at the beginning of a unit of work so that they have a place to record the good vocab and structures that they encounter in their learning. Some of my classes are allowed to re-use the worksheet for the end of unit assessment in writing. Over the years, they create their own collection of complexity that they can memorise and re-use in examinations.

Today I would like to share a little tip with you that could potentially save you hours, money and headaches. If you need your students to type in either French or Spanish, you will soon realise that learning the ALT codes is really cumbersome, slowing them down, and not ideal for the classroom. There is an alternative on PC, which is to change the keyboard language to either French or Spanish, and place a few stickers on some keys to have a fully-working(*) foreign keyboard at no cost.

A collection of 12 Polaroid photos to get your students to manipulate the language. Most of the sentences given can be followed by a noun and a verb in French.

French Idioms - A fun worksheet to start discussions in French Hand-picked for relevance.

Year 9 French activity: Me, my family & Friends, Activities translation into French (corrected) Revises: Personal descriptions Activities Frequency Movies Personality Last week-end “Nous” vs. “on” Direct object pronoun Imperfect tense

This is a great game to play with your students from any years in order to practise numbers in French. You may want to print the last page, which is a nice reference about French numbers. This money sharing game is based on the concept of game theory, which is the study of mathematical models of strategic interaction between rational decision-makers. All the instructions are included on the worksheet in the target language, and you can have a look at a sample worksheet filled in for your reference. The instructions are very simple, and yet I am sure that your students will thoroughly enjoy this.

French AQA GCSE Speaking - Possible questions in themes & timeframes Here are some possible questions for both Foundation and Higher candidates, arranged in the themes prescribed by AQA.

French A-Levels : Revise Key vocabulary with fun activity Use this in preparation to the end of year examinations as an incentive for your students to go back through their notes / books in search for the words that match the definitions.

GCSE Translation into French, Translation into English: A trip to Paris Here you have two translation exercises, one into French and one into English with the corrections. The length of the tasks match the AQA GCSE requirements.

Classroom Card with the relevant Target Language for day-to-day participation : French You can print this card on double-sided card and give it to your students to keep in their folder. It contains all the required vocabulary to actively take part in the lesson using the target language. I hope that you will enjoy them.