Ma ville et ma maison - French GCSE A Knowledge Organiser (KO) in the form of a parallel text about someone’s city and home. Designed to expose students’ to many of the key vocabulary items from the AQA GCSE Specification (Home, Town, Neighbourhood and Region section - e.g. verbs like déménager) and to provide useful recyclable structures and phrases. Google ‘Michaela French Knowledge Organisers’ for some ideas about what to do with this kind of parallel text. Had a productive couple of lessons with my GCSE class exploiting this text, all with minimum teacher preparation (apart from writing the text!) e.g. You can use it for pronunciation practice/awareness: I got pupils focussing on the recurring [ɛ] and [ɑ̃] in the first few paragraphs. They had to listen and highlight the text, then I re-read the text with pupils putting hands up when they heard the sound. Then they had a go in pairs. Then we did some work on the vocabulary. Listening activities too where I changed parts of the text and pupils had to identify what had changed. Then they had a go at adapting parts of the text and combining words and phrases from it to make their own paragraphs. Includes editable PPT version and a PDF version.

Crossword to practise the Present Tense (AR, ER and IR verbs). Pupils enjoy this self-correcting activity which helps them learn the verb endings. The crossword appears twice on the page to save on your photocopying!

Two-sided worksheet, to be used after RE and IR verb endings have been presented. Side 1: Grid with common RE verbs. Pupils, following the example, must fill in the ‘je’ and ‘nous’ forms. Common irregular re verbs provided at the bottom of the sheet for reference. Side 2: Same but for IR verbs. Useful for verb practice and later reference. Ideal for pupils’ GCSE (or A-Level) files.

Double-sided sheet with an overview of all the main French verb tenses. Ideal ‘quick reference’ sheet for Key Stage 4 and 5. Pupils can stick it in front of their books/files. Sections are numbered so you can quickly refer them to the right section. Includes key irregular/semi-irregular verbs. PDF and editable Powerpoint* version included. *Note that if you don’t have the latest (2016) version of Office, the formatting of the PPT version will appear wrongly. But the PDF will be fine. SPANISH VERSION ALSO AVAILABLE IN MY SHOP :)

Double-sided sheet with an overview of all the main Spanish verb tenses. Ideal ‘quick reference’ sheet for Key Stage 4 and 5. Pupils can stick it in front of their books/files. Sections are numbered so you can quickly refer them to the right section. Includes stem-changing and key irregular/semi-irregular verbs. PDF and editable Powerpoint* version included. *Note that if you don’t have the latest (2016) version of Office, the formatting of the PPT version will appear wrongly. But the PDF will be fine. FRENCH VERSION ALSO AVAILABLE IN MY SHOP :)

Useful for practising the Conditional Tense in the context of the Racism topic. Gets students practising relevant vocabulary while practising their grammar at the same time. (If you use the new Oxford 'AQA Spanish' text book you'll find that p.35 in Section 2.2A (Las medidas contra el racismo) covers the Conditional Tense in just this context.) Contains: 1) Worksheet with 20 sentences about combatting racism for students to translate into Spanish. Each requires a verb in the Conditional Tense, including some of the main verbs with irregular stems (and a couple of derivatives, e.g. intervenir). 2) Simple Powerpoint presentation where the sentences appear one by one, followed by the answer. You could do a few on mini-whiteboards/iPads as a class and then pupils fill in the rest on their sheet.

For the KS5 'Racismo' sub-topic. The double-sided worksheet contains two tasks: 1) An introductory gap-fill activity (text summarising what SOS Racismo is and does) 2) An audio-visual activity where students watch a video ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bi1Xm0sqYr0 ) then answer the 11 accompanying questions. To complete task 2, pupils must watch a Youtube video of an interview with the president of SOS Racismo, who gives examples of racism, including his own experience, and some measures for combatting it. The video gives various other facts about racism in Spain. I would recommend that you reduce the speed of the video to 75% by selecting the Settings icon at the bottom of the video (not available on some tablet apps but visible on PCs), then clicking Speed > 0.75 PLEASE CHECK that the video is still available before downloading the worksheet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bi1Xm0sqYr0 This sheet will probably take up most of the lesson by the time you have watched the video twice (pausing it to give students a chance to write), gone through the answers and discussed the issues raised. Alternatively, it could be set as a homework. (Images are public domain from openclipart.org unless otherwise credited)

There are a few 'useful essay phrases' resources out there online but I put together this one because: 1) I was mainly looking for useful phrases pupils could make use of in the (new AQA) speaking exam when talking about the various topics 2) Existing resources seemed more geared towards structuring an essay 3) ...and many contained many pages of often quite convoluted essay phrases students were fairly unlikely to remember or find an opportunity to use. Yes, virtually all of these phrases would be perfectly suitable in written work too but I have tried to compile a relatively brief (just over 2.5 pages) list of what seem to me the most handy expressions that could be plausibly used when speaking. I have gathered the ones which take the subjunctive in a separate box at the beginning of the document. Easily editable. And there is a box at the end for students to add further phrases.

Introduces present tense of regular AR verbs (main model verb: estudiar). Short practice exercise. Plenary game (pupils gain points for their team by creating a phrase, e.g. if they say 'bailan', the teacher clicks "they" and "dance", revealing a number of points under each square which are added together and given to that team)

Presentation and worksheet to introduce and practise demonstrative adjectives and pronouns (lequel, celui-ci, etc). Uses clothes vocabulary/shopping context generally (a bit of food vocab too, to remind students that grammar is applicable in multiple contexts) Probably best after some work/revision on clothes has been done first. Also suitable for revision of this grammar point at A-Level. (All images are public domain from https://openclipart.org/ )

Sentences for pupils to translate about the main characters of L'étranger (Camus). Some key vocabulary is provided. This resource is also available as part of a 'bundle' of L'étranger resources

Pupils must match 9 quotations to the right box in the tables, to show how they fit with certain character traits of the three main characters (Meursault, Raymond, Marie) This resource is also available as part of a 'bundle' of L'étranger resources

Two pages of quotations grouped under the following headings: La mort et la futilité de la vie La justice dans un monde irrationnel Le désir de l’homme de trouver un sens à la vie Être « étranger » L’importance d’accepter la vie et d’en profiter You can cut up (or digitally re-arrange) the quotations for students to sort under the headings themselves, perhaps after you have first asked them to find some relevant quotations related to those themes themselves. This resource is also available as part of a 'bundle' of L'étranger resources

This 6-page document assembles key quotations from Part I of L'étranger (Camus), most introduced by a brief English comment for easy reference. This resource is also available as part of a 'bundle' of L'étranger resources

Double-sided worksheet, designed for Year 12 to revise adjective endings, especially the more irregular ones.

Made for a Year 12 to re-cap regular Present Tense verbs. Presentation and a couple of practice games of Morpion. Could be used in other year groups.

Flowchart overview of the Perfect Tense. Good to consolidate this key grammar point. Designed for Yr 12 French but could be used for younger students.

Presentation of the perfect tense with être, with a fun battleships game at the end. This was designed for a Year 12 French class to re-cap the perfect tense, but could also be used at KS4 (or even KS3).

Basic worksheet on the imperfect tense. Pupils fill in the verb endings then do the gap-fill exercise.