Words of the Week

Today we had our Remembrance Day Assembly. All the students were very well behaved throughout. We made poppies to wear to the assembly, we read a book in class and we had a nice discussion about people we know who were in a war. We also had a chance to write a thank you postcard to a Veteran. Some children chose to write to a relative, others wrote to Father Greene (our music teacher's dad) who spoke at the assembly, others wrote to Mr. Lowens. Mr. Lowens is my grandfather - he was in the Navy and spoke to my class last year. Unfortunately he was not feeling well enough to come this year, but I shared his stories and some pictures. Everyone is bringing home some Government-provided Remembrance Day materials. We looked briefly at the French sides, but there are plenty of activities in there that we didn't get into at school.

Our new sound this week is 'ou'. Here’s where you get to use your true English  ‘u’ sound. It’s much rounder than plain ‘u’ in French. When you see ‘ou’ in French, think “dude” or “food” in English.

Some ideas for mixing it up this week:

1.   “ou” means “or”. Ask your child lots of questions involving a choice using “ou” this week. E.g., “Est-ce que tu veux du lait ou du jus?” (Would you like milk or juice?)

2.   It is very common to have silent letters on the ends of French words, and this is something your child has already started to notice at school. Ask your expert to hunt for the silent letters in this, and previous, word lists. (It’s the p on “loup” and the final s on “sous”.)

3.   Last week we had the word “sur” (=on top of) and this week we have “sous” (=under).  There’s a cute little song to the tune of London Bridge that begins with these two words. Ask your singer if he/she can sing it for you.

ou, loup, sous, rouge, bonjour

Bonus words: jour, pour