Family

I'm going to be talking about family in French with Year 4 next half term. I always avoid getting the children to describe their own families as this can cause distress for some. In the past I have often used the Simpsons as an example but this time I am going to use the royal family, having realised from my own children how little they know and how they don't tend to recognise anyone beyond the Queen and Kate. Here is a slide with photos of members of the Royal family, set out in a family tree.

Royal family tree


 You can use this to ask questions using "Qui est?" and "comment s'appelle?" such as "Qui est la mère de Zara Phillips?" or "Comment s'appelle la tante du prince George?" You could also play "vrai ou faux?" with various statements about the family tree.
I realised that, following the birth of Prince George, we need the word for great grandmother and great grandfather. They are arrière-grand-mère and arrière-grand-père respectively. Great grandchild is arrière petit-enfant.

Of course, you could also use this as an opportunity to do some cross-curricular work with whatever you are studying in history, such as the Tudors or Ancient Greeks. (Some caution is needed when presenting the family  tree of Zeus!). At ALL Language World in April I included this in my presentation on cross-curricular links. I wrote a mini play script in French called La Famille de Zeus. You can seethe play script and name badges here.