Pupils needing extra support: working in small groups, children can focus on just selecting one or two characteristics when describing a friend. If possible, they can work with an adult to create and rehearse their sentence about one of their classmates.

Pupils working at greater depth: challenge them to extend their ideas to describe their friend taking into account both their appearance and as many characteristics as they can. To further practise pronunciation and accuracy, they can present their description to the class.

• Play Répétez si c’est vrai (Repeat if true) with statements about the group of friends in the Presentation: Personalities used in this lesson. You say a statement and if it is true, the children repeat the statement. If the statement is false, the children remain silent.
• Revisit some of your chosen pictures from the Louvre (see ‘French, Year 4, Portraits – describing in French, Lesson 1: Portraits – getting French adjectives to agree’), and get the children to come up with sentences to describe the portrait, seeing how many descriptive words they can use (for example, Elle a les cheveux châtains et les yeux marron et elle est heureuse. Elle s’appelle Mona Lisa She has brown hair and brown eyes and she is happy. She is called Mona Lisa).
• Let the children practise their dictionary skills and look up some adjectives to describe people’s personality, writing down the masculine singular and the feminine singular forms. Try: pretty (joli, joie), good (bon, bonne), brave (courageux, courageuse), kind (gentil, gentille), mean (méchant méchante), interesting (intéressant, intéressante). Create a classroom display and try grouping the adjectives into their different ending types.