This French video introduces teachers to a lesson focused on developing pupils’ ability to use a bilingual dictionary effectively. By building these skills, learners can move beyond stock phrases to create truly personal sentences, such as describing unusual pets, and become independent language users. The activity demonstrated involves a noun-sorting task using animal vocabulary, with pupils practising how to locate words, identify the correct word class, and check whether a noun is masculine or feminine to choose the correct article.

This video is part of Kapow Primary’s French – vocabulary. It offers practical tips for teaching dictionary skills, from navigating the correct section to understanding abbreviations like masc and fem. Pupils also encounter new phonemes, helping to improve pronunciation. The approach promotes discovery learning, resilience when words aren’t found immediately, and creativity in sentence construction. The session closes with a fun French homophone tongue twister, linking language exploration with speaking confidence, and sets up the next lesson where pupils will place their newly found animals into habitats.

French, key stage 2, Year 3, Unit 6: A circle of life in French, Lesson 1: French animal nouns and sounds