Les Couleurs

Cognates - have you ever heard of this word before or do you have any idea as to what it means? Cognates are words which are derived from the same source; thus, they are 'related', like cousins tracing their ancestry. As they come from the same origin, cognates have similar meanings and often similar spellings in different languages, for example 'colours' in English and 'couleurs' in French.

Year 6 has been exploring the colour purple. Isn’t it odd that colours in French have gender. Take the colour purple in French, ‘violet’ which is masculine and ‘violette’ feminine. The children learnt that colours change gender to adjust to the gender of the object. It also follows the quantity: singular and plural. Their interest and curiosity was sparked as they tried to get their minds around how colours have gender.

The children have also explored possessive adjectives; it was wonderful to see them make connections once more with gender and numbers. ‘La famille’ was a favourite as they sang along to a family song in French. They were able to name their family members and use their correct possessive adjectives. Unlike English where we only have one form of ‘my’, French has three forms! Mon (masculine), ma (feminine) and mes (plural). Quite a lot to get your head around as a budding French speaker.

Over Colours Fortnight, they used the colour purple, possessive adjectives, family members and nouns to describe different things. The children used a variety of expressions to state a family member’s opinion on purple items whether they liked, loved, disliked, hated or preferred an item. They were enthusiastic, engaged and interactive as they carried out their group task! C’etait super!