What do you prefer ? POP UP questions

What do you prefer….? Pop Up 

Practise of the key question:  Do you prefer .......? and offering choices from which to select a response

Today I have received this marvellous pop up book from the publisher Helium which has inspired me to create a simple sequence of activities that all teachers in every target language could use with their young learners .

This may be a target language book for very young children but it will be a really useful resource in French UKS2 to practise asking and responding to questions , developing a sequence of questions and answers and recalling familiar nouns and adjectives .

At the beginning of learning a language we often teach children a range of nouns  within a context – animals , foods, colours .

We  progress so that the children can use these nouns and adjectives  in a simple sentence e.g.  I like red / I like dogs / etc

And then we will practise with the children how ask someone if the  like something e.g. Do you like dogs ? etc

This simple story book in French will allow me a new way to practise the question “Do you prefer….? “ ( Tu préfères……? ) and to be able to create a range of choices  e.g.  “Tu préfères un chien ou un chat……?”  

What it will also do is allow me with older children in UKS2 to revsit familiar content and to encourage them to create their own choice options from this content .How will I do this?

Stage One : Which nouns ? Which adjectives?

A random word sort of familiar nouns (and possibly adjectives)  – foods/ animals / clothes/ ice creams and their flavours .

Give the children ,working in twos ,a set of nouns and adjectives on cards . Let the children decide how they wish to sort these nouns (and adjectives).

What categories will they come up with ? 

In previous activities like this one I have found that some children will immediately sort these as types of content ( foods etc) , some children will identify the gender of the noun , some children will list them in alphabetical order . 

In itself this is an interesting exercise to see how the children categorise and organise language . 

What if they are unsure of a word….? Well then they should use bi-lingual dictionaries and on line tools and  own reference material to access the meaning of the word.

Can the children identify the nouns and the adjectives and re-sort according to this objective? 

How do they know which are nouns and which are adjectives? 

This will work well in Year 6 for us  when the children can talk about their own personal characteristics.

Stage Two :What’s the question?

Set the scene   with the story . It’s a very simple story but it reinforces how to use the question:

Est-ce que tu préfères ………ou …………..?

The book poses the same question in different ways e.g Est-ce que tu  préfères.... ? and Tu préfères.....? Always offering item choices to select from

Here is an example :

  

If the target language you teach isn’t French then you could use cards or objects to demonstrate this. Why I like this book is because it is a very physical explanation of how to pose the question. 

Now ask the class , working in twos, to create questions of preference .Ask them to create at least three questions of preference.  To do this they must   identify two items in their categorised word lists from Stage One that belong  to a similar body of content and can they create a physical sentence? 

This means they must ask the question in chorus and then each partner should offer one of the possible choices to the class . Can the class give responses to their questions?

Stage Three :Our own POP UP prompt devices

The book uses different “pop up” devices  to pose questions for example look at the pictures below about ice cream flavours . 

Here it's a pull tag that operates the POP UP of the bottom half of the ice cream t change it from chocolate to vanilla

Discuss with the children ways to create pop up devices and to create pages in a pop up book. 

Now it’s over to them!

Can they create their own visual preference questions  on card and using the key target language questions and familiar content ? Would make an impressive display or could be used as question prompts for a class spoken Quiz Quiz Swap activity

Stage Four :

Asking others our questions and getting a response.

Keeping a record of our questions and responses 

   

Working with a partner and using the  Educreations IWB why not ask the children to draw symbols to explain their own preference question and record themselves asking the question at the same time?

Each partner should record at least two questions and each time  they should save their recording.

The pair should share their saved questions with a second pair who need to write a target language response to the recorded questions – either as a paper and pen activity or as an Educreation IWB written and  recorded  response.