Mille feuilles moments!

Inspired by the Great British Bake Off  yesterday evening I realised what great fun we could have with writing in the target language - creating our own mille feuilles ! 

It is such a simple idea and would work with children writing at different stages in their language learning and although it is very much a French cake , I can't see why we couldn't use this in other target languages too!

• Each layer in our mille feuilles will be a layer of paper.
• Each piece of paper will have some special writing upon it .
• Each layer of filling will be the additional information we want to add.
• The icing decoration on top will be the "Word Art" depiction of the writing we have done throughout our layers- it will give our readers a  taste - a clue to what they are about to read!
• As with all good cakes the proof is in the eating! So we are going to let our class friends read our writing and decide if the word art gave us the correct clue to the writing

How will this actually work?  

1. Identify the content you want the children to write about- personal information, likes and dislikes, family , the weather, animals etc.(Simple familiar content for beginners...perhaps more challenging content with more advanced learners)
2. Brainstorm key language with the children
3. Give each child five strips of paper or ask the children to cut paper to the correct size to make a mille feuille cake.Show the children what one of these cakes looks like.

I have selected two current focuses from our own VLE and SOW 

Beginners: Simple Colour Cakes
Now we are ready to make our cakes.Our cakes are going to be about colours.

Bottom layer - a strip of paper.Write our first sentences -a sentence to tell someone a colour we like.
Filling layer- second strip of paper- a pictionary of items in the colour we have just written about.
Third layer - new strip of paper- a sentence about a colour we don't like.
Filling layer- a pictionary of items in the colour we have just written about
Top layer- our Word Art decoration- just how are we going to add our icing and decorate the top of the cake so that our readers have an idea about the messages we are giving when they geing to read the cake and deconstruct the cake layer by layer?!

Moving On: Autumn Cake Walk Poems 
This is going to be an Autumn poem using commands, counting and colours.
Bottom layer - a strip of paper.Write our first sentence: a command, colours and numbers to set us on our walk.
Filling - a strip of paper that has simple sentences about leaves we find on our walk
Third layer -a new command, colours and numbers to continue on our walk.
Filling - a strip of paper that has simple sentences about animals we find on our walk
Top layer our Word Art depiction of our poem and the type of walk our readers are going to go on, when they start to deconstruct the cake and read the information!