How things used to be: imperfect tense, ordinal numbers
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Why this why now
In this unit, pupils consolidate their knowledge of the past tense, as they add the imperfect tense of -er verbs and frequent irregular verbs (such as prendre, venir, sortir lire, choisir, and écrire) to their repertoire. The context of the past and present school system in France, and childhood memories of French speaking celebrities supports pupils in consolidating the uses of the imperfect tense for habitual activities vs the perfect tense for one-off completed events. Pupils will continue to consolidate this in extended writing and speaking tasks.
Prior knowledge requirements
- Pupils know how to form the perfect tense with 'avoir' or ‘être’ as the auxiliary verb.
- Pupils know how to form past participles of regular -er verbs, including feminine and plural past participle agreement.
- Pupils can use intonation questions in the present and perfect tenses.
- Pupils know how to negate perfect tense sentences using 'ne...pas' and 'ne…jamais'.
- Pupils can use emphatic pronouns ‘moi’ and ‘toi’ after prepositions.
- Pupils can use the relative pronoun ‘qui’ with subordinate clauses.
- Pupils can use verbs like 'prendre', ‘venir’, ‘sortir’, ‘entendre’, ‘lire’, ‘choisir’ and ‘écrire’ in the present tense.
Threads
Why this why now
In this unit, pupils consolidate their knowledge of the past tense, as they add the imperfect tense of -er verbs and frequent irregular verbs (such as prendre, venir, sortir lire, choisir, and écrire) to their repertoire. The context of the past and present school system in France, and childhood memories of French speaking celebrities supports pupils in consolidating the uses of the imperfect tense for habitual activities vs the perfect tense for one-off completed events. Pupils will continue to consolidate this in extended writing and speaking tasks.
Prior knowledge requirements
- Pupils know how to form the perfect tense with 'avoir' or ‘être’ as the auxiliary verb.
- Pupils know how to form past participles of regular -er verbs, including feminine and plural past participle agreement.
- Pupils can use intonation questions in the present and perfect tenses.
- Pupils know how to negate perfect tense sentences using 'ne...pas' and 'ne…jamais'.
- Pupils can use emphatic pronouns ‘moi’ and ‘toi’ after prepositions.
- Pupils can use the relative pronoun ‘qui’ with subordinate clauses.
- Pupils can use verbs like 'prendre', ‘venir’, ‘sortir’, ‘entendre’, ‘lire’, ‘choisir’ and ‘écrire’ in the present tense.
How things used to be: imperfect tense, ordinal numbers
Pupils are introduced firstly to -er verbs in the imperfect tense to describe habitual events in the past. The imperfect of common irregular verbs is added, before pupils then contrast one-off and habitual events with the perfect vs imperfect tenses, practising this with known and new vocabulary.
8 lessons in unit
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