Du gâteau, des gâteaux!
Form IIIA, Form III Alpha and Form III Aleph have all been involved recently in a cooking project that not only served to improve and expand their French vocabulary and encouraged new IT skills, but also resulted in some delicious cakes! Ms Assémat here reports on the project:
‘Du gâteau, des gâteaux!…. même si parfois*,… ce n’est pas du gâteau*!
(* même si parfois : even though, sometimes) (*ce n’est pas du gâteau= it is not easy)
Before the Easter holidays, the three Form III classes taught by Ms Assémat, Ms Gandi and Mrs Toynton were set an interesting homework – to make a video presenting the different steps in making a cake of their choice. The pupils had to research the vocabulary as well as how to pronounce the different ingredients and learn verbs such as add, incorporate, mix. Although we prepared well in class, as every cake was different, the girls had to conduct individual research.
On Monday 25th April the girls came to school with their cake and the list of ingredients they had used, des gâteaux…sans noix, bien sûr!
In class we watched the videos the girls had shot over Easter, but the good thing on that day was that after such a lot of effort it was time for relaxation! Nous avons testé (tested), jugé (judged) et vraiment apprecié (really appreciated) les bons gâteaux!!! Miam ! Miam!
The girls have shown huge talent in using their French accurately and pronouncing the language remarkably well, but also showed off with their IT skills and entertained the whole class with their fantastic videos!
Beyond French vocabulary, the girls have developed their pronunciation in French thanks to the fact that they used their devices efficiently to listen to the pronunciation of the words they were using in the cake presentation. Besides, this type of ‘homework’ equips our girls with wider skills which will surely be useful for the future.’
Some comments received from the pupils:
Antonia commented on what she had learnt, ‘This project enabled me to practise my pronunciation of French terms and I increased my cake baking skills.’
Holly had this to say, ‘I really enjoyed the cooking project and I found it really fun and engaging, for I love baking and trying new things. For me, the hardest part was learning all the pronunciations and trying to get them right. One of the tactics that I used to try and get my pronunciation on point was that I would listen to the words in French over and over again until finally I could say it with the French pronunciation. Whilst making the video I was opened up to a variety of new and different vocabulary such as, facile – easy, difficile – difficult, bon marché – cheap, pendant – for/during, environ – about, J’utilise – I use, Je demande – I ask, Je mets – I put, puis/et ensuite – then/and then, de nouveau – again, quand/lorsque – when and Le tout-everything…..
Sophie commented that:
- I found this project great fun as it was a baking project and I like baking. I also liked it as it wasn’t just working with a textbook.
- I learned new words like ‘separe’ which means separate and ‘fouet’ and the verb fouetter, which means whisk/whisking.
- This task enabled me to extend my sentences in French and add more details beyond the basics. It also helped me to develop my French pronunciation when speaking the language.
- I baked a French cake which was the French log cake; Une bûche!
- If I did this again I would be a bit louder and a little clearer with my pronunciation.
Chistiana said, ‘I found this project enjoyable because we learnt a lot of new words. I also found it great fun because we made a cake too! It made me have a deeper understanding of the words and I learnt how to pronounce them by myself. I learnt words such as ‘de la farine’, ’de la levure’, ’du lait’, ’de l’eau’, ’du beurre’, ’du sucre’, ’du chocolat’, ‘des oeufs’ and ‘un saladier’. I also learnt how to make a cheesecake, mais en français!! For the pronunciation, I used ‘Google translate’ and I listened to some examples to help me, but ‘Word reference’ was a good dictionary on line!
I learnt how to upload a video to google classroom and this helped me to improve my computing/IT skills as well.’
Umaynah’s comments were very thorough:
‘Je fais un beau gâteau!
The Baking project St Augustine’s Students have been assigned to do over the Easter Holidays’
How I found the French cake project: The latest updates.
In our last lesson of Term Ms Assemat set us some holiday home work – Baking a cake in French. What we had to do was search up French ingredients vocabulary for words like eggs and flour, then we had to choose a cake and make a tutorial of how to make it in French. When we came back, we were going to try the cakes and watch our videos over two periods which sounded like a great idea to eat a lot of cake at the time…
During this Project, there were many good and bad sides to it. It was really enjoyable being able to show off my baking skills to my class while also trying everybody else’s cakes. I learned a lot of new words and vocabulary in French and even practised my pronunciation as I was making my video. Although I did make some mistakes with the cake while making it and had to make many takes as I kept making mistakes with pronunciations. I found this both challenging and fun! Overall, I thought that this was a great way to have fun in school but also learn a wide variety of French vocabulary.
What I learned: While making this project, I learned techniques from the video I had watched by making the cake by just simply adding in the ingredients rather than separating the dry and wet ingredients. In my opinion, I think that this improved my French pronunciation and I feel a lot more confident saying and reading French words.
What I could do better next time!: Next time I would say that I need to practise a bit more with the language and know the instructions really well as I kept making mistakes and had to keep re-filming. I also think my video was quite long so maybe I could have edited the less important parts.’
Categories: Priory Post Senior Whole School