Here’s a list of free online resources for French teachers because there can never be enough options to offer meaningful practice for our students, right?
If you’ve been a French teacher for a while, you’ve already found yourself spending hours on the internet trying to find online resources to help you teach.
From game creating sites to authentic French listening files, THERE IS a lot you can use out there on the internet and, best of all, for free.
Problem is…
If you’re anything like me, you started bookmarking pages in chaotic fashion only to promise yourself you would stop one day to put that crazy list in order.
Of course, that never happened…
My goal is to help you save time, so I’ve organized that list for you 🙂
Below are links to free online resources for French teachers with a brief description on what each one is and what it offers.
Free online resources for French teachers
Websites
According to the description of the site itself: “+ de 2500 fiches pratiques et totalement gratuites d’activités manuelles pour les enfants de 3 à 12 ans : recettes, bricolages, coloriages, jeux, comptines, contes…” Here’s a sample of what the site is about:
- Chercher et corriger les erreurs
- Le présent des verbs en -ER
- Les homonymes – exercice d’écriture
- Le top des comptines
They describe themselves like this: “1 jour 1 actu explique avec des mots simples l’actualité des adultes.” It’s got lots of animated videos that French teachers can show in their classrooms to complement a lesson, assess listening comprehension, and generate meaningful discussions. As the site was created to explain what’s happening in the world to kids, the language is not overcomplicated, but it’s still authentic. Here are a few videos and articles to give you an idea of what the site is about:
- Qui a inventé les jeux vidéo?
- Quelles sont les langues les plus parlées dans le monde?
- Peut-on vivre sur Mars?
- Quels sont les dangers d’Internet
No list of free online resources for French teachers would be complete without including “Il était une histoire”. It’s an amazing site. If you sign up for free, you can print or download PDF files of “Albums et histoires” (texts), you can download MP3 files of narrated “Contes et légendes“, “Fables et poésies“, or “Comptines et chansons“. They’ve algo got “Documentaires“, which are longer non-fiction texts about different topics. Below are some of my favorite from each category:
- from Albums et histoires: La maison de l’escargot
- from Contes et légendes: Pérsephone ou la naissance des saisons
- from Fables et poésies: La Cigale et la Fourmi
- from Comptines et chansons: Des goûts et des couleurs
- from Documentaires: Les animaux domestiques
There are games, videos, exercises, and much more. It’s always updated and the resources are labeled according to the CEFR level, i.e. A1, A2, B1, B2. Some videos present exercices at different levels so you can differentiate – you can have students working with the same video on different computers at different levels. Check out some examples:
This is also part of the TV5 site, but I thought it deserved its own mention on this list. There are currently 10 fables available. They are illustrations, but not animations, with a voice-over narrator. The text is also available on the page. The stories are timeless and work great as discussion prompts.
Yes, I know the name of the site includes the word “pay” and it’s true that the bigger and more thorough resources are priced (and well worth it, in my opinion), but you can still find lots of good printables for free. You do need to create a free account to download resources. Check these out:
- Get-to-know-you dice for the French classroom
- French Alphabet Chart
- The four food groups game in French
- French desk name plates
- Stamping Animal Words
- Autoévaluation: préparation aux bulletins
- “Ici on parle français” poster
- French Focus Wall Headers
- Reading Comprehension Worksheet
Click here and scroll down to find more free resources on TpT!
This is like the TeachersPayTeachers of digital resources. Boom Cards™ are digital games your kiddos will play on computers, tablets, smartphones, interactive whiteboard, etc. They do require Internet connection. You do need to create an account, but there is a free option.
You can see below one of the free decks you can find on Boom Learning:
Check out some of the free Boom decks in French that you can find on Boom Learning:
- Farm animals vocabulary practice with audio (the one in the video above)
- Le passé composé: avoir ou être
- Les couleurs: vocabulary practice with audio
- Ten-frame counting apples
Even though this is a website targeted at parents, there are many printable resources teacher can download and use for free. You do need to sign up, but you don’t have to pay anything.
Here are the links to specific sections with worksheets:
The stories on this site present illustrations with written text and narration. They are also interactive – students need to understand the story and complete the scenes with objects mentioned. Not for emergent readers if you’re setting this up as an independent center.
This site sells some items, but there’s a lot of content for free: games, nursery rhymes, printables, etc. Here are a couple:
Site with interactive games: “une sélection de jeu éducatifs pour tous les âges.” They have a variety of games and I encourage you to spend some time just browsing through what they’ve got. Here’s a very short selection of some games I’ve tested:
- Maternelle: J’apprends les formes
- Maternelle: J’apprends les couleurs
- 6-7 ans: Pour apprendre l’alphabet
- 6-7 ans: Calculs rapides d’additions et des soustractions
- 7-8 ans: Je maîtrise les verbes (this is great conjugation practice – you can select one verb or a group of verbs, one specific tense or a mix of tenses)
It’s no secret that students love games, so why not “gamefy” the learning experience? That’s what the folks at Duolingo have done. Users lose lives for mistakes they make, earn badges for exercises completed, and so on. They now offer Duolingo for Schools, which allows teachers to monitor students’ progress, and assign different goals for different students. You can also share progress reports with other teachers or parents.
It’s “le site des jeux éducatifs en ligne” and it lives up to its name! There are tons of online interactive games: “maternelle“, “l’ortographe“, “conjugaison/grammaire“, Math, “confusions de sons“, and much more!
* Zone de jeux pour les petits
Wonderful site for “les petits”. It’s got language and Math online games that your K-1 students will love. The videos, much like the next suggestion (Jean-Jean) can only be watched in Canada. There is still a lot to be used in the French classroom even if you are not at a Canadian school.
This site has fun, simple, and interactive online games for kids. It’s a companion website for a TV series. The games can be played by everyone, but the videos can only be watched in Canada.
* GéoAdo
Lots of articles specially written for teens and some of them by teens. Here are some:
- Bientôt un village sur la Lune?
- Et si les grands singes pouvaient parler?
- Tâches ménagères: l’égalité hommes-femmes est encore loin
- L’accent circonflexe ne disparaîtra de sitôt
According to Amélie herself: “Amélie Pepin was born in Quebec (Canada) and has been drawing since she was a child. (…) Amélie is now working as a freelance artist dedicating most of her work to children’s illustrations and teaching resources.” She has shared a whole lot of free printable worksheets on her site like these Math exercises.
There are SO MANY resources on this site, I don’t even know where to begin. You might experience the same. Use the search feature to find what you’re looking for.
The topics range from Math to grammar to music, all in French. Here are some links to categories pages:
Don’t be fooled by the name! This website from Northern Ireland has a page with French resources, including games (under the “activities” section of each theme), online flashcards (called “workbank”), and comptines (“rhymes” in each theme). The best thing, in my opinion, is the “stories” section. You could say they’re online picture books. You move from page to page and get to hear, read, or hear and read the story. I like the fact that you can see the illustrations without sound or text first – that allows you to get kids guessing and inferring from the images. Then, you decide to play the sound and/or display the text. For that reason, you can use this resource to improve listening skills, inferring and predicting skills, and reading as well. NOTE: when using “stories”, remember to switch to full screen for a better user experience.
The games on this site, by the Literacy Center Education Network, are for small kids learning both the language and concepts, e.g. colors, number, letters. Simple, but fun for younger students.
* eBooKids
This site offers “plus de 400 livres pour enfants” and is the brainchild of a parent, Damien Stevens, who kept hearing his kids saying: “Quelle histoire vas-tu lire Papa?”
The stories are illustrated and some are read aloud. You could read one a day in your classroom without repeating stories.
I recommend you read the story first so you’ll know if the level is right for your students.
Bibliothèque numérique des enfants
“À découvrir en avant-première, ce nouvel espace entièrement dédié aux jeunes de 8 à 12 ans, véritable introduction à l’univers de l’écrit et de l’image. Tous les types de livres sont représentés dans cette bibliothèque : abécédaires et imagiers, récits animaliers, encyclopédies, aventures, récits de fiction, contes et légendes, livres d’art et de poésie…”
The link above goes straight to the user site, but if you’d like to search for specific activities, or books, or games, etc, check out “le coin des enseignants” first.
NOTE: the site is Flash-based, so it won’t work on iPads and similar devices.
The best thing about this site, in my opinion, are the read-aloud stories. Here’s how you get to them. When accessing the site, click on the “passer l’intro” on the right bottom corner of the image to skip Carmen singing (nothing against her, but it might drive you crazy to hear her sing after a couple of times or maybe it’s just me). Click “Centre Soleil” and click on the bookshelf on the right (“Lis avec Carmen”). There are three stories for you to choose. You can either have Carmen read the stories aloud or have your students read the text by themselves (or you can read for them) and let them interact with the images.
I debated including this blog on this list. Shannon Wiebe, who writes (wrote) the blog, is super generous and shares tons of resources on the site. I didn’t know if I should mention the site here or not because it’s not super easy to find the stuff you’re looking for. That being said, when you do find it, you’re super happy. Here are a few links:
- How to use Daily 5 in Kindergarten French Immersion
- Needs of animals
- L’espace – vocabulaire et projets d’écriture
They claim to have more than 700 free French games and activities. I honestly haven’t checked out all of them, but below’s a short list of links to some items you can find:
- a very easy conversation between two friends: you can listen to them and you can also hover your mouse over parts of the illustration to see the names of the things on the screen
- game to practice “les contraires”
- memory games to be played by one or two players
YouTube Channels
La cuisine est un jeu d’enfants
This channel has animations of kids cooking recipes (with adult supervision, of course). There are a lot of videos to choose from and they can be used, for example, when you’re teaching your food unit,quantities and numbers, and procedural vocabulary (d’abord, puis, etc).
* Mouk
It’s a series of animations for kids about different topics and themes. Here are some that are part of “Découvre le monde avec Mouk”:
- (Canada) La partie de hockey
- (Australie) Le clip des Wallabies
- (Égypte) Une croisière de tout repos
There are MANY videos for kids on this channel. Topics range from learning to count in French to feelings to seasons of the year. Some are as short as one minute and others as long as 21 minutes. You are sure to find a video that can be used in your classroom.
Tonton is a puppet turtle that will teach your little students how to speak French. Here’s a video about the days of the week in French and daily actions.
The adventures of a cute little toddler. Can’t get any cuter than that 😉
The Monde des Titounis video channel releases a new video every Wednesday. There are a lot of videos on the channel, but I think they’re really for little kids, which is not a bad thing, but they can’t be used with teens or adults.
* Apprends avec moi – ABC, 123
I think the name of the channel is self-explanatory 🙂
They’ve got videos for learning the alphabet as a whole and letter by letter, like this video for “la lettre F“.
If your students are between 9 and 13 years old, they’ll probably like the videos in this series. Produced by ICI Radio-Canada, ONIVA! is “une émission POUR les jeunes, faite PAR les jeunes.”
There are not producer of videos, but teachers who have created playlists around themes to make it easier for other French teachers to find what they need.
The following channels are all about “comptines”:
Listening Resources
I believe that pretty much all videos can be used for listening exercises, so the section above should give you many options.
This part includes links to resources that are mainly audio (and sometimes text).
The name is pretty self-explanatory – the website has audio files in slow French so that French learners can work on improve their listening skills without feeling overwhelmed. The fact that they talk about current news make it more appealing and meaningful for older students and even adults.
Online dictation for grades 1-8 students. They listen to the dictations, write on a box, and check what they got right or wrong. You can choose whether to listen to the texts with or without repetition.
These dictation audio files cover grammar points, “l’imparfait” for example. Listen to the first file for general comprehension and the second file for the actual dictation. Students have to write on their notebooks. The site offers the written text for correction.
This is the main site of the podcast series with “conversations en français: dialogues pour FLE.”
The good thing about this site is that you can actually listen to the podcast on the site itself instead of having to go to iTunes and download the file.
The transcript is also available on each episode page.
* Français Facile – French for Beginners
Videos for pronunciation practice created for beginners.
Reading Resources
Similarly to the listening resources, the sites at the top of this post include a lot of reading exercises and texts.
This section includes links to resources that share printable texts or books.
Scholastic: Envol en littératie
Printable PDFs of “livres de lecture guidée, niveaux A à C.”
Multimedia Creating and/or Sharing Sites
All teachers have tried at one point or another to re-create in their classrooms the excitement and interest that a game show can generate. From creating Jeopardy-like games on Powerpoint to scribbling questions on index cards, we have all been down that path. But we don’t have to improvise anymore. Kahoot is here to make interactive games as easy as A-B-C-D. Creating quizzes is a breeze and I also love the fact that students can use tables and smartphones without the need to create accounts.
I’d say that the only thing to bear in mind is not to overuse it in your classroom or you might end up losing students’ engagement. Once or twice a month is best.
You can use Slideshare to, well, share the presentations you create on PowerPoint (in my case, Keynote) with other teachers.
Or you can find presentations created by other teachers to help you teach French. Checkout the presentations/quizzes I created here.
Reference and Guides
Dictionnaire français Larousse
Dictionnaires bilingues Larousse
The Larousse website has free online dictionaries and an encyclopedia. There is a French dictionary and bilingual ones as well, e.g. français/anglais and anglais/français.
Students can also use the “conjugateur” to check out, well, the conjugation of verbs.
This is another option when it comes to French online dictionaries. It’s also got conjugation, synonyms, and English to French translation (and vice-versa).
* La Banque de Dépannage Linguistique
They certainly do a better job at describing their site than I ever would: “BDL est un outil pédagogique en constante évolution qui propose des réponses claires aux questions les plus fréquentes portant sur la grammaire, l’orthographe, la syntaxe, le vocabulaire, les anglicismes, la ponctuation, la prononciation, la typographie, les noms propres, les sigles, abréviations et symboles, la rédaction et la communication.”
If there’s a language topic that’s been making you question your knowledge of the French language, or you drew a blank on the right way of using a structure, check out this site.
That’s a loooong list of free online resources for French teachers. I’m sure you’ll find something you hadn’t heard of before!
If you’ve got any suggestions to make, email me and let me know: lucy@forfrenchimmersion.com
I’ll be constantly updating this post to make it more and more thorough and complete!
Thank you and help other French teachers find this list by sharing it on FB and Pinterest!
Merci beaucoup!
Lucy 🙂
DISCLAIMER: this is a list of suggestions, but I’m not responsible for the content of the sites mentioned (unless it’s something created by me). As a teacher, you should check out the resources first, e.g. language accuracy, level of difficulty, etc, before using them in your classroom.
NOTE: the items with a * have been suggested by readers of this blog or newsletter subscribers. Thank you for helping me write this post!
