Teaching a child to read means, among other things, teaching them the letters of the alphabet and the sound each letter makes. In other words, teaching letter-sound correspondence.
Of course, things get complex really fast as letters start to blend and create new sounds, particularly in French.
Students need to have a solid foundation on which to build their reading skills. Therefore, they need to know how to identify and read sounds first.
So start out teaching French phonics by teaching the vowels: a, e, i, o, u, y.
A, i, u, and y are great because they really do correspond to one sound only. O and e can represent more than one sound and that’s tricky.
Next, you can move on to other simple sounds, like long and short consonants. Then, you can get into complex sounds.
Being able to speak French means being able to recognize and pronounce words correctly. That applies to other languages as well, but holds particularly crucial for French.
All the letters, letter combinations, and sounds can overwhelm a child, particularly if they’re learning to read AND learning a second language at the same time.
The best way to avoid tears is to teach what your curriculum requires you to teach, but offer tons of focused practice.
Practice one letter-sound (grapheme-phoneme) correspondence at a time.
French Phonics Lapbooks
I’ve been creating interactive lapbooks for some time now and there’s a series that is totally dedicated to French phonics.
Each lapbook focuses on one letter-sound pair and also includes lots of practice with support of illustrations.
The French phonics lapbooks should help your students:
- identify the focus sound in written words, which should allow them to recognize the focus sound in texts faster
- identify the focus sound in illustrations
- improve vocabulary because they’ll be working with lots of words
- increase critical thinking because they’ll have to sort words that do and do not include the focus sound
- contextualize words that include the focus sound by writing sentences with the words
- build a strong grapheme-phoneme association through a variety of hands-on, interactive practice
Every lapbook includes the similar paper pieces. In addition, there are three extra practice worksheets.
When completed, the French phonics lapbooks should look like the picture below.
French Phonics Lapbooks: components
Let’s now take a closer look at the pieces of the lapbooks.
In order to put together a lapbook, you’ll need file folders.
You can also add the paper pieces to interactive notebooks instead of creating lapbooks.
Here’s a Slideshare tutorial on how to fold the file folders to create the lapbook base:
Then, kids will create the cover by either using the printables included in the file (pictured below) or by drawing and writing on the flaps.
There are different interactive activities to make students practice (identify, read, write) the sounds in different contexts.
There’s an activity for students to sort (separate) words that include the focus sound from the ones that don’t include it.
They’ll place the corresponding images in the right pockets, which are glued to the lapbook or to a notebook.
Differentiation is a key element of these lapbooks, so the cards the students have to sort come in 3 versions: images only, images with words, and images with a word bank.
The lapbooks include two kinds of books: one mini-book for reading practice and one mini-book for writing practice.
The reading mini-book uses only one sheet of paper and comes in 3 versions:
- reading six words, with illustrations to support understanding, that include the focus sound
- tracing the words below the illustrations
- reading the words and making drawings to illustrate the words
Click to learn how to fold a mini-book and download a free verbs mini-book.
The writing practice mini-books can present 3 or 6 words that your students need to use in sentences.
In the image below, the reading mini-books are on the left and the writing mini-books are on the right.
There are two more activities, which you can check out by download the preview of any of the individual sets on TpT (links below)
French Phonics Lapbooks: individual sets and bundles
There are 30 phonics lapbooks available so far, but I’ll be creating lots more.
For your convenience, you can purchase them individually or in discounted growing bundles.
Every time I add a lapbook to a growing bundle, the price goes up, but if you have purchased, you won’t have to extra – the new lapbooks will be free for you.
So check out the lapbooks bundles:
- MEGA Lapbooks Bundle: includes ALL my lapbooks (the phonics and the other ones + future ones)
- PHONICS Lapbooks Bundle: includes current phonics lapbooks + future phonics lapbooks
And here are the links to the individual phonics lapbooks available so far:
- Le son A (lettre A)
- Le son B
- Le son D
- Le son E (lettre E)
- Le son É (lettre É)
- Le son È (lettre È)
- Le son Ê (lettre Ê)
- Le son F (la lettre F)
- Le son G doux (la lettre G)
- Le son G dur (la lettre G)
- Le son I (lettre I)
- Le son O ouvert (lettre O)
- Le son O fermé (lettre O)
- Le son AU
- Le son EAU
- Le son U (lettre U)
- Le son OU
- Le son OI
- Le son AN
- Le son EN
- Le son IN
- Le son ON
- Le son CH
- Le son C dur (lettre C)
- Le son C doux (lettre C)
- Le son CR
- Le son BR
- Le son GN
- Le son S (lettre S)
- Le son Z (lettre S)
Click to learn more about French interactive lapbooks!
Before you go, leave me your questions or comments at the end of the post!
Thank you for reading! Merci!
Lucy 🙂
Read: FREE Storytelling Dice
Read: French Alphabet Centers
