Do you teach anchor words in French for each letter of the French alphabet to your students?
Especially if you’re in a primary grade, you probably do!
Anchor words are so key for helping our students remember their letter sounds. In fact, they are so important that at my school, we have the same anchor words for all classes grades K-2.
Especially for our struggling students, this consistency is clutch!
In this blog post, I’ll share my number one favourite way to help my students remember their anchor words in maternelle.
You may already know what anchor words are and why they are important, but just in case…
What are anchor words?
An anchor word is basically a special, easy-to-remember word that you teach to your students to help them remember each letter sound.
Every letter should have its own anchor word, and every time you refer to that letter, you should use the same anchor word.
Consistency is REALLY important!
When you are always using the same anchor word for each letter, your students will be more likely to remember a word that begins with each letter.
Why is this helpful?
Well, it can be easier to remember a word than a sound.
With an anchor word, our students can picture the whole word in their head, and it is much more concrete than just a sound.
For example, if your anchor word for Ss is soleil, your students can use that knowledge to remember the sound that the letter Ss makes.
They may say something like “Ss… soleil… sssss”, where the anchor word leads them to the correct sound for the letter Ss. They think of the word, and then identify the beginning sound… that beginning sound = the sound the letter makes.
This is especially helpful when our students are learning to write, and are trying to write down the sounds they hear in each word.
How can we help our students remember their anchor words in French?
My favourite way to teach anchor words? I use alphabet anchor word crafts to build our anchor word out of each letter of the alphabet!
My students LOVE this activity, and get excited every day to see what our anchor word for our new letter will be.
By actually assembling all the parts they need, including the letter itself, I find that my students have been better able to remember their anchor words!
This is especially important since most of our maternelle students don’t speak much (if any) French at this point in the year.
How the letter crafts work
My alphabet craft resource contains a craft for each uppercase letter of the alphabet. Each craft matches the anchor words in French found in my other resources.
(exception – I could NOT find a way to make a cute “oreille” craft haha. So, the Oo craft is an orange)
There are two versions of each craft included. You can choose the one that works best for you and how much prep time you have.
Option 1: Print on coloured paper
This option is definitely the cutest! You can print the pieces of each craft for your students on coloured paper (I prefer Astrobrights). Students just need to cut out and glue to complete their craft.
Option 2: Print on white paper
For this option, every piece your students will need is on one single page. You will just need to copy that page for each student, and you’re good to go!
They will colour (I do suggest colouring before cutting out), cut, and glue the craft together.
PS – want to try the avion craft pictured below? Head to the end of this post to find out how you can get it for free!
Where do we keep these anchor word crafts?
As per usual, there are a few things you can do with these crafts.
You can glue them onto construction paper and display them in your room or send them home each day.
You can also have students glue them into a notebook each day, and then send the notebook home at the end of the alphabet (that’s what I do!).
My students all have a coil notebook (I use the 82 page Hilroy ones) and they just glue their craft in each day.
When it’s full, we take them home.
Here’s an example of the Ee craft from one of my students:
I like this option because there is less loose paper, everything stays together, and my students can look back through their notebook whenever they want!
Are you going to give these a try?
I hope that this post helped clarify a bit about anchor words in French and why they are so important. It may also have inspired you to try something new to help your students learn them – alphabet crafts!
The key thing to remember about anchor words, however you teach them, is that they should be consistent. From resource to resource, from activity to activity, and maybe even from grade to grade.
They should also be simple and easy to remember, and you should provide your students with lots of opportunities to play with, use, and practice the words.
My number one favourite way to do that is with alphabet crafts, but there are lots of other ways, as well!
If you are interested in my alphabet crafts, they are available for sale in my TPT store.
Click HERE to see my set of alphabet crafts on TPT.
Want to try them out?
If you want to try one out to see if they are a good fit for your class this year, great news!
You can try out the Aa craft (un avion) for FREE.
Click HERE, enter your name & email, and I’ll send you both versions so you can see which works best for you.
I hope you and your students love it!
