Learn French through Nature exploration
How do we teach French
through Nature Exploration and Inquiry-Based Learning?
Nature and inquiry-based learning offer a rich, authentic context for developing oral French skills in meaningful and engaging ways. Through interactions, children develop the ability to express their thoughts, listen to others, and engage in collaborative learning.
​To support oral comprehension, we incorporate engaging vocabulary games related to nature, encourage attentive listening through storytelling sessions in outdoor settings, and challenge children with nature-themed riddles that sharpen their reasoning skills. These playful and immersive activities help children connect language to real-world experiences, making comprehension both intuitive and enjoyable.
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In a natural setting, children encounter real-life situations that invite spontaneous conversation, developing oral expression: asking questions, describing what they see, and sharing discoveries in French. This immediate relevance encourages them to use language naturally and confidently. During the class, children sing songs, retell familiar stories, and collaboratively invent new ones inspired by what they observe in the natural environment. Drama and role-play are frequently used to bring scientific concepts or stories to life, allowing children to embody characters and ideas in an expressive way. Throughout our inquiry-based projects, students are regularly invited to ask questions, share their hypotheses, describe their observations, and discuss the results of their research with their peers. Group discussions during investigations support peer-to-peer learning, where children build vocabulary together, negotiate meaning, and reinforce each other’s understanding. This collaborative environment naturally enhances both fluency and confidence.
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Reading and pre-reading skills are also naturally nurtured through our nature-based activities. Children engage in playful exploration of letters, tracing letters in the soil, forming them with natural objects, learning to recognize them in different labels... Phonological awareness is developed through sound-based games, such as finding words that contain a specific sound or that rhyme. As their decoding skills grow, children are invited to read simple words or clues and connect them to real-world objects. For example, by identifying labeled plants, reading instructions during an investigation, or following a recipe or technical guide. Outdoor reading moments, whether shared aloud or independently, offer a calm and meaningful way to connect language with lived experiences, laying a strong and joyful foundation for lifelong literacy.
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Collaborative research and learning are wonderful opportunities for children to express themselves and practice their oral, reading and writing skills. Each learner is given the space and support to speak, listen, reflect, and grow. Oral participation is valued as a powerful way for children to clarify their ideas, build confidence, and deepen their understanding of the natural world and their place within it. The diversity of expression activities helps children internalize new vocabulary and structures through repetition and embodied learning.
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Documenting Discovery: Written Expression as a Tool for Scientific Thinking​
During their exploration, children are encouraged to create various forms of written expression—texts, drawings, diagrams, graphs, tables, posters, and more. The level of teacher support varies depending on the child’s age and proficiency in the French language.​
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We can identify three main types of writing:
Individual Writings: Exploring Initial Ideas
Depending on the child’s age, this individual work may include drawings, diagrams, short texts, an experimental plan, a list of materials, a hypothesis, and what the child expects to do or observe. The purpose of this writing is to help students structure their thinking. It is essential that each child feels free to express themselves without fear of judgment and understands that this writing is a tool to support scientific exploration. For this reason, it is not corrected by the teacher, neither for scientific accuracy (such as misconceptions, incomplete drawings, or incorrect hypotheses) nor for language errors (like spelling, grammar, or vocabulary). However, as children share their ideas with peers, they naturally begin to recognize the importance of organizing their thoughts in a clearer, more accessible way.
​rize what has been learned through the research and to serve as a lasting record in the classroom or as a means of communication.
Because these texts are intended to be shared with others or revisited later in the year, attention to language, such as correct spelling, precise vocabulary, and proper syntax, is especially important.
Collaborative Writings During the Research Process
These are typically collaborative writings created in small groups to document observations or results, allowing the research to be paused and picked up again later. Examples include: an experiment report, recorded results, an observation drawing, a model diagram, or notes from documentary research.
This type of writing is more structured than individual writing, as it needs to be clear and understandable for the investigation to continue. However, it may still include incomplete illustrations, scientific inaccuracies, or mistaken conclusions, reflecting the students’ evolving understanding at that stage of their inquiry. Depending on the group’s level of autonomy, these writings may also include some language errors.
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Scientific Summary Writings
These are written collaboratively with guidance from the teacher, who helps structure and formalize the content to ensure it reflects accurate scientific understanding. Their purpose is to summarize what has been learned through the research and to serve as a lasting record in the classroom or as a means of communication.
Because these texts are intended to be shared with others or revisited later in the year, attention to language, such as correct spelling, precise vocabulary, and proper syntax, is especially important.