Le capitaine arrive

Before you begin

Use the safety checklist to help you plan and risk assess your activity. Additional help to carry out your risk assessment, including examples can be found here. Don’t forget to make sure all young people and adults involved in the activity know how to take part safely.
Make sure you’ll have enough adult helpers. You may need some parents and carers to help out if you’re short on helpers.
If you want to, you could print out the French words and their meanings and stick them up around the room for people to see.

Play the game

Everyone should spread out across the space, so they have plenty of room.
Set some boundaries, so everyone knows where they can go up to in the space.
One member of the group is the caller. This person will call out the commands. It could be a young member, young leader or adult volunteer.
The caller should introduce the first few words and actions, and everyone should practise them together. You could have a practice round, too.
Once everyone’s ready, the caller should say a word in English. Everyone should then say the word in French while doing the action.
If anyone gets the word or action wrong, they're out. Anyone who's out could help the caller to spot people who get the actions wrong.
As the game goes on, the person leading the activity should keep calling out words in English.
If everyone’s getting on really well, pause the game and add an extra word or two. You could also start to get faster to make it harder and eliminate the last person to do the action.
The person left at the end of the game is the winner.

Reflection

Learning a new language can sometimes be difficult, but by having fun we can make it easier to learn something new.

This activity gave everyone the chance to develop skills while being active. What words do people remember and what do they mean?

Are any words harder to pronounce? Do the French words sound very different to the English words or are some similar?

We practised some really useful words, such as hello and goodbye. Would you be happy to practise using them by greeting someone in French? What other words could we teach our friends?

Safety

All activities must be safely managed. You must complete a thorough risk assessment and take appropriate steps to reduce risk. Use the safety checklist to help you plan and risk assess your activity. Always get approval for the activity, and have suitable supervision and an InTouch process.

Active games: The game area should be free of hazards. Explain the rules of the game clearly and have a clear way to communicate that the game must stop when needed. Take a look at our guidance on running active games safely.