Here's a sense of 'jour' that surprises even good French speakers: a 'jour' can be a hole. Not the day, not the daylight - an actual gap, the opening that lets the light in. 'Ajoure' is the word for anything made that way.
The noun 'ajour' - an opening or perforation - is recorded later than the adjective 'ajoure', so French seems to have had the word for the pierced thing before it had a plain noun for the hole itself.
The etymology comic - illustrated stage cards, one idea each, with short KS3/4 captions
The word-history breakdown, Latin to modern French, dated where the record allows
The three senses of 'jour' - the day, the daylight, and the opening light passes through
The English-links section - the everyday English words that share the root
The sources page
A short how-to-use guide for the adult
For personal use in home education and tutoring only.
It suits KS3 and KS4 French learners who enjoy how a word shifts its sense, students of art, jewellery and design, home-educated children, and specialist tuition students including those with dyslexia. It's a good word for a curious learner because it shows a root moving one step further than you'd expect.
It's the most specialist of the light-family - a learner meets 'ajoure' mainly in jewellery, heraldry and design, not in everyday French. The resource is honest about that: it's here for its interest and its clean demonstration of how 'jour' shifted, not as core exam vocabulary.
'Ajoure' is a small lesson in how meaning moves. A learner who sees that 'jour' goes from 'day' to 'daylight' to 'the gap the light comes through' has watched a word change under their own eyes - which is exactly the thing that makes vocabulary stop feeling arbitrary and start feeling like it has reasons.
I first made these for my dyslexic son.
Same topic, in L'atelier des mots: its two light-family cousins here, 'abat-jour' and 'contre-jour', and the wider 'jour' family - 'bonjour', 'journee', 'sejour', 'journal', 'ajourner'.
Same root: all built on 'jour', from Latin 'diurnum'. 'Ajoure' takes the opening-sense; 'abat-jour' and 'contre-jour' take the light-sense; the rest take the day-sense.
Free in the Wordhord: the English cousins 'journey' and 'journal'. And the Compendium post on why word origins help with modern languages, dyslexic learners especially.
Available now as a PDF download.
This PDF prints into two forms, and you choose which suits you.
The large cards - one idea to a page - are made to be laminated and clipped onto a binder ring. Print single-sided, laminate, trim, and punch a hole in the top-left corner, then hold them together with one ring. The cards are numbered, so a loose deck goes back in order. Once they're on the ring a child can handle them, turn them over and lay them out - which is where a lot of the understanding happens. The deck is a bag or dinner-table object: something a child picks up and works through at the table, not a pencil-case card.
The single sheet at the end holds the whole word on one page. Print it and it's ready - no laminating, no cutting. It's the print-and-go form, for the fridge or the middle of a lesson, when you want the whole story in front of you at once. You assemble the deck yourself; there's no ready-made deck in the box. You'll need a printer, and a laminator and a ring for the deck. Neither form is homework and neither is a test.
This is an educational support material. It isn't a diagnostic, assessment or therapeutic tool, and it doesn't replace specialist assessment or intervention. Outcomes vary by learner. It's built to be revisited over time rather than worked through in one go, and it isn't a complete teaching programme or a substitute for formal instruction.
Here's a sense of 'jour' that surprises even good French speakers: a 'jour' can be a hole. Not the day, not the daylight - an actual gap, the opening that lets the light in. 'Ajoure' is the word for anything made that way.
The noun 'ajour' - an opening or perforation - is recorded later than the adjective 'ajoure', so French seems to have had the word for the pierced thing before it had a plain noun for the hole itself.
The etymology comic - illustrated stage cards, one idea each, with short KS3/4 captions
The word-history breakdown, Latin to modern French, dated where the record allows
The three senses of 'jour' - the day, the daylight, and the opening light passes through
The English-links section - the everyday English words that share the root
The sources page
A short how-to-use guide for the adult
For personal use in home education and tutoring only.
It suits KS3 and KS4 French learners who enjoy how a word shifts its sense, students of art, jewellery and design, home-educated children, and specialist tuition students including those with dyslexia. It's a good word for a curious learner because it shows a root moving one step further than you'd expect.
It's the most specialist of the light-family - a learner meets 'ajoure' mainly in jewellery, heraldry and design, not in everyday French. The resource is honest about that: it's here for its interest and its clean demonstration of how 'jour' shifted, not as core exam vocabulary.
'Ajoure' is a small lesson in how meaning moves. A learner who sees that 'jour' goes from 'day' to 'daylight' to 'the gap the light comes through' has watched a word change under their own eyes - which is exactly the thing that makes vocabulary stop feeling arbitrary and start feeling like it has reasons.
I first made these for my dyslexic son.
Same topic, in L'atelier des mots: its two light-family cousins here, 'abat-jour' and 'contre-jour', and the wider 'jour' family - 'bonjour', 'journee', 'sejour', 'journal', 'ajourner'.
Same root: all built on 'jour', from Latin 'diurnum'. 'Ajoure' takes the opening-sense; 'abat-jour' and 'contre-jour' take the light-sense; the rest take the day-sense.
Free in the Wordhord: the English cousins 'journey' and 'journal'. And the Compendium post on why word origins help with modern languages, dyslexic learners especially.
Available now as a PDF download.
This PDF prints into two forms, and you choose which suits you.
The large cards - one idea to a page - are made to be laminated and clipped onto a binder ring. Print single-sided, laminate, trim, and punch a hole in the top-left corner, then hold them together with one ring. The cards are numbered, so a loose deck goes back in order. Once they're on the ring a child can handle them, turn them over and lay them out - which is where a lot of the understanding happens. The deck is a bag or dinner-table object: something a child picks up and works through at the table, not a pencil-case card.
The single sheet at the end holds the whole word on one page. Print it and it's ready - no laminating, no cutting. It's the print-and-go form, for the fridge or the middle of a lesson, when you want the whole story in front of you at once. You assemble the deck yourself; there's no ready-made deck in the box. You'll need a printer, and a laminator and a ring for the deck. Neither form is homework and neither is a test.
This is an educational support material. It isn't a diagnostic, assessment or therapeutic tool, and it doesn't replace specialist assessment or intervention. Outcomes vary by learner. It's built to be revisited over time rather than worked through in one go, and it isn't a complete teaching programme or a substitute for formal instruction.
