French keeps an oddly large crowd of words for the few minutes when it starts to get light - 'l'aube', 'l'aurore', 'le petit jour', 'la pointe du jour'. 'Point du jour' is one of them: daybreak, the coming of the daylight.
The variant 'la pointe du jour' exists alongside 'le point du jour' with the same meaning - the same dawn named with either the masculine 'point' or the feminine 'pointe', a small reminder that fixed phrases don't always settle on one form.
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 light-sense of 'jour' explained - day and daylight in one word
The other French words for dawn - 'l'aube', 'l'aurore', 'le petit jour'
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, anyone who enjoys how one language keeps many words where another keeps one, home-educated children, and specialist tuition students including those with dyslexia. It also opens a small vocabulary set - the several French words for dawn - which a learner can collect together.
'Point du jour' is more literary than everyday - a learner is likelier to meet it in a poem, a song or a place name than in conversation. The resource treats it that way, as a lovely phrase and a clear demonstration of the light-sense of 'jour', rather than as core spoken vocabulary.
Why this exists
This phrase teaches the split inside 'jour' better than almost any other. English uses its word for 'day' to mean a stretch of hours and little else; French 'jour' means that and the daylight. A learner who grasps 'point du jour' - the point where the light appears - has understood the light-sense, and 'abat-jour' and 'contre-jour' fall into place after it.
Originally created for my dyslexic son.
Same topic, in L'atelier des mots: the light-sense cousins 'abat-jour', 'contre-jour' and 'ajoure', and the wider 'jour' family - 'bonjour', 'journee', 'sejour', 'journal', 'ajourner'.
Same root: all built on 'jour', from Latin 'diurnum'. 'Point du jour' uses the light-sense, as the light-family words do.
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.
French keeps an oddly large crowd of words for the few minutes when it starts to get light - 'l'aube', 'l'aurore', 'le petit jour', 'la pointe du jour'. 'Point du jour' is one of them: daybreak, the coming of the daylight.
The variant 'la pointe du jour' exists alongside 'le point du jour' with the same meaning - the same dawn named with either the masculine 'point' or the feminine 'pointe', a small reminder that fixed phrases don't always settle on one form.
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 light-sense of 'jour' explained - day and daylight in one word
The other French words for dawn - 'l'aube', 'l'aurore', 'le petit jour'
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, anyone who enjoys how one language keeps many words where another keeps one, home-educated children, and specialist tuition students including those with dyslexia. It also opens a small vocabulary set - the several French words for dawn - which a learner can collect together.
'Point du jour' is more literary than everyday - a learner is likelier to meet it in a poem, a song or a place name than in conversation. The resource treats it that way, as a lovely phrase and a clear demonstration of the light-sense of 'jour', rather than as core spoken vocabulary.
Why this exists
This phrase teaches the split inside 'jour' better than almost any other. English uses its word for 'day' to mean a stretch of hours and little else; French 'jour' means that and the daylight. A learner who grasps 'point du jour' - the point where the light appears - has understood the light-sense, and 'abat-jour' and 'contre-jour' fall into place after it.
Originally created for my dyslexic son.
Same topic, in L'atelier des mots: the light-sense cousins 'abat-jour', 'contre-jour' and 'ajoure', and the wider 'jour' family - 'bonjour', 'journee', 'sejour', 'journal', 'ajourner'.
Same root: all built on 'jour', from Latin 'diurnum'. 'Point du jour' uses the light-sense, as the light-family words do.
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.
