L’atelier des mots
Structured French vocabulary for KS3-KS4 learners who find words hard to hold on to
Your child has learnt 'beaucoup' for the test. They can say it. But on the page it's seven letters that don't match the sound, and by next week the word and its spelling have come apart again - if they stuck at all. French is hard to hold on to partly because it doesn't look the way it sounds. Endings fall silent, letters do nothing you can hear, and a learner who already finds reading effortful is being asked to remember a shape that seems to have no relationship to the word they say out loud. Or you're teaching French at home, going over the same word three lessons running and watching it slip away each time.
There's a reason French looks the way it does. French spelling was largely fixed around the way the language sounded eight or nine hundred years ago, and it has stayed close to that ever since while the spoken language carried on changing underneath it. The silent endings and the letters that don't seem to do anything aren't random - they're an older pronunciation left on the page, and often a record of where the word came from. So the difficulty isn't that French is illogical. It's that the logic is historical, and a struggling reader can't see it without being shown.
How the packs work
The packs in L'atelier des mots work with that. Instead of asking a learner to memorise the whole word, they show how the word is built, where it comes from, and how it connects to others - the roots, the patterns, and the links to English that turn up again and again across French. Once a learner can recognise a root inside a longer word, or spot how a French word connects to one they already know in English, a French word stops being a string of letters that won't behave and becomes something with parts they recognise. This is the same structured approach I use in tuition, applied to French. I'm a specialist literacy teacher and a linguist, and these resources were originally created to support one of my own children's learning. They were shaped through real use - I changed them as I went, based on what helped and what didn't.
The packs are made to be picked up for short sessions. They support whatever else is happening - school French, or a course you're running at home - rather than replacing it.
How the packs print
Each pack is a PDF that prints into two forms, and you pick the one that suits you. The large cards - one idea to a page - are made to laminate and clip onto a binder ring, so a child can handle the deck, turn the cards over and lay the stages out in order. The single sheet at the end holds the whole word on one page - print it and it's ready, for the pencil case or the middle of a lesson. You'll need a printer, and a laminator and a ring if you want the deck; the single sheet needs neither. Full instructions are inside each pack.
Why seeing the structure helps vocabulary stay put
For many learners, and particularly those who find reading hard, vocabulary taught as isolated items rarely settles into memory. Teaching words through their structure - their roots, their patterns, the families they belong to - helps recall. The evidence for this is strongest in English, with children and struggling readers, and the application to French is a reasoned extension rather than something proven to the same degree. I've written about where the evidence is strong and where it's more reasoned than proven over in the Compendium.
The French word packs
Each pack takes one common French word and makes its structure visible - meaning, roots, and the connections that tie it to other words and to English. The panels are laid out to keep the page uncluttered, so a learner isn't fighting the format as well as the language. Each one is a short printable PDF - a single word broken into its parts, with the meaning and the connected words set out clearly enough to use in one short session. L'atelier des mots is the French branch of The Wordcrafter's Bench, applying the same approach to French - teaching language explicitly and in a clear order, the method known as structured literacy.
Browse the individual packs below. Each is £2. Click any one to see what's inside. If you want to search for an individual word, you can do that by using the search bar.
A free word to try - 'toujours'
'toujours' is one of those French words that's hard to hold on to - seven letters, three of them silent, and no obvious reason why it means 'always'. This free pack takes it apart. It goes back to the two Latin words hiding inside it, 'totus' ('whole') and a word for 'day', and follows them through Old French to the word a learner meets today - with the English cousins 'total', 'journey' and 'journal' turning up along the way. Same as the paid packs, printed the same two ways. Download it, print it, see if the approach suits your learner before buying anything.
Frequently asked questions
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Is this suitable for GCSE?
Yes. The packs cover common vocabulary that KS3 and KS4 learners meet right through to GCSE, and they're useful for reinforcing words that need to come back quickly under exam conditions.
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Are the packs printable?
Yes. Each one is a downloadable PDF, made for printing and for short, structured sessions. It prints two ways - large cards to laminate and ring-bind into a deck, or a single reference sheet.
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Do I need to be teaching French to use these?
No. Whether your child is learning French at school or you're teaching it at home, the packs work the same way - they make the structure of each word clear enough to use without a language-teaching background.
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No. They support whatever French teaching is already happening, at school or at home - strengthening understanding and helping vocabulary stay put.
Free Word Histories
Alongside the packs, there are free posts over on The Wordhord exploring individual French words in depth - how a word developed, how its form carries meaning, and how it connects to related vocabulary. They use the same approach as the paid materials: patterns, not just translations.
Photograph someone facing the light and they come out dark - mostly edge, their detail lost in the brightness behind. Painters and photographers call that 'contre-jour', French for 'against the light'. The word crossed from painting to photography without changing at all - photographers in the nineteenth century simply picked up a painter's term from the seventeenth and carried it across, which is why a 400-year-old art word now lives on camera settings.
What's included
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 1615 painting origin and the move into photography
The English-links section - 'counter', 'contrast', 'contradict' from the same 'contra'
The sources page
A short how-to-use guide for the adult
For personal use in home education and tutoring only.
Who it's for
It suits KS3 and KS4 French learners, students of art and photography, anyone who likes word-building, home-educated children, and specialist tuition students including those with dyslexia. It's a good bridge word - a French term a learner may already have met in an art or photography lesson without knowing it was French.
It's a more specialist word than 'bonjour' or 'journee' - a learner meets it less often, and mainly in art and photography. That's part of its interest, but it isn't core everyday vocabulary, and the resource doesn't pretend otherwise.
Why this exists
A word made of two clear parts - 'against' and 'the light' - is easier to hold than a term learned as a lump. 'Contre-jour' is one where the picture is exact: once a learner sees the figure black against the bright window, the word explains itself, and the shared 'contra' opens a door onto 'contrast' and 'contradict' too.
Originally created for my dyslexic son.
Related resources
Same topic, in L'atelier des mots: its two light-family cousins here, 'abat-jour' and 'ajoure', and the wider 'jour' family - 'bonjour', 'journee', 'sejour', 'journal', 'ajourner'.
Same root: all built on 'jour', from Latin 'diurnum'. 'Contre-jour', 'abat-jour' and 'ajoure' use the light-sense; the rest use the day-sense.
Free in the Wordhord: the English cousins 'journey' and 'journal', and (from the other half of this word) the 'contra' family. And the Compendium post on why word origins help with modern languages, dyslexic learners especially.
Available now as a PDF download.
How it prints - two forms
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.
About this resource
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.