Primary School

ENRICHMENT ACTIVITIES

Engagement in fun activities creates a desire to learn.

Throughout the academic year we offer activities and opportunities for our students to enjoy themselves and to interact meaningfully with their peers.

Guest artists

Once a year, the we aim to invite one or more professional artists to conduct workshops with our students in order to transmit their know-how and encourage students to express themselves through art. Recently, the painter Mathieu Wührmann and photographer Alexandra Serrano delighted children with their workshops. Students painted leaves and learned the workings of a darkroom and even developed their own photos.

Primary Play

The Primary Play in June is one of the social and pedagogical highlights of the CM2’s final year in Primary and is attended by the whole primary school and parents in the historic Municipal Theatre of Fontainebleau. All the CM2 Anglophone classes perform in the play which is seen as a team-building, bonding event as the children graduate from Primary. Costumes, scenery and music accompany the pupils’ star performance, to the delight of young and old.

Family Sports Day

The Anglophone Family Sports Day normally takes place in September. It is a good way for newcomers to meet other parents and children in the Section. Traditional games such as the egg and spoon race, the sack race and the three-legged race run alongside some more inventive ones, such as the welly-wanging competition.

The Christmas Party

In December, the Anglophone Section organises a huge Christmas party to which all the Primary students are invited to. It consists of a myriad of activity and craft tables, a photo booth, a dance floor and of course refreshments in abundance in a room decorated like Santa’s workshop. Recently, we have the privilege to use the grand salle des fêtes of the Municipal Theatre and the mayor dropped in for a glass of mulled wine.

Trips

In all the year groups there are day-trips throughout the year and parents may be asked to accompany these excursions. There are also residential trips. Our central location means that excursions to the landing beaches of Normandy, the wild coast of Brittany and the volcanoes of Auvergne are less than 5 hours coach trip away.

For exploration outside the classroom, we are within easy walking distance of the world-famous Fontainebleau forest and château, theatres and cinema.

The Library

Every Anglophone classroom has part of the Section’s Primary library where students can browse through books or borrow English language fiction or non-fiction books. Students are encouraged to write reports on books they have enjoyed to help others choose which ones they would like to read.

Our English teachers have put together the following suggested reading lists by class. This is suggested, not compulsory reading, aimed at encouraging our students to enjoy reading and a great variety of literature.

After-School Activities

In France extracurricular sports and cultural activities are organised by local associations and clubs and students are encourage to sign up for their favourite sports activities during the Fête des Associations Fontainebleau/Avon that takes place every year early in September.

Football players are welcome to join the Fontainebleau INTER football team, comprising mainly anglophone players, who annually competes in the Albion cup, a football tournament for international schools and sections in Ile de France.