¡Vámonos!

Posted by lisibo at 22:00 0 comments    

Labels: funny, spanish, videos

A beautiful story for the end of October - made me go 'ah!'



Here are the words in case you want them!

Posted by lisibo at 15:36 0 comments    

Labels: cultural awareness, songs, spanish, stories

Having accosted him at the bus stop, I had the pleasure of travelling from Cowes to Newport with Adam Sutcliffe last Friday. Not quite sure why or how the subject arose, but I do know that at some point during the journey I said 'This weekend I will mainly be wearing red' as Adam reminded me of it on Saturday evening when I was in my fourth red outfit of the weekend saying 'you weren't joking, were you?!'

So, it amused me to read the following article on BBC Mundo:

Más sexy si se viste de rojo.
¿Quiere volver a un hombre loco de amor? Vístase de rojo. O al menos eso fue lo que encontró un estudio científico.

Basically, it suggests that if a woman wears red, she is seen as more attractive and more worth spending money on by men (but not by women!)

I'd just decided I would stick to one colour to save problems of deciding what to wear jewellery and accessory-wise and I'd just bought some lovely clothes in Barcelona. But it makes you wonder, doesn't it?? ;o)

Posted by lisibo at 23:03 0 comments    

Labels: funny, IoWConference, news, spanish

Having congratulated José 'Así se hace' Picardo on the 1st birthday of Box of Tricks yesterday, it dawned on me that it must be ¡Vámonos!'s birthday soon - and then I realised I'd missed it in all the fun and excitement of the IoW conference!

So belatedly, Happy Birthday to my lovely pink blingy blog ;o)

As I explained in my first post on 23rd October last year, I procrastinated and vacilated for a long time before finally taking the plunge and starting a blog. Having said that, I have loved blogging - it suits the chatty, enthusiastic, got to share the news part of me, and also satisfies the part of me that is frustrated by day to day stuff. And it means that I can write which appeals to the part of me that hasn't seen much action since my Uni of Sheffield days.

Of course, I don't just blog for my own satisfaction - I hope people find my blog interesting and useful - but I really think I'd carry on even if I didn't get read. At times this year, I have hidden from reality by blogging and it has kept me going through the hardest and saddest time of my life.

And it has also restored my feeling that I do have something to say that's worth hearing - sometimes it's hard when everyone at school tells you that you're so good but you know that they actually don't really know if you are or not as they have no idea of how Primary languages or new technologies work. So it's important to me that my peers - like Jo and Joe and José (and others whose names don't start with Jo!)- tell me what's what.


Added to which, without this blog I probably wouldn't have met and made friends with so many people across the country and world who have enriched my life so much with their advice, thoughts and funny comments.

So to all those who have read ¡Vámonos! over the last year, keep reading and .... xxx

Posted by lisibo at 14:00 4 comments    

Labels: birthday, Jo Rhys-Jones, Joe Dale, Jose Picardo, lisibo, thanks

I've had the pleasure this weekend of finally meeting Mark Pentleton. Can't believe we have never actually met before! Mark is a really busy man so I grabbed the opportunity to find out more about why exactly he is up from before dawn to way after nightfall!

I first heard of Mark when he worked on Partners in Excellence (PiE) in Scotland, a project with the purpose of raising achievement in East Ayrshire by establishing a virtual school with pupils contributing through such things as film making, animation and latterly podcasting. The project involved 29 schools across islands and down to South Ayrshire, a very large geographical area with diverse sizes and types of schools. For some, the project became a case of expanding peer group of pupils in tiny schools by use of VLE to develop a community.

The PiEcast was a way of keeping everyone in touch as well as a learning tool for the particpants. It began as a podcast containing news about events, interviews and news reports to give the community a voice. As time went on, this expanded to include a learning element such as listening material in French, Spanish, German and cultural element. This then led to something else - the Verbcast. This was an intense 10-12 minute nightly podcast for four weeks for 25 young people, looking at French verbs. Having listened to the Verbcast, pupils received a text message each day testing them on what they had learned the previous day; the answer was posted to the website - very interactive! Verbcast used relaxation techniques - feedback was good from pupils and teachers were really pleased with the grasp that pupils had of verbs after participation. (Note to Mark - do it in Spanish please!!)

Radio Lingua Network
Mark saw a gap in the market for beginners Spanish podcasts - Notes in Spanish is good for intermediate. So he started Coffee Break Spanish with Ciara in October 2006; a premium version with access to extra materials was launched in January 2007. Lesson 79 was looking at imperfect subjunctive so it wasn't all easy peasy!!

Mark then began his quest for world domination as follows:
February 2007 - My Daily Phrase German / Italian
September 2007 - Coffee Break French - on episode 41
October 2007 - One Minute Languages x6 in response to requests for basic phrase podcast - Norwegian, Polish, Luxembourgish, German, Gaelic, Russian - 10 lessons
Another 6 just launched - Mandarin, Catalan, Danish, Japanese, French, Romanian
September 2008 - Show Time Spanish - after first few episodes of preparation got soap opera for show - to be released at end as an entity in its own right
October 2008 - Write back soon - EFL podcast tackling phrasal verbs - emails between students using lots of phrasal verbs that are then explained.
Although he didn't mention it, I particularly like his idea of a week of podcasts leading up to Valentine's day last year entitled Love Lingo that taught the language of LUUURVE in Spanish, German, Italian, French and Norwegian!


Podcasting fits our lifestyle - it's hard to learn from a course that is linked to a text book when you’re driving, walking etc. It's so much easier to listen alone- and less obvious too!! And that's why podcasting is so successful!

Mark then shared some future projects for RLN - but I'm not allowed to blog those so you'll have to wait and see ;o)

So, to the lessons learned:

Learning -
Podcasts give-

• content in the learner’s context
• ‘secret learning’ - lack of peer pressure
• massive storage opportunities - 670 hrs in 5 years lang learning/1000 on an iPod
• access - if it’s there, they might just use it! If it’s not, they don’t have the opportunity!
• just in time delivery via RSS - time things to happen just before an exam, at a particular time etc
• learners learn most by making podcasts

Sharing information
Podcasts show that

• learning not just for pupils
• podcasting inherently builds community
• collaboration

Style of delivery
Podcasting should NOT be recording of classes delivered - must be created eg four main points rather than whole lesson
Should they be scripted or non-scripted - most of RLN's are non scripted

Technical lessons

• equipment - CO3U Samsung USB mike
• mic techniques
• recording
• systems
• ‘respecting the ear’ - if people are listening through headphones, avoid crackles!!

I found all this fascinating - I am not going to launch a business empire like Mark - for a start, he's too good and I wouldn't stand a chance against that competition. However, the lessons are applicable to all podcasting and podcasters. It also all showed exactly why Mark never seemingly sleeps - he has no time!!

If you're going to the Language Show this weekend, you can catchup with Mark and the RLN crew yourself on stand 20!

Keep up the good work Mark - and I look forward to the next lot of RLN projects in the pipeline - they sound very exciting - but my lips (and cheeky tweets!) are sealed ;o)

So - for all your language needs - check out RLN - there's something for everyone!!

Posted by lisibo at 13:50 0 comments    

Labels: Mark Pentleton, podcasts, RLN

One of the highlights of the IoW conference was learning how to podcast on a Mac. Not so much for what I learned as to how I was taught and by whom.

Don’t get me wrong; it was very exciting learning how to use Garageband to podcast and great fun too. But more important to me than that was the fact that the session was delivered by four pupils from Heathfield Technology College with little or no ‘teacher’ input.

The pupils had written the presentation themselves and taught us what they had learned from Shirelands CLC, represented by Lesley Hagger-Vaughan of whom I have heard many great things! They were confident, cogent and very professional in their delivery- first of all , explaining the ‘W’s of podcasting - why/when/what/how/where before demonstrating the whole process of making a podcast and then splitting it into manageable chunks. Each stage was re-demonstrated before we were set off in small groups to try it out. And at all ties, there was a pupil at hand to check we were getting on OK, or to give us extra help if we needed it.

• A storyboard was produced.
• We rehearsed using an iPod with a microphone attachment.
• We recorded using a condenser microphone, splitting the audio into manageable chucks to allow for easier editing. At this point we were encoraged to make sure that we ‘acted’ with our voices and didn’t keep it monotone!
• Next came editing the audio chunks to eliminate pauses, create space for the intro music and ensure that it was all corectly recorded.
• Using the ‘Jingles’ option, we added music to the audio, lowering the music so that the voice could be heard over the top of it.
• Finally we added photographs to illustrate the podcast.
• (My group even managed to add a Powerpoint slide ours!)

The session concluded with a showcase of the three finished podcasts - all about our visit to the Isle of Wight. I had to rush off to my round table presentation with Jo Rhys-Jones so didn’t get to download our podcast onto my memory stick so I can’t post it here, but it was very good! ;o)

Apparently, it was the first time that these pupils had done such a session but you’d never have known. They delivered clearly, supported one another, answered questions when asked and kept perfectly to their timings - other presenters weren’t so good at that - especially the ones talking about Primary MFL ;o)

And, with the Brummie accents, it was like being at home!

Posted by lisibo at 11:41 0 comments    

Labels: inspiring, IoWConference, macs, podcasts

I attended a really interesting session on Digital voice recorders delivered by Kath Holton from Argoed High School.

She began by talking about her criteria for a good digital voice recorder -

• high quality - recording and manufacture
• ease of uploading eg via USB
• good internal microphone
• the type of file it records eg mp3 is best as can be downloaded onto pupils’ iPods and mp3 players
• ease of access for staff and pupils
• robust

She suggested a number of suitable DVRs and referred us to Joe’s blog to see his ideas on the subject!

She then shared how she used digital voice recorders in her MFL classes in several ways.

Firstly, she used it for pupils to practice for GCSE. Pupils could record their response to questions / their presentations for their teachers to hear and assess when convenient, and also to provide a record that could be listened to not only by the pupil, but also by others - if the pupil has given permission. In addition, teachers recorded revision material in this way. The pupil response to this was very positive as it gave them the possibility to listen/revise wherever was convenient - on their phone, iPod, or stereo etc.

A second use was to record evidence of KS3 conversations and speaking activiites. Each of the three teachers at the school have three DVRs. Pupils are given the recorder and allowed to go out inot the corridor to record their pairwork. At the end of the lesson, the teacher downloads these onto her memory stick and can listen to, assess the audio files before keeping them as evidence. Kath advised that it’s important to remind pupils to state their name at the start of the recordings to save time trying to work out who is talking.

These files can also be used as starters in the next lesson with an AfL focus - pupils discussing stars and wishes on the class focus of, say, pronunciation. And the same files can also be used by staff for moderation purposes , allowing discussion of levelling etc.

Kath then went on to talk about the storage of files in a Wetpaint wiki, thus enabling pupils and staff to upload to a single space. she had previously tried a blog but felt that the wiki was better as it allows more freedom.

The focus then moved to the use of Voki with her pupils. She has made an account but her pupils do not have one - she encourages them to respond to her Voki using the comment button and text to speech. I found this really interesting as I had not discovered this feature (you think you know all about a tool...) You can leave a comment by clicking on the comment button and choosing to use an existing Voki or make your own. Kath encourages the pupils to do this in their time, as the making of the Voki can take time!! But she has found this to be a very successful activity with pupils ‘showing off’ in a way that they may feel uncomfortable doing in class. Kath has even had Voki from parents who have wanted to join in!

Kath finished off by mentioning Quizlet - www.quizlet.com a free tool that she uses to practice vocabulary, and then sharing an anecdote about giving pupils ownership of their work - by using their sound effects as a ‘highlighter’ of key concepts in presentations, they feel that the task is personal to them.

The great news is that Joe has interviewed Kath and you too can hear what Kath has to say about DVR as well as many other things by listening to the audio and reading the notes here.
You can also catch Kath on the CILT Cymru DVD in the ICT section.

Really interesting stuff. I’ve used Audacity so far to record pupils - problematic as there is a lot of classroom noise and I really don’t like them lugging the laptops out in to the corridor. But a DVR would be a different story... wonder if ICT has spent its budget yet?? ;o)

Posted by lisibo at 08:04 3 comments    

Labels: afl, audacity, digitalvoicerecording, IoWConference, sound

Every time I have heard Drew Buddie speak, I have been amused, informed and challenged to go away and investigate - and this time was no exception. Drew aka @digitalmaverick delivered a session on Web2.0 tools in his own inimitable style, taking his inspiration from Alan Levine aka CogDogBlog / CogDogRoo and his 50 ways to tell a story. You can find a full list on the CogDogRoo wiki but we only had time to look a few of them including Bubbleshare, Ourstory.com, Animoto and Kerpoof.

With @pj23harry, @jokingswear @orunner and @lisibo tweeting proceedings, it was unsurprising that Twitter was explored in some depth with most of the session attendees signing up for accounts and starting to befriend one another. Drew encouraged us all to write our Twitter names on or name badges so that we would be able to recognise who had a Twitter profile and follow them. This fitted well with the big screen in the hall that displayed all tweets to @iowconference08, the conference Twitter account.

We also had a look at Voki and discussed how it might be used, and touched on Voicethread, before thinking about wikis and blogs. Drew showed people how to sign up for a Blogger blog, and also mentioned NING but as blogs and NING are blocked on IoW, that was something that people had to go away to investigate further.

Although I knew about many of these sites and tools, it was good to be reminded of them and offered ideas for using them. It was also great that people chipped in little bits of information that they had to share, and that included people via Twitter. And of course, the entertainment factor was high, especially as the master computer for the room was at the back and Drew had to keep running up and down the room to operate things until he coopted Paul Harrington into doing it for him ;o)

Posted by lisibo at 16:15 0 comments    

Labels: ICT, ideas, tools, Twitter, voicethread, voki

I finally arrived home at 10.45pm last night after the Isle of Wight Conference, having spent time on the train preparing blog posts about some of the sessions I attended. I'll publish them over the next day or so, but I really must spend some time with my family who were pleased to see me this morning when they woke up!

Suffice to say, I had a brilliant time and will let you know my thoughts as and when they develop in my befuddled tired mind.

Posted by lisibo at 13:50 0 comments    

Labels: IoWConference

Currently in a session on Web2.0 by Drew Buddie who is whizzing through demos of a a dazzling array of tools - people are logging into and creating a Blogger account, but as I have one, thought I'd grab the opportunity to blog!

The IoW Conference started off last night with an informal meeting in the Castle Inn and is now well underway with sessions with staggered starts meaning that there is an ebb and flow of people around the school.

More posting later!

Posted by lisibo at 12:51 2 comments    

Not the bumper crop we had hoped to post but we did manage to finish three despite crashing laptops, intermittent Internet connection and microphones that wouldn't work!


Get a Voki now!



Get a Voki now!

Posted by lisibo at 15:21 0 comments    

Labels: audacity, voki, wcps

Get a Voki now!

Posted by lisibo at 14:43 0 comments    

Labels: audacity, voki, wcps

I'm just showing 6VH how to get around our little problem with Voki not recording directly by using Audacity. So brace yourself for lots of Voki coming at you this afternoon ;o)

Thanks to Zara in 5SD for letting me use her sound file to demonstrate!


Get a Voki now!

Posted by lisibo at 12:28 0 comments    

Labels: audacity, voki, wcps

For the last couple of weeks, I've spent my lunchtimes getting rather hot and bothered rehearsing three dance routines in Spanish with a group of Key Stage 2 pupils at WCPS in preparation for an excting challenge.

Following on from the success of Take Ten en français,(see Jo Rhys-Jones' blog post for more details) Devon Education Services is developing Take Ten en español, and we were asked to take part. I know - Sutton Coldfield is miles from Devon but it all happened after an 'on the hoof' chat with Chris Wakeley at Primary Languages Show last year when Jo Rhys-Jones volunteered my services!

Take Ten is 'a fantastic little resource from Devon Education Services. It’s a handy pocket-sized book full of games and activities that can be used as PE warm-ups or more sedately in the classroom as Brain-gym exercises.' The English translation is alongside the Spanish and it links languages and physical activities, neatly addressing two initiatives at once!

So, along with five Devon schools, at the start of term we received a DVD and CD with our three dances. When I asked in assembly for volunteers, half of Key Stage 2 wanted to join in - then they saw the dances and quite a few dropped out. Having said that, there were 36 stalwarts and it was SOOO hard to choose the final team of 10 - but choose I did and this morning, the big day arrived!

Tracy Adams and Simon the cameraman arrived from Devon and we set to work dancing our socks off, resplendent in our Take Ten T-shirts. I'm just glad that I was dancing behind the camera as I was getting rather tired by the end - and I am quite fit! The kids did so well that filming was completed in record time - even with chocolate biscuit and juice breaks! In fact, the kids were rather disappointed that they'd finished so we had a bit of a muck around - see our videos!




We can't wait for the final product to be published so we can see what it looks like. but until then, we have our Take Ten en español T-shirt and photographs to remind us of the day!
As soon as it's available, I'll let you know as it's a really good resource and well worth buying for your schools.

Posted by lisibo at 12:57 0 comments    

Labels: active learning, CD, dance, DVD, songs, TakeTen, wcps

Only a few days left now until the Isle of Wight Conference this weekend.

I'll be heading down on Friday for two days (Saturday and Sunday) of PD and social networking at its best - there are so many sessions on offer that we're spoilt for choice - and I've got to fit in delivering one of them with the lovely Jo Rhys-Jones with whom I am also hosting a 'Round Table' - I hope this refers to a discussion not a piece of furniture ;o) I'm really looking forward to hearing some inspiring presenters like Mark Pentleton, Drew Buddie, Chris Fuller, Adam Sutcliffe - I could go on and on - and meet up with friends, old new and virtual!

To see what's on offer - and it is a very impressive lineup - check out Integrating ICT in the MFL classroom, the blog of the mastermind behind the conference, Mr Joe Dale.

I acknowledge that it is a long way, but it is well worth the trip, and is a bargain at £100. And it's not too late to book! Download the booking form from here - you know it makes sense :o)

Posted by lisibo at 21:04 0 comments    

Labels: Chris_Fuller, IoWConference, Jo Rhys-Jones, Joe Dale, Mark Pentleton

I've just noticed that the visit counter on ¡Vámonos! has just reached five figures - how exciting!

At last count there have been 10,004 visits - and there have been more as the counter wasn't in place from the start as I didn't want to be discouraged by the lack of action! For someone who gives the impression of being very confident but actually isn't, I am really excited that people have actually read my blog and that, in less than a year, it's been 'hit' over 10,000 times.

I know it might have been 4 people 2,500 times each but my Mum is computer illiterate, my husband has all blogs blocked on his laptop by his employers, my Dad sadly didn't have very long to access it and my kids are only interested in the posts that make noises, involve games or involve them, so unlikely!

When I reached the last milestone I blogged - 6000 hits on 22nd June - I set myself the goal of reaching five figures by Christmas so I've reached it just over two months early!

Little did I suspect when I started last October that I would be here nearly a year later having been read by so many!

Muchísimas gracias a todos xx

Photo - Marco on Flickr

Posted by lisibo at 20:57 4 comments    

Labels: counter, news

Guest blogger - Adam 6VH
I enjoyed making Vokis so much that I decided to make one at home! This one is not Spanish but I managed to play around with the accents and this is the result!

Get a Voki now!



PS I know he's hijacked my blog ;o) Sra. Stevens

Posted by lisibo at 14:25 0 comments    

Labels: voki, wcps

Get a Voki now!

You may have noticed rather a lot of Voki action on ¡Vámonos! today as 6VH and I had an experiment with Voki.com. We're coming to the end of unit on school and to round it off, we were making up paragraphs about school. As the SIP is highlighting AfL and because I think it's a valuable way of monitoring, assessing and practising listening and speaking, we're doing lots of audio recording. Yesterday, 3AT had a go at recording Spanish weather forecasts using Audacity. This morning 5SD were recording information about the solar system in Spanish - they all tried to do it at the same time having discovered that the laptops had in built microphones (cue various raps, football chants and random utterances before they got to work) but this proved to be unsatisfactory so we set up two recording areas outside the classroom and in the cloakroom.

This afternoon, 6VH were supposed to planning their scripts for the first part of the lesson. However, being inquisitive kids, they noticed that I was making sure that Voki worked at school (it does sometimes and not others so have to check there and then!) and before I knew it were on logged on and following what I was doing.

Sadly, the record facility in Voki wasn't working today, so i had to record in Audacity, export as a .WAV and then use the upload function to make my (introductory) Voki. I uploaded it to my blog as I couldn't log in either!

Lots of the kids, by the time I played mine back, were well into exploring Voki. They had a good nose around and worked out that they could use the text to speech, and discovered that there are various Spanish voices - male and female - that read your text surprisingly fluently. I was very pleased with their independence.

If only we had experienced more reliable internet connection, less PCs crashing and a less hit-and-miss reaction from the Voki site, then we would have had more than five Voki published on my blog. However, the excitement generated in the class as we published those that did make it was a ray of sunshine after a really bad day.

Next week, we're going to make more and hopefully use Voicethread too to share our thoughts!

Posted by lisibo at 21:24 0 comments    

We've had fun and games with crashing computers so we're hoping this will work :os


Get a Voki now!

Posted by lisibo at 15:24 0 comments    

Labels: voki, wcps

And we're on a roll here - here's comes Lauren's punk rocker!!


Get a Voki now!

Posted by lisibo at 15:22 0 comments    

Labels: voki, wcps

Here's Ella's Voki, delivered by Charlie 'el perro' :o)


Get a Voki now!

Posted by lisibo at 15:11 0 comments    

Labels: voki, wcps

As we're having issues with recording sound directly into Voki, Chris cleverly found that you could type in the text and select a Mexican accent. Here's his Voki!


Get a Voki now!

Posted by lisibo at 14:57 0 comments    

Labels: voki, wcps

Here's our first Voki!!


Get a Voki now!

Posted by lisibo at 14:49 0 comments    

Labels: voki, wcps

Bon dia des de Barcelona! Didn´t think I´d get to blog from Barcelona but as ´mi marido´is ´trabajando´and the hotel has a PC with free wifi, ´aquí estoy´.

I am having a lovely time and there´s still more than a day to go.

Yesterday we went to Montjüic and visited MNAC, Fundació Miró and el Poble Espanyol.

Today we´ve visited la Sagrada Familia (I expected scaffolding but there was far too much of it!) and then Parc Güell. And it´s only lunchtime.

Next on the agenda is Port Vell and Port Olimpic before el Barri Gòtic etc and some serious shopping tomorrow.

I´ve taken lots of pictures - typical tourist ;o) - but as ´el marido´is using his laptop and this PC doesn´t Bluetooth or have an SD card reader, I can´t downlaod them at the moment. However, I have ´borrowed´one by the lovely Theo K to illustrate my post!

Fins aviat!


PS I am trying really hard to speak Catalan - after all, that´s why I´ve been revising. However, every time I try I am either looked at blankly or answered in Spanish. So, either I´m trying it out on people who can´t speak Catalan, my Mallorquí accent is confusing them, or I really am rubbish at Catalan! Hoping it´s not the latter ;os

Posted by lisibo at 15:37 0 comments    

Labels: Barcelona, catalan, holidays, Spain

Soooo excited! Tomorrow I'm off to Spain with Mr S (and without the little Master Ss!)

Three nights in Barcelona - definitely not long enough but I'm grateful for any time spent in Spain. And Barcelona - wow! I've studied the history of the city at University, learned the language and read books (fact and fiction) about its streets. So can't wait to be let loose to explore properly - last time I was on an organised trip and had a measly 2 hours to ourselves! Mr S will just have to follow me around and as long as he is allowed to partake of coffee, beer and tapas at regular intervals, he'll be fine!

Hope to take lots of pictures of my own, but here are a few by other people to set the scene.




And a brilliant 3D movie of how the Sagrada Familia might / will look when it's finally finished - in 2020!!

Posted by lisibo at 21:37 2 comments    

Labels: Barcelona, catalan, Spain

I received a missive from the school Bursar last week informing me that I had not spent my budget yet and warning me that if I didn't get a move on, the remaining balance would be 're-allocated.'

Well, faced with the prospect of Art getting more paper and paint that is then locked up so we can't touch it, or PE getting even more equipment to lose, I set about finding ways to spend, spend, spend.

I am not adverse to shopping and just love a good brochure so it was really a hardship! However, I did resent being forced to spend my money before I'd really been able to decide on the best items on which to spend it for the benefit of the kids. I did toy with the idea of purchasing a fire extinguisher for a certain Scottish Fizzics teacher who is at risk of combustion without one, but then got lost in the pages of the lovely glossy leaflets that I stash away for such occasions.

So, what did I buy?

• borders for displays
• posters for walls all around the school
• a subscription to Babelzone - a bargain at £49 with a wealth of sound files, games, listening activities and more matched to the QCA units.
• stickers
• Spanish syllables and blends pocket charts
• a bingo game
• and various other bits and bobs.

Added to some bilingual books, subscription to Atantôt and set of dictionaries I'd purchased earlier in the year, and the Sónica software that we bought with Tesco vouchers, that's not bad - and Ive still got another £170 to spend!!

Next on the list -

• more dictionaries and a simple grammar book (working on learner independence this year!)
• some recordable postcards
• an easi-Speak microphone
• a talking photo album
• plasticine (for animating!)
• and I'm tempted by Talk balls (no comments!)

And when the Head gives me the £150 she's promised owed for cover, I'm going to get Little Tails of the Unexpected too.

So, off to check out more glossy brochures (on and offline!) and make sure that the Bursar is familiar with the details of Linguascope, TTS, Little Linguist, Beelingua, Costcutters and Language Stickers.

Any suggestions as to what else I might buy??

Posted by lisibo at 20:39 1 comments    

Labels: money, primary languages, resources, wcps

Just been checking my e-mails and came across one from Helen Myers that I thought I might share with you!  

In response to a request for a song about pets in French, Helen posted - 
To the national anthem: (thanks to Rachel Hawkes for reminder of this .. I think it originates from a CILT Pathfinder / Steven Fawkes) ...

Posted by lisibo at 20:12 3 comments    

Labels: free resources, french, ideas, primary languages, secondary languages, songs

I've just made this motivational poster using Flickr Toys (http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/) - and what could be more motivating than a cold pint of San Miguel. Especially those particular pints, waiting for me when I finally arrived at our favourite chiringuito on the Playa de la Carihuela after arriving a day after the rest of my (extended) family having been delayed by French air traffic controllers, and without my suitcase that had been sent to Palma de Mallorca. Never has a pint tasted SOOOOOO good ;o)

You can make photo mosaics, postcards, jigsaws and all sorts of other items on Flickr Toys - have a nose around and see what you can make to motivate or amuse yourself!

Posted by lisibo at 22:31 4 comments    

Following a request this afternoon at the meeting of the Birmingham Primary Language Coaches for a forum on which they could meet, discuss and share, a new NING has been born!

Birmingham Primary Languages, as the blurb suggests, is a place for those involved in - or soon to be involved in - teaching languages in Primary schools to discuss, share ideas and resources, offer and receive help and advice, and generally keep in contact with what's going on across the city.

Over the next week or so, I'll be explaining what's what on the site but I've started off the forum with an easy question to get the ball rolling.

So, if you're involved in Primary Languages in the Birmingham area, please join and start sharing and asking questions. If you want to make any suggestions, you can leave me a message on my page on the site (click my icon) or a private message by clicking the envelope below my name on my page. or you can always leave me a comment here.

Don't forget, if you're involved in Primary Languages anywhere in the country, Talkabout Primary MFL is a must-join-NING! ;o)

Posted by lisibo at 20:15 2 comments    

Labels: BirminghamPrimaryLanguages, ning, TalkaboutPrimaryMFL