¡Vámonos!

Further to my previous post about the wonderful STORYBIRD site, I've got good news and bad news!

Posted by lisibo at 19:20 2 comments    

Labels: ICT, ideas, languages, storytelling, Twitter

I'm on a blog writing roll this week aren't I?And being an inquisitive gal, I went and had a look.

Posted by lisibo at 16:05 3 comments    

Labels: ideas, languages, primary languages, secondary languages, storytelling

As Jo Rhys-Jones kindly pointed out last night, in all my blogging I have failed to post my own presentation!

Posted by lisibo at 09:37 0 comments    

Labels: Hampshire_Language _Conference, ICT, ideas, languages, primary languages, secondary languages

Whilst writing an article on storytelling for a future publication, I found a song I'd downloaded to which I wanted to refer. As often happens, I couldn't recall whether I'd been sent it by a friend, downloaded it from a fora or found it online.

After a bit of searching - which took me once more to the wonderful West Sussex GFL language resources - I found that it had come from a site called MrsJonesRoom. When I approached the eponymous MrsJones for permission to use the song, she was very accomodating and pointed me towards other Spanish resources on her page.

I've had a look at some of the links and particularly like the downloadable mini books and the songs, complete with sound files of the tunes! There are even some Spanish Disney songs - great for EDL? Sadly there are a number of 'dead' links which is a shame but it's well worth a look.

Posted by lisibo at 22:31 0 comments    

Labels: free resources, ideas, songs, spanish

I received notification a few days ago that the latest edition of the Primary languages ezine is available on the Primary Languages website.
All about cross curricular links this time, Ruth Churchill from CILT says-

articles include integrating languages with work on mini beasts, keeping fit, growing sunflowers and music. There are also features on CLIL (Content Language Integrated Learning) from the University of Nottingham’s Dr Philip Hood and a research project involving French and the Tudors. All this with the latest news and resources.

Visit the primary languages website to read the latest issues online and find out how to subscribe to automatically receive future issues for free: www.primarylanguages.org.uk/link/ezine.aspx

Lots there to give you ideas ready for September - and links to more advice and ideas if you can't get enough!

Posted by lisibo at 18:15 0 comments    

Labels: CILT, ezine, ideas, primary languages, resources

Not a post about S Club 7 (athough I will say that my boys are big fans of Hannah who's in Primeval now!) but about something that was reinforced in my mind last night.

The Assistant Head at school had been asked to run part of the PDM on EAL (English as an additional language) and to give some brief ideas on how to make life easier for EAL pupils at school. We don't have many but it is an important issue - and one that is relevant in general too! On a recent course she had attended, the presenter had taught them some Welsh to put the delegates in the position of an EAL learner, and Jan had asked me to emulate this - her exact request was 'you know an oscure Spanish dialect don't you? Could you teach us some?' Not sure how the Catalans would respond to hearing Catalan described as such but I took the challenge.

The idea was to teach numbers 1-12 and then do some basic maths but without using visual prompts like fingers, cards, notes, actions or mimes until about half way through the session. Thus the staff were put in the place of a learner who is capable to doing the task - all our staff can add and subtract numbers up to 12!- but don't have the vocabulary to understand the task.

What struck me was how hard I found it to teach without using actions - I literally had to put my hands in my pockets or hold them together to stop myself gesturing. I found it really uncomfortable to see the looks on my colleagues' faces as they tried to work out what I wanted them to do - and I think I caved in quicker than I should have done. My style is very much waving my arms around, pointing, miming and using any clue I can to enable the pupils to understand.

When asked how they'd felt, it was obvious that the exercise had hit the mark as the staff immediately pinpointed the difficulty of understanding the task being the biggest stumbling block, and how much easier it had been once actions had been introduced, or the list of numbers being written on the wall. One colleague said that she'd given up trying after a few minutes as she was so baffled; another that she'd felt so inadequate and small as others had caught on more quickly than her, and almost humiliated (once she'd understood it) by the simplicity of the task that she'd been unable to do.

So, despite my discomfort at teaching in a way that is alien to me, I think the exercise served to underline just how important gesture and mime are in enabling understanding.

We played a game from Digital Dialects as part of my mini-lesson. Well worth a look if you want to learn - or even just look at - some basics in a wide range of different languages!

Posted by lisibo at 10:08 1 comments    

Labels: active learning, catalan, CPD, ideas, personal, wcps

Friday was a busy day, starting off in London with an animation course run by Oscar Stringer at Institute of Education.

Working in two groups, we spent the day developing our animation skills, producing two short animations from initial idea to finished film complete with transitions, titles, sound and music. We used ICanAnimate to capture the animation then exported the film to iMovie to 'finish' it. My group used my Macbook and a Hue webcam - and it was lovely to meet the man behind Hue in the UK during the day as well (mine's on order from Amazon - went for the blue one in the end!) whilst the other group used an iMac and a driverless webcam.

James, Carolyn and I took our inspiration from the Mr Men. Firstly, our models followed the principles of Mr Men (which are also important principles for plasticine animation - big features, bold shapes and simple designs) and secondly, we made an animation with a message - suitable for PSHE and based on friendship in the playground - a lonely girl on a bench wanting to join in with a game of ball.

The day reinforced all that I already knew about animating - the importance of keeping things simple, of planning well before you start, of working in collaboration and of how much fun it is!
We laughed so much making the animations - my group's is posted below. This is the English version. We recorded three different ending - with the bench saying THE END in English, French and Spanish - so that we can use it in our classrooms and dub it in different languages.

If you want to find out more about animating, I can't recommend Oscar's courses enough. He has a real gift for making it all seem very simple (and it is) and conveys the great potential that animation has as a tool for creativity, collaboration, innovation and progression. Check out his website and his blog to find out more.



Amazing what you can do with a carpet tile, some plasticine and an idea!

Posted by lisibo at 20:50 0 comments    

Labels: animation, creative curriculum, creativity, ideas, Oscar Stringer, primary languages

Thanks to Alex Blagona and Joe Dale who recorded and edited the audio, here's the Slidecast of my recent presentation at Language World in Leicester.

And if you want to listen on your mp3 player, you can download my podcast Lisibo talks!

Posted by lisibo at 21:44 0 comments    

Labels: ideas, lisibo, lisibo talks, presentations, primary, primary languages

Received an e-mail from CILT today with the latest copy of the Primary Languages e-Zine.

This online magazine contains news of QCA units, CILT publications and more, and also takes a topic for consideration.

The focus for this edition is STORYTELLING with ideas of how to get started, how to move on and how it fits into the Primary Curriculum and some ideas for resources as CILT staff choose their favourite books.

There's also a section called 'What you're doing' which contains reports on how various people have used storytelling in the Primary language classroom - including Handa's Surprise, Jules Verne and Go away Big Green Monster - written by someone you might know ;o) - as well as ideas for where to obtain *free* resources for storytelling and what research says about the use of stories.

Well worth a read!

Posted by lisibo at 23:50 0 comments    

Labels: CILT, ideas, news, primary, primary languages, resources, stories, storytelling

I was lucky enough to be asked to present this year at Language World, the annual conference of the Association for Language Learning (ALL), which took place at University of Leicester on 3rd and 4th April.

My presentation was entitled Absorbing Language Learning and offered ideas to engage enthuse and stimulate language learners, particularly focusing on the Primary Language Learning context although the ideas are all transferable.

I was really glad to be on the programme near the beginning of the conference as I was then able to relax and enjoy the rest of it. And I was also really chuffed that my session was so full - we only just had enough chairs!

As promised, here is the presentation with links to all the resources. The battery on my iRiver sadly gave up midway through the session, but the lovely Joe Dale had given the equally lovely Alex Blagona an iRiver to record me too so I will shortly add the audio to the Slideshare and then you'll be able to hear me too!

Links to sites and resources can also be found in my delicious bookmarks under lw09

photos - http://www.flickr.com/photos/emerging/

Posted by lisibo at 20:06 4 comments    

Labels: ALL, free resources, ideas, Language World 2009, lisibo, presentations, primary, primary languages

Hot on the heels of CILT's Primary Language Show, Birmingham's ELL RSG meeting at the Martineau Centre in Harborne on 9th March was led by Helen Leigh from Worcestershire LA and was full of ideas for five to ten minute language activities that can be done in the classroom. Whilst the recommendation of one hour per week language learning has been understood as a discrete lesson by some, the ideal is that the hour is spread throughout the week. Not only because an hour is a loooong time to maintain attention and energy, but also because little and often fits well into the already packed primary curriculum. Helen suggested the term 'language exposure' too as a good way of viewing it.

The session was jampacked wth ideas which Helen related to the KS2 Framework.

Here are some exmaples -

O3.3 - perform simple communicative tasks using single words, phrases and short sentences
‘Snail stories’ - can be done in many languages as so simple! Un escargot (actions draw s - drive a car - point GO!)
Un escargot....deux escargots.....bonjour....bonjour...... kiss kiss......au revoir...au revoir
Un caracol...... dos caracoles.....hola.......hola........kiss kiss....... adiós.....adiós
could add to it by asking how you are, name etc

Brain gym -
a)letters and number - using the chart (right), say the alphabet whilst lifting arms and legs as indicated by the number as below -
1- right hand and left leg
2- left hand and right leg
3- both hands

Kids could make up their own versions, have a competition to see how fast they can do it correctly? It also fits the idea of Daily Physical Activity. See also Take Ten en français / en español.

b. colours - Dr Kawashima-like stroop test - as a timed test perhaps, or inter table competition?

Another idea was a Mexican wave of word cards and/ or pictures?





O3.2 to recognise and respond to sound patterns and words O4.3 to listen for sounds, rhyme and rhythm

‘Phonics’
eg Une poule sur un mur (see here for song mp3)
focus on ‘ou’ sound - touch your head when you hear the sound.
then ‘u’ sound
actions

Helen then used pictures of Marge and Homer Simpson, breaking the sad news that they were splitting up and had to split their belongings, to demonstrate an activity with phoneme. Homer was in a house labelled ou and Marge in one labelled u - the task was to divide all the things in the home. eg Marge got la jupe, Homer la tortue, Marge le mur etc

Dans la forêt lointaine is a good song to use for reinfrcing the phoneme ou - pupils stand up and sit down each time your hear ‘ou’
This also covers ICU as traditional song. Helen reiterated that it is not necessary to understand every word.

“Splat’
A simple activity - two pupils compete to splat the number, animated on PPT to pop up and down. Make it harder by asking pupils to splat multiples of 3 for example.


L4.1 to read and understand a range of familair written phrases
O5.1 to prepare and practse a simple conversation, reusing familiar vocabulary and structures in new contexts
Fishing rods - hook a fish - on the back of the fish is a number - the team that gets the number closest to x that wins.
Add them orally! Alternatively, make it harder by allowing the use of all operations to reach a more difficult number.

Helen also showed an idea using an alphabet mat - give two people a word to spell out by 'dancing' on the letters. their partners cmpete to write the word phrase down.

Another idea was to ask questions with three possible answers. Someone is sent out. whilst they are outside, the group decide on the correct answers. When they return, the person has to get all three right or start again. This allows the class to practise the question form which the part they often struggle to learn.

Above is a slide about a game of Cluedo that could be played with the class - involves colours, classroom objects and rooms, and pupils repeat the same vocabulary over and over until someone gets the correct answer. And a bit of blood and gore always go down well ;o)

O3.4 listen attentively and understand instructions, everyday classroom language and praise words

‘spells’
Helen then showed us some magic! Dice that changed colour, books that lose colours and regain colours, disappearing things, psychic displays - all the usual stuff!
We made up a spell about colours -

We then had a look at the story Je m’habille et... je te croc! all about a wolf who gets dressed then comes to eat us! Helen had found a Powerpoint in French already prepared - there are lots more great ideas on the site too!


The final activities involved the Months of the year - firstly, using a mgaic bag - everyone wrote their birth month on a slip of paper and put them in a bag. Helen then got someone to choose a month and wrote the month that she thought it would be on a magic board. of course she was right as there was a secret compartment n the bag! The other activity involved betting on the month that disappears forst from the board, then, once they've all gone, which comes back? The disappearing involves pupils copywriting on a whiteboard, and reappearing involves recall.


Loads of ideas!! Thanks Helen x
pass the bomb!

Posted by lisibo at 21:04 0 comments    

Labels: ELL RSG, ideas, primary languages

Stuck for a present for Christmas? Don't want to waste your money on a present that will be discarded as soon as you've left? Want to give something with that will have a lasting value?

Here's an idea, presented with all the cheesiness of a ripe Gorgonzola as only Mr P can ;o)
(Congratulations on the European Podcast Award win)



Alternatively, check out Oxfam Unwrapped or Send a cow :o)

Posted by lisibo at 20:50 0 comments    

Labels: christmas, ideas, Mark Pentleton, RLN

At this time of year I am regularly greeted at meetings in the West Midlands area with 'What's that story you told last year ?' or 'You're the one who tells that story about the robin, aren't you?'
For the last three I've promised to put it online. And I've finally done it!

I first came across this story on a Tweenies video from Spain - La Nochebuena. In this particular episode, Santi Claws, as Jake calls him, picks up the Tweenies from their houses on Christmas Eve and takes them to the North Pole where he tells them the story of 'Los chalecos del pequeño petirrojo', a translation of Little Robin Red Vest by Jan Fearnley.

It's the story of a little robin who washes and irons his seven warm vests the week before Christmas. Each day he puts on a different coloured one and goes out into the cold, only to meet another animal who complains of being cold. And each day, he gives away his vest to the other animal, until he is left on Christmas Eve with no vests left, cold and alone! The story ends happily though as Father Christmas comes along and takes the robin to the North Pole where Mother Christmas knits him a very special red vest that will always keep warm.

I immediately saw the potential of this story in my classroom. I taught Kindergarten to Year 6 at the time and could see how it could be used with all these age groups. Initially, I downloaded clipart pictures of the animals and made flashcards, then drew different coloured vests. I laminated them all and told the story with these, moving the vests from robin to rabbit, mole, frog etc. It's a great story as you can count the vests over and over, discuss the colour of the next vest and guess the next animal. It's good for repetition - the refrain 'Tengo frío' is soon taken up by even the youngest children, who also like to join in with Gracias (good manners!) and it encourages concentration and memorisation as the children try to recall what happens next. And there's the 'moral' element too - the robin showed the true spirit of Christmas by giving selflessly to help others, and was rewarded with his very special red vest.

As I said, I've used my laminated flashcards and vests for the last few years and every year am availed upon to repeat my performance at RSGs. And finally, inspired by a request from Jo Rhys-Jones for help, I made the long awaited Powerpoint presentation, complete with animations and sound files. It took AGES to make so I hope you like it. I've uploaded it to Slideshare and embedded it below.

I've also uploaded the scanned flashcards and vests in case you want to laminate them and tell the story that way.



I think it would make a great assembly with masks and vest, and I did spend a while today in charity shops looking for different coloured vests or T-shirts.... but I didn't find any so I'm working on my next plan - do PE bibs come in pink and purple??

Posted by lisibo at 06:41 4 comments    

Labels: animals, christmas, ideas, resources, stories, storytelling

I first used Animoto during the Voices of the World project last year when we made a short 30 second video featuring pictures that the children had drawn of Spain accompanied by a rather dubious rendition of the Spanish Himno Nacional by most of Key Stage 2.

Animoto describes itself as follows:

Animoto produces TV-quality music videos using your photos in just minutes.

It's so simple to do too. Choose a song as the soundtrack to your video and Animoto will analyze every nuance of it. Producing a totally unique video each time, no two videos are ever the same.

I thought it was a good tool then although the limit to 30 seconds for the free version was a little annoying. A while back, I saw it reported that educators could have a free account (saving you $30) and I was sure I'd registered then. However, it seems I hadn't as when I went back today, I didn't have an account. So I rapidly registered and began playing!

I'd been reminded of Animoto by a Twitter message saying that you could now add text to Animoto. So, having uploaded lots of pictures of flowers taken in my garden from iPhoto as a test Animoto video and then remixed it, I set about investigating the new facility.

I uploaded a set of photos from my Flickr account entitled Spanish food and drink. Next I sorted them a bit so that they were grouped vaguely. My first text screen was the title page, then I added a section title - Tapas and a comments about gazpacho - Me gusta mucho :o) . I then thought I'd make use of a set of pictures to tell a story - a man choosing from the menu and then enjoying his morning break - thanks to my model ;o) I was a little disappointed that you couldn't subtitle the pictures as I'd envisaged making a slideshow to teach food words. However, you could insert a text slide before or after each picture for revision I guess! Having selected a suitable piece of music from the Animoto library, I let Animoto work its magic and voilà - a video that can be emailed, uploaded to Youtube, downloaded and embedded as it is below.


If you want to learn more about Animoto, why not check out the site or the case studies section where you can find out how educators have used Animoto in their classroom.

I'll be exploring further and will keep you informed of how things go!!

Posted by lisibo at 07:47 0 comments    

Labels: animoto, ICT, ideas, video

Yesterday saw a repeat of the Primary Languages Conference that was held in Coventry in June, this time in Bromsgrove to cover the South of the region.

Held in the lovely Bromsgrove Hilton, we were treated to a lovely lunch (always important on a training day!) as well as some great sessions on such things as Numeracy and MFL, Parachute games, Music and MFL and The International Dimension.

Eight lucky individuals took part in an Animation workshop with Oscar Stringer and had great fun producing short animations in just over an hour and half. Thanks to the British Council eTwinning, the lucky few took away their animations and Oscar's animation PDF on a memory stick! :o)


Find more videos like this on Animation For Education

I delivered a session on Exciting ICT in the PLL Classroom, looking at delicious, Voki, Voicethread and Audacity. As promised, the presentation and notes are below for those who attended and also for those who didn't!

Exciting ICT in the PLL classroom.


And the day ended with the lovely Steven Fawkes of ALL once more stunning and inspiring us all with his ideas on Performance and Motivation, culminating in the performance of La Banane, a new and innovative take on Kylie's Can't get you out of my head!!

And I won a lovely soft Spanish calendar in the raffle courtesy of Little Linguist. I eagerly await its arrival! :o)

Posted by lisibo at 18:34 0 comments    

Labels: ALL, audacity, Birmingham Primary Conference, ICT, ideas, motivation, podcasting, primary languages, voicethread, voki

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

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

Having spent a good while flicking between Youtube and Zamzar over the last couple of days, downloading and converting videos, I've had a chance to look over some of my 'favourited' videos once more, and came across this one.

I remember They Might Be Giants from their song Birdhouse in your soul - classic lyrics including 'blue canary in the outlet by the lightswitch who watches over you' and 'not to put too fine a point on it, say I'm the only bee in your bonnet' - and It's Istanbul not Constantinople - but here they are singing a song about the Alphabet of Nations. They cheat for X but otherwise a country for each letter.

I was thinking of using it as a challenge for European Day of Languages - some ideas:

• learning the song would be the simplest
• play the song each day for a week then have a quiz on countries
• name the languages spoken in the countries
• name the capital cities
  
• challenge pupils to label the countries on a map
• pupils rewrite the song with countries of their choice
• write a collaborative Alphabet of Languages - then learn a word in each language

Doesn't have to be for EDL - it would be a good exercise for global awareness and ICU at any point.

There is an Animaniacs video naming countries too, but I prefer this one as it's shorter, less dated (in terms of look and also countries that no longer exist) and also funkier. ;o)

Posted by lisibo at 16:26 0 comments    

Labels: EDL, global awareness, ideas, intercultural understanding, videos

I came across Omniglot the other day and bookmarked it in my del.icio.us account for further investigation.
Omniglot is 'a guide to the languages, alphabets, syllabaries and other writing systems of the world'.

You can find out information about a myraid of languages including ones I've never heard of!

It's fascinating to look at all the different writing systems both real - some Mayanscript


and some imaginary - some Klingon!

There are tips on language learning, as well as a multilingual bookstore and articles on languages.

In fact, there's so much on there that it's hard to do it justice in a blogpost so I'd encourage you to look for yourself. However, here are three of my favourite parts.

1. Language related art
This is a piece of art by Venantius Pinto based on the Torcharian script and there are links to other examples of artwork such as Mike O'Connell's artwork featuring a number of different scripts and Peggy Shearn who is inspired by language and writing systems (see also below)

2. Useful foreign phrases
Ever wanted to know how to say 'Please speak more slowly' in Estonian?

Palun rääkige aeglasemalt

Or 'Where's the toilet?' if you're caught short in Greece?
Ποῦ εἶναι οἱ τουαλέτες
There is a quite long list of possible phrases in a wide range of languages - some with accompanying soundfiles to aid pronunciation. And there are also phrases that are possibly not as useful, but nonetheless amusing such as 'My hovercraft is full of eels' - here in Mandarin Chinese 我的氣墊船裝滿了鱔魚 and Polish Mój poduszkowiec jest pełen węgorzy and 'Stop the world, I want to get off!' in perhaps Czech Zastavte svět, chci vystoupit! or Armenian Աշխարհը կեցուր թարնալէն, հոս կուզեմ ելել:

You can also access in a variety of languages, again some with soundfiles-
for example -

Μιὰ πάπια μὰ ποιά πάπια;
(Miá pápia ma piá pápia)
A duck but which duck). (GREEK)

Esel essen Nesseln nicht, Nesseln essen Esel nicht.
Donkeys don't eat nettles, and nettles don't eat donkeys. (GERMAN)

Mae Llewellyn y llyfrgellydd o Lanelli wedi llyfu llawer o lyfaint.
Llewellyn, the librarian from Llanelli, licked many toads. (WELSH)

3.Proverbs and quotations about languages.

Omniglot has collected together proverbs and quotations in various tongues on the subject of languages. The majority are quite profound -

Language is the blood of the soul into which thoughts run and out of which they grow.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes

Una lengua natural es el archivo adonde han ido a parar las experiencias, saberes y creencias de una comunidad.
A natural language is the archive where the experiences, knowledge and beliefs of a community are stored.
- Fernando Lázaro Carreter (SPANISH)

Cenedl heb iaith, cenedl heb galon.
A nation without a language is a nation without a heart. (WELSH)

but there are others that are less 'serious' -

Chan fhiach cuirm gun a còmhradh.
A feast is no use without good talk. (GAELIC-SCOTLAND)

It's no coincidence that in no known language does the phrase "As pretty as an airport" appear.
- Douglas Adams

天不怕，地不怕，只怕广东人说普通话。
(Tiān bù pà, dì bù pà, zhǐ pà Guǎngdōng rén shuō Pŭtōnghuà)
I fear neither heaven nor earth, I only fear Cantonese speakers trying to speak Mandarin. (MANDARIN)

天唔驚，地唔驚，只驚北方人講廣東話唔正。
(Tìn m̀ gìng, deih m̀ gìng, jí gìng bākfòng yàhn góng Gwóngdùngwá m̀jeng)
I fear neither heaven nor earth, I only fear Mandarin speakers speaking Cantonese badly. (CANTONESE)

My particular favourites include

Any time you think some other language is strange, remember that yours is just as strange, you're just used to it.

Kolik jazyků znáš, tolikrát jsi člověkem.
You live a new life for every new language you speak.
If you know only one language, you live only once. (Czech)

and this French saying that I hope will soon be seen as untrue -

Un homme qui parle trois langues est trilingue.
Un homme qui parle deux langues est bilingue.
Un homme qui ne parle qu'une langue est anglais.
A man who speaks three language is trilingual.
A man who speaks two languages is bilingual.
A man who speaks only one language is English.
- Claude Gagnière

Looking at all the above 'favourites' I can see the OMNIGLOT site as an excellent resource for expanding the vision of languages in an interesting and fun way.

Why not use it as a resource for European Day of Languages on 26th September?

You could use the artwork to inspire your pupils to create their own having looked at the section on various scripts and writing systems.

Or challenge pupils to learn tongue twister in another language - the sound files are great for that!

Or each class could attempt to learn a phrase in as many languages as possible - and other classes could guess the phrase - I think we'll be doing this at WCPS!

Whatever you do, it's well worth a look!

Posted by lisibo at 21:31 4 comments    

Labels: cultural awareness, EDL, ideas, languages, tonguetwisters

I have made no secret of my love of puppets as evidenced by various blog posts over the last nine months and several dodgy pictures floating around the blogosphere. So a post on Linguahelp captured my attention.

I hadn't discovered the Linguahelp blog before, probably because my school doesn't subscribe to Linguascope. However, my Google alerts today included a link to the most recent post entitled Gimmick sites to help in the MFL classroom and it made lots of sense to me. I'm always up for finding innovative and captivating ways of engaging language learners so the idea of using the Iceland Socks site seemed appealing - and I tried it out!

I followed the advice offered on Linguahelp -

The idea is simple - you build up a mini ‘film’ using sock puppets, subtitles and a series of animated locations, which you can then email to friends - but the usefulness to language learning is immediately apparent. The puppets speak a ‘Pingu-esque’ nonsense chatter, which is made into intelligible dialogue by the user. Students could use the site to build up practice dialogues in a very up-to-date, hi-tech fashion - instead of potentially awkward and embarrassing role-play in class, they can create YouTube style cartoons full of the language they are learning. To top this, the resulting ‘films’ can then be emailed to the teacher for checking later! Not perhaps the original intention of the site designers, but a fun adaptation to liven up the lesson.

and you can see the results of my first attempt by clicking on the title, Lucía and Miguel go to Iceland.

In fact, it was so much fun, I made another! Mimi and Roberto go to Iceland.

And I'll probably make more!

Feel free to leave me links to your videos in the comments box - would love to see what others dream up!

Posted by lisibo at 21:00 1 comments    

Labels: blogs, creative curriculum, free resources, ideas, languages, primary languages, secondary languages, videos