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.
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I love Les sacs en plastique - very simple but with an important message; and Le monstre de la musique is very amusing too - if only it were in Spanish, I could use it wth Year 5 in their current unit of work!
Can't wait for more languages and more stories to be added.
If yu check out the site in detail, you'll find details of the methodology behind the resource, how the Scheme of work will be comprised and also details of pricing for September.
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!
Well, it's December 1st and as much as I've tried to be strong, Christmas has finally got me! School is full of Christmas plans for plays, parent partnership days, activities, assemblies and the like, and home is likewise in Christmas mode as littl'un plays the lead in the Infants' play tomorrow as The Little Angel - if his temperature doesn't get any higher :os
And, obviously, plans for classroom activities are turning Christmas-ward too!
So, I've been through my files and found some Powerpoints that might help you - and me! to get our classes in the Christmas spirit as well as ticking a few Intercultural Understanding boxes! I am not claiming responsibility for all of these as lots have been kindly shared by people on Yahoo! MFL resources group, or the Consejería.
So - to start you off, why not try learning how to say Merry Christmas in 10 languages other than English? Perhaps you could take one each morning for the next two weeks?
Here's a Disney video from Youtube if you want more languages - and it's even got the pronunciation for you!
Then perhaps have a look at some Christmas vocabulary in Spanish? If your room is decorated for Christmas, why not label the decorations - or use them for a game of 'Búscame...' ?
Christmas in Spain is very particular and the Ministerio de Educación y Cienciain conjunction with the Consejería de Educación en el Reino Unido e Irlanda have produced a great powerpoint presentation choc-a-block with authentic pictures of the events in December and January - not all of which are religious.
They have also produced a presentation about El Belén - the traditional Nativity scene that decorate Spanish homes at this time of year. I usually use my ELC nativity scene to retell the story of Christmas from the Biblical perspective completely in Spanish. Kids understand because it is a story with which they are familiar and also because I'm very dramatic in my retelling - the Head of the Catholic Prep, School where I used to work was rather taken aback by my reenactment of Mary being told by an angel that she was pregnant with Jesus ;o)
I also uncovered this very comprehensive presentation about Spain at Christmas complete with more photos and information in bite size chunks. It includes details of El Gordo, el Caganer (in ploite language!) and el Roscón de Reyes.
I've also found a presentation I did a few years ago at Birmingham Council House (I think it was!) about ideas for Christmas in the MFL classroom. It includes ideas for French, Spanish and German, and the ideas are suitable for right across the age range. I posted it last year too but in case you didn't catch it....hopefully something for everyone! (hope the links still work!)
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) ...
J'ai un chat, Hannibal Tu as un animal? Elle a un chien Nous avons des possons Vous avez des lions? Elles ont deux serpents longs J'ai un lapin
As I am a great advocate of DIY songs, I thought this one was particularly good as it uses a tune with which most kids are familiar - thanks to sport and especially recently due to Olympic success - but which is not a nursery rhyme. It's also a bit more 'advanced' than some little ditties I make up as it can be used to teach a grammar point too. In fact, Helen ended her message by saying that she'd sung the above song with her Y11 class today!
Regular readers may have realised by now that I'm a sports fan - and even irregular readers probably have an inkling! So you can guess that I'm currently having a fine time keeping an eye and ear on events at the Olympics Games in Beijing. My boys are quite interested too and it's fun trying to work out the rules of various rarely seen sports like fencing and judo as well as explaining those that I do understand like badminton and canoeing (again rarely seen on TV!)
Of course I'm particularly enjoying the cycling - Sami Sánchez (left) came good in the road race although Contador failed to make it a Spanish double this morning - my eldest was pleased though as he's a Cancellara fan.
For those of you who are also enjoying the Games and fancy finding out more in Spanish, you can access the official site in Spanish - as well as English, French, Arabic and Mandarin.
And whilst I'm still on holiday for another three weeks (well, bit under I guess!), those of you in other countries will soon be back to school so here's a link to some great Olympic resources from the Australian Olympic Committee - five lessons worth of stuff available in Spanish but also Arabic Chinese Croatian French German Indonesian Italian and Japanese. I'm thinking that I might use them anyway as part of EDL day - I know all the languages aren't European but it's about celebrating different languages and I'm never really very strict on them being European ;o) You could also check out this blog for some further ideas in Spanish.
And of course, don't forget the Chinese policeman about whom I blogged before the Games - wonder how many people he's helped - and in how many more languages he's mastered greetings!
Anyhow, back to my sporting activities - I have a fantasy football team to complete - and it's not going to plan as there are too few Spanish defenders in the Premiership to make my team fully Spanish so I'm haivng to cheat more than a little. Oh well!
I have made no secret of my love of puppets as evidenced by variousblog 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.
Here comes part three of my reflections on the units I'm currently using in KS2 Spanish. If you've read the other parts on Units 5 and 11, you'll recall that I've taught the units to half of the school and am now teaching the parallel classes until the summer break. So the current groups are probably getting a better deal as I refine and adapt from the first run, but may not finish the unit in its entirety as the end of term leads to much lesson disruption!
As with Units 5 and 11, Unit 14 has an opening stimulus from which the unit stems. In this case, a song. Based on the well known children's song, I am the Music Man, Yo soy músico has proved popular with Year 5. The QCA Unit which can be downloaded from here in PDF and RTF, gives the lyrics - you just have to sing it! Helen Myers has recorded a music only version - clever lady!- which can be found here, and if you want to hear how it sounds with a class in full voice, check out the WCPS Spanish podcast in the right hand column - although I'm sure you've all subscribed to it in iTunes ;o)
At the top of the post is the Powerpoint I made to go with the song. Note that it has two parts. The first half is in the first person singular - Yo soy músico, which is the version used in the first instance when the teacher (or volunteer class member!) is the Music Man. The second part is in the first person plural - Somos músicos - as the class join in with the whole song and we all become Music Men. I used animations having listened to Nick Mair talking in Oxford about boys learning best when there is action and movement in the graphics. There is an initial disadvantage as the class comment on the guitar playing pig etc mid-song, but after the first view, this stops and it really helps memorisation.
Looking at the medium term plan above, you can see that the objectives for the first lesson are to express simple opinions about music. This proved popular as we listened to some different types of music and decided if we liked them or not. In a previous unit on free time we had learned the phrase la música pop / rock / clásica and most recalled the phrase - and the accompanying action -
la música - hands on ears like you're listening to music then ..
...pop - makes your hands pop from fists to spread fingers whilst making your eyes wide
...rock - rock from side to side
...clásica - conduct an orchestra
...heavy - mosh!! (a clear favourite I must say!)
We added jazz (jazz hands) and folclórica (play a guitar) which took some explaining as few knew what it was! Several pupils commented on the use of cognates - and when one asked what tecno music would be, another piped up that 'it'd be la música tecno, silly'
I expressed an opinion in Spanish about the music using facial expression then encouraged the class to offer their own opinion in Spanish. Again, the phrase was not unfamiliar but, for some, had to be dragged from memory banks!
We then sang the song which soon involved the whole class. The first couple of times, everyone sang all the instruments to learn and fix the words - and of course we did actions for those who are kinaesthetic learners (and to keep everyone awake!). Having looked at pronunciation of the words we had a quick look at accents - why do música / saxofón / batería have accents - I explained it using people's names - when we see a name in English we know (usually!) how to say it as there are stress patterns - it's AlexANder not AlEXander and accents help show us how to say words. Pupils completed a simple sheet to finish the lesson - labelling and also trying to use their LLS to work out what six instruments were in English. Some of the words were obvious and others needed a bit of thought - but a few did work out los platillos are cymbals by thinking of plates!
Next lesson began with a recap of vocabulary and game of Simóm dice. Then we sang the song, firstly using Soy músico but with each table alloted the flashcard of a musical instrument to represent. This led to hilarity as the 'piano' table worked out that they had to stand up and sit down every verse - as you can guess I chose this table carefully!! We looked at the words of the opening to the song and used Sé tocar... and then Toco ..... to say which instruments we could and couldn't play - an 'on the ball' pupil suggested 'toco regular el piano' and 'no toco la guitarra muy bien' as answers - not bad eh? It's really encouraging when pupils 'play around' with language because they're trying to express themselves more accurately. We then looked at the second half - Somos músicos, venimos de Madrid etc' and discussed how this might differ in meaning from the first half.
We went on to recap our opinions about music genres and this time tried to add some simple reasons for the opinion - because it's slow, because it's boring, because it has rhythm etc. Pupils made up sentences in groups adding all the bits from the two lessons to see how long a sentence they could make using connectives such as 'y' and 'porque'.
At the start of the next lesson we recapped our opinions and started to present them in written form on graffiti wall posters - the word 'graffiti' made eyes sparkle although it was somewhat controlled graffiti! Whilst the class worked on this, I worked in the corner with my laptop and and microphone to record members of the class expressing their opinions about music - this was the start of WCPS Spanish podcast. The look of wonder on pupils' faces when they heard their voice comin gout of my laptop and then the IWB was great - one lad, Zach, commented 'But I sound really Spanish!'. (Pictures of posters to follow!)
Next we listened to some Spanish music and Latin American music, comparing and contrasting the instruments heard. I borrowed a CD from the library that had a vast array of South American music types on it, and I took in some of my own music - Tomatito, Heroes del Silencio, Joan Manuel Serrat, Los Nikis,Gloria Estefan,Alejandro Sanz,Operación Triunfo. We listened and decided which instruments we heard, and gave opinions on the singers / groups. Then I role played buying a CD - using a ActivPrimary flipchart (in Box of Goodies as can't upload to .DocStoc). In pairs with one as customer and one as assistant, the customer had to
say they wanted to buy a CD
express their opinion about a type of music and say which type they prefer
agree to buy an item., and we recorded some examples (see podcast!)
The roles were swapped so that everyone got to play each character. We recorded some examples for the WCPS Spanish podcast as well. This time I'm going to add discussing buying an MP3 file to this bit ;o) Having looked at accents and stress patterns as well as considering types of music, looking at the rhythm, especially the rhythm of words made perfect sense and we spent a good while clapping out phrases and trying to copy rhythms in the next session. At times it was rather haphazard, freestyle clapping but there were signs of promise from some who managed to copy accurately and understood the use of dynamics to mark stress. 'Guess the phrase from the rhythm' was a popular game - it's amazing how much concentration it takes to clap a simple phrase!
The last few sessions were given over to Year 5 producing their own rap/song in Spanish. I allowed them free rein over this with the proviso that it had to be in Spanish (obvious to me but you'd be surprised!) As a whole class we discussed how the task might be tackled and we came up with a start for those who couldn't think of a way in, then it was up to the groups to do their bit! There were several things to note from these lessons for next time.
Some groups needed more support than they were given - perhaps more time working together as a whole class before setting groups off on their own.
Groupings are key, and all the 'musical' kids ended up in two groups - they would've been better perhaps split up to help those whose rhythm was a bit off!
When recording pupils' final productions, don't put your iRiver anywhere near the drums! Sadly, a couple of good outcomes are drowned out by the percussion.
I'll upload those that will not damage eardrums to the podcast and/or Box of Goodies as soon as this post is finished ;o) There were a couple of groups that tried to sing their performances to tunes from The Sound of Music - good idea, I thought. Some stuck to opinions on music, others tried to work in vocabulary from other units such as Personal introduction vocabulary and sporting likes and dislikes.
The other Year 5 class are very different to the first group and I expect this half term to pan out differently to the previous one. I think this time we'll look at the pre-performance interview suggested in the QCA Unit and perhaps try to adapt a song rather than write rap. I'll keep you informed!
NOTE - if you'd like ideas on this Unit in french, check out Talkabout Primary MFL where Jo Rhys Jones has spookily just blogged about the same unit!
I had the privilege to speak at Tile Hill Wood School andLanguage College on Thursday evening. I was really pleased to be asked by Ana Neofitou, Head of Languages, who I've met a couple of times at Language World and other more local conferences, and Jo Redford who is Assistant Head and who I met in Oxford this year when she introduced The ALL London Show and Tell session in which I participated.
My session was the last of three sessions for Primary teachers in teaching and learning Primary Languages. Previously the group of about 40 teachers had been working in language specific groups and focusing on vocabulary for topics such as sport and animals. My session, entitled Top tips for Primary Languages, aimed to give them an insight into how to deliver PL in an engaging way, making use of free resources and easily acquired skills. I enjoyed expanding on my presentation from Oxford (you can see and listen to it in this slidecast) which I delivered there in 10 minutes - just over an hour was still too short, but I was happier! I just get so excited that I could talk for hours!
Below is the presentation, and also the notes I made for delegates so that there wasn't too much mad scribbling as I gabbled away! Even as a standalone document, I think you can see what I'm trying to say!
You may have noticed that I'm a fan of 'pretty things' - avatars, Flickr photos, widgits etc - and also of words (current favourites include kerpoof as said by Drew Buddie) so when Wordle was recommended in last night's EdTechRoundup Flashmeeting, and I then saw a post by Langwitches in my Google Reader telling me that 'Wordle produces 'beautiful word clouds'', my interest was piqued.
Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends.
I had a little go at making some. You can use your own - or someone else's del.icio.us username to create a cloud - here's one for http://del.icio.us/lisibo and another for http://del.icio.us/whitehousecommon (my school del.icio.us account)
I love these visual representations of my bookmarks as they highlight the most popular tags so clearly(the text size for each word is related to the number of times it appears) and it's pleasing to see that the focus of my tagging is where I thought it was ;o)
You can also input random words to create a cloud. So I tried pasting my last blog post into the text box and came out with this - There are some other great examples in the Wordle gallery including: How to survive a Zombie attack
Here's a French one - very topical too - Le Coupe d'Europe
and a Spanish one - Inteligencia emocional
I think these are great fun and could be used in the classroom as a way of presenting information e.g. new vocabulary such as food and drink, things based on popularity when doing likes and dislikes as well as creating visual poems and stories. And how about inputting some text that children have written and graphically showing them how many times the word 'said' or 'went' appear - that should bring the point home ;o)
I have stopped gazing in awestruck wonder at the beauty of my new 'baby' and am now trying to get to grips with it. For those who don't know (I wonder how this is possible?) I have moved to the 'light side' and am now the proud owner of a shiny white MacBook. And she is most gorgeous. However, even gorgeous things can be improved and one of the first things I did was to download Firefox. This great web browser is free - always a bonus - and in five days, on Download Day, the much awaited and talked of Version3 will officially be launched. To mark the occasion, Mozilla Firefox are aiming to get into the Guinness Book of Records for the most software downloads in 24 hours. You can join the effort by putting your name on the pledge map, planning a download fest, or by promoting the day on your blog. Why not?
I've travelled by train several times in the last few weeks and each time have acquired a free copy of Metro. I knew that there were different editions for major cities, but didn't realise that it is an international paper.
Today, courtesy of MinkiePinkie aka Emmanuelle and via MFLresources Yahoo group, I discovered that not only are there editions in a number of countries, but also that they are accesible and downloadable online. You can download today's paper in PDF from Metropoint choosing not only from the coutries below but also from the regional edition you fancy in a number of countries, including Spain.
You can also read the papers online at Readmetro, selecting the country, region and date of the paper you require. Added to this, there is the facility to change the language of the site between English, Spanish, French and Danish.
A great feature is that, as well as a 'global search', there is an 'advanced search' facility, allowing you to search for a specific theme, in a specific country, region and/or time frame.
This looks a great way for older pupils to access authentic newspaper articles, weather reports, TV pages, puzzles and advertisements as well as for teachers to keep up to date not only with the language itself but also with their knowledge of countries speaking the language they teach.
I'm off to read the article about Bryan Adams on page 12 of today's Edición Nacional from Spain.
I've mentioned before the Voices of the World project, initiated by Sharon Tonner creating links around the world using our voices / sound rather than solely as a way of written word. It's a genius project as it offers-
a monthly task - short sharp bursts are great for keeping up interest , and also work well for me as the whole school want to be involved so I can rotate classes to lead
a different tool each month - so far - Voki, Animoto, One True Media and Voicethread (not to mention using Audacity and Flickr to gather and create things!) so we're introducing new ideas and techniques into the classroom - and they're free!
links with classes across the globe - Greece, Thailand, Scotland, Wales, France, Germany, Australia, USA... the list goes on.
the opportunity for my pupils to 'be' Spanish. I teach them Spanish and, in the absence of a Spanish school, and because I have to be different, Whitehouse Common are doing their tasks in Spanish (the other schools are doing the tasks in their own language)
This month, the task is on Voicethread and is on the theme of customs. It's a two part task - Sharon has selected some slides featuring fruit, clothes, musical instruments etc and each school is going to record the name of each fruit, instrument and so on in their own language. Then each school is going to create their own Voicethread based on their country - the food, costume, sport that most represents it.
I must admit, with January half gone, we haven't started yet. There are many reasons but one is the issue of our icon.
We need to create an icon to represent our school on Voicethread, and Sharon asked that it be the flag of our country. Problem - we are in England, but our words will be in Spanish so which flag do we use? Sharon and I exchanged e-mails on the subject and concluded that it needed to be a hybrid! So, we were about to head off to Paint to redesign the flag when i discovered a very timely post from Langwitches, Silvia Tolisano, on a tool she had discovered on Twitter via Karen Bosch called We are multicolored. This tool allows you to make a hybrid flag, based on three questions - Where is your home? What other country has affected you? Where have you dreamed of going?
So, off I went and had a play and came up with these - not sure which I like best but it's a start.Is this one a bit boring and predictable?
I like this one with the English bit of the Union flag at the front - but does the St George's cross get a bit lost?
And this one is for our Euro08 project - we've drawn Sweden!
It's a tool I wish I'd discovered yesterday when I was teaching Year6 RE about signs of belonging and identity - but we'll be having a go next week for sure (they'll be thrilled - tweeting on Twitter with Ewan McIntosh last week, designing flags next week - what will it be next?)
And I also think it'll be a great new tool to add a new dimension to European Day of Languages next September - we've discovered the languages spoken by our school community - wouldn't it be great to have a display of the 480+ hybrid flags of the pupils? And we thought last year was brilliant!
I spend a fortune on resources for school so I'm always up for a freebie. Instant Display is a site well known to those that frequent TES staffroom and particularly the 'Parasites Paradise' thread, (so called because all the listed sites offer free resources.) Instant Display offers reasonably priced posters and resources such as labels for use in Primary classrooms (although, as with all resources, there's scope for use with older kids too) - you choose your resource(s), pay by Paypal and the link to the resource is sent to you very promptly in my experience. There are a number of MFL resources available , particularly in French such as number cards, weather posters and classroom instruction cards, as well as some Spanish and German resources too. Each set costs £2.
And there is also a free section!! In this section you can find several French resources, including colours, counting, converting euros, weather and En France (things associated with France).
The reason I thought of posting at this particular juncture is that there are a number of free Christmas resources on the site including a set of Merry Christmas posters in 18 languages, and Christmas around the world, a set of posters featuring traditions from different countries, places and continents including Poland, China, Hawaii, Denmark, Bethlehem and Africa.
I've printed and laminated them, and made quiz trail around the school - greetings in KS1 and traditions in KS2. With productions etc at this time of year, there is a lot of lining up in corridors and spare moments to fill, so this seemed a popular idea. This week I've followed it up with questions on the school website - 5 per day - to encourage families to join in the fun. It's all part of my strategy to raise cultural awareness in the school - and it's also fun!
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