¡Vámonos!

Rachel Hawkes is an absolute genius who I’m certain rarely sleeps or else has her own TARDIS as she can’t possibly have the hours in the day to teach and do all the things she does!

Her ‘Major talk’ was all about speaking - the most undeveloped but most important skill in terms of motivation as our perception of being good at languages hangs on our ability to speak.

If you want to experience the presentation, you will no doubt soon see it on Rachel’s blog, but some key points were-

Key strategies -

sound-written pattern

building a framework for spontaneous talk

providing opps for planned and unplanned talk

focusing on key structures

providing a range of stimulus materials to respond to

using tech to enhance interactions

Teaching phonics is very important - the first thing that happens in year 7 at Comberton. The phonics aare linked to a gesture and once learned, the pupils are given words to pronounce - it could be people’s names or shopping lists.

Other ideas for geting pupils talking were

1. using a Morph clip and asking What are they saying? Can you give Morph and Chas some words? Or to give pupils the words and ask them to put them in order.
2. an iPhone clip that practiced ‘Puedo.......’ and could be used to reinforce ‘¿se puede....?
3. the Obama reggaeton rap
4. posing a question eg ¿Tienes hermanos o hermanas? and stipulating ‘tu respuesta debe tener 7 palabras‘ then ¿Cómo puedes contestar con más de 10 palabras
5. Odd one out connecting triangles
6. pilla al intruso ; and, one of my favourites,
7. what isn’t going to happen??? What didn’t happen?

All the clips Rachel used are bookmarked in her account there - RachelHawkes60.

Posted by lisibo at 21:52 0 comments    

Labels: ALL, creativity, Language World 2010, Rachel Hawkes, speaking

A proper blog post will follow tomorrow, but here are the photos from today!

Posted by lisibo at 22:09 0 comments    

Labels: ALL, courses, photos, primarylanguages, secondary languages, slideshows, speaking

All a bit topsy turvy I guess, reporting on a course I ran on Tuesday after a presentation I did today but heigh ho!

Posted by lisibo at 17:41 0 comments    

Labels: ICT, PLL, presentations, primary languages, social networking, speaking

I had the pleasure and privilege of speaking at the Education Show today. I volunteered myself, admittedly, but I hardly thought they'd say yes! I'd attended a previous seminar there and had been rather unimpressed and thought 'I could do better!' - so I put my money where my mouth is - and hope I succeeded.

Posted by lisibo at 17:28 0 comments    

Labels: Education Show, ICT, primary languages, speaking

1. Teachmeet Takeover

BETT is really a huge trade show with people wanting you to buy their products to use in your educational setting. This year, educators are taking over stands for half hour slots to share what they've done in their classrooms with free stuff. When I say 'takeover', the stand owners - including Scholastic, BrainPopUK, Adobe and NetIntelligence - have donated time so it's not an aggressive thing, and that's great as our ideas have probably got nothing to do with what their stand is showcasing.

I've volunteered to speak at 10.30 on Friday on the Rising Stars stand on 'Ideas for tools in language learning including Voki, Wallwisher, Voicethread, Storybird'. I'll try to remember to record it - it's about time for another episode of Lisibo talks!

Andrea from Rising Stars sounds lovely and has promised me a strong coffee before hand. Might need one afterwards too!

Here's a link to the whole programme. If you're at BETT, why not pop along to one or two sessions. There's a goody bag worth £300 for people who participate and fill in some ideas they've gained from the experience so it's worth it!

So that's reason one why I'm excited about BETT.

Posted by lisibo at 22:03 0 comments    

Labels: BETT, speaking, Teachmeet Takeover

I've spent some time over the weekend doing something that I find rather uncomfortable - listening to my own voice! Whilst it is much better than watching myself on video, I find myself cringeing at the sound of my accent and speech habits. In my head I don't sound like that - my 'self-image voice' speaks much more 'properly' and sounds less Brummie!

So why do it? Well, I was catching up with editing the audio from my presentations at two recent conferences - in Hull and in Basingstoke, Hampshire - before adding it to my podcast. I kept reminding myself that I wouldn't have to listen again once I'd finished, and then remembered that I'd have to listen one more time to synch the audio to my Slideshares to make Slidecasts.

So - I'm pleased to announce three new episodes of my podcast Lisibo talks! But does it make sense?

Posted by lisibo at 10:13 0 comments    

Labels: audio, etwinning, Hampshire_Language _Conference, Hull, ICT, lisibo, lisibo talks, primary languages, secondary languages, Slidecast, slideshows, speaking

Having never been to Stoke on Trent previously, I was there twice in three days! This time I'd been invited to speak at a 'Creative Spanish' afternoon for Primary Language teachers, organised jointly by Lorna Harvey from Staffordshire and Helen Thomas from Stoke on Trent. I really enjoyed the presentation on using Art by Shirley Kliment-Temple and was sorry to miss the salsa and skipping!

My presentation was a repeat of the one I did at the Primary Language Show in Liverpool about the QCA unit based on SaintSaens Carnival of the Animals, and I have posted the slidecast from that event below so that you can listen and watch the slides! If yu want any of the resources, they are in this post.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.

Posted by lisibo at 20:19 0 comments    

Labels: animals, animation, creative curriculum, presentations, primary languages, spanish, speaking

It was great to be asked by Helen Thomas to talk to some teachers from Stoke about International Dimension and especially eTwinning a couple of weeks, and I'm sorry that it's taken me this long to upload my presentation.

As promised, here is the presentation (it's the same presentation but from a previous date - nd you get it with sound!) and the case study from my school below it. If you have any questions, please get in touch with me or with the eTwinning team at the British Council. The West Midlands contact is Isabel Lalsingh who is lovely and very helpful.

Posted by lisibo at 19:40 0 comments    

Labels: etwinning, lisibo, presentations, speaking

I was privileged to be asked by David Noble (@parslad) to join TeachMeet ASN-SEN Online tonight and invited to speak as well! A huge privilege when you look at the other speakers!

I choose to talk briefly about using puppets and sound recording to encourage speaking skills in the classroom. As I teach languages, my examples came from my experience in the primary language learning classroom but, as I said, are equally applicable in other contexts.

If you want to catch what I said, you can watch the replay here

And here are some posts I've previously made about using puppets in the classroom -
Puppets! (video at the bottom of the post)
Los animales hablan
Inspired in IKEA pt 2

And about using sound recording-
5MW on Podomatic

And also moblogging -
La Primavera
Saved by the blog

Posted by lisibo at 21:20 0 comments    

Labels: audio, CPD, flashmeeting, motivation, puppets, speaking

Today I was supposed to be in Leicester speaking about eTwinning and the potential of using Voki, Voicethread and Audacity in projects. However, the snow got in the way so I'm not there but at home. I sent my presentation and notes to Jenny from the British Council so those brave souls that made it could have a look at what I might have said.

Below you will find all that I would have presented today given the chance.


Notes for Madrid - Free Legal Forms


Madrid - Free Legal Forms

And here's the slideshare related to Whitehouse Common's awardwinning project - if you want to see examples of the sort of things we did, leave me a message and I'll upload some of those too.

Posted by lisibo at 11:40 0 comments    

Labels: audacity, BritishCouncil, etwinning, presentations, speaking, voicethread, voki, wcps