October 2009 – Page 2 – ¡Vámonos!
 

Month: October 2009

Languages at KS1

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As pupils at Whitehouse Common learn Spanish from Nursery to Year 6, I was very interested by this session at the Hampshire Conference. Fiona and Naouele spoke persuasively about the benefits of language learning at a young age.

They shared the story of Le Chasse à l’ours. As we listened to the story, we had three tasks.
1. to pass a bear every time we heard the word ‘l’ours’
2. to repeat ‘la vie est belle’ everytime we heard it
3. to repeat the sound effects
Some of the techniques they suggested are familiar to any primary (and even secondary) teacher – repetition, using actions and mimes, looking at language and punctuation, being animated and expressive and so on. Some activities mentioned included Bang Bang – also known as Splat! – Fruit Salad, matching pairs, dressing up games and chopped up text.
We looked at Talking tins, Easispeak microphones and Chatterblocks – dice with six recorded sounds and pics, one on each face. All these resources are great for speaking and listening activities. I think some of those Chatterblocks will be on my shopping list.


CLIL is – Content and Language Integrated Learning and basically involves teaching cross-curricularly, delivering other subjects through the language. Do Coyle is the driving force behind this. The ideal is that the subject specialist delivers the lessons in the language, but it’s more likely that the MFL specialist will deliver eg history, or possibly the subject and the MFL teacher team teaching. You might also use the FLA to support the subject specialist. I’m interested in this as Whitehouse Common is involved in a project with three foci, one of which is CLIL.

Schools that use this include Hockerill Anglo-European College, Tile Hill Wood School, Ridgemeadow Community College.
Why CLIL? There has historically been a focus on grammar and the content of the exam. that they need to pass, rather than on content and interest, on creativity and relevance. The New Curriculum talks of real purposes, creativity, imagination, personal interest, intercultural understanding. CLIL is also a good potential ‘solution’ to transition as pupils will be arriving in KS3 with knowledge of languages – whichever it may be.
I’m really excited to see details of how Ringwood Junior School where they use CLIL for aspects of the curriculum eg in Year 5, the Science scheme of work is linked to the French story Mimi, le fourmi d’espace. This is the sort of thing I’m trying to do increasingly at Whitehouse Common, making language learning part of pupils’ day to day experience and not just a discrete subject. Louise Wornell, the presenter, is from Ringwood School, and shared what her school did – for example, in Yr7 they do 3 modules including Citizenship – the right person for the job
and History – Castles. In KS4, topics include climate change based of 12 French speaking countries and Paris through the yes of the Impressionists.
It seems to me that CLIL is something that is actually quite easy to start – there is already a teacher at my school who has taken on my attempts to link language learning to e.g. Science and has labelled all her displays in Spanish as well as English. Taking that further step and teaching entire lessons of the scheme in the language might need a bit more courage, but small steps are how we start to walk….

I was somewhat disappointed to discover that the Hampshire Language Conference this year was not being held at Marwell Zoo, and excited to discover that it was to be held at The Ark. So far no animals have appeared and its a lovely day so you might guess that it’s not a big boat.

Lid King has just addressed us all and we’re listening to our first seminar – I’m in a session led by David Hicks aka Monsieur X, showing us how to encourage pupils to use target language through action, rap, song and movement.
Better stop blogging and join in!
More later!

I Love You In 100 Languages by michelleoshen
Attribution License

Just caught up with an article in The Independent on Monday with the headline –

Speak a second language for money happiness….. and sex.

Apparently, in a survey commissioned by Michael Thomas,

Britons who learn a foreign language are richer, happier and are regarded as sexier than those who can only speak English, according to a new study.

An average of £145,000 more earned over a lifetime? Linguists easier to match for dating agencies as they are seen as more intelligent and sexier? Can this be true?

I don’t know but I like the sound of it!

El Mundo de Pocoyo

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I have declared my affection for Pocoyó previously on this blog and have subscribed to the Youtube channel dedicated to this lovely little chap. His latest clip is above and announces Mundo Pocoyó.

As the blurb says –

Un mundo virtual donde los niños pueden compartir experiencias y aventuras con sus personajes favoritos: jugar con Pato en el parque de atracciones, visitar la boutique de Elly o pintar y colorear con Pocoyó.
Actividades didácticas y amenas que ayudan a conocer el mundo, juegos que estimulan la habilidad, capítulos y melodías siempre disponibles para disfrutarlos online, miles de posibilidades al alcance de todos con un claro objetivo: aprender riendo.
www.mundopocoyo.com

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Welcome to Pocoyo World!

A huge virtual world where kids, parents and carers can share adventures with their favourite characters: play with Pato in the theme park, visit Ellys shop or paint and colour with Pocoyo.

Educational activities, games, puzzles, episodes, music and dancing, all available in a totally secure environment, with one simple objective: learning through laughter.

www.pocoyoworld.com

Available in English or Spanish, the site seems to function much like Club Penguin, with you having your own character – a Pocoyó like personaje- and, by earning tickets by completing games, you can buy pets, furniture etc. It’s a social place as you can interact with other members.

Fun place to visit – and good for playing with another language.

So, the decision about to whom London pass on the Olympic flame at the end of 2012 will soon be made. And much to everyone’s surprise, Chicago (despite Obama) are out and Madrid are still in to fight it out head to head with Rio.

The smart money is on Rio but Madrid can dream for a bit longer. Here is their promotional video.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwqyblkpUP0&hl=en&fs=1&color1=0x402061&color2=0x9461ca]

The third clip is poorly synchronised with the subtitles unfortunately!

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Just spent a lovely day in Hull at their primary language conference. The sun shone, the trees were very autumnal and it was far from ‘grim’

About 90 delegates attended the day which focussed on Using ICT in Primary Language teaching, attending workshops on film in education by Mark Reid of BFI, the use of animation for improved speaking and listening in language learning led by Oscar Stringer, using school networks to support language learning led by Dorolyn Parker and cross curricular collaboration, led by me.

I’m becoming more used to presenting seminars now and, whilst the adrenalin rushes and I have butterflies, it is not as frightening as it once was. However, Hull presented a new challenge as I’d been invited as keynote speaker as well – a first! Anyone who has been following my tweets this week may have sensed the growing anxiety I experienced as the ‘big day’ approached; that was but nothing compared to my state this morning. However, once I’d cracked a joke and got everyone doing a ridiculous warm up dance, I felt much better and, despite one or two issues with projector not wanting to talk to my Mac and then the Internet failing to connect, I think the session went well. I even think my use of a Fernando Torres clip (a mere four days after he scored a hattrick in the 6-1 defeat of Hull City by Liverpool) may have been forgiven by 95% of the delegates.

My Keynote was entitled Inspiring Creative Teaching in the Primary Language Classroom and centred on what ICT can do to enhance and support language teaching and learning. As Ewan McIntosh said – it’s not about the tech, it’s about the teach.

My seminar was entitled Don’t be mad, get cross curricular with ICT and PLL and focussed on embedding and entwining language learning into the existing school curriculum, making links and collaborating, and tools that might help in this. We talked eTwinning, eLanguages and it was also pleasing to see that schools are working collaborativel on a local level in clusters to support one another.

Below I’ve posted my presentations – pop back over the next couple of days to see the screencast with audio. I’ll also post both sessions on Lisibo talks! as soon as I have a spare moment!

Any queries, feel free to leave a comment below or contact me directly – my details are at the end of the slideshow.

A couple of things I mentioned that weren’t in the handout (also below)

The wiki sites I mentioned were Wikispaces, Wetpaint and PBWiki.

For ways of using Youtube, and/or downloading clips where it is blocked, have a look at a previous presentation You and Youtube where I mention RealPlayer, Zamzar, MediaConverter and Firefox widgets.

You can obtain Take Ten en français or en español from Devon Education Services or from Little Linguist.

And finally, check out this post for details of tutorials for some of the tools I mentioned today.

Thanks for a great day Hull! You’ve definitely made an impression on me!


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