February 2010 – ¡Vámonos!

Primary Languages, Literacy and EAL.

February 28, 2010

Last Wednesday I took part in a day for Language Coaches in Birmingham. The afternoon session was given over to looking at links between Primary Language Learning, EAL and literacy, and we were fortunate to have Joe Brown from CILT to address us.

I did try to blog as I went along but kept getting distracted from writing by getting involved in the talk so, when I looked back at the pictures I’d taken, I decided to reflect back by making a slideshow in Keynote.

Understanding English, communication and primary languages

View more presentations from lisibo.

At the end, it seems a minute of audio has disappeared – probably because I hit a button prematurely! – in which I was saying that Joe told us about a number of research projects going on, looking at PLL and literacy.

storytelling
the language of Maths
APP writing
motivation
talk for writing
Training the Trainers Module 9

All sounds very exciting and I await the results with anticipation. You can catch Joe speaking at PLS in Liverpool in two weeks time!

(This post has taken over 24 hours to be published. Note to self –

Blogger doesn’t like my videos, Youtube don’t like 17 minute clips, Slideshare is very temperamental and thank heavens for Garageband!)

Imagiers on Youtube

February 27, 2010

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I subscribed to the channel belonging to Imagiers a while ago.

Originally, I saw the traditional songs below –

Today I saw that there was new series – Les comptines de Gros nez. This is a series of 63 French rhymes / songs ‘sung’ by a cartoon blue man with a big red nose. For example –

Alternatively, you could use Les comptines de la souris –

Also on Imagiers are many vocabulary videos like the one below –

There are thousands of videos on the channel – some are more advanced grammar and so on, others are simpler vocabulary presentations. And some are not French at all – eg there are several clips about Helsinki!

I’m a WebFox!

February 27, 2010

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Yesterday I took a Web Behaviour Test as part of BBC’s The Virtual Revolution – investigating how 20 years of the web has changed our lives.

I was asked questions about my Internet useage, how much time I spent online and doing what, how much ‘multi tasking’ I did and my response to a number of statements.

Would I be a bear, an elephant, an octopus, a hedgehog, a fox, an elk, a leopard or an ostrich?

My result is below – not a bad appraisal. Why not take the test and see which animal you are!

If you like to know what this quiz is hoping to achieve, check out what the scientists say.

Lyrics training

February 27, 2010

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Not one for Primary language learners perhaps, but nonetheless a find, I think!

Via my Googlereader I read a post on Lifehacker about Lyric Training and thought – ‘what fun!’

As Lifehacker says

Lyrics Training is a really fun approach to helping you pick up a foreign language. Choose a YouTube-hosted music video and select one of three mastery levels; Beginner, Intermediate, and Expert. As the video begins to play, the song’s lyrics appear underneath with several words missing. Your job is to fill in the missing words as they’re sung.

If you get stumped, the video stops playing until you can come up with the word, but don’t take too long because the app keeps track of the time it takes you to fill in the blanks. Click the “Give Up!” button to see the words that elude you.

Videos are available in English, Spanish, French, German, Italian and Dutch, and are rated easy medium and hard. You can then choose easy medium or hard tasks. Having said that, I chose easy and an easy task – and it was quite tricky as you have to type as you hear. I think if I listened to the song first I might have had a better chance. There is help – you can rewind the last line with the back space and use the tab to skip words you really can’t get! At the end you’re given a score based on how many words you successfully filled in and the time it took you in comparison to the actual length of the song. This is how I got on with Himno de la corazon

Good fun! Practises your

listening skills and also your spelling as it won’t accept the wrong spelling, letter by letter!

Have a go and see how you do!

Technology in Modern Foreign Languages – A practitioner’s perspective

February 24, 2010

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Technology in Modern Foreign Languages – A practitioner’s perspective is a post by José Picardo in which he announces the online publication of a series of blog posts that originally appeared on his blog Box of Tricks over December/January, written by a wide variety of language practitioners about their experiences of and advice for using technology in the MFL classroom.

If you didn’t read the original posts, they’re well worth a read (even the one I wrote!) – and now they’re downloadable in one go.

Veo veo

February 19, 2010

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At the ELL Local Support Group (LSG) last week, we were talking about short activities that needed minimal preparation and could be used for the ‘little and often’ model.

One of the activities discussed was I spy…

In Spanish there is a lovely little rhyme that goes with the game – check out the East Riding site for sound files, instructions and words. A good game for playing with kids who have a wider vocabulary, but also for discrete groups of words eg food, sports, colours. You could change it to ‘tengo tengo’ (I have..) and play with items in a bag even.

Veo veo I see, I see,

¿Qué ves? What do you see?

Una cosita. A thing

Y ¿qué cosita es? And what thing is it?

Empieza con la ……. It begins with ………

¿Qué será? ¿Qué será? ¿Qué será? What can it be? (x 3)

I also came across this catchy sung version of the rhyme – here I’ve chosen the kiddies version rather than the tropical island and bikinis! Lyrics below.