Month: April 2010

This is the first post on my new website – lisibo.co.uk

I like Blogger for many reasons, not least that it’s free and it was my first blog, and http://lisibo.blogspot.com will always be special.

However, the time has come to have my own domain and take another step up the ‘web ladder’.

Hopefully loyal readers will soon get used to the less vibrant surroundings and new readers will appreciate the mellow pinky lilac tones!

Just realised that I hadn’t blogged the Wallwisher made by Year 5 just before Language World.

Created with Padlet

Embedding languages was also the theme of the last session I attended at Language World.

In Unlocking potential Liz Black talked about a project, or as she prefers to call them ‘series of work in context’ inspired by Le Grand Parc – Puy de fou, a demonstration of community problem solving – in an area of poverty but with lots of land, the community got together to solve it by building a theme park. All the materials she used can be downloaded from Liz’s school website – www.stokesleyschool.com

Her school has a cross curricular day each Wednesday duirng which departments work together, and this project covered history, drama, literacy, French, PSHE, enterprise and finances and more. She shared some brilliant ideas including using Latin roots to provoke pupils to think of words in English with those roots, and gladiator drama to encourage reluctant boys to speak French.

Feedback from staff and pupils was very positive with one child saying ‘I like it when teachers work together’.

I have to say that the website itself for Puy de Fou is absolutely beautiful to look at, with lots of things to click and see. Certainly makes you want to go there !

I made friends with Claire on Facebook just before Language World – what a great decision that was! She’s as mad and lively as me!

Her session was on Embedding Languages in the Curriculum and gave plenty of ideas for doing just that!

Highlights including dancing to www.genkigerman.com (just tried it out again with Isaac – a big hit!) and learning a song in Italian about food! It went to the tune of La Cucharacha and I think the words were

Then Claire asked me if I’d contribute some French / Spanish which I happily did! I shared www.UptoTen.com and the duck song – Peux-tu marcher comme un canard? and then demonstrated the ‘animal symphony’ activity I used to link Spanish, music and literacy. Materials and instructions to replicate it can be found here.

Molto bene Claire!

[blip.tv http://blip.tv/play/AYHTuUcC]

The Keynote on Saturday morning at Language World was delivered by Cynthia Martin, President of ALL this year, and was report on research that she and others have carried out into Primary languages. Rather than try to write it all down, I took lots of pictures of the slides and made a movie. And here are a few comments that I hope will shed light on the slides.