Whilst reading my Googlereader feed, I came across a post by Steve Beard on his Thunder blog about some software that allows you to make any photo talk. Being a fan of Voki etc, this attracted my attention. I’ve seen the results of using a piece of software to make a teddy bear talk demonstrated by Nick Falk and Otso Bear but this promised to make any photo talk, not just bears. But it got even better! PQ DVD are offering the software (normal price $59.90) FREE if you blog about it – so that’s what I’m doing!

Have a look at the demo and see what you think. I’d be a happy Mum if I received this on Mother’s Day!!

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!

In case you want to join in, I’ll put the questions in the Goodies Box – or you can go to the Whitehouse Common school website .

I’m horrified to discover that it’s nearly two weeks since I last blogged! Where is the time going?

Well, with Christmas fast approaching, I thought it might be a good time to share some Christmas ideas.

I prepared a presentation for the Birmingham RSG last year -you can view it as a Slideshow below – but here are a few of the highlights.

If you’re looking for French carols, have a look at http://www.csdraveurs.qc.ca/musique/noel/
It’s always great to get something free and there’s lots here : a great French-Canadian site with songs sung by children, complete with visual presentation of the words.I think it would work really well on an IWB and also as a daily starter activity as it’s an Advent calendar with a song behind each door. My favourites are the first two, a song about peace (Enfants de Noël) and an amusingly animated song about world food (La Tourtière).

For Spanish, why not check out another Canadian website –

where you’ll find a webquest based on six articles about Christmas in Spain, Mexico and South America. The articles and accompanying questions are all in English (and in Spanish too sometimes) and include recipes and traditions. Bag the ICT suite or the laptop trolley and see what your pupils can discover for themselves!

Another favourite site is

http://club.telepolis.com/belenes/ a downloadable ‘belén’ , postcards to send by e-mail, some carols and, (perhaps most usefully?) tips in Spanish on how to wrap awkwardly shaped Christmas presents!

And the final one I discovered on an Edublog winning blog El Tinglado – a link to a Wiki full of Spanish carols and music for Christmas – El Rincón de los Villancicos.
With words, music, midi files of the carols and videos, this is a one stop concert planner! Just add singers!

| View | Upload your own

I blogged last week about the ELL RSG meeting last Tuesday, and my contributions on the subject of parachute games and songs and rhymes that can be used for active learning. However, other people offered ideas too and I was reminded of one of them when I received an email via MFL resources Yahoo group.

One contributor was Sara Vallis from City Road School in Birmingham shared some ideas from a course she had attended in Besançon.
FlySwat and Lamb Darts – also known as Lamb Slam – where two people compete to be the first to swat or slam the appropriate item of vocabulary on the board. Perhaps not one for the IWB!
Chair OXO where you physically play Noughts and Crosses with vocabulary items to be named or questions to be answered on each chair before the square is ‘won’ and the team representative can occupy the chair. I liked this alternative to OXO on the board with pictures as I usually play it.
Hot/cold – Hide the teddy somewhere in the room whilst one person is outside, then the volunteer returns and has to find the teddy, guided by the rest of the class repeating a word or phrase loudly(for hot) or quietly(for cold) depending on how close the seeker is to finding the teddy. You could use any vocabulary or phrase; you could even use it to practise opposites with two words being used eg grande for hot and pequeño for cold.

Sara also suggested a song in French to practise body parts – as an alternative to Heads Shoulders Knees and Toes! Jean Petit qui danse is a sweet little song about a man who dances with various parts of his body. Sara used a downloadable track to show us how the song went, and yesterday I recieved an email in which MarieFrance Perkins mentioned the same song –

I’ll blog about what Paul Nutt and Rona Heald said a little later!

I spent today in Gloucester at an eTwinning event entitled Working on the Internet with partner schools across Europe . The event was led by Baldev Singh so when I was asked following the Nottingham PDW by the British Council to attend the event as an eTwinning Ambassador and talk about my experiences of eTwinning, I jumped at the chance. As I blogged previously, I had wanted to attend all three of the workshops at the Nottingham event, so the prospect of learning something from Baldev was exciting. And sure enough, I did!

After giving us an overview of how ICT and technology has impacted our world and how it can be used to develop the international dimension, we had a go at using Photo Story 3 to make presentations on a theme of our choosing. I was itching to have a go as I helped other people with their presentations, and I managed to grab a few minutes to make a quick slideshow about ‘Healthy food’. I was really pleased to learn that Photo Story 3 is downloadable free and as soon as I got home I downloaded it – another thing to play with at the weekend ;o) It was really simple to use and you can see the result of my ten minutes (promise you it was that quick!).

Throughout the day we talked about a myriad of tools such as Voicethread, Voki, Animoto, OneTrueMedia, Flickr, and many more as well as mentioning various projects including Voices of the World and Chris Fuller’s Euro08 project – possibly not a good time to talk about footy :o( as looked at the possibilities for eTwinning. I talked to one delegate about a collaborative music project and another about their existing partnerships and how it might be developed. It was good to be able to go beyond my brief too as people asked about my PLL experiences too and I was able to point a couple of people towards online support networks such as Talkabout Primary MFL.

All in all, a successful day for all – and I must have done a half decent presentation as I’ve been asked to go back!

Enjoy the video!

Today’s ELL RSG in Birmingham is entitled Let’s get active! and I’m presenting ideas for activities using Songs and Rhymes , and also Parachutes.

I’ve uploaded my presentations to My Box of Goodies (see right) along with some of the materials I’m using. I’ve done this so that people that were at the RSG can download them but also to give access to those that weren’t there – I’m not averse to sharing! I’m also conscious that giving people handouts is lovely but they often get filed away and forgotten – hopefully by encouraging people to be proactive and download the materials they are more likely to use them. And if they don’t want them, I’ve not caused the death of another small forest ;o)

A couple of links –
the parachute stuff is heavily inspired by the work of Daryl Bailey and co at Hove Park School – have a look at their website
You can download their parachute materials in Spanish, French and German from there!
And the materials for Le fermier dans son pré are available from Maternelle de Moustache
by clicking on F. There are lots of other materials there too for stories and songs as well as craft activities.

Having published the last post, I came over all creative and decided to make a slideshow of some of the hands from Hands around the World using OneTrueMedia – partly as a trial run for this month’s Voices of the World task, but also because I think it looks and sounds great. Tell me what you think!

Make an on-line slide show at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Back at the end of August, Paul Harrington blogged about Imagiverse and mentioned being involved in their Hands around the World project last year. As I’m always on the lookout for new ideas for global links, I investigated further and signed up Whitehouse Common.

Well, a couple of weeks ago, the time came to take part and on Friday I sent off a large parcel of handprints to Michelle Mock in California.

A brief idea of the project –

Hands Around the World – Students from classrooms around the world will create cut out paper “handprints” which they will send to Imagiverse for distribution to other participants. You will receive as many handprints as you send (at least one per student). The Fall exchange is themed “Holidays Around the World”. Since many countries and cultures are celebrating major holidays at this time of year, we would like to celebrate how and what you celebrate. What are the traditions celebrated where you live? What are the customs and traditions you observe? What might someone in another country not know about your celebration? What is the history behind the tradition?

So, being an adventurous kinda gal, I decided that the whole school should get involved, so over the last ten days, 480 kids have been drawing around their hands and decorating the prints to depict a festival of their choice. Then on the back they have written the name of the festival and a sentence or two about why it is special to them. Most classes cut them out too but I did end up with over 100 to cut out myself, and then I took photos of them all for posterity before parcelling them up and posting them to the USA.

Now we await the arrival of our parcels of Hands from around the world! Hopefully we’ll find out about some festivals and celebrations with which we are not so familiar as well as discovering how other people celebrate the ones we know.

Just as with our eTwinning project last year, I feel that this exercise has once more given the pupils the opportunity to reflect a little on events that happen every year, like Bonfire Night, Diwali and Christmas, and to remember the reasons why we have these events – even if some of their reasons for choosing to depict them were based on sweets and presents!

So – why not get involved? There’ll be another exchange in the Spring, with a new theme. You don’t need to involve the whole school, but nothing ventured, nothing gained! It could be a gentle way to introduce the idea of International projects to your school, and, as Paul pointed out in his blog, it’s an excellent idea for keeping kids busy during wet breaks!

Well – perhaps this is the answer to lack of global awareness of our pupils? Although I’m not sure that geographical knowledge will necessarily translate into global understanding, at least she can find her way around a world map and perhaps one day, visit all these places?
(Thanks to My Wonderful World Blog via Langwitches for blogging this clip first! )