Celebrate language learning with the

Primary Languages Classroom Awards 2010 (PLCA 2010)

Entries are invited from: primary schools, after school clubs, teachers, children and parents who would like to share excellence in language teaching in their school. For the overall winning school there is £1000 worth of resources and a class visit to the Houses of Parliament in London to receive the winner’s Award.

What are the awards? The awards are a way of celebrating the teaching and learning of languages in UK primary schools and to highlight its positive impact on both the whole school and the local community.

As language teaching is a relatively new addition to the primary curriculum (supported right across the political spectrum), we aim to have a positive impact on the enthusiasm surrounding and the uptake of Primary Foreign Languages in our schools. With many pupils and schools supporting a wide range of languages in UK primary schools the English as an Additional language (EAL) award is to celebrate teachers and schools that support language development in both English and the child’s home language.

Who organises and sponsors the awards? The Primary Language Classroom Awards are organised by EMAS UK and Manic Monkey with the help of BESA and Affinity Media. The Awards are supported by Golden Daffodils, Little Linguist, Rafiki, and we are pleased to be able to recognise representatives from the French and German Embassies, the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust, The Association of Language Learners, Dr Lid King (National Director for Languages.) and Gemini.

How are the awards judged? These awards are judged independently by a group of professional educational and language experts.

Who are the winners? There will be 5 category winners, one for each category who will receive certificates of excellence, and an overall winner who is judged to show good practice and an holistic approach to the teaching of language, they will receive the day trip for the a class of the school to the Houses of Parliament, £1,000 worth of prizes and a framed certificate.

If you want to enter, download this PDF

Closing date is 30th April so get your skates on!

Bricklaying for beginners – Building firm foundations

It seems months ago that I spoke at Language world and I apologise for my tardiness in delivering this post!  Sadly, although i posted my presentation to Slideshare some time ago, i’ve been unable to get at it for a couple of weeks as the site is being rather glitchy.  Added to that the fact that i have used up my free bandwidth on Podomatic and also my new website, there are been ‘issues’ with getting everything together.

Still not worked it all out but until I do, here’s my presentation in PDF form for you.  Audio will follow asap!

People often ask me what eTwinning is all about, and, as an eTwinning Ambassador, I try to explain.  The eTwinning experience is tricky to put into words until you’ve experienced it, so this video is just the ticket.

It has no words and is therefore useable in any country, and it says a lot about what eTwinning can do for you.

As Alexander Meerkat would say ‘Simples!’

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fj58uA4cjrQ&w=425&h=350]

I was teaching Year 1 the days of the week this morning. We used the marvellous Days of the week song from Español Español but I’ve found this cute little clip on Youtube as well.
If you use it, though, you need to remind pupils that Spanish days of the week (and months of the year) have lower case initial letters and not capitals as we do in English.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5WHgkjL3kE&w=425&h=350]

Image by Cristóbal Cobo Romaní

Fast forward is the (long awaited by many!) article  published today in The TES magazine about ICT in MFL.

Yojana Sharma interviewed lots of fellow MFL Tweeters a few months back, gathering our thoughts on the use and importance of ICT in language learning.  She’s done a good job to condense all our thoughts as she spent on average 45 minutes interviewing us on the ‘phone.

So, if you’re interested in what Helena Butterfield, Clare Seccombe, Chris Harte, Isabelle Jones, Joe Dale, Alex Blagona, Suzi Bewell, Jo Rhys-Jones and José Picardo think about ICT and MFL, as well as the wonderfully named Norbert Pachler from IOE, check out the article.

Oh, and someone described as ‘widely regarded as a trailblazer for ICT use in Primary Languages’ has a word or two to say as well!

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.