Apologies to those of you who have been waiting for four weeks for this!

On 19th June I spoke at the Birmingham Primary Languages Conference along with Dr Lid King and Lucy Adamson of CILT amongst others.
Held at the beautiful Birmingham Botanical Gardens, the conference was attended by many of those involved implementing and delivering primary languages in the area.
My talk was on eTwinning and the International Dimension, my main point being that looking outside the classroom and making links with others is a nobrainer for so many reasons.

Below you can listen to and look at my presentation. If you want further information, feel free to contact me via the comments, or by going to the eTwinning site.

As regular readers of my blog will know, I’m a big fan of sporting events and particularly football, and I aim to use sporting events to make language learning relevant to my pupils. For example, a couple of years ago we had a Spanish scheme of work for all of KS2 Autumn term based on the Rugby World Cup.

Therefore I was really pleased to read a blogpost on Talkabout Primary MFL by Clare Seccombe entitled World Cup 2010.

In her post, Clare links to a presentation she did recently in the NorthEast, offering ideas and links on how to integrate and use the World Cup in the Primary classroom.

Well worth a look!

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9EZ25NIjJA&hl=en&fs=1&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999&border=1]

On the day of his funeral, here’s Michael Jackson singing in Spanish. For a 2001 special edition of his “Bad” album, Jackson recorded “Todo mi amor eres tú,” a translated version of his hit “I Just Can’t Stop Loving You.” He performed it as a duet with Siedah Garrett.

(Thanks to About.com for sharing this)

Today I took part in a Primary Language workshop at Plantsbrook School.

My contribution to the day was called You and Youtube and addressed the use of video and slideshows to facilitate and enhance primary language learning. Below is my presentation. If you click on the videos or the titles, they are all hyperlinked to their source. I’ve added a few of the clips I used as well.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkQCtzdQFto&hl=en&fs=1&border=1]

Additionally, to address some of the questions posed:

I was asked a few questions about ANIMATION – can I direct you to Oscar Stringer’s wonderful site for guidance ideas and resources – particularly his useful PDF that gives directions on how to animate.

Putting SOUND in POWERPOINT – check out this post from the ubiquitous Joe Dale.

Good places to find RESOURCES – ready made – are Talkabout Primary MFL and TES Staffroom.

All my bookmarks are available to access here – http://delicious.com/lisibo so if you need some ideas on festivals, click on the link, then click on ‘festivals’ on the right hand side and you’ll find all the sites I’ve bookmarked.

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Spanish Hand Gestures, originally uploaded by KatsAsleep.

Just picked up the following from Twitter via @josepicardo who was alerted to it by @luciax.

Published by The Guardian in its Language Resources – Spanish area, ‘Learn Spanish gestures’ is a guide to some typically Spanish gesticulating that you could employ to look truly authentic as you complain of being fed up or tell your friend how busy the bar was at lunchtime.

Gesticulating is something that I can’t help doing when speaking, especially in Spanish so this is just up my street. And I can see that this would be a useful resource for intercultural understanding activities, comparing typical gestures. I recall discovering the hard way that gestures that are innocuous in one country can cause offence to other nationalities – not my fault that Greece lost 5-0 in the football and noone had told me that holding up five fingers with my palm facing a Greek was rude!

Well, something exciting happened yesterday and I was too busy at the MFL Flashmeeting to notice.

My blog received its 20, 000th hit at some point – when I checked today the counter stood at 20,095 which shocked me rather!

Thank you to all those who have read my blog over the last 20 months. Hopefully you’re still finding it helpful.

Just been reminded that TONIGHT we are having a MFL Flashmeeting, just like the one we had on May 4th! I was sure it was next week as there had been a suggestion of possible activities for Bastille Day due to the proximity to 14th July but it seems that it is today – 8.30pm – 10.30pm.

You can check out details here on the wiki and see who else is joining. There is a waiting list for places, but do not despair as some people may be unable to attend for thw whole time and others may have had to change their plans since signing up.

So why not pop along here at some point during the 2 hours and see what we’re up to!

Heres the agenda!

AGENDA ITEMS

1. If you are a blogger, what is your favourite post and why?
2. Getting into podcasting. Where do you start?
3. Ideas for celebrating The European Day of Languages on 26th September 2009 using Web 2.0 tools or otherwise (How about a massive VoiceThread?)
4. CPD opportunities for next academic year. Would anyone want to organise a one or two day face to face event somewhere in the UK? (@josepicardo – I am not able to make it tonight, off on a staff do, however, I would like to volunteer that we might be able to use my brand new sixth form center at Nottingham High School for a one day f2f probably Easter or October 2010. Discuss if appropriate. José Picardo)
5. Cunning tips: how do you save time in blogging/podcasting/resource creating and so on, to keep work/life balance & prevent divorce/forgetting names of children, etc.?

Having never been to Stoke on Trent previously, I was there twice in three days! This time I’d been invited to speak at a ‘Creative Spanish’ afternoon for Primary Language teachers, organised jointly by Lorna Harvey from Staffordshire and Helen Thomas from Stoke on Trent. I really enjoyed the presentation on using Art by Shirley Kliment-Temple and was sorry to miss the salsa and skipping!

My presentation was a repeat of the one I did at the Primary Language Show in Liverpool about the QCA unit based on SaintSaens Carnival of the Animals, and I have posted the slidecast from that event below so that you can listen and watch the slides! If yu want any of the resources, they are in this post.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.

It was great to be asked by Helen Thomas to talk to some teachers from Stoke about International Dimension and especially eTwinning a couple of weeks, and I’m sorry that it’s taken me this long to upload my presentation.

As promised, here is the presentation (it’s the same presentation but from a previous date – nd you get it with sound!) and the case study from my school below it. If you have any questions, please get in touch with me or with the eTwinning team at the British Council. The West Midlands contact is Isabel Lalsingh who is lovely and very helpful.

As I don my Spain shirt to watch Spain take on the singing might of Bafane Bafane, I thought I’d share with you a clip of the ‘guapísmo’ ‘Nando Torres scoring a hattrick against New Zealand earlier this week.

(thanks to Year4 at Green Park School for sharing this originally!)

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=piLVaZ1ilsY&hl=en&fs=1&color1=0x402061&color2=0x9461ca]