Hot on the heels of CILT’s Primary Language Show, Birmingham’s ELL RSG meeting at the Martineau Centre in Harborne on 9th March was led by Helen Leigh from Worcestershire LA and was full of ideas for five to ten minute language activities that can be done in the classroom. Whilst the recommendation of one hour per week language learning has been understood as a discrete lesson by some, the ideal is that the hour is spread throughout the week. Not only because an hour is a loooong time to maintain attention and energy, but also because little and often fits well into the already packed primary curriculum. Helen suggested the term ‘language exposure’ too as a good way of viewing it.

The session was jampacked wth ideas which Helen related to the KS2 Framework.

Here are some exmaples –

O3.3 – perform simple communicative tasks using single words, phrases and short sentences
‘Snail stories’ – can be done in many languages as so simple! Un escargot (actions draw s – drive a car – point GO!)
Un escargot….deux escargots…..bonjour….bonjour…… kiss kiss……au revoir…au revoir
Un caracol…… dos caracoles…..hola…….hola……..kiss kiss……. adiós…..adiós
could add to it by asking how you are, name etc

Brain gym –
a)letters and number – using the chart (right), say the alphabet whilst lifting arms and legs as indicated by the number as below –
1- right hand and left leg
2- left hand and right leg
3- both hands

Kids could make up their own versions, have a competition to see how fast they can do it correctly? It also fits the idea of Daily Physical Activity. See also Take Ten en français / en español.

b. colours – Dr Kawashima-like stroop test – as a timed test perhaps, or inter table competition?

Another idea was a Mexican wave of word cards and/ or pictures?

O3.2 to recognise and respond to sound patterns and words O4.3 to listen for sounds, rhyme and rhythm

‘Phonics’
eg Une poule sur un mur (see here for song mp3)
focus on ‘ou’ sound – touch your head when you hear the sound.
then ‘u’ sound
actions

Helen then used pictures of Marge and Homer Simpson, breaking the sad news that they were splitting up and had to split their belongings, to demonstrate an activity with phoneme. Homer was in a house labelled ou and Marge in one labelled u – the task was to divide all the things in the home. eg Marge got la jupe, Homer la tortue, Marge le mur etc

Dans la forêt lointaine is a good song to use for reinfrcing the phoneme ou – pupils stand up and sit down each time your hear ‘ou’
This also covers ICU as traditional song. Helen reiterated that it is not necessary to understand every word.

“Splat’
A simple activity – two pupils compete to splat the number, animated on PPT to pop up and down. Make it harder by asking pupils to splat multiples of 3 for example.

L4.1 to read and understand a range of familair written phrases
O5.1 to prepare and practse a simple conversation, reusing familiar vocabulary and structures in new contexts
Fishing rods – hook a fish – on the back of the fish is a number – the team that gets the number closest to x that wins.
Add them orally! Alternatively, make it harder by allowing the use of all operations to reach a more difficult number.

Helen also showed an idea using an alphabet mat – give two people a word to spell out by ‘dancing’ on the letters. their partners cmpete to write the word phrase down.

Another idea was to ask questions with three possible answers. Someone is sent out. whilst they are outside, the group decide on the correct answers. When they return, the person has to get all three right or start again. This allows the class to practise the question form which the part they often struggle to learn.

Above is a slide about a game of Cluedo that could be played with the class – involves colours, classroom objects and rooms, and pupils repeat the same vocabulary over and over until someone gets the correct answer. And a bit of blood and gore always go down well ;o)

O3.4 listen attentively and understand instructions, everyday classroom language and praise words

‘spells’
Helen then showed us some magic! Dice that changed colour, books that lose colours and regain colours, disappearing things, psychic displays – all the usual stuff!
We made up a spell about colours –

We then had a look at the story Je m’habille et… je te croc! all about a wolf who gets dressed then comes to eat us! Helen had found a Powerpoint in French already prepared – there are lots more great ideas on the site too!

The final activities involved the Months of the year – firstly, using a mgaic bag – everyone wrote their birth month on a slip of paper and put them in a bag. Helen then got someone to choose a month and wrote the month that she thought it would be on a magic board. of course she was right as there was a secret compartment n the bag! The other activity involved betting on the month that disappears forst from the board, then, once they’ve all gone, which comes back? The disappearing involves pupils copywriting on a whiteboard, and reappearing involves recall.

Loads of ideas!! Thanks Helen x
pass the bomb!

This time last week I was starting my second afternoon of speaking at Primary Language Show in Liverpool. In three weeks time, I’ll be listening to, well, I can’t decide! It could be Rachel Hawkes, it could be Alex Blagona on wikis and it could be Pippa talking about a cross curricular French / Tudors project.

As usual, Language World, the annual conference of the Association of Language Learning (ALL), is packed full of great sessions. Spread over two days – Friday 3rd and Saturday 4th April – and taking place at Leicester University this year, the conference as always has something for everyone.
From trainees to PhDs, from Primary languages to Further education – all will find something to satisfy their needs. There’s a primary strand this year which is great and special rates for Primary teachers – whoop whoop!

And the opportunities for meeting new people and networking are great too.

I love Language World because there are always sessions that really challenge my brain, something that doesn’t always happen in CPD.

Why not have a look at the ALL site, download the PDF and check it out for yourself.

I’m speaking on ‘Absorbing ideas for Primary languages’ so it would be lovely to see you there. if not, I’ll publish my presentation and resources here, and of course, add the audio to Lisibo talks!

In order to make a Slidecast, you need to have a URL for the audio you want to synch to your Slideshare. So, the easiest way was to use Podomatic as I knew how that worked.

My first Slidecast – Ten top tips for Primary Language Learning – was created with the kind assistance of Joe Dale who saved the audio for me and emailed me the link, but I like to do things for myself and was determined to sort it all myself this time.

And, as I was putting the audio on Podomatic, it seemed silly not to publish it as a ‘podcast’.

So, you can also take advantage of just the audio of my PLS sessions (And any future ones!) by listening to my new Podomatic channel – Lisibo talks! or by subscribing on iTunes (link to follow when I’m approved!)

A quick update on the presentations from the Primary Language Show in Liverpool. Last week I published my presentations Join El Carnaval de los Animales and You and Youtube via Slideshare, and embedded them on my blog with other resources from the talks.

I recorded the sessions on my trusty ‘Toblerone’ aka my iRiver, and, as I was off work with a sick son this Thursday, I had time to edit the audio using Audacity and the Levelator. I then linked the audio to my Slideshare, synched it to the presentation and published it on Slideshare as a Slidecast. So if you now go to the blogposts, or to my Slideshare page, you will get the audio too! Magic!

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Learn a language – see through the eyes of others, originally uploaded by acjeppo.

Love this poster from Andrew Jeppesen (@ajep)
Beautiful photograph – and such a true statement.

From the home of Coffee Break Spanish, School Run French, One Minute Languages and Showtime Spanish comes a brand new, one off podcast mini series in aid of Comic Relief.

Urged to ‘do something funny’ this year, Mark and the Radio Lingua team have responded to frequent comments about their Scottish accents by producing a three part series entitled CoffeeBreak Scottish in which they teach us some basic Scottish phrases. It is a tongue in cheek look at how people speak in Scotland, not a course in Gaelic and as Mark says..

‘Please be aware that Coffee Break Scottish is provided as a light-hearted introduction to some contemporary Scottish expressions used in certain parts of the country, predominantly in the west. The course does not provide an in-depth study of the Scots language. It is not intended in any way to offend. Remember, we’re Scottish so we are laughing at ourselves! All materials are suitable for a family audience. Above all Coffee Break Scottish intended to give you a linguistic laugh and hopefully make some money for charity!’

So, if you want to know what ‘ah havnae a scooby’ or ‘it’s baltic oot there’ mean, why not pop along to http://www.coffeebreakscottish.com/ where, for £3, all of which goes to Comic Relief, you can downlaod the three episodes covering basic greetings and useful words, eating out, and making arrangements.

And, as a special treat, Radio Lingua are offering a voucher for 25% off any future purchase of a language course from RLN. So, if you enjoy CoffeeBreak Scottish, you might like to explore the catalogue of equally excellent but less tongue-in-cheek podcasts they produce.

One of the sessions I attended at the PLS was all about using Fairytales and Fables in PLL and employing children’s thinking skills. It was led by Louise Harty from Northumberland, and spoke to the wonderful resources available on the NGfL – particularly Riccioliodoro and Les souris courageuses

As I admitted to Louise when I saw here later, I’ve used the resources on the NGfL, specifically Goldilocks and Little Red Riding Hood in Spanish, and have made use of some of the activities discussed during the session without really grasping the full power of them. So it was good to discover the thinking and theory behind it all.

This has implications for thinking skills – Louise opened by reflecting that learning should be active, meaningful, challenging, collaborative, mediated and reflective. She talked about Lev Vygotsky and his zones of proximal development. Vygotsky felt that it is children’s interaction with others through language that most strongly influences the levels of conceptual understanding they can reach. He also believed that we can learn from others, both the same age and of a higher age and developmental level – learning is a social activity and thinking skills could be the road to better language learning.

The progression of learning in PMFL was said to be

• nouns
• words to describe nouns
• short phrase
• making own sentences
• able to use verbs confidently

and the scheme of learning activities that Louise was presenting follow this pattern.
At each stage, opportunities are given to explore concepts behind the knowledge in an unthreatening manner.

Here are the success criteria for each objective-

• nouns – I understand gender (not teaching it but exploring it)
• adjectives – I understand how adjectives work
• short phrases – I understand simple word order.
• sentences – I understand sentence construction
• use verbs confidently – I understand how verbs work

By using scaffolding early on, pupils in PMFl can reach level 5 equivalent skills. Louise questioned why, if pupils are conceptually able to reach level 5 in Maths science and Literacy, we limit them in MFL?

By moving from fairytales to fables the pupils are moving from familiar to less familiar stories with more complex language.

Ricciolodoro è i Tre Orsi was the first story in focus.
By using Storyboarding pupils were developing sequencing and deductive skills. They went on to classifying nouns, exercising sorting and clasifying skills, using language of similarity and differences whilst making connections. They ahve to articulate their reasoning with everyone bringing their own learning and skills
We did an activity in which we were exploring gender – not being taught it but discovering it. If you present ‘the cognitive conflict’ children discover for themselves and it much more powerful than being told.

Les souris courageuses – une fable
We began looking at the activity Map from memory, a visual, walking dictation type of activity in which we were communicating the position of items in a picture from memory wthout touching. The key was – How did we tackle the task? Were we methodical and divide the picture into sections? Did we look for likely places to put words? Did we match adjectives in advance of instructions?

We then moved onto the construction of phrases and sentences using a grid, then joining with connectives. Although some may not be strictly correct in terms of likelihood or sense, in the feedback you get quality of language. Louise emphasised that the teacher’s role is facilitating in thsi scenario rather than giving learning. In this exercise, the thinking was interpreting and oragnising info whilst the children were talking about how to work together as a team – team strategies lead to spontaneous language.

The next activity involved a Venn diagram which we used for making deductions about adjectives. Conclusions reached included that you often add an e to make feminine adjectives and ones that are the same end in e already. The exercise then gave opportunities for more sentence making opportunities.

Sadly Louise ran out of time to explain the Fortune line and Fact or fiction, but we did have a quick look at classifying verbs, matching infinitives to verb forms and then splitting the verb cards as we saw fit. We were encouraged to split them into description and action verbs, and then to discuss our conclusions.

The interactive stories and SMART notebook files of characters and for retelling the story are available on the NGfL website and the accompanying resources are available for purchase £149.
I’ve used the Goldilocks stuff in Spanish very successfully with Year2 who discovered all sorts of things about language through it. And now I understand why!!

For those of you who read my post a while back about the One Semester of Spanish Love song, you’ll be pleased to know that Mike hasn’t given up on wooing his ‘chica’. Now, with another semester (term) of Spanish behind him, and with a little help from a friend, he’s back with the Second Semester of Spanish Love Song.

Enjoy!

In honour of the big match tomorrow night and in honour of Scousers everywhere, a short video!

Especially for @raff31 – get well soon x

¡Qué ganen los Rojos!

Here’s my presentation from my Saturday session at the Primary Languages Show in Liverpool entitled You and Youtube.

The idea of the session was to give people ideas about how Youtube can be used in Primary Language Learning (PLL). We looked at alternatives to Youtube, how to use video clips if a site is blocked by downloading via one of a number of tools and of course, ideas of suitable clips to use and how they might be used to meet bjectives in the KS2 Framework.

As the movies included in my Keynote presentation were embedded, I have had to go back through the presentation and hyperlink to source sites. So if the title is not hyperlinked, click on the picture or black squarea nd you’ll be taken to the original!

Here are a couple of clips I showed that weren’t in the presentation.

spanish food song from janet wisner on Vimeo.

Activity ideas for use with the clips included:

• dressing up in clothes/ finding the flashcard as a race during Juguemos en el bosque
• holding up words – bateau, ciseau, la rivière, l’eau, or jigsaw texts in Bateau Ciseau
• listen out for a phoneme in Bateau ciseau (‘eau’) or Shnuffel (ich)
• respond to a Slideshare using Voicethread
• rewrite a song eg La Vaca Lola
• discuss cultural events – Semana Santa, German first day of school
• look at everyday life in other countries
• sing a long
• watching peers and using clips for assessment eg El Carnaval de los animales
• motivation – eg Baby Mario Mysteries

If you have any comments / questions, please feel free to leave them below, or e-mail me!