Stuck for a present for Christmas? Don’t want to waste your money on a present that will be discarded as soon as you’ve left? Want to give something with that will have a lasting value?
Here’s an idea, presented with all the cheesiness of a ripe Gorgonzola as only Mr P can ;o)
(Congratulations on the European Podcast Award win)
Alternatively, check out Oxfam Unwrapped or Send a cow :o)
You know you’re doing something right when you ask a class to write a Christmas poem and several kids ask you for a Spanish dictionary – in a Literacy lesson!!
I have to explain that as well as teaching Spanish, I teach other subjects too and whilst I like to integrate Spanish into other areas of the curriculum, on this occasion I had meant them to write in English. However, I wasn’t going to discourage them so off they went to fetch the dictionaries. I did advise them to stick to a simple structure and suggested ‘Navidad es….’ as a repeated line but otherwise left them to it!
Most of the class did write poems in English – although several finished their English one then wrote in Spanish too – but there were three or four Spanish ones. We shared our some of our poems and, using an Easispeak microphone, we recorded some of them (sadly didn’t have time for all of them but we’ll do it next week!) Then, at lunchtime, we made them into Voki. They’re on the school website, but here are two Spanish ones.
One is written as an acrostic using Regalos as its theme.
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The other was written by a lovely girl who finds literacy very tricky so I was really proud of her!
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Just read an interesting article in The Telegraph Education section with the above title. It reports on a group in the Harrogate area called French for Fidgets (a great name for the group!) that teaches French to toddlers through song and games. Taking kids as young as 18 months, their philosophy is –
“… to make it fun. When devising these classes, I asked myself what children this age enjoy doing and the answer was singing, eating and rolling around the floor. So that’s what we do. It just happens we speak French while we’re doing it.”
I’ve taught Kindergarten at a previous school and also had pupils as young as 18 months, so I can completely agree with and endorse the benefits of catching them early. In fact there were children with emergent speech who had as many words in Spanish as in English – and all that from 20 minutes first thing on a Monday! The analogy ‘little sponges’ is a very apt one.
And research backs this up – Professor Annette Karmiloff-Smith of the Birkbeck Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development in London is quoted in the article saying –
“Right from birth, the brain has the capacity to learn three or four different languages and in many countries that’s what happens,” she says. “In fact, the majority of children in the world are bilingual, either because their country has a number of borders or because their parents speak different languages.
“The typical pattern is for a child to learn one language from their father, one from their mother and another at school or in the street. As for brain capacity, I know children with Down’s syndrome who have three languages simultaneously. The truth is that languages shouldn’t be introduced at primary school, but at nursery school.”
And she concludes with a radical idea-
“Teach a language at nursery school and you won’t need to teach it at secondary,” she maintains. “By that time, the children will already be able to speak it.”
Well, it’s December 1st and as much as I’ve tried to be strong, Christmas has finally got me! School is full of Christmas plans for plays, parent partnership days, activities, assemblies and the like, and home is likewise in Christmas mode as littl’un plays the lead in the Infants’ play tomorrow as The Little Angel – if his temperature doesn’t get any higher :os
And, obviously, plans for classroom activities are turning Christmas-ward too!
So, I’ve been through my files and found some Powerpoints that might help you – and me! to get our classes in the Christmas spirit as well as ticking a few Intercultural Understanding boxes!
I am not claiming responsibility for all of these as lots have been kindly shared by people on Yahoo! MFL resources group, or the Consejería.
So – to start you off, why not try learning how to say Merry Christmas in 10 languages other than English? Perhaps you could take one each morning for the next two weeks?
Here’s a Disney video from Youtube if you want more languages – and it’s even got the pronunciation for you!
Then perhaps have a look at some Christmas vocabulary in Spanish? If your room is decorated for Christmas, why not label the decorations – or use them for a game of ‘Búscame…’ ?
Christmas in Spain is very particular and the Ministerio de Educación y Cienciain conjunction with the Consejería de Educación en el Reino Unido e Irlanda have produced a great powerpoint presentation choc-a-block with authentic pictures of the events in December and January – not all of which are religious.
They have also produced a presentation about El Belén – the traditional Nativity scene that decorate Spanish homes at this time of year. I usually use my ELC nativity scene to retell the story of Christmas from the Biblical perspective completely in Spanish. Kids understand because it is a story with which they are familiar and also because I’m very dramatic in my retelling – the Head of the Catholic Prep, School where I used to work was rather taken aback by my reenactment of Mary being told by an angel that she was pregnant with Jesus ;o)
I also uncovered this very comprehensive presentation about Spain at Christmas complete with more photos and information in bite size chunks. It includes details of El Gordo, el Caganer (in ploite language!) and el Roscón de Reyes.
I’ve also found a presentation I did a few years ago at Birmingham Council House (I think it was!) about ideas for Christmas in the MFL classroom. It includes ideas for French, Spanish and German, and the ideas are suitable for right across the age range. I posted it last year too but in case you didn’t catch it….hopefully something for everyone! (hope the links still work!)
to be continued!!
I love this poster, shared with me on Twitter by @nwinton from the imaginatively named I love Typography blog in a post entitled Diacritical Challenge. The challenge is to a) name the font and b) identify the diacritical marks!
I’ve got to say that I couldn’t name all of them but there are plenty of people having a go in the comments!!
The subtitle of the post is ‘Squiggly bits’ which is how many of the pupils I teach describe them. As they’re unfamiliar in our language, it can take a bit of explaining but ñ isn’t too hard to explain, and the accents in Spanish to show where to stress words is easily explained when I mispronounce their names by stressing the wrong bit. And ¡ and ¿ are explained by the need to know if something is a question or exclamation a the beginning of the sentence so that your intonation is correct – cue much overacting ;o)
All counts towards Knowledge about Language!
Via my FriendFeed, I was asked by John Johnston (via Twitter!) what type of blog I had, linking to Typealyzer. Being a nosey, inquisitive soul, I decided to find out! And what I found was rather interesting.
I’m forever doing quizzes and surveys on Facebook like Which Sesame Street puppet are you? (Zoey) Which Heroes power do you have? (Peter Petrelli) and Which Scrubs character are you? (Elliot) and frankly, whilst amusing, they interest me for about 10 seconds before I move on to poking someone or finding out if I remember the 80s.
However, this captured my attention for much longer. I put in my URL as requested and was given the following analysis.
And apart from the bit about being impulsive (have to work at that!) and following things through (which I do!), I’d say it was rather accurate! especially the bit about sitting still and remaining inactive!
But even more interesting was the next bit which analysed my brain activity.
Made me think – why am I so low on feeling, intuition and imagination? I’d say I was that way inclined but my blog doesn’t. Perhaps it’s the way it’s analysed – not sure if it’s on the last post or on the whole thing. Perhaps I’ll have another go in a week or so and see if it tells me anything different.
If you’ve got a blog, I’d be interested to know what it says about you. I did check a few and discovered that Chris Fuller is a Doer like me, Joe Dale and Oscar Stringer are Guardians, Tim Rylands is a Mechanic, Tom Barrett is a Scientist and Jo Rhys Jones is a Duty Fulfiller.
Some of you may recall a blog post in July about a group from English Martyrs School and Sixth Form College, Hartlepool, winning Company of the Year and Most Creative Company of the Year in the Young Enterprise in the NorthEast sponsored by The Arts Council NorthEast for their product LanguAges.
For those who don’t, here’s a brief recap from the group ;
Our company, LanguAges, provides educational resources to aid the teaching and learning of French in primary schools at Key Stage 2. We have created a compilation of three different games, The Clothes Game, The Class Card Game and The Shopping Game, and an Interactive CD, which form the LanguAges Pack.
All of our games are tailored to be fun, yet educational, comprehensively covering the Key Stage 2 curriculum, and helping to improve vital comprehension and speaking skills.
Having tested the product and marketed it to Stockton schools, all schools in Hartlepool should now have a copy of the materials.
A representative from the Hartlepool local authority, Tom Argument, said: “Their materials are creative, fun, very practical, and of a high quality. The group present themselves in a business-like manner and have real entrepreneurial potential.”
The group went on to discuss the future-
We realise that LanguAges has a huge amount of potential, and are currently investigating the many options available to us. Several possibilities are being considered, such as selling the idea, or even continuing the company even after the Young Enterprise Company Programme is over.
The prospect of mass producing the LanguAges Pack and even expanding the range to include a variety of other modern foreign languages is a very exciting one.
Today I received news from their (very proud) teacher, Madame Welsh, about LanguAges.
An update….they did brilliantly well at the National Finals, winning the Award for Financial Management. They are working with a company http://www.tts-group.co.uk/ to market their product further afield! They make me so proud!
So well done once more to the LanguAges team for their continuing success – a great example of language learning going hand in hand with other areas of the curriculum.
And a pat on the back to TTS for seeing the potential of the product. TTS is currently one of my favourite school shopping places so I’ll be watching out for the arrival of the products!
I came across an interesting news report via my GoogleAlerts from The Kerryman paper in Ireland, entitled Enthralling tales from afar. The report begins…
It goes on to say that this is the second time that this type of visit has been made possible by the GoetheInstitut, and that the aim of the exercise was to encourage primary pupils to learn German in a fun environment.
“There has been a growing interest in teaching and learning modern foreign languages at primary level in Europe and research shows how enthusiastic teachers and children are,” Georgia Herlt, head of the language department at the Goethe-Institut Dublin, stated.
“As well as learning languages it helps with cultural awareness and combats stereotypes, and the children are geared up for it when they go to secondary school.”
The visits saw Suse Weisse using familiar and less well known fairytales in German (with explanations in English).
I love using stories to teach primary languages for many reasons. For example;
I could go on!
So I’m all for these visits – when a Year2 class told me that they’d worked out from listening to and reading Rubiales on the Northumberland GfL that Spanish put the adjective after the noun whereas English put it before, I was sold on the use of stories to teach!
Off to see if I can find a Spanish storyteller now…;o)
I have been criticised before for ‘posting in a foreign language’ on ¡Vámonos! A little harsh, I felt, as the blog is subtitled ‘Teaching and learning Primary Languages in the 21st century’. (comment to that effect has been deleted from the post!) However, I am aware that there are readers who do not speak Spanish or Catalan, the two main languages (other than English!) in which I blog. Since its inception, ¡Vámonos! has had a ‘translate’ widget in the right hand sidebar for just this reason, and I recommended the use of Google Translate last year.
Last week, I discovered that Google Reader now offers the opportunity to have your reading translated into a language that you understand. So, if you have subscribed to my blog using GoogleReader, and didn’t understand a word of the previous post, this is for you!
Go to view settings…select ‘Translate into my language’ (that is the language that you have set as default for your reader) …..
and Bob’s your Uncle!
The translation isn’t perfect – me chifló seems to have it stumped! – but you can get the gist!
So, now there’s no excuse for not reading my blog, eh?? ;o)
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