Category: books

*This is one of a series of posts about some of my favourite story books for Primary Language Learning*

Moving to Switzerland added German books to my book case where previously there had only been French and Spanish. Not very many as books are exorbitantly priced  (I mostly borrowed them from the library) but some.

I love books. I am indeed a bookaholic and whilst I am very fond of my technology (and this series will feature ebooks), I’m not sure I’ll ever stop preferring the smell and feel of a ‘proper’ book to swiping an electronic device. So I had to purchase this book –

Esel (Donkey) asks Was hast du denn da?

Affe (Monkey) replies Das ist ein Buch.

Esel has obviously not seen a book before and wonders if it texts, needs wifi or Tweets; Affe patiently replies Nein, das ist ein Buch until he decides that it would be best to let Esel read the book …

I love Das ist ein Buch because I’m Monkey when most people think that I’d be Donkey. I also like the ‘there’s more to life than swiping and tweeting and making noise’ message.

I think this would be a great story to share with a class, certainly the “Das ist ein Buch” refrain would soon be picked up, and the language is quite easy to decipher with clues from the pictures supported by actions from the reader. And it lends itself to adaptations with the scaffold “Kannst du…+ verb?”  with other things that a book might be able to do.

Below is an animated telling of the book and the whole book appears one one sheet here.

httpv://youtu.be/nYl_nyuyn5Y

My second book is Wo ist mein hut

“Mein Hut ist weg. Ich will ihn zurück” says Bär. He patiently asks the other animals if they have seen his hat but noone has until the deer asks a good question that jogs his memory!

I like this book as it is again repetitive with Bär asking each animal “Hast du meinen Hut gesehen?” and thanking them politely when they haven’t “Schon gut. Trotzdem vielen dank” so lends itself well to class reading. It could also be developed into a game where learners hide an object whilst one of the class is outside for them to discover on their return (good question practice) or in small groups with cards, with question Hast du ……… gesehen? and reply Nein, ich habe……. nicht gesehen if they don’t have the card or Ja, es ist hier if they do. You could easily substitute the verb for gestohlen (stolen) gegessen (eaten) versteckt (hidden)and so on.

So that’s two of my favourite German books – others include the Lieselotte series about a mischievous cow, and all the Pixi Bücher that you can buy very cheaply wherever you see the stand below as well as in supermarkets. I’ll post again with my favourite ebooks another time!

As I am virtually housebound (that’s ‘nearly completely’ not  ‘housebound in a virtual world’!) I’m looking for things to occupy my time so decided embark on a blog series. I then concluded that I could kill two birds with one stone by cataloguing my books (especially as I’m being reunited with many of them out of storage!) and blogging about them. And I woke this morning to see that Clare has blogged about her favourite French and Spanish books so it seems that now is a good time to share!

So. over the next few weeks, I’ll share some of my favourite story books and try to share how I use them or might use them in the classroom. It’ll take that long as a)I have lots of books b)some are still in storage.

First post is coming right up after this one!

Although I love a good book, eBooks are increasingly becoming part of my life for a number of reasons. One of those reasons is that, in an educational / classroom context, an eBook projected onto a IWB / via AppleTV or Reflector app is so much easier to share than a printed text.

I’ve previously written about Calliope, Queen of the Zebras, an iPad app story, and Soy demasiado grande and Le facteur spatial in I can read..eBooks, so I was interested to have a look at some of the more advanced books by bSmall .

Los mellizos de tiempo is one of their original eBooks in the Let’s read series, aimed at older learners who can read independently. This series are bilingual parallel texts with Spanish on one page and English on the other. (Also available in French!)

“The twins’ grandfather has invented a time-travel watch. Whoosh! The twins suddenly find themselves in Ancient Egypt. But will they ever get home again?”

Having used the CDRom versions of the I can read books, I’m familiar with the double page spread with colourful illustrations. The eBook preserves this and also the ability to have the book read to you. What I like about this book is that there is a separate audio control for Spanish and English text so you can choose the language you wish to hear, unlike the I can read books that I’ve seen where both texts are on the same control. There’s an image scrubber at the bottom of the page that means you can move smoothly from beginning to end of the book or home in on a selected page. Wonderful!

As to the story, it’s quite simple and easy to follow, especially as there’s the support of the English text too. It’s short enough to be used in one go but also long enough to be read in a few ‘episodes’ to a class. I think it would be great to use in the primary classroom as it links so well with the ‘topic’ of Egyptians, or under the ‘learning journey’ of Treasure taken in Year 4 at WCPS. And that got me thinking…

In the next post I’ll be sharing some ideas about linking Spanish and the Egyptians!

Today in Waterstones in Coventry, Maria Alexander aka @IamMariaAlex has been holding a book signing for her first book – very exciting! Entitled Welcome to Planet WizZ, it is the first of a series of books ‘Teaching children Spanish the WizZ way‘, and Maria kindly let me have a pre-launch look!

Planet WizZ is ‘a mysterious little planet..that never stays still and keeps whizzing among the other planets.’ The planet is inhabited by wizzes, including Marrón and Naranja who are twins and the ‘stars’ of the story, along with Señor VerdeRojo who runs the only school on WizZ. Spanish is the official language on Planet WizZ and, whilst the book is written in English, there are Spanish phrases in the text besides the characters names. Each chapter (five in this book) has a theme in the form of a question e.g. ¿Qué hay en tu mochila? ¿Cuántos años tienes? ¿Cuándo es tu cumpleaños? and within the chapter, relevant vocabulary is used which is then listed at the end of the chapter.

I enjoyed the story – the characters are amusing and you quickly get to know their personalities and traits. The Spanish does not detract from the story by which I mean that the story doesn’t seem stilted as you switch reading between the two languages, and there aren’t too many new words introduced in each chapter. All the Spanish is highlighted in bold so it’s clear to the reader when the Spanish is coming, and the characters’ names are also written in the colour of their name (as I wrote the names above!) I loved the graphics – simple but very amusing and appealing. (I think all teachers could do with 5 eyes like Señor VerdeRojo) And I particularly liked the little bits of incidental ICU that appear as you read such as information about Spanish speaking countries, and also the ‘valuable lessons’ that the characters often learn by the end of the chapter! The page of vocabulary at the end of the chapter promises sound files for the pronunciation of each item on www.planetwizz.com – you can currently register for future updates and I sure that this will follow soon along with other supporting resources as soon as website glitches are sorted out.

Whilst the books are aimed at 6-9 year olds, as Maria says in this lovely interview by one of her pupils, Ellie, they can equally be used by older beginners as a starting point as the themes such as numbers and the alphabet, are ones you usually meet at the start of language learning.

The interview also talks about how some of the proceeds from the book will got to M.A.M.A., an organisation that uses art and music to make the world a better place!

According to the Bablake newsroom you can buy the book, priced £6.99, from Waterstones in Coventry (where Maria will be signing more copies  during late night shopping on Wednesday 19th), WHSmiths, independent retailers and on Amazon (although it says currently unavailable, they’ll have more copies very soon)and the Book Repository.

This is billed as the first of many Spanish books, and there’ll be more languages too…(see below!)

Good luck Maria! Looks great!

I was reflecting today how much things have changed since I began teaching – we still used a banda machine (ah, the smell of that fluid!), Spain had the peseta, computers were huge and static, and the www was in its infancy.  Even in the last few years things have changed significantly with the arrival of smartphones and tablets – “fruity” or otherwise ;o)

By coincidence, I’d found that a resource I’ve used as a primary school teacher has now been released in a new format.

When first taught primary languages I discovered the I CAN READ series of books, firstly in French and then in Spanish.  These bilingual books allowed learners to read the simple stories in English and French or Spanish at the same time, meaning that they were never unsure about the meaning of vocabulary. It also made it less ‘risky’ for a learner to choose such a book as they didn’t have the mental block of all the words being ‘foreign’.

Then, as learning became more ‘technological’ and with the advent of the IWB,  Early Start began to market the books as Big Books on CD Rom, offering French Spanish and some German books. This meant that a whole class could read the book together, or have it read to them. They could complete activities collaboratively and discuss the text, focussing on individual items of vocabulary or grammar points like adjectives or exclamations. and of course, individuals could access them and play independently with the sound of the language adding to the reading that was possible with the books.

And now bsmallpublishing  have added ebooks to the mixture! Priced £4.99 and available from the iTunes app store, there are currently 10 French and  2 I can read… Spanish titles, and then 3 Let’s read (aimed at older KS2/KS3 readers) eBooks in Spanish and French.

The eBooks all feature a helpful ‘tips and shortcuts’ page which explains how to interact with the book – the eBooks are intuitive but there are certain things, such as how to stop the book from reading in English and skip to the French/Spanish, that are best made explicit from the start.

Below are screenshots from two of the books – Soy demasiado grande and Le facteur spatial showing some of the features such as Read to me (press the green triangle), the thumbnail bar that appears so you can skip to the correct page, and the vocabulary/pronunciation page that highlights the key words in the book.

The bsmall webpage explains –

We have been busy preparing ebook versions of some of our bilingual stories. Our bilingual books are designed as fixed layout, colour ebooks with read aloud capabilities in two languages. They are in the epub format. They are readable on your iPad via the iBooks App and will be available soon for Kobo Vox and Kindle Fire. We’re adding more and more devices/distribution options as we go along so watch this space.

Read a little more about our list’s journey from print to digital on our blog.

And here is a Youtube video demonstrating how the books work using George, le poisson rouge.
httpv://youtu.be/1XA99B0ento

I think that the eBooks are great for individual pupil access which is after all the idea of a mobile device. The stories are simple yet appealing, and feature repetition of words and structures, making them very accessible to beginners as well as intermediate learners. If I were to use it as a teaching tool, I would want a way to choose between hearing the English OR the French/Spanish OR both, rather than having to ‘jump in’ as quickly as possible to isolate the French/Spanish story – perhaps a future update might allow this. The vocabulary section is great too – a clear picture dictionary makes it very accessible to personal learning. I might like to see some phrases added to this e.g. me gusta – I like / no me gusta – I don’t like or tengo – I have and quiero – I want in Soy demasiado grande; however, I appreciate that the idea of a picture dictionary is that it is visual and sentences are more difficult to illustrate clearly!

The other great thing about the eBooks is that, once purchased, they go into your iBooks library where you can use all the feature of that app too such as the ability to ask it to speak a word or phrase that you highlight (in any language for which you have the keyboard), define to find out the meaning of words  or the search facility to find every occurrence of a certain word.

There’s a part of me that still loves ‘proper’ books, and I’m not entirely convinced that I’ll ever completely abandon the joy of literally turning pages, but I have to admit that in the language classroom, eBooks are a great tool that allow independent access to stories (and information books of course!) in other languages, not just in written but also in spoken form.

The second video I’d like to share –

A story about a girl called Maria finding some lines on the ground at the base of a mountain in Peru opens up the possibility of looking at the history of a Spanish speaking country, the culture and heritage, and the art of that area. Here’s some background information that might help!

I think it’s be a brilliant way of integrating lots of different areas of the curriculum – what about making your own Nazca lines on the school field?

Nazca lines

Nazca Lines and Cahuachi culture

Nazca lines facts

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PMPsqBAMfw]

Just discovered this ‘channel’ on Youtube – coloradolibraries. It’s the site of Colorado State Libraries and features several clips of people reading stories.

A Colorado Storytime includes read-alouds of childrens books along with literacy tips. It includes different types of short books, in English and Spanish, with colorful pictures, related in some way to Colorado through publisher, author, illustrator or theme, and read by Colorado personalities.

Over the next 4 posts I’ll be sharing some Spanish ones and making the odd suggestion about how they might be used.

The first is a story about Cucumber soup – Sopa de pepino – a great story about working together (think The enormous turnip) featuring minibeasts!

Linda Owen has some lovely ideas about using minbeasts in primary languages and here are some resources (in French I think but they could be adapted!)  and there’s a wonderful song about a labybird on this page (scroll down the page)

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRRWnRO7dm0

On Tuesday I was in sunny (yes, it was sunny!) Manchester, delivering my AQA course.

Apart from the problems with the internet, I believe a good day was had by all – lunch was once more a highlight!

Rather than repeat all the links, can I refer you to my last post where you will find all the ‘new’ links about PLL, and also some recommendations from other delegates of sites and learning materials that they’ve found useful.

I forgot last week to put a link to a resource listing many many games and quick activities for the PLL classroom, so here it is.

Here is the Slidecast of my second presentation from Brighton.

Apologies for the audio cutting out before the end – no idea what happened there!  Perhaps the iRiver overheated!

Apologies to @wizenedcrone for forgetting her real name – it’s Fiona Joyce!!!

And the German site I mentioned was called GenkiGerman.