My session at the wonderful Practical Pedagogies conference centred around the use of technology to enhance Primary Language Learning.

Key points I made included:

• technology is not  just for the pupils but also for the teacher;
• it is just one tool we have to use;
• it is not always the best tool for the job.

I went on to suggest online tools as well as apps that might be useful in a range of contexts and situations.

My presentation is below and there is wiki with links to tutorials, examples and ideas that accompanies it. Feel free to ask questions via the contact form or @lisibo on Twitter.

I had the joy and pleasure of going to France last week for the Practical Pedagogies conference at International School of Toulouse. It’s not every day you get to go on a course that involves a ‘plane journey, and I was wondering about the wisdom of my exploits as I sprinted from one side of Brussels Airport to the other with 20 minutes to make my connecting flight thanks to high winds delaying my incoming flight… I made it, and it was well worth the travel and the late night.

What a conference! Why? Well, there were many reasons!

1. The welcome received at IST was wonderful. The staff went out of their way to help us. For example, I tweeted that I was having plug adaptor woes (mine didn’t have a ‘top hole’ so wouldn’t go in the socket, the one loaned by the hotel wouldn’t work either as my plug wouldn’t go into it…) and within minutes I was presented with a working adaptor and was able to charge my ‘phone (thanks also to Chris Mayoh who seemed to have a case full of adaptors that he was lending out!)
2. The organisation. Never have I been to such a well organised conference. Things ran to schedule, the gaps between sessions meant that you always had time for coffee even if you stayed behind to ask a question at the end of the previous one, and I never felt the vertigo I often feel as I rush from one place to another without breathing.
3. The company. What a great bunch of people! I laughed until I cried at points and enjoyed the friendship offered by those I already knew, those who I’d only previously known online, and those who were completely new acquaintances. Fun and games involving hats, Lycra, yards of beer and bowling alleys spring to mind.
4. Ewan McIntosh. That man has been so pivotal in my thinking and development as a teacher and learner, right from when he was still a language teacher and spoke at Language World at Oxford Uni. He will forever be known in my house as ‘the man who made Mum buy a Nintendo DS’ for which my sons are very grateful. Every time I hear him speak or read his blog he challenges me to think and consider what I do, how I teach and how I can best facilitate learning. And he is also very human and it’s great to talk to him. Loved this description of him:

Two inspirational keynotes (plus a workshop) that were like rich Dundee cakes in content & depth of ideas from @ewanmcintosh at #pracped15

— Andy Day (@Andyphilipday) October 16, 2015

And  5. The variety of sessions was amazing! Covering any subject you could name plus cross curricular ones as well as technology and even ukelele playing. It was very hard to select just 7 (I was told I had to choose my own session) but I did.
To sum it up in a tweet:

Great ideas and lots of collaboration in a lovely location with wonderful people inspiring great thoughts and actions. And fun!! #pracped15

— Lisibo (@lisibo) October 18, 2015

 

  I tried to sketch note all the sessions I attended, only failing twice as I couldn’t draw during the Drama workshop and it was hard during the AIM one as I needed to use my hands to gesture (and I’m also rubbish at drawing hands!) Anyway, I’ve uploaded my notes below.

Ewan McIntosh – opening keynote @ewanmcintosh @notosh

Novel departures – Estelle Ash and Isobel Patrick (IST) @estelleash @isobel_patrick

Boosting language acquisition through a FUN reading program – Patricia Burgaud and Joanne Allcock

Stimulating writing using technology to encourage reluctant readers – Julian Wood @Ideas_Factory

Immersive Learning – Ewan McIntosh @ewanmcintosh @notosh

Practical Straegies for teaching EAL students – Nick Fretwell (IST) @Nick_Fretwell

All in all, an amazing time during which I’ve learned a lot and laughed a lot too. I hope there’s a #PracPed16 – or 17 if Russel needs longer to recover 😉 – already planning what I might offer to present! (This year’s offering is in the next post!)

If you want to find out more, check out Russel Tarr’s reflections on the event, and notes etc are here

PS I think that every good school needs a ‘crime scene’ in the foyer complete with police tape, forensics suit and evidence. Talk about capturing the imagination!

I always get excited when people invite me to speak at conferences but I was very excited when Russel Tarr (created Classtools.net and was famously attacked by Gove for using Mr Men to help teach History resulting in a mass Mr Men Twitter avatar protest in solidarity!) asked me if I’d like to speak at a conference he was planning in Toulouse. A trip to France? Don’t mind if I do! And when he told me who else was speaking, I was even more excited and also perhaps a little daunted when I saw who else was speaking!

Practical Pedagogies takes place at the International School of Toulouse on October 15th and 16th and is

A high-impact training conference for classroom teachers by classroom teachers.
Two days of inspiring keynotes, 70+ workshops and networking activities: only 150 Euros!

 

I’m very much looking forward to the conference as there are so many different sessions under the umbrella theme of “Creativity, internationalism and innovation in the classroom” that it was very hard to choose which I’d like to attend. The programme is packed with goodies as you can see! And Ewan McIntosh @ewanmcintosh @notosh  who is keynoting and also delivering workshops always inspires and challenges!

My session will be about using ICT in the Primary Language Classroom:

There are threads for

• Pedagogy, Personal and Professional development including sessions by Miles Berry (@mberry), David Rogers (@daviderogers), Bill Lord (@Joga5) and Marisa Constantinides (@marisa_c);             
• Computing including sessions by Miles Berry (@mberry) and Chris Mayoh (@chrismayoh);
• Drama, Music and Design and technology including a session that I want to attend on Using drama games and activities across the curriculum led by G. Fearnehough (@gfearnehough), Curriculum Leader for Drama at IST, and E. Renou (@emmanuelrenou31), Modern Foreign Languages teacher at IST;
• History including a session about collaboration between History and Geography (and beyond!) led by Russel Tarr, author of ActiveHistory, and Matthew Podbury, author of GeographyPods.
• Science which offers diverse sessions on data logging, helping EAL learners and using SOLO taxonomy;
• English and Literacy with sessions led by Julian Wood (@ideas_factory), and staff from IST about using picture and story books to work creatively and cross curricularly (hopefully I’ll get to attend one or both);
• Mathematics with sessions on using Lego and Geogebra;
• Assessment and reporting with a session entitles Marking:Is it really worth it?;
• Tech tools including sessions by Dave Stacey @davestacey and John Sutton @HGJohn;
• CAS (Creativity, action, service) and TOK (theory of knowledge);

and of course

• Languages that features people I know like Isabelle Jones (@icpjones) and those who I have yet to meet like Dico Krommenhoek (@dico_kr). Oh, and me! I’m very much looking forward to finding out more about AIM and how IST use a FUN reading programme to boost comprehension and expression with their upper primary language learners.

There’s still time to register if you’d like to attend. It costs 150 euros (very reasonable) and if you can get a cheap flight it’s not much more expensive than two days of INSET!

And if you can’t attend in person, you can follow on Twitter! You can follow the Twitter account @pedagogies and the conference hashtag is

#pracped15

It’d be great to see some of you there and if not, converse via Twitter. And of course I’ll share my thoughts (and sketch notes!) on my return!

My second session was all about cross curricular language learning; how languages support other areas of the curriculum like literacy and maths as well as how languages can be taught in conjunction with and through other subjects and vice versa.

I mentioned my Pinterest pages; here’s the link to my Roman resources for Spanish. And if you click through the presentation, you’ll find links to things like the music for The Carnival of the Animals, a slideshare of Querido Zoo, links to BuildyourWildself and Switchzoo for making hybrid animals and that cheesy song in Spanish about the planets.

Some resources I showed included:

Habitats matching activity sheets

LAT SP FR ROM NUMBERS 1-31

I also recommended looking at The Iris Project for  Latin/Greek resources, and LightbulbLanguages has some lovely Latin stuff as well as planets linked to maths and science, and much more. And check out TES Resources from Joan Miró resources from Helen Stanistreet and Rachel Hawkes.

I’d also draw your attention to the list of helpful sites and documents in the last few slides for further ideas!

Having a number of pupils who don’t celebrate Christmas, and to alleviate ‘Christmas saturation’ I tried to come up with a different activity for the last week of term for my pupils.

Most of WPS have spent the last half term looking at days months and numbers so a calendar sprang to mind. And I recalled making a 3D one years ago…

I couldn’t find the template so I searched online for a dodecahedron net, and then for 2015 calendar tabs in Spanish, and then made my own.

‘Ingredients’

• dodecahedron net copied onto card – dodecahedron
• copy of Spanish calendar tabs for 2015 – (you’ll need to reduce it to half size I discovered unless you print it straight from the site in which case it’s the correct size!)
• scissors
• glue
• felt tip pens
• LOTS of patience!

‘Method’

I gave each child a net on thin card and asked them to decorate each pentagon to form a background. Some chose a pattern, some tried to draw a suitable picture for the month, others just coloured.

Then they cut out the net – I’d made all the bits to cut really obvious by using dashed lines but still children cut off the tabs!

They cut each month out and stuck one month per pentagon onto the net.

Then the fun began! You need to fold all the pentagons inwards, and all the tabs too.

Sticking it all together starts off easy as you make a basket shape with the base but gets more and more fiddly as you have less space to grip and hold flaps so that they bond. My advice is to make sure the you do a tab or two at a time and hold them until they are firmly stuck. The last few joins will be more flimsy as you can’t apply pressure but if you try to leave a pentagon with several flaps, you should be able to just tuck them in and hope for the best!

Here’s my finished example:

I’ve since discovered this preprinted dodecahedron calendar calendario-deca-2015 on the same site – it wasn’t there last week! However, I prefer my version as this has capital letters for the months and days and having battled with children all term to stop ‘correcting’ the date that is written on the board when they copy it into their books, I’m not going down that road!

And there is also a Calendario rombico calendario-rombico-2015 which looks interesting! You need to follow the instructions here to make it!

Whilst the bottom strip on the calendar tabs is not needed, it fits beautifully with the unit we’re studying as we’re in the middle of discussing festivals and dates, and the calendarios will be  great for practising saying the date in Spanish after Christmas break. However, having spent my lunch hour ‘rescuing’  a large pile of them, I don’t want to see another one for a while!

Last night I braved the cross city traffic and went to King Edwards Five Ways (nowhere near the Five Ways I know!) for TeachmeetBrum. Organised by @frogphilp aka Steve Philp of Paganel Primary, it was an intimate affair (but that’s not a bad thing!) but that’s a good thing as we all talked to one another!

I admit to spending longer on cupcake production than on my presentations, but I often do my best work when hoofing it and speaking from my heart.

I talked about using apps like PicCombo, 4Pictures 1Word and Icomania (iOS and Android) to inspire learners at the start of lessons as well as increasing vocabulary. I used them when teaching English last year; M+M loved the puzzle of working out how the picture were linked and then discussing what a duster and a red and white flag had to do with one another (answer – polish/Polish) There is a French, German and Spanish version of 4pictures 1word available in the Swiss (Fr/Ger) and Spanish (Sp) iTunes stores – you can download them if you have an account with that store. Alternatively, you can do as Dannielle Morgan did and create your own! She has made some for Year 7 French ,  Year 8 French and Year 9 French that she kindly shared on TES Resources
I didn’t make a new presentation but recycled part of an old one – see below!

My second presentation was also recycled from MFL Show and Tell in Coventry – and I make no apologies for it as I think it was a really successful unit of work that both the kids and I enjoyed. Inspired by Go away Big Green Monster in Spanish, and the learning journey topic of Mythical Monsters, Year 3 and I embarked on a mission to write books in Spanish. See how we did it below, using non-technological means as well as iPads!

The PPT of Señor Cabeza Naranja is all over the place for downloading (some with my name removed which bugs me no end!) – just Google it. However, the updated version is below!

Hopefully I managed to inspire someone, and failing that, hope someone enjoyed my cupcakes 😉

Just before Christmas I wrote about Night Zookeeper’s Drawing Torch app , a brilliant app that encourages users to use their imagination and creativity to undertake missions, drawing with their magic torch.

I was therefore very excited this week to hear that Night Zookeeper has launched a new app – Teleporting Torch.

The premise is similar – here’s the blurb!

Night Zookeeper Teleporting Torch inspires you to draw pictures and write stories about magical animals!
Do you think you could become a Night Zookeeper? Enter a world of Spying Giraffes, Time Travelling Elephants and scary Fear Monsters.
On your journey you will take on creative drawing missions to protect the zoo from monsters and care for thousands of magical animals. Can you turn one of your friends or family into a strange animal? Could you paint the ocean, if a monster has stolen the colour blue? It’s time find out!

Some of the features are similar to the Drawing Torch e.g. you still ROAR! to unlock the Night Zookeeper story, and the drawing panel is still as cool! Where it differs from the Drawing Torch is that missions are delivered on a daily basis “like a never ending activity book” rather en bloc and you can now create your own missions.

Here’s a video explaining it.

httpv://youtu.be/lRqPwoirBck

The ability to create your own missions is particularly exciting from my point of view. In the original post, I documented my conversation with @nightzookeeper about the possibility of having the missions in other languages. 

Now you can write your own missions on www.nightzookeeper.com, there’s nothing to stop you writing them in other languages. Accents work (always a worry!) and it’s really easy. You can use existing templates or write your own.

I’ve written two in Spanish so far. I used the existing ideas and templates, simplifying the language a little and translating them. And i’ve only scrolled down a little bit – there are many more ideas that I have yet to read, and I’m sure I’ll be inventing my own ideas soon! So, there’s a food based mission, and a clothing based mission. Once learners have completed the mission, we could share them as a class with learners presenting their creations and then discussing them as a class.

Another thing I love is that you can add as many zookeepers as you wish to each iPad meaning that I can do the challenges and so can my children; that’s great in the context of a class where learners are sharing iPads and can simply change the zookeeper to their identity and complete the challenge before passing on to another learner who can complete the same challenge or another!  You can also decide who will receive each challenge. So it’s easy to send different challenges to individuals, tailored to their interest, age or ability.

All pictures are saved in the Night gallery as well as on the iPad – here’s my gallery!

The app costs £1.99 but I think that this is worth it as it is now so much more versatile and customisable. And it can be used across the curriculum, not just in literacy! Once I’ve played some more, I’ll no doubt be back with more ideas!

Being a fan of 64 Zoo Lane and having a wild imagination, when I discovered that there was someone called the Night Zookeeper on Twitter, I was fascinated and wanted to know more. And I wasn’t disappointed when I found that the NightZookeeper pr

oject was all about encouraging children to be creative and use their imaginations.

To quote the About on the Night Zoo Teacher website (companion to the NightZookeeper one)

Night Zookeeper was first delivered as a creative project in a Lancashire school back in 2007. It was clear from the beginning that the project had huge potential to inspire children to learn through the mediums of art,

creative writing, ICT and playground games. And so, from the children’s smiles, animal noises and magical creations, a Night Zoo was born.

In 2011 we launched the website (www.nightzookeeper.com) and the project has since gone from strength to strength. Support has reigned in from education thought leaders, governments and most importantly from teachers from all around the world.

The Night Zookeeper team consists of artists, storytellers, primary school teachers and creative technologists.  We are all united in our belief in the importance of fostering a child’s creativity in the classroom and at home.

I have to admit that, not having had a class on which to try it out, I’ve not explored as much as I might. However, following on from #TMTwist last week which was organised by @nightzookeeper (with @jodieworld  and @oliverquinlan) and held at NightZookeeper HQ (looked wonderful – wish I’d been there in person rather than virtually), I revisited and was particularly interested to hear of an app!

Night ZooKeeper Drawing Torch is a FREE app for iPads that is just amazing or as Apps Playground says ‘ A CREATIVE IPAD TREAT FOR KIDS’. Taking the premise that you are  a Night Zookeeper, you are set challenges or missions to look after thousands of magical animals and defeat the monsters that attack the zoo. And how do you do that? By drawing of course with your drawing torch! I am no great artist but that doesn’t matter – in fact, I find that it helps me in the classroom as no one can EVER be intimidated by my drawing being better than theirs! And because it’s a drawing app that asks for you to use your imagination, there’s no right or wrong answer so there’s no fear there. AND it’s all part of a story too, beautifully narrated! Examples of the challenges (I’ve taken them form the iTunes page as I don’t want to spoil the surprise by revealing more!) – “What do you think a Spying Giraffe looks like? Can you turn one of your friends or family into a strange animal? Could you draw a frog, if a monster has stolen the colour green?”

So far I’ve completed two missions of the 22 on the app, each a star in the night sky. I’m trying hard to ration myself and not do them all in one go but it’s very tempting! The naughty monsters are already being tricksy and making life interesting. Below are the first two drawings I made (told you I wasn’t very good at drawing!), saved to the CameraRoll of my iPad using the save option – you can also email. Very simple!

As I said, I love any opportunity to get people thinking and exploring their creativity – whether young old or in between! And I’m having a blast playing with this app. In the classroom I can see this app as a great springboard to some brilliant imaginative writing, dancing, singing not to mention drawing of course. It could be linked to Science e.g. adaptation and habitat, to PSHE e.g. problem solving, and that’s just a few ideas for starters without a) exploring the whole story and b) looking at the resources offered on NightZookeeper Teachers page.

I’ve already tweeted @Nightzookeeper asking about the app in other languages – a bit impatient of me considering the app is only 3 weeks old! However, I like to get my requests in as soon as possible, especially when I like something! It takes Build your Wildself  (which I love and have mentioned before here and here ) a step further – so much further – and that’s just one aspect of it.

Two ways I might use it.

1. At the moment, I teach English to some delightful kids and over the last couple of weeks we (coincidentally) talked about animals and made up our own hybrids so I think this app will be a great next step – you can redo the challenges so that’s not a problem!

2. And although the challenges are written in English, there’s nothing to stop you using the Drawing Torch for things other than the official missions, is there? So I could set my own mission in Spanish for example and learners could carry it out using the app. They wouldn’t win a star but I’d find another reward! ;o)

I’m sure that’s there’s more to come from Drawing Torch in the future. In fact, there’s a competition for kids to devise a new mission and win an iPad Mini (closing date 4th January and you don’t need an iPad to enter!).

And I’ve just discovered that, despite only being 3 weeks old, Drawing Torch has already been nominated for Best Edu Mobile app in the Edublog Awards . Way to go @NightZookeeper!

Thanks to Pat Sweeney on the Yahoo MFL Resources group for pointing out this group.

If you like Hi5, and you love a bit of 90s “cheese”, you’ll love Nubeluz.

As Pat writes –

“Many of Nubeluz’s songs seem to be innocent good fun and definitely have catchy tunes that make you want to dance and sing along.
However, some “carry a message “. For example “Papi, deja de fumar!”
( Daddy, give up smoking!) or “Cuidado ” ( Be careful!) which warns of being mislead by friends to get involved in things that are not right or good.”

She goes on to pose a question –

“I would be very interested to know what people think of the songs and whether they would deem them suitable for using as teaching aids..and if so..with which groups..how?”

So…here are some ideas for how to use  Yo quiero ser

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sm1ZqJel8-c

I think this would fit well with the topics People who help us or Jobs people do that are part of EYFS and KS1. I think that the chorus is the most useful part.

Activities you might do:

• ask learners to identify the jobs they hear in the chorus. They are repeated at the very end so there are 2 chances to catch them. You might provide a tick sheet with pictures for younger learners or the names in Spanish for older ones.
• make a pelmanism game with job images and names in Spanish for matching first then for playing.
• cut the lyrics (chorus) into strips. Ask learners firstly to see if they can match the jobs with the description of what they do. This uses their LLS as they will look for cognates, make connections between the word for the job and words in the description and so on. Then they can check their answers by listening and watching again.
• I might use Amara (was UniversalSubtitles) http://www.universalsubtitles.org/en/ to put Spanish subtitles on the video too. (See this example and also this post about how and why)

• I might use other video clip such as Los oficios which features a famous song, or this version with the words.
• This clip Cuando sea grande would be a good step onto using the future tense. Seré dentista/artista etc. I also like the final lines – “Cuando sea grande, haré mil cosas/Porque estoy seguro que podré. Y mientras tanto llega la hora/Solamente niño quiero ser”
• There is a whole unit of work on Udicom on Los oficios. These resources are intended for ‘alumnos de compensatoria’ or learners needing extra help in Spain so many are very simple exercises on copywriting, phonics, matching and writing words and short phrases. I particularly like the phonics sections and the use of little rhymes too.
• This interactive site is useful for learning the names of jobs by hovering over the people, and clicking to see/hear a short sentence about what they do. Further forward (click on arrow bottom right) it talks about “profesiones” – professions as opposed to “oficios” – jobs.
• Here’s a free poster that you can download – I believe you need to purchase the other posters tagged Los oficios but you can look at them for ideas!
• I also found this blog with an image and short descriptions for 6 jobs/professions.
• And this is a wonderful site with lots of ideas and materials for a wide age range. There are a number of stories at a variety of levels (primary and secondary) as well as comics and ‘information books’, all presented online. As this resource is aimed at social studies for Spanish learners, so you need to bear that in mind e.g. Look at the complexity of language rather than going by the age indicated. I looked at a few stories – Alejandro el canguro pintor (basic) is a lovely tale about a kangaroo that draws all the time, and Maria auxiliar de ayuda a domicilio is more complex and a home help who makes Grandma’s life better. There’s a teachers guide that includes ideas and some activity sheets. Well worth an explore if you’re looking to work cross curricularly at primary or secondary level!

So, Pat. Does that answer your question? 🙂

I am so behind with posting things – rather a lot going on at the moment!

Apologies to those who have been patiently waiting for my presentation at the Comenius Conference at Newman College on June 29th – here it is!

It was a really great day and it was a wonderful way to finish this phase of the project.