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Category: cultural awareness

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]

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.

Today sees the beginning of another wonderful offering from Radio Lingua Network as episode 1 of NewsTime Spanish is launched.

Made by a highly talented trio – Mark ‘Mr RadioLingua’ Pentleton, José ‘just say Edmodo and I melt’ Picardo and Chris ‘where’s it to?’ Fuller, this weekly podcast keeps you up to date with news from Spain and Hispanic countries.

In this week’s edition of News Time Spanish we’ll be looking at the major financial reform in Spain as a result of the ongoing issues around Europe. Other stories include:

  • UK elections news
  • Spanish sporting successes
  • Mexican/US immigration issues
  • Health problems in Spain

You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes and listen for free, whilst a Premium pass will allow you access to transcripts, exercises and a slower version of the audio.

El Ogro y la Bruja

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A beautiful story for the end of October – made me go ‘ah!’

Here are the words in case you want them!

Ella era una bruja fatal

su hermosura y su soledad

caminaba en la niebla sin ver

que un ogro muy triste la seguía

Este amigo tarareaba una canción

y la bruja ocultaba su emoción

En los cuentos de hadas

las brujas son malas

y en los cuentos de brujas

las hadas son feas

así decía la canción

que el ogro cantaba

En el bosque,un día de sol

se encontraron frente a frente los dos

le clavó su mirada

la bruja malvada

para ver si podía

con su magia ahúyentarlo

pero el ogro sonríendo y cantando

el hechizo rompió

La tomó de la mano

las lechuzas callaron

se miraron un rato largo

y el ogro y la bruja se amaron

bajo el sol..

No hay mejor brujería que el amor

la la ra lara la la ra larala!!!
La ra la larala laieee!!!

Omniglot

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I came across Omniglot the other day and bookmarked it in my del.icio.us account for further investigation.
Omniglot is ‘a guide to the languages, alphabets, syllabaries and other writing systems of the world’.

You can find out information about a myraid of languages including ones I’ve never heard of!

It’s fascinating to look at all the different writing systems both real – some Mayanscript


and some imaginary – some Klingon!

There are tips on language learning, as well as a multilingual bookstore and articles on languages.

In fact, there’s so much on there that it’s hard to do it justice in a blogpost so I’d encourage you to look for yourself. However, here are three of my favourite parts.

1. Language related art
This is a piece of art by Venantius Pinto based on the Torcharian script and there are links to other examples of artwork such as Mike O’Connell‘s artwork featuring a number of different scripts and Peggy Shearn who is inspired by language and writing systems (see also below)

2. Useful foreign phrases

Ever wanted to know how to say ‘Please speak more slowly’ in Estonian?

Palun rääkige aeglasemalt

Or ‘Where’s the toilet?’ if you’re caught short in Greece?
??? ????? ?? ?????????
There is a quite long list of possible phrases in a wide range of languages – some with accompanying soundfiles to aid pronunciation. And there are also phrases that are possibly not as useful, but nonetheless amusing such as ‘My hovercraft is full of eels’ – here in Mandarin Chinese ?????????? and Polish Mój poduszkowiec jest pe?en w?gorzy and ‘Stop the world, I want to get off!’ in perhaps Czech Zastavte sv?t, chci vystoupit! or Armenian ??????? ?????? ????????, ??? ?????? ????:

You can also access in a variety of languages, again some with soundfiles-
for example –

??? ????? ?? ???? ?????;
(Miá pápia ma piá pápia)
A duck but which duck). (GREEK)

Esel essen Nesseln nicht, Nesseln essen Esel nicht.
Donkeys don’t eat nettles, and nettles don’t eat donkeys. (GERMAN)

Mae Llewellyn y llyfrgellydd o Lanelli wedi llyfu llawer o lyfaint.
Llewellyn, the librarian from Llanelli, licked many toads. (WELSH)


3.Proverbs and quotations about languages.

Omniglot has collected together proverbs and quotations in various tongues on the subject of languages. The majority are quite profound –

Language is the blood of the soul into which thoughts run and out of which they grow.
– Oliver Wendell Holmes

Una lengua natural es el archivo adonde han ido a parar las experiencias, saberes y creencias de una comunidad.
A natural language is the archive where the experiences, knowledge and beliefs of a community are stored.
– Fernando Lázaro Carreter (SPANISH)

Cenedl heb iaith, cenedl heb galon.
A nation without a language is a nation without a heart. (WELSH)

but there are others that are less ‘serious’ –

Chan fhiach cuirm gun a còmhradh.
A feast is no use without good talk. (GAELIC-SCOTLAND)

It’s no coincidence that in no known language does the phrase “As pretty as an airport” appear.
– Douglas Adams

??????????????????
(Ti?n bù pà, dì bù pà, zh? pà Gu?ngd?ng rén shu? P?t?nghuà)
I fear neither heaven nor earth, I only fear Cantonese speakers trying to speak Mandarin. (MANDARIN)

????????????????????
(Tìn m? gìng, deih m? gìng, jí gìng b?kfòng yàhn góng Gwóngdùngwá m?jeng)
I fear neither heaven nor earth, I only fear Mandarin speakers speaking Cantonese badly. (CANTONESE)

My particular favourites include

Any time you think some other language is strange, remember that yours is just as strange, you’re just used to it.

Kolik jazyk? znáš, tolikrát jsi ?lov?kem.
You live a new life f

or every new language you speak.
If you know only one language, you live only once. (Czech)

and this French saying that I hope will soon be seen as untrue –

Un homme qui parle trois langues est trilingue.
Un homme qui parle deux langues est bilingue.
Un homme qui ne parle qu’une langue est anglais.
A man who speaks three language is trilingual.
A man who speaks two languages is bilingual.
A man who speaks only one language is English.

– Claude Gagnière

Looking at all the above ‘favourites’ I can see the OMNIGLOT site as an excellent resource for expanding the vision of languages in an interesting and fun way.

Why not use it as a resource for European Day of Languages on 26th September?

You could use the artwork to inspire your pupils to create their own having looked at the section on various scripts and writing systems.

Or challenge pupils to learn tongue twister in another language – the sound files are great for that!

Or each class could attempt to learn a phrase in as many languages as possible – and other classes could guess the phrase – I think we’ll be doing this at WCPS!

Whatever you do, it’s well worth a look!



Flamenco

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Whilst searching for suitable clipart for the previous post, I came across some quirky flamenco / sevillanas related videos that I thought deserved a post of their own!

A woman dressed in sevillanas dress is a classic image that means Spain to so many – I’m sure there are at least 25 little girls at school who have a sevillanas outfit (they wore them on EDL day!!) As part of their Spanish lessons, I think it’s important that pupils learn more than the language. They are very curious about life in Spain and particularly fascinated by anything that is different to England. We’ve had a go at flamenco ‘palmadas‘ before – a challenge when the class find clapping a regular rhythm hard – and certain classes enjoy watching me demonstrate the first compás of sevillanas – probably as I end up dizzy!

There are many videos of ‘real’ flamenco but I can’t wait to get back to school to show these little videos as I know they will appeal to this curiosity as well as their sense of humour!

Firstly, a simple animation using the image of the sevillanas dress.

The second is a clay stop-motion animation – not sure I could do that, but could have a go!

And the final one, my favourite – a flamenco dancing frog! What could be better, eh?

Today I took part in a conference in the Banqueting Suite of Birmingham’s Council House about the International Opportunities, presenting a case study as part of a presentation on Comenius and eTwinning along with Simon Graham from the British Council and Paul Higgs from Belvedere Junior School in Burton on Trent.

For those of you who attended the session, here’s my presentation – especially if you attended the first version when I had to fit it all into 3 minutes ;o)
I’ve also uploaded a couple of examples of work that the pupils did as part of the project. More can be found on our school websites – WCPS and CPCHD.

If you have any questions, you’re welcome to contact me.

4KP Easter ppt (RE) – Get more documents

1HJ Easter PPT (music) – Get more documents

4CT Easter PPT (maths) – Get more documents

questions for cpchd – Get more documents

The ws of etwinning at wcps – Get more documents

example of pancake day work – Get more documents

I’ve mentioned before how I think that language learning should not be a stand alone but creatively integrated into the curriculum. Today I’ve been alerted to a couple of videos that I can see being used to do just that, using works of art as the stimulus for speaking activities.

Helen Myers (of ALL President and MFLResources fame) passed on a tip from Glynis Rumley about Women in Art, a lovely video compilation of many female faces from works of art morphing into one another.

The information on Youtube about it says –
500 Years of Female Portraits in Western Art
Music: Bach’s Sarabande from Suite for Solo Cello No. 1 in G Major, BWV 1007 performed by Yo-Yo Ma
Nominated as Most Creative Video
2007 YouTube Awards
For a complete list of artists and paintings visit http://www.maysstuff.com/womenid.htm

Helen asked for ideas of how this could be exploited. One answer suggested using it as an ‘observation’ piece on which you ask questions at the end along the lines of How many brunettes? How many blondes? How many earrings? How many faces? What is the most popular eye colour/dress colour? How many hats? Or you could use the stills of the individual pictures from the site above – pupils choose one to describe then communicate the description to a partner / group who have to pick the correct portrait. Or, if they’re up for it, draw the portrait then compare to the original.

Along these lines, I found this video on Teachertube called Mona et Paloma. A class use the Mona Lisa by Leonardo DaVinci and Paloma by Picasso as the stimuli for a speaking activity. Having drawn their own versions of the portraits, they imagine that Mona and Paloma are members of their families, describing them in as much detail as they can in French. Adds interest to the sometimes tame and boring, and potentially touchy subject of families.

And whilst I was there, I came across the following video – similar to Women in Art, but solely about Picasso. It could be used in a similar way to the above videos – descriptions, family members etc, and also for cultural awareness of the life and times of a Spanish artist, linked to the art curriculum.

Any more ideas of activities, or suggestions of other video clips you’ve discovered of a similar vein?

PS more ideas on integrating art and languages in Mira Miró.


Hot on the heels of yesterday’s e-mail from CILT about Europe Day (see yesterday’s post), today I received a message from Pamela Powers at the European Parliament about Spring Day in Europe;

Spring Day in Europe was set up to promote learning and debate about the European Union in schools.

As 2008 is the European Year of Intercultural Dialogue, “Bridging cultures through dialogue” is the chosen theme for Spring Day 2008. It will be held from 25th March to 30th June, with a special focus on 9th May, which is Europe Day. Schools across Europe are invited to take part.

The Spring Day in Europe website provides teachers and students with ideas for events and activities in the classroom. For further information and to register your school, please look at the Spring Day website: http://www.springday2008.net

Once registered, you will have access to the full package of teaching and learning resources, activities, tools and services of the web portal.

The teacher adviser for the UK is Ian Levinson . He is a contact point between European Schoolnet and schools that register with Spring Day in Europe and is able to advise and answer questions.

Investigating the Spring Day website, it seems that there are various benefits to registering for the day – such as involvement with other classes and schools, taking part in competitions and receiving a certificate of participation for your involvement – always popular in schools with SMT :o)

Content is in 23 different languages, allowing for access to the site in the language studied as well as English, and the ability to compare text (and I assume activities) in different languages. At the same time, the whole day is based on the discovery of other cultures and traditions, thus covering ICU strand. There are online games, ecards to send and podcasts too which make my evolving techie side smile! You can find out more about activities, past events and how to register on the Spring Day for Europe 2008 site.

At the time of writing there are 1113 schools registered – I’m about to make it 1114.

What about you?

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