Category: embedding

I’ve just got back from the Practical Pedagogies conference at the International School of Toulouse. Organised by Russel Tarr, the two day conference brought together educators from around the globe. Here’s the rationale behind the conference which explains why I travelled to Toulouse at my own expense to speak (I wasn’t paid to it):

“Educational conferences can be prohibitively expensive for ordinary teachers, and often focus on abstract theory delivered by professional academics with very little hands-on classroom experience. Such events often appear more concerned with making money than with genuinely improving the quality of education being delivered within schools.

In contrast, “Practical Pedagogies” comes out of the belief that the best teacher-training conferences are delivered by practising teachers, for the benefit of each other and their students, as not-for-profit events.”

I attended some excellent workshops and chatted to so many people that further inspired me.

Below are my sketch notes of the conference that document the sessions I attended. I hope that they give you a flavour of the conference. You can find out more by checking out the Twitter hashtag #pracped16 (which was trending at various points in various countries over the two days!) or by looking at the conference website. I’m sure that many will share their presentations and that there’ll be lost of blogging so I’ll update the post over the next week or so to share them.

Opening Keynote by Ewan McIntosh. @ewanmcintosh @notosh

Curriculum, controversy and current affairs: manoeuvring in a multicultural world by Mariusz Galczynski @MariuszEDU

Philosophy for Children across the primary Curriculum by Jenna Lucas @JennaLucas81

I’m a teacher: Get me out of here! by Mike Watson @WatsEd

Coding with cards by Yasemin Allsop @yallsop

The Art of Voice:bringing characters to life by Ben Culverhouse @ben_culverhouse

You shipping it? Closing keynote by Ewan McIntosh @ewanmcintosh @notosh

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!

And here’s my session on Making links across the curriculum.

I didn’t get to share my Pinterest pages as they were blocked by the firewall, but here’s the link to my Roman resources for Spanish. 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 a cheesy song in Spanish about the planets.

Some resources that I said I’d share –

habitats matching copy worksheet

LAT SP FR ROM NUMBERS 1-31

I also recommended looking at The Iris Project and MFL Sunderland for other resources that I have found useful for Latin/Greek (former) and Latin, Planets and much more (latter) And check out TES Resources from Joan Miró resources from Helen Stanistreet and Rachel Hawkes

If I’ve missed anything out that I promised to post, please let me know!

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!

My second presentation at ILILC3 was called Let out for good behaviour.

The blurb said

Let out for good behaviour? refers to leaving the classroom being (often) seen as a treat. There are many ways to ‘break free’ of the walls of your classroom, both physical and virtual, and this session will involve both. Participation is required as we explore activities and games, that will enhance teaching and learning whilst bringing a breath of free air to a stuffy classroom. Technology will be involved but you don’t need anything but your imagination and sense of adventure to enjoy the activities.

Although my presentation was somewhat spoilt by the weather meaning we couldn’t get outside and make a mess with chalk, there was much giggling as we played Punto de contacto, went on a QR quest to solve animal riddles, went Placespotting and tried to win chocolate by solving dominoes. And much more of course! It’s great to know that some of the ideas I shared have already been used in classrooms!

Below are my slides from the session.

[slideshare id=16644981&style=border: 1px solid #CCC; border-width: 1px 1px 0; margin-bottom: 5px;&sc=no]

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? 🙂

It's heavy!

Materials and presentation from my second session at #ILILC2 – Barça, Barça, Baaarça!

Barca – presentation

Barca handout – links to things mentioned in the above presentation and more!

comenius_spotlight_birmingham – information sheet from British Council on the project

Yes, it’s another Barcelona post but nothing to do with football – promise!

Last week when I was in Barcelona on a Comenius Regio visit, my colleague Jane and I hared around numerous sites in the city, collecting resources.

One place we visited was the Zoo de Barcelona. Are all zoos the same, we wondered? Well, no! Whilst there were plenty of animals in common, this was nothing like Twycross (our local zoo) You could get very close to the animals (a little too close we felt in some cases – aren’t hippos and rhinos rather dangerous animals to be kept in enclosures with 2 foot high walls) and the information was in three languages – Catalan, Castillian (Spanish) and English. Hence I pootled around happily snapping signs to the amusement of anyone who saw me, ready for comparison of languages activities, guessing games and reading activities.

I also took plenty of animals pictures to fit into our creative learning journeys – Are you my Mummy?  The Circle of Life. Big teeth. A walk on the wildside. The Blue Planet. And more.  It’s amazing how many links you can come up with when faced with a near empty zoo and armed with a camera and a creative thinking colleague to ‘bounce’ off. We tried to get some footage/ images for Down Under but the kangaroos were uncooperative, lying on their backs in the sun and  refusing to hop.

Anyhow, I’ve been thinking about these ideas and will be collecting the many pictures into folders and writing up some ideas for colleagues as well as giving them the opportunity to think for themselves given the footage and photos. And I had a look at the website to see what I could find.

Like the Zoo, it is tri-lingual and I LOVE IT! At last I’ve found a site in Spanish to rival the French Zoo Palmyre

There’s an interactive map that allows you to click on an animal silhouette and discover photos and information about that animal – scientific classification, habitat, how endangered it is and also a lovely chunk of writing about the animal too. And it’s all available in the three languages – great for Spanish teaching but also good so that the non-specialist who wants to use the Spanish version has a ‘safety net’ ;o)

Then there’s the Espacio Lúdico or recreational area where there are some fun games. One involves solving clues to find out to which animal the pawprints belong. Simple sentences that can be decoded with minimum help and a bit of previous knowledge of animals perhaps! And so easy to use in non discrete language lessons – which had be jumping up and down excitedly!

Other sections caught my attention such as the zoo rules, the history of the zoo and even the map of how to get there and the price list. Some people say I have a one track mind and never switch off from learning mode – I guess I do! And it doesn’t bother me much to be honest! If only there were enough hours in the day to explore all the ideas that come to mind in a place like that!

As we work on our ideas at school, I’ll try to share as many as I can here.

I’ll leave you with Copito de Nieve (Floquet / Snowflake), for many, the (sadly deceased) face of Barcelona Zoo. A powerful image and thought.

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.

Embedding languages was also the theme of the last session I attended at Language World.

In Unlocking potential Liz Black talked about a project, or as she prefers to call them ‘series of work in context’ inspired by Le Grand Parc – Puy de fou, a demonstration of community problem solving – in an area of poverty but with lots of land, the community got together to solve it by building a theme park. All the materials she used can be downloaded from Liz’s school website – www.stokesleyschool.com

Her school has a cross curricular day each Wednesday duirng which departments work together, and this project covered history, drama, literacy, French, PSHE, enterprise and finances and more. She shared some brilliant ideas including using Latin roots to provoke pupils to think of words in English with those roots, and gladiator drama to encourage reluctant boys to speak French.

Feedback from staff and pupils was very positive with one child saying ‘I like it when teachers work together’.

I have to say that the website itself for Puy de Fou is absolutely beautiful to look at, with lots of things to click and see. Certainly makes you want to go there !