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.
Reading Los mellizos del tiempo got me thinking about integrating language learning in the Primary curriculum. As I mentioned in my previous post, it links so well with the ‘topic’ of Egyptians, or under the ‘learning journey’ of Treasure taken in Year 4 at WCPS. So I had a bit of a look around and came up with the following ideas, resources and links that might be of use to anyone who wants to do just that!
General information
Egipto para niños – collection of fairly simple texts on a number of areas of Egyptian life including the Pyramids, food, manners and mummies as well as a bit of geography. This text is in fairly short chunks too. And Blog de los Niños has some short chunks of information, particularly about Egyptian gods and the meanings of the various crowns.
Here are some longer texts about various Egyptian ‘misterios’ including the Mummy of Pyramid KV22.
Historia Simple has some short-ish historical summaries of the various phases of the 2500 year long Egyptian era including a section on the Pyramids. There’s also some information on El Historiador.
And of course there’s Wikipedia – you can translate the pages back and forth between languages so you could have some fun with picking out key items of vocabulary.
Slideshare has some presentations for ideas and information including this lovely one from some young learners which is beautifully simple and asks some good questions on slide 4 that could be used for investigation.
And this blog has two simple presentations by Dora la Exploradora and friends, and Hello Kitty covering some of the basics of Egyptian geography and history in words and image.
However, my favourite find is from Junta de Andalucia. This site is a one stop shop about Egyptians, written in simple language and presented in short paragraphs with lots of visuals, making it really accessible. There is a dictionary of key terms as well as the facility to click on highlighted words for an immediate ‘pop up’ definition. Lots of interactive maps and also a hieroglyphics maker within the site also make it a great place for young learners to find out about Egypt. There’s also a webquest that guides learners through the site, posing questions that can be explored and investigated. (There’s another more complex webquest here along with other Egyptian resources shared on the Tiching site.)
A close second goes to a resource from Gobierno de Canarias that takes an interactive look at the Pyramids with extra information, again simply presented, appearing as you click on specific areas of the pyramid.
Videos
Videos are another source of information that can often be more accesible than just text.
And then there are these cartoons, the first from a series called Érase una vez.. and the second from a series called Martín Martín.
And here’s another I’ve just found which is a short video about the Egyptian pyramids:
You might also like to try the Barrio Sésamo approach with this video in which Lola visits the Pyramids or this video which presents images and name of the animals of Egypt before moving on to images of buildings and then some short snippets of information about Egyptian life.
Songs
You know how I love a good kitschy song! Here’s one called Momias de colores by Rockolate. When my hand is feeling better, I might try to subtitle the video using Amara or at least write them down!
(see also Fátima una momia responsable below under Stories for another song)
“Literacy” ideas
(see also Stories below!)
Perhaps with older, more advanced learners you could use some of the definitions from this ‘Glosario’ for a match the word to the definition. You could choose key words like Faraon, Esfinge, Obelisco, Momia, Papiro, Sarcófagos, Vasos canopos and so on.
And this vocabulary list gives you the Spanish word with the Arabic equivalent. Could provide an interesting language comparison activity.
And here’s an online hieroglyphics tool. Would be fun to write some words in hieroglyphics and ask learners to decode before they write their names. Or they could write key Egyptian vocabulary in hieroglyphics for display as well as in Spanish for a multi lingual display!
Maths ideas
The Egyptian system of counting and adding etc was very developed and you can find out all about it here (in more detail than I think I need to know but if you like Maths…)
This site has lots of writing at the top (useful information!) but the really ‘useful’ part for learners is the chart with the Egyptian number glyphs and the puzzles underneath, both for whole numbers and also for fractions. I foresee lots of fun with setting maths problems for each other… There are a few more maths problems here.
A document explaining that Egyptian numbers are not positional so you can write the units, tens, hundreds etc in any order! Un sistema aditivo – el egipcio
And of course there are all sorts of things you can do at a very simple level such as sequencing and using geometrical shapes when making Egyptian jewellery, and making pyramids.
Stories
I found this free video story about Egypt called El pendiente de la princess: Cuento de Egipto. Sadly it doesn’t go full screen but the man telling the story speaks clearly and fairly slowly so it could be used for a true/false activity or perhaps a multiple choice activity.
However, I found two more promising possibilities!
2. This PDF (rita_ladrones) has links to useful sites (some I’d already highlighted above before I found this!) and also some activity worksheets. Whilst the middle sheet on characters in the book would be hard without reading it, the first sheet (matching words with images and writing your name in hieroglyphics) needs no knowledge of the book, and I think that the third sheet which is a sequencing activity could also be done without reading the story, and actually gives a very simple synopsis of what happens!
3.Then I discovered that there is an online version of the CD rom of activities about the book, complete with Teachers Notes (in Spanish!) There are various activities including finding synonyms and antonyms, sequencing text and a wordsearch – see below image for contents. Some activities are quite challenging for primary learners; however, a bit of challenge can be a good thing!
Fátima, una momia muy responsable
Fátima una momia muy responsable is a lovely story about an Egyptian mummy called Fátima who wants to be a tour guide and keeps scaring people! She builds up a great collection of hats and torches by doing it, but one day…
It’s a narrated version of a book that has been used in many Spanish primary schools.
httpv://youtu.be/On5fNWq9N8w
Some ideas for using the story –
act out the story
talk about colours and sizes describing the hats that Fátima collected / was gifted
pretend to be Fátima and give a tour of a pyramid
one of the class blogs I discovered had a song on it about how Fátima dances which would be great fun, whatever your age! You can access the words here or here, and here is a recording of young learners singing it!
I love ‘being a magpie’ and collecting ideas, and here are some classes in Spanish primaries that have done an Egyptian topic and shared their ideas.
Mis cosillas de Educación Infantil – this link takes you to the posts for the entire project. I particularly like the concept map that they made which includes lots of important vocabulary organised systematically. I think that having a map of what is already known that is added to as time passes and more information is gathered is a great way of documenting learning and progress, especially if learners post questions that they’d like to investigate and see them answered as they explore and investigate!
E.I. 5 años Carlos Ruiz have been doing an Egyptian topic too and this is the first of a number of posts on what they have done. If look in the archive, there are further posts documenting their work throughout noviembre and diciembre 2012 including the sequencing activity referenced in the Maths section above and an interesting post giving instructions on making ‘papiros’.
La Clase de la Bruja Maruja have done a project on Egyptians too and have published some of their work as well as links on their blog. Of particular use I think are the simple worksheets they used that could easily be used in the primary language classroom. I also love the fact that they’ve been using the wonderful Woodlands site by Mandy Barrow using GoogleTranslate to put it into Spanish!
And the Egiptologia site has a number of resources from schools in their Trabajos en colegios e instituciones section as well as Tus trabajos escolares. Lots of the resources are written by students making them suitable for learners to access themselves as well for use by teachers as information sources and inspiration!
So, I hope you’ve find the above useful. I know that there are many more things that could be done; for example, I haven’t even started on the possibilities for art projects! If you have any ideas or resources, please leave a comment – it’s good to share! And even if you haven’t, leave a comment! Its good to know that people are reading!
As is often the case, this site is not a language specific but it allows you to input your own language elements.
Whilst reviewing resources onThe TES resources website, I came across some that referenced Tools for Educators – Board Game maker so I thought I’d investigate.
As is often the case, this site is not a language specific but it allows you to input your own language elements.
From a bank of images, you can choose to make a board game on a wide variety of subjects, using just images as in the fruit example, or incorporating instructions as in the mini beasts. These examples use the Galactic Challenge theme but there are three others from which to choose (it defaults to Galactic Challenge but all you need to do is go to the bottom of the list of topics and click on the board you’d like) The third and fourth examples show other board games.
These games can be printed and laminated for future use, then used for a variety of exercises.
For example, take the fruit one. It could be used for-
a)vocabulary rehearsal – everytime a learner lands on a fruit, they say the name of it in Spanish
b)giving opinions – learners give their opinion of the fruit on which they land
c)asking questions – learners ask one another if they like the fruit
d)shopping – learners must travel the board buying fruit – perhaps give them a list of fruit and they must keep going until they have all their fruit?
e)pronouns – ask and answer ¿Hay uvas? and response could be Sí las hay or No no las hay
f)colours/adjectival endings – learners say what colour the fruit is eg La manzana es verde or Hay una manzana verde; Los plátanos son amarillos / Hay plátanos amarillos
And that’s off the top of my head. I’m sure with a bit more thought I could come up with more ideas. If you have any, post them in the comments!
There are also Printable board games so that learners can design their own games. what about using the Loveheart game board for likes and dislikes – or for Valentine’s Day? The question cards can be edited to include your own images or questions. Or perhaps use the Bubbles theme for wishes or wants!
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.
I came across this wonderful website today, linked from Teaching Ideas site.
Chillola.com is a multilingual site, offering simple resources in English, French, Spanish, German and Italian.
There are attractive vocabulary presentations accompanied by audio on subjects like colours, numbers, months, fruit and vegetables and body parts. There are also very simple printable activities and colourables.
It’s a great resource for introducing vocabulary and for individual access, as well for raising awareness of other languages that are not necessarily taught at your school.
My favourites are the hamster teaching prepositions and the lovely illustrations for the opposites.
The site also offers links to several other websites about which I’ve never previously heard. I feel more posts may be forthcoming…
Whilst writing an article on storytelling for a future publication, I found a song I’d downloaded to which I wanted to refer. As often happens, I couldn’t recall whether I’d been sent it by a friend, downloaded it from a fora or found it online.
After a bit of searching – which took me once more to the wonderful West Sussex GFL language resources – I found that it had come from a site called MrsJonesRoom. When I approached the eponymous MrsJones for permission to use the song, she was very accomodating and pointed me towards other Spanish resources on her page.
I’ve had a look at some of the links and particularly like the downloadable mini books and the songs, complete with sound files of the tunes! There are even some Spanish Disney songs – great for EDL? Sadly there are a number of ‘dead’ links which is a shame but it’s well worth a look.
I am delighted to inform you that a unique collection of GrowstoryGrow’s wonderful stories has just been published by Beelingua Products Ltd (makers of Little Tails of the Unexpected).
The stories are all designed to help primary school children effectively learn a foreign language.
Each story has sentence-building tasks, games, fun lesson plans and many other useful resources.
All of these stories are currently available “Free of Charge” for a trial period.
COMING SOON – over 100 extra stories will be available in many languages including German, Italian, Urdu, Russian, Hindi, Portuguese, Arabic and Polish.
Over the course of the next few months we will be regularly publishing these new stories. If you would like us to tell you about these new publications you need to subscribe to our newsletter.
Please forward tell parents, teachers and friends who you think may find GrowStoryGrow stories useful. Why not try out the stories with your children TODAY and please let us have any feedback by sending an email to Valerie Thornber (creator of GSG): val@growstorygrow.com
There you will receive a trial login and be able to try out the product for a while.
I love Les sacs en plastique – ver
y simple but with an important message; and Le monstre de la musique is very amusing too – if only it were in Spanish, I could use it wth Year 5 in their current unit of work!
Can’t wait for more languages and more stories to be added.
If yu check out the site in detail, you’ll find details of the methodology behind the resource, how the Scheme of work will be comprised and also details of pricing for September.
I was lucky enough to be asked to present this year at Language World, the annual conference of the Association for Language Learning (ALL), which took place at University of Leicester on 3rd and 4th April.
My presentation was entitled Absorbing Language Learning and offered ideas to engage enthuse and stimulate language learners, particularly focusing on the Primary Language Learning context although the ideas are all transferable.
I was really glad to be on the programme near the beginning of the conference as I was then able to relax and enjoy the rest of it. And I was also really chuffed that my session was so full – we only just had enough chairs!
As promised, here is the presentation with links to all the resources. The battery on my iRiver sadly gave up midway through the session, but the lovely Joe Dale had given the equally lovely Alex Blagona an iRiver to record me too so I will shortly add the audio to the Slideshare and then you’ll be able to hear me too!
My session at the wonderful Practical Pedagogies conference centred around the use of technology to enhance Primary Language Learning.
