Category: ideas

Further to my previous post about the wonderful STORYBIRD site, I’ve got good news and bad news!

I’m on a blog writing roll this week aren’t I?

And being an inquisitive gal, I went and had a look.

As Jo Rhys-Jones kindly pointed out last night, in all my blogging I have failed to post my own presentation!

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 received notification a few days ago that the latest edition of the Primary languages ezine is available on the Primary Languages website.
All about cross curricular links this time, Ruth Churchill from CILT says-

articles include integrating languages with work on mini beasts, keeping fit, growing sunflowers and music. There are also features on CLIL (Content Language Integrated Learning) from the University of Nottingham’s Dr Philip Hood and a research project involving French and the Tudors. All this with the latest news and resources.

Visit the primary languages website to read the latest issues online and find out how to subscribe to automatically receive future issues for free: www.primarylanguages.org.uk/link/ezine.aspx

Lots there to give you ideas ready for September – and links to more advice and ideas if you can’t get enough!

Not a post about S Club 7 (athough I will say that my boys are big fans of Hannah who’s in Primeval now!) but about something that was reinforced in my mind last night.

The Assistant Head at school had been asked to run part of the PDM on EAL (English as an additional language) and to give some brief ideas on how to make life easier for EAL pupils at school. We don’t have many but it is an important issue – and one that is relevant in general too! On a recent course she had attended, the presenter had taught them some Welsh to put the delegates in the position of an EAL learner, and Jan had asked me to emulate this – her exact request was ‘you know an oscure Spanish dialect don’t you? Could you teach us some?’ Not sure how the Catalans would respond to hearing Catalan described as such but I took the challenge.

The idea was to teach numbers 1-12 and then do some basic maths but without using visual prompts like fingers, cards, notes, actions or mimes until about half way through the session. Thus the staff were put in the place of a learner who is capable to doing the task – all our staff can add and subtract numbers up to 12!- but don’t have the vocabulary to understand the task.

What struck me was how hard I found it to teach without using actions – I literally had to put my hands in my pockets or hold them together to stop myself gesturing. I found it really uncomfortable to see the looks on my colleagues’ faces as they tried to work out what I wanted them to do – and I think I caved in quicker than I should have done. My style is very much waving my arms around, pointing, miming and using any clue I can to enable the pupils to understand.

When asked how they’d felt, it was obvious that the exercise had hit the mark as the staff immediately pinpointed the difficulty of understanding the task being the biggest stumbling block, and how much easier it had been once actions had been introduced, or the list of numbers being written on the wall. One colleague said that she’d given up trying after a few minutes as she was so baffled; another that she’d felt so inadequate and small as others had caught on more quickly than her, and almost humiliated (once she’d understood it) by the simplicity of the task that she’d been unable to do.

So, despite my discomfort at teaching in a way that is alien to me, I think the exercise served to underline just how important gesture and mime are in enabling understanding.

We played a game from Digital Dialects as part of my mini-lesson. Well worth a look if you want to learn – or even just look at – some basics in a wide range of different languages!

Friday was a busy day, starting off in London with an animation course run by Oscar Stringer at Institute of Education.

Working in two groups, we spent the day developing our animation skills, producing two short animations from initial idea to finished film complete with transitions, titles, sound and music. We used ICanAnimate to capture the animation then exported the film to iMovie to ‘finish’ it. My group used my Macbook and a Hue webcam – and it was lovely to meet the man behind Hue in the UK during the day as well (mine’s on order from Amazon – went for the blue one in the end!) whilst the other group used an iMac and a driverless webcam.

James, Carolyn and I took our inspiration from the Mr Men. Firstly, our models followed the principles of Mr Men (which are also important principles for plasticine animation – big features, bold shapes and simple designs) and secondly, we made an animation with a message – suitable for PSHE and based on friendship in the playground – a lonely girl on a bench wanting to join in with a game of ball.

The day reinforced all that I already knew about animating – the importance of keeping things simple, of planning well before you start, of working in collaboration and of how much fun it is!
We laughed so much making the animations – my group’s is posted below. This is the English version. We recorded three different ending – with the bench saying THE END in English, French and Spanish – so that we can use it in our classrooms and dub it in different languages.

If you want to find out more about animating, I can’t recommend Oscar’s courses enough. He has a real gift for making it all seem very simple (and it is) and conveys the great potential that animation has as a tool for creativity, collaboration, innovation and progression. Check out his website and his blog to find out more.

Amazing what you can do with a carpet tile, some plasticine and an idea!

Thanks to Alex Blagona and Joe Dale who recorded and edited the audio, here’s the Slidecast of my recent presentation at Language World in Leicester.

And if you want to listen on your mp3 player, you can download my podcast Lisibo talks!

Received an e-mail from CILT today with the latest copy of the Primary Languages e-Zine.

This online magazine contains news of QCA units, CILT publications and more, and also takes a topic for consideration.

The focus for this edition is STORYTELLING with ideas of how to get started, how to move on and how it fits into the Primary Curriculum and some ideas for resources as CILT staff choose their favourite books.

There’s also a section called ‘What you’re doing‘ which contains reports on how various people have used storytelling in the Primary language classroom – including Handa’s Surprise, Jules Verne and Go away Big Green Monster – written by someone you might know ;o) – as well as ideas for where to obtain *free* resources for storytelling and what research says about the use of stories.

Well worth a read!

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!

Links to sites and resources can also be found in my delicious bookmarks under lw09

photos – http://www.?ickr.com/photos/emerging/