Category: languages

Day 2 – Navidad Navidad (Jingle Bells)

httpv://youtu.be/hZa1prx1uME

Up until Christmas, watch out for a Spanish Christmas carol a day.

Day 1 – Feliz Navidad.

httpv://youtu.be/K9ULvb_FD-s

It’s nearly Christmas so here’s a lovely little video brought to my attention by @Mother Goose Club.

The Spanish Christmas song Navidad, Navidad (To the tune of Jingle Bells) with cute animation and karoake lyrics too!

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRS1PjprrTQ

A little story featuring Caillou to mark Thanksgiving.
Hope you enjoy it as much as I did!

httpv://youtu.be/1K4Z8wtJH2A

Thank you to June da Silva for pointing this out via primarylanguages@mailtalk.ac.uk.

November 21st is World Hello Day on which people are encouraged to greet 10 people to demonstrate the importance of personal communication in maintaining peace.

  World Hello Day was begun in response to the conflict between Egypt and Israel in the Fall of 1973.  Since then, World Hello Day has been observed by people in 180 countries.

    People around the world use the occasion of World Hello Day as an opportunity to express their concern for world peace.  Beginning with a simple greeting on World Hello Day, their activities send a message to leaders, encouraging them to use communication rather than force to settle conflicts.

    As a global event World Hello Day joins local participation in a global expression of peace.  The World Hello Day web site address is http://www.worldhelloday.org.

As June says in her email, what an opportunity to promote communication in other languages too. I will be attempting to greet 10 people in Swiss German and / or their native language. I’m sure I can find 10 people who speak 10 different languages at home amongst my boys’ new classmates and parents…

www.ipl.org/div/hello will help me in my task as will http://www.digitaldialects.com/ 

And how about these lovely song?

httpv://youtu.be/kjwkMmdqmH4

Zachary Jones’ site Zambombazo is a great source of inspiration for all things Hispanic.

And I love it because it proves time and again that there is always something to learn about a language you thought you knew quite well.

I’m often challenged by pupils when I can’t recall the word for ‘meerkat’ or ‘spark plug’ that ‘you’re supposed to know Spanish’ to which I reply I don’t know every word in English. Especially when it comes to colloquial useage. I mean, my son tells me that when he says soemthing is ‘sickage’, that’s great. I’m not so sure…

So, I particularly like this map that Zachary has made – ¿Cómo se dice ‘cool’ en español?

As he points out in his post, the answer to that question depends on lots of factors including the country or even region you’re in, your socioeconomic status as well as your age. The post also offers ideas on how you might use the map to increase vocabulary, to encourage intercultural discussion and to promote discussion of current linguistic useage.

Just found this interesting infographic about the relationship between learning languages and your brain.

The bottom section about the optimum age for your brain to be most efficient at language learning is a strong case for Primary Languages (hurrah!) but not such good news for my attempts to learn German (boo!). It doesn’t say you can’t learn a langage when you’re old. Er. Although I will very shortly head off their scale…

via

Another nod to Neil Jones today for introducing me to the lovely Pimpollos, Peru’s answer to the Hoobs. Cheery, friendly and with ‘karaoke subtitles’, I think a very useful series.

On his blog, Neil has posted materials for using their song Las verduras. Great stuff!

There are many more videos by Los Pimpollos and here are a couple of my favourites.

1. Arriba abajo.

This song is about things that are either up (arriba) or down (abajo) and I can see Nursery and Reception enjoying dancing along to this. The video supports the language with visual clues and actions can easily be added to show which way -arriba o abajo – each object is found.

httpv://youtu.be/_PVbDErQkGg

2. Cada día se un poquito más

I like this song for the words, meaning every day I know a little more; when I’m older I’ll know millions of things, just you wait and see! Well, I’m ‘older’ and I still want to sing this song as I’ve still got plenty to learn!

Cada día sé un poquito más

Yo voy a aprender tú ya lo verás

Cuando sea grande voy a saber

Un millón de cosas tú vas a ver

Que yo voy a aprender

para poder ser mejor.

Cada día sé un poco más que ayer

Todavía falta lo sé muy bien

Pero poco a poco lo aprenderé

Si tienes paciencia  lo vas a ver

Que yo voy a aprender

Para poder ser mejor.

Cada día sé un poquito más

Yo voy a aprender tú ya lo verás

Cuando sea grande voy a saber

Un millón de cosas tú vas a ver

Que yo voy a aprender

para poder ser mejor.

httpv://youtu.be/7yGE_hGJOaI

I really enjoyed Neil Jones’ presentation at ALL NorthEast Spanish day.

You can find all sorts of ideas and resources on his blog – http://mfljones.wordpress.com  – well worth a look whatever phase you teach.

I loved some of the advertisements he showed.  Here are two of them.  Torres has been forgiven and I love funny dogs.

Pesi – Fernando Torres

httpv://youtu.be/nd7fc5iFL4g

Pancho, el perro que ganó el Primitivo

httpv://youtu.be/vwpbAsAzLf4

Following on from Rachel’s Hawkes’ reminder to me of my plan to teach phonics using her grid, another reminder popped up today when i was on Slidecast and found this short presentation courtesy of Clare Seccombe aka @Valleseco aka MFL Sunderland webmistress extraordinaire.

Phonics are key to our ability to read and pronounce unfamiliar words in a language -must ask Rachel if she has a phonics grid for German!