Category: languages

Just in case anyone has missed the news…

MFL Sunderland is no more, but like a phoenix from the ashes arises…

LIGHT BULB LANGUAGES!

Below are the details – well worth noting, bookmarking and etching on your brain as if you don’t already use it, one day you will. Thank you to Clare for her dedication and persistence in sharing. ¡Eres una estrella!

PicCollage done by one of my pupils!

I presented at Language World as part of a triple act on using iPads in language learning. Joe Dale and Helen Bates preceded me talking about QR codes, sound recording, making screencasts and flipped learning before I took over to talk my favourite app – BookCreator.

I shared how to make a book in BookCreator (free/£2.99), how to add images, sound, videos and hyperlinks; how to change the background, how to make sound buttons invisible and how to avoid copyright issues by using QR codes or hyperlinks to videos! I also showed PicCollage (free) as a way of making my front cover, and Tellagami (free) for adding a “talking head”.

I ran out of time to share how you can combine books into one, meaning that you can make a class book with all learners working separately before putting it all together on one iPad (e.g. save to Dropbox and then open and combine) but I did share the news that BookCreator is now on Android – very popular that one!

You can find out more by checking out my post on iPads here which covers things I shared and much more! You can also have a look at this post to see the process of how my Year3s made their eBooks that I shared.

And here’s a tutorial I did on using Explain Everything (two years ago)

Explain Everything Explained. from lisibo on Vimeo.

Presentation by Lisa Stevens aka @lisibo about the iPad app Explain Everything (recorded using the app itself) for TeachmeetBrum and TeachMeet iPad. November 8th 2012

(That’s my red/black shoulder at the front!)

It was touch and go whether I’d make it to Language World this year but having missed it for the last two years, I was determined to make it even if I wasn’t 100%.

And I did, albeit deaf in one ear and in need of frequent sit downs.

Below are my notes from sessions I attended.  You can also download many of the presentations from the two days on the ALL site – Friday and Saturday

Language World is always special to me and this year was no different. Thanks to everyone who ‘looked after’ me, especially Joe who was poised to do my part of the presentation should I keel over; Philip, my chauffeur(!); Julie P who also chauffeured me and with whom I had some excellent chats; Julie D for returning my cap when I left it lying around; and everyone who looked out for me, willed me to be better, and/or remembered to speak into my good ear at any point! Language teachers rock! 😉

Elaine Minnett session

Rachel Hawkes – President’s Plenary

Liz Black

CLIL (Judith Woodfield); Janet Lloyd; Kati Szeless

Thanks to Joe Dale for the photo (and video later)!

I had the privilege on 28th March to speak at the South West London Primary Languages Conference #SWLPLC. My talk was entitled There’s more to PLL than ‘that donkey’ (Tip Top Tips for Primary Language Learning) and took inspiration from my son who when asked what he’d done in French usually replied “oh, we did that donkey again”. I have nothing against Mon âne but there’s more to PLL than singing as I went on to explain, sharing some of my favourite activities and ideas. Below is my presentaion and links to resources I used and sites I referenced.

A lovely day and well worth the early morning; great to see Joe, Rachel, Carmel and finally meet Ceri and Sue, and also to have so many positive comments about Primary Language learning flying around the room.

Habitats matching activity

worksheet LAT SP FR ROM NUMBERS 1-31

el nabo enorme

Oso Pardo pdf

Oso pardo

blank brown bear

Simpsons song

Que colores hay

Links from presentation

Rachel Hawkes’ phonics

httpv://youtu.be/seW6lf_9pSk

Music for Los vocales D.I.S.C.O.

@lisibo teaching Spanish vowel sounds! #SWLPLC http://t.co/KDZAJhpDPd

— Joe Dale (@joedale) March 28, 2014

 Rhabarberbarbara

Jo Rhy Jones phonic activities 

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. And if you flick through, resources for lots of other topics/themes too.

I also recommended looking at The Iris Project and LightBulbLanguages (formerly 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 fromHelen Stanistreet and Rachel Hawkes

Boowa et Kwala – Peut tu marchez comme un canard? Fingerpaint song

Padlet.com – for collecting ideas (online post it notes)

Storybird – make up your own stories using illustrators images.

MFL Storybird wikispace

I also mentioned Tellagami, Pic collage and Book Creator app. Check out this post for more details!

Again, if I’ve forgotten to upload something that I promised, please let me know!

(Sorry it’s taken me so long to post – illness, work and OFSTED held me up!)

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!

On Friday I was fortunate to attend the Stafford Primary MFL conference. I spoke twice, the after lunch keynote and then a workshop on cross curricular links, but really enjoyed listening to others and learning from their brilliant ideas.

I like to share what I learn when I go to conferences. Sometimes I tweet madly and fail to make notes, and other times I try to take notes. On this occasion I started out trying to do both but went for the latter in the end.

So here are my notes (without much editing!) I hope that they make sense!

Lorna Harvey – A link with Geography

We looked at the PoS for languages and also for Geography, and looked at areas where they overlap e.g. “inspire in pupils a curiosity and fascination about the world and its people” from the Geography PoS fits well with language aims.

Ideas –

En France …. on trouve? in French

Link to other countries in French – where might you find these features? as a starter activity for Geography

En Afrique je voudrais visiter…. – looking at the rest of the world rather than just UK and USA.

Where might you go on safari? Learn the phrase Je voudrais… and survey table about the most popular place to go

Make up a song! (tune of Pop goes the weasel)

Have a little conversation (about where you’d like to go on safari and what you can see) and video it – basic phrases but great acting and lots of repetition

Write a mnemonic for walking around France – BLGSIS

One idea was – Big lions growl scarily in SouthAfrica

Why visit France? Create an advertisement – given rubric of requirements – cross curricular

Lorna Harvey – A world of celebrations

This began with the question – How can we integrate languages into KS1 each week with little time and little language?

Can we find a festival every two weeks form Christmas to Easter?

• created a list of festivals
• learned songs and performed plays (Christmas),
• made une fève – figurines for La galette de rois and described it using colours,
• Chinese names for Chinese New Year – became a panda bear and chose a name; Chinese New Year song
• Japanese snow festival – looked at images and guessed where they were, used video clips to introduce – linked to hot/cold and played game.
• Germany for Karneval – learn some phrases for princess eg Prinzessin, Hase, and children asked to bring in one item to become that character/person the next week
• Spain for Fallas – text and video clip with questions – what can we work out? learned days of the week to the Macarena (lunes, martes x2; miércoles, jueves x2; viernes, sábado x2; eeeeee domingo)

To pull together, look at a map of the places and label them – where would you go if you could choose?

Karine Guillot  – Role play! Role play!

Reasons to use role play –

• to develop pupils’ spontaneity
• to develop pupils’ authenticity when speaking French

We looked at

• phrases to get someone’s attention including yelling Coucou!
• likes and dislikes – je hais – I hate (stronger than je déteste)
• suggestions  – Et si on….? How about….. Et si on jouait au ballon? Et si on mangeait un snack?
• agreeing and disagreeing, using lots of gestures as French are dramatic  e.g. ça ma branche (that plugs me in!) I’m up for it!   Non, pas aujourd’hui – no, not today

Traditional French games –

le jeu d’oie

le jeu de la marelle (like hopscotch) throw une pierre starting at 1 whilst standing on TERRE to arrive at CEL

le jeu des dames (draughts) with les pions (draughts/counters)

le jeu des échecs – roi, reine, fou, cavalier, tour, pion (pawn)

les cartes – pique (spades) trèfle (clubs) couer( hearts) carreau (diamonds) l’as (the ace)  le valet / la dame/ le roi

using boards games like Jeu de l’escargot – same board but new questions each time

David Moss (BEST Midlands) – 10 easy to organise classroom games for Gramur and Spelin (sic)

1. Monkey school

• Like hangman
• one monkey whoop for each letter
• if one correct letter, you whoop saying letter in position!
• best to choose from a list or a theme

2. Scene of the crime – MFL

• mixed up word – detectives have to solve the word by unscrambling it
• can up level by  adding a blank or two to challenge
• Ps can prepare for you by writing their own word and swapping in the room and across school
• can be any words – cross curricular
• as above, best to choose from a list/theme

3. Great Wall of China

• like Chinese whispers but you trace letters on hand and pass it down the line, a letter at a time
• be clear where the words come from – a list/ theme

4. Order Order!

• like a human sentence, spelling a word
• use accented letters to make more challenging
• can also sellotape to pupils’  backs and the class reorder them by giving instructions

5a. Accents forever

• using a Powerpoint with rotating words and two flyswats
• swat the accent according to instruction e.g. I’m looking for a circumflex over the letter e

5b. Apostrophes forever

• same as accents forever but for English!

6. On the march 

• assign physical actions to parts of speech e.g. march for a verb, hands on head for a noun
• call out a word and pupils respond with the action
• in English, a word like ‘light’ can have three actions!

7. O and X

• Say the word/phrase in the position you want to win the square

8. Sword drill

• using a dictionary as a sword
• march! attention! salute!
• possible instructions – find the word for…. what page is it on? what gender is it? spell the word and so on
• perhaps photocopy page, or word list, or put your finger in the page in the early stages

9. I need a better actor

• act out the phrase – three people all act out
• eg the girl plays football slowly
• after first, you call “I need a better actor!”
• can vote for best with clapping
• react using different adverbs

 10. Blankety Blank

• have a panel who write their word to fill a gap (from a list on the board) on a mini whiteboard.
• teams try to match with as many of the panel as possible

Lorna Harvey  – Show off your language learning!

How to celebrate language learning with the community

e.g. her school had previously used The Gruffalo in French with y3 and 4 as learners with parents invited to watch like at an Inspire – how can we teach parents and learners at the same time?

Some ideas shared:

•  Languages and countries
• carnivals around the world
• Martinique and France
• instructional language – making smoothies
• Paris

Parent workshop:

• made and gave opinions about cocktails – like and don’t like
• fashion show – introduced each other (linked to carnival clothes)
• tour operators – persuade the parents to go to your venue! Very impressive but two verbs (c’est and visiter)

 Some possible activities-

• using a phonic focus
• using words that we want to use rather than the ones in the book!
• used FLA to talk about Martinque and Carnival there
• classify fruit into countries
• like/dislike
• order instructions
• made own cocktail!
• match descriptions of places to France or Martinique – which would it likely be?

A really great day! I’ll share my presentations in my next post!

Not long now! Have you booked? Lots to do before then but already looking forward to it!

Language World 2014 at the University of Lancaster from 4-5 April has 44 sessions over two days, with a strong focus on the New Curriculum andworking together for the best in languages education.  Our theme is year is ALL Joined Up!

 

It’s the ideal event for you, whether you’re an experienced teacher of languages or coming new to the subject for the first time as part of the New Curriculum at primary level.

 

You can see the full  Friday programme here. And Saturday here.  Simply click on the speaker name to see the session description.

 

• Inspiring plenaries from Rachel Hawkes, Judith Woodfield and Steven Fawkes

 

• Major talks on the challenges and opportunities in the new curriculum from Bernardette Holmes, Liz Black, Marian Carty and a reflection on the past from Nicola McLelland

 

• Workshops full of new ideas to take away and use next day – with too many well-known speakers to name here!  Check out the programme

 

• Up-to-date information from Ofsted and the launch of the results of the latest Language Trends survey

 

• Question Time with actor Larry Lamb in the Chair and a panel from the worlds of education, business and media

 

• Find out how research can inform and support developments in languages education from Ann Swarbrick, Kati Szeless and others

 

• Get to know more about CLIL with Judith Woodfield (plenary), Pippa Jacobs & Sue Simpson (workshop), Kim Bower (major talk), Angela Molinari (workshop) and others

 

• Primary and secondary Show and Tell sessions

 

• Get ALL Joined Up through national initiatives like Routes into Languages and Speak to the Future

 

• Big exhibition of resources and opportunities for you and your pupils

 

• Your chance to network with teachers from around the country

 

Join us for one day or two!  From just £120 a day –full details of how to book see here or call us on 0116 229 7600.

 

I’ve spent today at University of Leicester talking to Primary PGCE students about using technology as part of a yearly event organised by Doug Dickinson aka @orunner. I took part in the original one and have missed the last two as I was in Switzerland so it was good to be invited back this year for the fourth year.

(Thanks to Oliver Quinlan for the very ‘serious’ photo!)

Below is my presentation and below that, some links to sites and apps I referenced.

4 Pictures 1 Word free app
PicCombo free app
Ruzzle free app

Padlet
Popplet – also app lite (free)  and paid (£2.99)

Festisite
Tools for Educators

Storybird
BookCreator – app (free to try) and paid (£2.99)
PicCollage  app (free)
PicLit

Tellagami – app (free)
Morfo – app (free)
Voki

Any questions, please feel free to leave comments below or message me via Twitter @lisibo

I saw this short film or ‘cortometraje’ shared yesterday on Facebook and I can’t get it out of my head so I thought I’d share it with you.

Cuerdas is the winning short film in the Premio Goya 2014 and tells the story of how life changes for María when a new and special child joins her school. It’s heartwarming (and heartbreaking) ; a lesson in seeing things as a child, finding solutions to seemingly insurmountable problems, and being a good friend. Even if you don’t speak Spanish it’s easy to understand and you can’t fail to miss the message!

It struck a chord with me as I have a gorgeous nephew who I’d like to think is treated as María treats her new friend.

And because, at a deeper level, it reminded me of the times when someone has metaphorically tied their hands and/or feet to mine and made me move when I couldn’t of my own volition, who has included me in their ‘games’ when I had nothing to contribute and been sad when I wasn’t there.

We all need a helping hand sometimes, don’t we?

httpv://youtu.be/A6IfiJ6hdsk

As the Youtube video seems to have been removed, Hopefully this video will work!

Following on from #ililc4, I’ll be speaking at Language World.

This year it’s entitled ALL Joined UP and is taking place at Lancaster University 4th-5th April. With a very broad programme on both Friday and Saturday catering for all levels of language learning from Primary to HE, it is always a conference that makes you think. I particularly enjoy the more academic talks as I rarely get to hear such things, but if that’s not your thing, there are plenty of practical sessions to please you with ideas that can be used tomorrow.

And that should include the session I’m doing with Joe Dale and Helen Bates on Multimedia language learning with iPads 

More details are here including how to book for the conference and conference dinner on the Friday night.

Having missed the last two (I was in Switzerland!) I am especially looking forward to this year’s event.

Here are posts of my presentations from previous years!

Language World 2011 – Entitled to enjoy primary languages

Language World 2010 – Bricklaying for beginners

Language World 2009 – Absorbing language learning

And some from sessions I’ve enjoyed (as far back as I can find that weren’t ruined when the site was hacked)

Reframing languages (2011)

Mini Olympic packs for primary languages (2011)

President’s address (2011)

Make it real (2011)

Languages reboot (2011)

Progression in reading and writing (2011)

A narrative approach to storytelling (2011)

Languages and the Olympics (2011)

Liz Black Embedding languages (2010)

Claire Dodd Embedding languages (2010)

Reflecting on Language World 2008