Category: primary languages

As pupils at Whitehouse Common learn Spanish from Nursery to Year 6, I was very interested by this session at the Hampshire Conference. Fiona and Naouele spoke persuasively about the benefits of language learning at a young age.

CLIL is – Content and Language Integrated Learning and basically involves teaching cross-curricularly, delivering other subjects through the language. Do Coyle is the driving force behind this. The ideal is that the subject specialist delivers the lessons in the language, but it’s more likely that the MFL specialist will deliver eg history, or possibly the subject and the MFL teacher team teaching. You might also use the FLA to support the subject specialist. I’m interested in this as Whitehouse Common is involved in a project with three foci, one of which is CLIL.

I have declared my affection for Pocoyó previously on this blog and have subscribed to the Youtube channel dedicated to this lovely little chap. His latest clip is above and announces Mundo Pocoyó.

As the blurb says –

Un mundo virtual donde los niños pueden compartir experiencias y aventuras con sus personajes favoritos: jugar con Pato en el parque de atracciones, visitar la boutique de Elly o pintar y colorear con Pocoyó.
Actividades didácticas y amenas que ayudan a conocer el mundo, juegos que estimulan la habilidad, capítulos y melodías siempre disponibles para disfrutarlos online, miles de posibilidades al alcance de todos con un claro objetivo: aprender riendo.
www.mundopocoyo.com

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Welcome to Pocoyo World!

A huge virtual world where kids, parents and carers can share adventures with their favourite characters: play with Pato in the theme park, visit Ellys shop or paint and colour with Pocoyo.

Educational activities, games, puzzles, episodes, music and dancing, all available in a totally secure environment, with one simple objective: learning through laughter.

www.pocoyoworld.com

Available in English or Spanish, the site seems to function much like Club Penguin, with you having your own character – a Pocoyó like personaje- and, by earning tickets by completing games, you can buy pets, furniture etc. It’s a social place as you can interact with other members.

Fun place to visit – and good for playing with another language.

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Humber Bridge light reflections, originally uploaded by David Locke1.

Just spent a lovely day in Hull at their primary language conference. The sun shone, the trees were very autumnal and it was far from ‘grim’

About 90 delegates attended the day which focussed on Using ICT in Primary Language teaching, attending workshops on film in education by Mark Reid of BFI, the use of animation for improved speaking and listening in language learning led by Oscar Stringer, using school networks to support language learning led by Dorolyn Parker and cross curricular collaboration, led by me.

I’m becoming more used to presenting seminars now and, whilst the adrenalin rushes and I have butterflies, it is not as frightening as it once was. However, Hull presented a new challenge as I’d been invited as keynote speaker as well – a first! Anyone who has been following my tweets this week may have sensed the growing anxiety I experienced as the ‘big day’ approached; that was but nothing compared to my state this morning. However, once I’d cracked a joke and got everyone doing a ridiculous warm up dance, I felt much better and, despite one or two issues with projector not wanting to talk to my Mac and then the Internet failing to connect, I think the session went well. I even think my use of a Fernando Torres clip (a mere four days after he scored a hattrick in the 6-1 defeat of Hull City by Liverpool) may have been forgiven by 95% of the delegates.

My Keynote was entitled Inspiring Creative Teaching in the Primary Language Classroom and centred on what ICT can do to enhance and support language teaching and learning. As Ewan McIntosh said – it’s not about the tech, it’s about the teach.

My seminar was entitled Don’t be mad, get cross curricular with ICT and PLL and focussed on embedding and entwining language learning into the existing school curriculum, making links and collaborating, and tools that might help in this. We talked eTwinning, eLanguages and it was also pleasing to see that schools are working collaborativel on a local level in clusters to support one another.

Below I’ve posted my presentations – pop back over the next couple of days to see the screencast with audio. I’ll also post both sessions on Lisibo talks! as soon as I have a spare moment!

Any queries, feel free to leave a comment below or contact me directly – my details are at the end of the slideshow.

A couple of things I mentioned that weren’t in the handout (also below)

The wiki sites I mentioned were Wikispaces, Wetpaint and PBWiki.

For ways of using Youtube, and/or downloading clips where it is blocked, have a look at a previous presentation You and Youtube where I mention RealPlayer, Zamzar, MediaConverter and Firefox widgets.

You can obtain Take Ten en français or en español from Devon Education Services or from Little Linguist.

And finally, check out this post for details of tutorials for some of the tools I mentioned today.

Thanks for a great day Hull! You’ve definitely made an impression on me!

Thanks to the lovely Joe Dale who has just blogged it, I have discovered this marvellous site called My Avatar Editor.

My Avatar Editor enables you to design your own avatar for use as your ID on, say, Twitter or for a tool like Voicethread or as your ‘online persona’ on your blog.

As Joe points out, it’s also great when teaching personal descriptions – either pupils are given a range of people to describe – see below – or are given descriptions and asked to make the avatar to match.

You could also use them to inspire pupils to creativity – eg characters for stories; to demonstrate feelings; talk in the style of….

Great fun! Not sure my hair is quite right though….

BTW – I’m the one at the top, not the very scary Granny ;o)

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!

Just come across this lovely cuddly family – Los Patata on Youtube.

As the blurb says

Telemadrid emite todos los fines de semana, por la mañana, “Los Patata”, una serie infantil realizada con muñecos, dirigida a niños en edad preescolar. Estructurada en mini episodios, pretende entretener fomentando conocimientos, valores, respeto e igualdad de roles… Además, la familia Patata, cada noche invita a los niños a irse a la cama con la canción “Hasta mañana, un beso”. “Los Patata” también están a diario en la programación infantil de laOtra.

I love this goodnight song – very sweet and makes a change from Chris Jarvis on CBeebies with his mobile eyebrows telling us ‘The time has come to say goodnight….’

Here’s the short version-
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tp0k45cYwu4&hl=en&fs=1&color1=0x006699&color2=0x54abd6&border=1]

Today I took part in a Primary Language workshop at Plantsbrook School.

My contribution to the day was called You and Youtube and addressed the use of video and slideshows to facilitate and enhance primary language learning. Below is my presentation. If you click on the videos or the titles, they are all hyperlinked to their source. I’ve added a few of the clips I used as well.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkQCtzdQFto&hl=en&fs=1&border=1]

Additionally, to address some of the questions posed:

I was asked a few questions about ANIMATION – can I direct you to Oscar Stringer’s wonderful site for guidance ideas and resources – particularly his useful PDF that gives directions on how to animate.

Putting SOUND in POWERPOINT – check out this post from the ubiquitous Joe Dale.

Good places to find RESOURCES – ready made – are Talkabout Primary MFL and TES Staffroom.

All my bookmarks are available to access here – http://delicious.com/lisibo so if you need some ideas on festivals, click on the link, then click on ‘festivals’ on the right hand side and you’ll find all the sites I’ve bookmarked.

Having never been to Stoke on Trent previously, I was there twice in three days! This time I’d been invited to speak at a ‘Creative Spanish’ afternoon for Primary Language teachers, organised jointly by Lorna Harvey from Staffordshire and Helen Thomas from Stoke on Trent. I really enjoyed the presentation on using Art by Shirley Kliment-Temple and was sorry to miss the salsa and skipping!

My presentation was a repeat of the one I did at the Primary Language Show in Liverpool about the QCA unit based on SaintSaens Carnival of the Animals, and I have posted the slidecast from that event below so that you can listen and watch the slides! If yu want any of the resources, they are in this post.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.

I had the pleasure of delivering the Next steps in ICT for the Primary Language Classroom at University of Cumbria in Lancaster on Tuesday. I had delivered the same in Cambridge last month, and whilst the presentations were identical, the days were quite different with the delegates taking a greater lead this time in guiding where we went. That always keeps you on your toes!

Below are my presentations from the day – you can also find these on the event wiki which was set up for us to ‘play around’.

Thank you to my 6 ‘victims’ as I referred to them on Twitter; to my Tweetmates who responded to my request to say hello; and to CILT for giving me this opportunity to share my enthusiasm for ICT and Primary Languages with others.