Category: primary languages

Language teacher? Fancy finding meeting up with other language teachers for an hour or so without leaving your own home? Why not join in the Bank Holiday MFL Flashmeeting at 9pm GMT tomorrow (Monday). All you need to join in is a computer with speakers although a microphone and a webcam will allow you to get more involved.

The brainchild of Joe Dale, you can read all about it on his blog here including instructions on how to join in by signing the wiki, and how to make sure you’re prepared.

The suggested agenda is –

• what is your favourite technology at the moment and how is it enhancing language learning?
• the Rose Review and the proposals that technology be at the core of the primary curriculum
• the value of creating your personal learning network and does the microblogging tool have a place in the classroom?
• Web 2.0 CPD opportunities for next academic year – anyone like to organise a conference for language teachers interested in using ICT?

NB – the wiki is looking very full so if you find you can’t get in, please don’t despair. Master of technology Mr Dale will make sure that you can see the replay as soon as the meeting is over and will no doubt blog it too – unless I get there first ;o)

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!

On Tuesday I made my way to Cambridge for the second time in four days to deliver a day’s training on behalf of CILT at Anglia Ruskin University.

The course was entitled NEXT STEPS IN ICT FOR THE PRIMARY LANGUAGE CLASSROOM and promised to address collaborative working, whole class ICT, digital voicerecording and assessment amongst other things.

I had a lovely day with the delegates and hope that they all went away with one or to things to try out in their classrooms – there was great enthusiasm for wikis and Voki, and TTS should expect a few orders for their sound recording products in the near future – especially as I need a new Easispeak as I seem to have left mine behind :O(

I made a wiki for the event on which I’ve put all my presentations and also as a place for the delegates to ‘play around’ with using wikis. I did record the sessions – mostly!- but in the afternoon we went off at a tangent and the audio won’t fit my presentations so i won’t be making slidecasts of everything. However, I have put the presentations below as they are full of hyperlinks to useful resources.

Hope you find it useful!

And if you want to go on the course, it is repeated in Lancaster on 19th May. Contact CILT for more details!

NB the first slideshow actually starts on slide 18 as slide 22 was triggered to the first 20 slides as examples!

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!

When I met up with Oscar Stringer at the Primary Languages Show in Liverpool, he told me about his recent experience of using Fuzzy Felts when animating with younger pupils, so I was really excited to see some of the work he did last week on his blog.

In Animation with Reception (Early Years), Oscar shares how he used the farmyard Fuzzy Felts with small groups of pupils for 20 or so minutes, making up simple stories involving the animals and the farmer, taking the required shots before using iMovie to create the finished product with sound.

Several things excited me about this!

Firstly, it’s so simple – no models to make- just take the pieces out of the box and off you go!
Secondly, it worked with young pupils – I made plasticine monster models with Yr2 but wasn’t brave enough to animate them – yet!
And possibly the most exciting thing for me as Oscar told me, and I can see the evidence in the clip, is that it makes for very simple stories of the kind that are so useful in language learning.

Do cows eat apples? No!
Do ducks eat apples? No!
Do dogs eat apples? NO!
Do horses eat apples? YES!

¿Eres mi mamá? ( the chick asks the cow.) ¡No! etc

Une vache habite un étang? Non!
Une poule habite un étang? Non!
Le fermier habite un étang? Non!

And anyone could make up such a story, young or old, using simple language to create their own version.

So pop by Oscar’s blog and see if it inspires you too!

I’m off to ELC to get myself some fuzzy felts – the house set is on offer as are ballerinas and pirates!

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/

Following on from my 30 minutes on the International Dimension on Tuesday, the assembled group were treated to a session led by Pam Haezewindt, HMI, on inspecting Primary Languages.

Here are some of the points, comments and observations that she made.

Subjects are not inspected as separate entities in setion 5 (whole school) inspections but
issues arising from the school SEF and preinspection briefing may be investigated, so PMFL may be visited to probe generic points eg behaviour.

Pam pointed us towards the following document which can be downloaded from the OFSTED website using the number quoted.

The changing landscape of languages
(An evaluation of language learning 2004/7)
July 2008
www.ofsted.gov.uk
report – ref no. 070053
(Also details some generic findings from whole school inspections – at least a 3rd of all inspections mentioned MFL in some way.)

Some comments from the report –

‘The French language pervades the school’

‘A pilot scheme to teach Spanish in y3 and 4 broadens horizons, builds self esteem and adds to pupil enjoyment’

‘Recently introduced Spanish lessons have spurred on pupils’ interest i another langauge and this is having a good effect upon their understanding of letter sounds in Spanish as well as English.’

Subject inspections are carried out as part of the survey inspections OFSTED is required to do. These are inspected according to the headings of section 5 schedule but each subject also selects an issue to look at in more detail.
In languages, the current subject issue is ‘progress toward entitlement in KS2’

Evidence collected -2005-7
In half the schools the effectiveness of the introduction of languaegs and progress towards good
enthusiastic pupils enthusiastic teachers

Improvement needed in –

• sound spelling links
• ICT use by pupils
• assessment
• monitoring
• reliance on external providers
• liaison with secondary schools

One third of schools identified were not visited because they had not begun languages, or, significantly, had begun but stopped due to staff leaving.
These schools have all been telephoned this term and only two have not now introduced a language.

2007-8 – what has changed?
This is most recent report

The context –

• mostly language spoken to Y3 and or 4
• if provided in y5 and 6, mainly similar to Y3 and 4
• few schools with progressions from Y3-6 – it’s early days
• the large majority teach French, 30-40 minutes a week, plus some extra provision.

• Effectiveness is good or better in 2/3 schools
• Achievement and provision were graded good or better in 2/3 of schools
• Personal development nearly always at least good, and outstanding in 1/5
• almost all schools fostered excitement

strengths-

• listening skills good
• speaking skills developing well
• Pupils will respond with confidence and enthusisasm to instructions and questions
• teachers use a variety of mean to help students pronounce well
• in some schools KAL and ICU developing well (still some way to go) – some still 4 skills not 5 strands
• teaching and learning good overall
• senior leaders commiteed
• self evaluation good

Areas still to improve and develop

• sound spelling links
• reading from early in learning
• writing (some reluctance, wishing to leave until Y6?)
• building on pupils’ own languages
• teacher confidence to build the language into everyday teaching and learning contexts
• time (some schools managing to find 50 minutes a week)
• self, peer, continuous and summative assessment
• working with secondary schools (what happens to all these pupils who have been learning languages for years)

In 2008-9 the key issues under consideration are entitlement and curriculum models.

The process of a primary subject visit is as follows-

• phone calls to school (2 weeks notice)
• pre-visit letter
• timetable in school
• visit (no requirement for subject SEF) – talk to staff, coordinator, pupils (you can choose to certain extent), observation (can be from 1 to 4 lessons!)
• oral feedback
• written feedback = post visit letter – no headings in letter so no ‘outstanding’ ‘satisfactory’ etc

The Rose Review – Interim report
A language is to become compulsory in primary schools from September 2011. (Not to be confused with 2010 deadline for entitlement!) The children who are currently in Reception will be the cohort with compulsory entitlement.
Languages currently sit within the area for learning; ‘English, communications and modern languages’
Current debate about which and how many languages is ongoing.
Do respond to the next consultation

I found all this information really useful and hope that it will be useful to others too.

Hot on the heels of CILT’s Primary Language Show, Birmingham’s ELL RSG meeting at the Martineau Centre in Harborne on 9th March was led by Helen Leigh from Worcestershire LA and was full of ideas for five to ten minute language activities that can be done in the classroom. Whilst the recommendation of one hour per week language learning has been understood as a discrete lesson by some, the ideal is that the hour is spread throughout the week. Not only because an hour is a loooong time to maintain attention and energy, but also because little and often fits well into the already packed primary curriculum. Helen suggested the term ‘language exposure’ too as a good way of viewing it.

The session was jampacked wth ideas which Helen related to the KS2 Framework.

Here are some exmaples –

O3.3 – perform simple communicative tasks using single words, phrases and short sentences
‘Snail stories’ – can be done in many languages as so simple! Un escargot (actions draw s – drive a car – point GO!)
Un escargot….deux escargots…..bonjour….bonjour…… kiss kiss……au revoir…au revoir
Un caracol…… dos caracoles…..hola…….hola……..kiss kiss……. adiós…..adiós
could add to it by asking how you are, name etc

Brain gym –
a)letters and number – using the chart (right), say the alphabet whilst lifting arms and legs as indicated by the number as below –
1- right hand and left leg
2- left hand and right leg
3- both hands

Kids could make up their own versions, have a competition to see how fast they can do it correctly? It also fits the idea of Daily Physical Activity. See also Take Ten en français / en español.

b. colours – Dr Kawashima-like stroop test – as a timed test perhaps, or inter table competition?

Another idea was a Mexican wave of word cards and/ or pictures?

O3.2 to recognise and respond to sound patterns and words O4.3 to listen for sounds, rhyme and rhythm

‘Phonics’
eg Une poule sur un mur (see here for song mp3)
focus on ‘ou’ sound – touch your head when you hear the sound.
then ‘u’ sound
actions

Helen then used pictures of Marge and Homer Simpson, breaking the sad news that they were splitting up and had to split their belongings, to demonstrate an activity with phoneme. Homer was in a house labelled ou and Marge in one labelled u – the task was to divide all the things in the home. eg Marge got la jupe, Homer la tortue, Marge le mur etc

Dans la forêt lointaine is a good song to use for reinfrcing the phoneme ou – pupils stand up and sit down each time your hear ‘ou’
This also covers ICU as traditional song. Helen reiterated that it is not necessary to understand every word.

“Splat’
A simple activity – two pupils compete to splat the number, animated on PPT to pop up and down. Make it harder by asking pupils to splat multiples of 3 for example.

L4.1 to read and understand a range of familair written phrases
O5.1 to prepare and practse a simple conversation, reusing familiar vocabulary and structures in new contexts
Fishing rods – hook a fish – on the back of the fish is a number – the team that gets the number closest to x that wins.
Add them orally! Alternatively, make it harder by allowing the use of all operations to reach a more difficult number.

Helen also showed an idea using an alphabet mat – give two people a word to spell out by ‘dancing’ on the letters. their partners cmpete to write the word phrase down.

Another idea was to ask questions with three possible answers. Someone is sent out. whilst they are outside, the group decide on the correct answers. When they return, the person has to get all three right or start again. This allows the class to practise the question form which the part they often struggle to learn.

Above is a slide about a game of Cluedo that could be played with the class – involves colours, classroom objects and rooms, and pupils repeat the same vocabulary over and over until someone gets the correct answer. And a bit of blood and gore always go down well ;o)

O3.4 listen attentively and understand instructions, everyday classroom language and praise words

‘spells’
Helen then showed us some magic! Dice that changed colour, books that lose colours and regain colours, disappearing things, psychic displays – all the usual stuff!
We made up a spell about colours –

We then had a look at the story Je m’habille et… je te croc! all about a wolf who gets dressed then comes to eat us! Helen had found a Powerpoint in French already prepared – there are lots more great ideas on the site too!

The final activities involved the Months of the year – firstly, using a mgaic bag – everyone wrote their birth month on a slip of paper and put them in a bag. Helen then got someone to choose a month and wrote the month that she thought it would be on a magic board. of course she was right as there was a secret compartment n the bag! The other activity involved betting on the month that disappears forst from the board, then, once they’ve all gone, which comes back? The disappearing involves pupils copywriting on a whiteboard, and reappearing involves recall.

Loads of ideas!! Thanks Helen x
pass the bomb!

One of the sessions I attended at the PLS was all about using Fairytales and Fables in PLL and employing children’s thinking skills. It was led by Louise Harty from Northumberland, and spoke to the wonderful resources available on the NGfL – particularly Riccioliodoro and Les souris courageuses

As I admitted to Louise when I saw here later, I’ve used the resources on the NGfL, specifically Goldilocks and Little Red Riding Hood in Spanish, and have made use of some of the activities discussed during the session without really grasping the full power of them. So it was good to discover the thinking and theory behind it all.

This has implications for thinking skills – Louise opened by reflecting that learning should be active, meaningful, challenging, collaborative, mediated and reflective. She talked about Lev Vygotsky and his zones of proximal development. Vygotsky felt that it is children’s interaction with others through language that most strongly influences the levels of conceptual understanding they can reach. He also believed that we can learn from others, both the same age and of a higher age and developmental level – learning is a social activity and thinking skills could be the road to better language learning.

The progression of learning in PMFL was said to be

• nouns
• words to describe nouns
• short phrase
• making own sentences
• able to use verbs confidently

and the scheme of learning activities that Louise was presenting follow this pattern.
At each stage, opportunities are given to explore concepts behind the knowledge in an unthreatening manner.

Here are the success criteria for each objective-

• nouns – I understand gender (not teaching it but exploring it)
• adjectives – I understand how adjectives work
• short phrases – I understand simple word order.
• sentences – I understand sentence construction
• use verbs confidently – I understand how verbs work

By using scaffolding early on, pupils in PMFl can reach level 5 equivalent skills. Louise questioned why, if pupils are conceptually able to reach level 5 in Maths science and Literacy, we limit them in MFL?

By moving from fairytales to fables the pupils are moving from familiar to less familiar stories with more complex language.

Ricciolodoro è i Tre Orsi was the first story in focus.
By using Storyboarding pupils were developing sequencing and deductive skills. They went on to classifying nouns, exercising sorting and clasifying skills, using language of similarity and differences whilst making connections. They ahve to articulate their reasoning with everyone bringing their own learning and skills
We did an activity in which we were exploring gender – not being taught it but discovering it. If you present ‘the cognitive conflict’ children discover for themselves and it much more powerful than being told.

Les souris courageuses – une fable
We began looking at the activity Map from memory, a visual, walking dictation type of activity in which we were communicating the position of items in a picture from memory wthout touching. The key was – How did we tackle the task? Were we methodical and divide the picture into sections? Did we look for likely places to put words? Did we match adjectives in advance of instructions?

We then moved onto the construction of phrases and sentences using a grid, then joining with connectives. Although some may not be strictly correct in terms of likelihood or sense, in the feedback you get quality of language. Louise emphasised that the teacher’s role is facilitating in thsi scenario rather than giving learning. In this exercise, the thinking was interpreting and oragnising info whilst the children were talking about how to work together as a team – team strategies lead to spontaneous language.

The next activity involved a Venn diagram which we used for making deductions about adjectives. Conclusions reached included that you often add an e to make feminine adjectives and ones that are the same end in e already. The exercise then gave opportunities for more sentence making opportunities.

Sadly Louise ran out of time to explain the Fortune line and Fact or fiction, but we did have a quick look at classifying verbs, matching infinitives to verb forms and then splitting the verb cards as we saw fit. We were encouraged to split them into description and action verbs, and then to discuss our conclusions.

The interactive stories and SMART notebook files of characters and for retelling the story are available on the NGfL website and the accompanying resources are available for purchase £149.
I’ve used the Goldilocks stuff in Spanish very successfully with Year2 who discovered all sorts of things about language through it. And now I understand why!!

I was very privileged to be invited to present this year at the Primary Languages Show in Liverpool, not once but twice!

I promised at my two sessions that I would post my notes and resources on my blog for people to download and use.

So here’s my first presentation. If you download it, the hyperlinks all work – or did when I tried them. However, if they don’t, remember that I have bookmarked all the sites to which I referred (and more) on Delicious tagged PLS09 – http://delicious.com/lisibo/pls09

The Powerpoints I used are also below –

I have blogged this unit previously here and you will find my worksheets, the SoW and more ideas here and a fuller description of how we animated our animals here.

A couple of things I mentioned but didn’t put in the presentation – the masks were downloaded from Sparklebox and the animation was done using FramebyFrame on my Macbook. You can also use SMAnimator (free to download on a PC) or ICanAnimate (for PC or Mac costs about £40)

If you’ve got any questions, feel free to leave a comment below!