Category: primary languages

I blogged about this great site a while back – but thought I’d mention it again, and post a picture of MY Wildself as I intend to mention it tomorrow when I speak about Using ICT in the Primary Language Classroom for Comenius West Midlands in Wolverhampton, and also as I mentioned it in my post about El Carnaval de los Animales.

So here’s Lisibo – the Rein-pol-conda-ger-guin-peacock (always said I was a bit mixed up )

As I mentioned in my post on Unit 11, my idea is to use the image above as the stimulus for descriptive writing. Pupils could describe

• the physical attributes of their Wild self
• the character traits that their Wild self displays
• the environment in which it lives
• the food it eats

So – my example would be:

Me llamo Lisibo. Tengo la cabeza de una niña. Tengo las orejas de un oso polar y las cuernas de un reno. Tengo la lengua larga de una anaconda. Tengo los brazos de un tigre y el cuerpo y piernas de un pinguino. Y tengo la cola muy bonita de un pavo real. Soy simpática y cariñosa pero a veces soy feroz. Me gusta el sol aunque tengo que sentarme en un palo de hielo porque mi trasero es de pinguino ;o) Como las hormigas y los gusanos con la lengua, y mi comida preferida es una hamburguesa.

There are probably other things you could add – feel free to add suggestions to the comments below. I like it when you talk back!

yo soy músico

Here comes part three of my reflections on the units I’m currently using in KS2 Spanish. If you’ve read the other parts on Units 5 and 11, you’ll recall that I’ve taught the units to half of the school and am now teaching the parallel classes until the summer break. So the current groups are probably getting a better deal as I refine and adapt from the first run, but may not finish the unit in its entirety as the end of term leads to much lesson disruption!

As with Units 5 and 11, Unit 14 has an opening stimulus from which the unit stems. In this case, a song. Based on the well known children’s song, I am the Music Man, Yo soy músico has proved popular with Year 5. The QCA Unit which can be downloaded from here in PDF and RTF, gives the lyrics – you just have to sing it! Helen Myers has recorded a music only version – clever lady!- which can be found here, and if you want to hear how it sounds with a class in full voice, check out the WCPS Spanish podcast in the right hand column – although I’m sure you’ve all subscribed to it in iTunes ;o)

At the top of the post is the Powerpoint I made to go with the song. Note that it has two parts. The first half is in the first person singular – Yo soy músico, which is the version used in the first instance when the teacher (or volunteer class member!) is the Music Man. The second part is in the first person plural – Somos músicos – as the class join in with the whole song and we all become Music Men. I used animations having listened to Nick Mair talking in Oxford about boys learning best when there is action and movement in the graphics. There is an initial disadvantage as the class comment on the guitar playing pig etc mid-song, but after the first view, this stops and it really helps memorisation.

Scheme of work for Year5 spanish summer yo soy musico

Looking at the medium term plan above, you can see that the objectives for the first lesson are to express simple opinions about music. This proved popular as we listened to some different types of music and decided if we liked them or not. In a previous unit on free time we had learned the phrase la música pop / rock / clásica and most recalled the phrase – and the accompanying action –

• la música – hands on ears like you’re listening to music then ..
• …pop – makes your hands pop from fists to spread fingers whilst making your eyes wide
• …rock – rock from side to side
• …clásica – conduct an orchestra
• …heavy – mosh!! (a clear favourite I must say!)

We added jazz (jazz hands) and folclórica (play a guitar) which took some explaining as few knew what it was! Several pupils commented on the use of cognates – and when one asked what tecno music would be, another piped up that ‘it’d be la música tecno, silly’

I expressed an opinion in Spanish about the music using facial expression then encouraged the class to offer their own opinion in Spanish. Again, the phrase was not unfamiliar but, for some, had to be dragged from memory banks!

We then sang the song which soon involved the whole class. The first couple of times, everyone sang all the instruments to learn and fix the words – and of course we did actions for those who are kinaesthetic learners (and to keep everyone awake!). Having looked at pronunciation of the words we had a quick look at accents – why do música / saxofón / batería have accents – I explained it using people’s names – when we see a name in English we know (usually!) how to say it as there are stress patterns – it’s AlexANder not AlEXander and accents help show us how to say words. Pupils completed a simple sheet to finish the lesson – labelling and also trying to use their LLS to work out what six instruments were in English. Some of the words were obvious and others needed a bit of thought – but a few did work out los platillos are cymbals by thinking of plates!

instruments lesson 1 – Get more College Essays

Next lesson began with a recap of vocabulary and game of Simóm dice. Then we sang the song, firstly using Soy músico but with each table alloted the flashcard of a musical instrument to represent. This led to hilarity as the ‘piano’ table worked out that they had to stand up and sit down every verse – as you can guess I chose this table carefully!! We looked at the words of the opening to the song and used Sé tocar… and then Toco ….. to say which instruments we could and couldn’t play – an ‘on the ball’ pupil suggested ‘toco regular el piano’ and ‘no toco la guitarra muy bien’ as answers – not bad eh? It’s really encouraging when pupils ‘play around’ with language because they’re trying to express themselves more accurately.
We then looked at the second half – Somos músicos, venimos de Madrid etc’ and discussed how this might differ in meaning from the first half.

We went on to recap our opinions about music genres and this time tried to add some simple reasons for the opinion – because it’s slow, because it’s boring, because it has rhythm etc. Pupils made up sentences in groups adding all the bits from the two lessons to see how long a sentence they could make using connectives such as ‘y’ and ‘porque’.

types of music flashcards

At the start of the next lesson we recapped our opinions and started to present them in written form on graffiti wall posters – the word ‘graffiti’ made eyes sparkle although it was somewhat controlled graffiti! Whilst the class worked on this, I worked in the corner with my laptop and and microphone to record members of the class expressing their opinions about music – this was the start of WCPS Spanish podcast. The look of wonder on pupils’ faces when they heard their voice comin gout of my laptop and then the IWB was great – one lad, Zach, commented ‘But I sound really Spanish!’. (Pictures of posters to follow!)

Next we listened to some Spanish music and Latin American music, comparing and contrasting the instruments heard. I borrowed a CD from the library that had a vast array of South American music types on it, and I took in some of my own music – Tomatito, Heroes del Silencio, Joan Manuel Serrat, Los Nikis, Gloria Estefan, Alejandro Sanz, Operación Triunfo. We listened and decided which instruments we heard, and gave opinions on the singers / groups.
Then I role played buying a CD – using a ActivPrimary flipchart (in Box of Goodies as can’t upload to .DocStoc). In pairs with one as customer and one as assistant, the customer had to

• say they wanted to buy a CD
• express their opinion about a type of music and say which type they prefer
• agree to buy an item., and we recorded some examples (see podcast!)

The roles were swapped so that everyone got to play each character. We recorded some examples for the WCPS Spanish podcast as well. This time I’m going to add discussing buying an MP3 file to this bit ;o)

Having looked at accents and stress patterns as well as considering types of music, looking at the rhythm, especially the rhythm of words made perfect sense and we spent a good while clapping out phrases and trying to copy rhythms in the next session. At times it was rather haphazard, freestyle clapping but there were signs of promise from some who managed to copy accurately and understood the use of dynamics to mark stress. ‘Guess the phrase from the rhythm’ was a popular game – it’s amazing how much concentration it takes to clap a simple phrase!

The last few sessions were given over to Year 5 producing their own rap/song in Spanish. I allowed them free rein over this with the proviso that it had to be in Spanish (obvious to me but you’d be surprised!) As a whole class we discussed how the task might be tackled and we came up with a start for those who couldn’t think of a way in, then it was up to the groups to do their bit!
There were several things to note from these lessons for next time.

1. Some groups needed more support than they were given – perhaps more time working together as a whole class before setting groups off on their own.
2. Groupings are key, and all the ‘musical’ kids ended up in two groups – they would’ve been better perhaps split up to help those whose rhythm was a bit off!
3. When recording pupils’ final productions, don’t put your iRiver anywhere near the drums! Sadly, a couple of good outcomes are drowned out by the percussion.

I’ll upload those that will not damage eardrums to the podcast and/or Box of Goodies as soon as this post is finished ;o)
There were a couple of groups that tried to sing their performances to tunes from The Sound of Music – good idea, I thought. Some stuck to opinions on music, others tried to work in vocabulary from other units such as Personal introduction vocabulary and sporting likes and dislikes.

The other Year 5 class are very different to the first group and I expect this half term to pan out differently to the previous one. I think this time we’ll look at the pre-performance interview suggested in the QCA Unit and perhaps try to adapt a song rather than write rap. I’ll keep you informed!

NOTE – if you’d like ideas on this Unit in french, check out Talkabout Primary MFL where Jo Rhys Jones has spookily just blogged about the same unit!

I had the privilege to speak at Tile Hill Wood School and Language College on Thursday evening. I was really pleased to be asked by Ana Neofitou, Head of Languages, who I’ve met a couple of times at Language World and other more local conferences, and Jo Redford who is Assistant Head and who I met in Oxford this year when she introduced The ALL London Show and Tell session in which I participated.

My session was the last of three sessions for Primary teachers in teaching and learning Primary Languages. Previously the group of about 40 teachers had been working in language specific groups and focusing on vocabulary for topics such as sport and animals. My session, entitled Top tips for Primary Languages, aimed to give them an insight into how to deliver PL in an engaging way, making use of free resources and easily acquired skills. I enjoyed expanding on my presentation from Oxford (you can see and listen to it in this slidecast) which I delivered there in 10 minutes – just over an hour was still too short, but I was happier! I just get so excited that I could talk for hours!

Below is the presentation, and also the notes I made for delegates so that there wasn’t too much mad scribbling as I gabbled away! Even as a standalone document, I think you can see what I’m trying to say!

| View | Upload your own

Top tips for Primary Languages

clipped from wordle.net

Wordle is a toy for generating
“word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds
give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently
in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different
fonts, layouts, and color schemes.
The images you create with Wordle are yours
to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them
to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends.

I had a little go at making some. You can use your own – or someone else’s del.icio.us username to create a cloud – here’s one for http://del.icio.us/lisibo

and another for http://del.icio.us/whitehousecommon (my school del.icio.us account)

I love these visual representations of my bookmarks as they highlight the most popular tags so clearly(the text size for each word is related to the number of times it appears) and it’s pleasing to see that the focus of my tagging is where I thought it was ;o)

You can also input random words to create a cloud. So I tried pasting my last blog post into the text box and came out with this –

There are some other great examples in the Wordle gallery including:
How to survive a Zombie attack

Here’s a French one – very topical too –
Le Coupe d’Europe

and a Spanish one –
Inteligencia emocional

I think these are great fun and could be used in the classroom as a way of presenting information e.g. new vocabulary such as food and drink, things based on popularity when doing likes and dislikes as well as creating visual poems and stories. And how about inputting some text that children have written and graphically showing them how many times the word ‘said’ or ‘went’ appear – that should bring the point home ;o)

So let’s get Wordle-ing!

Here’s the second of four posts on the Spanish QCA units I’m using with KS2 this term. The first, QCA Unit 5, Los Cuatro amigos seemed to be popular so I hope you find this one helpful too.

First thing to say is that I really enjoyed teaching this unit – and the class seemed to be equally enthused. The combination of music, literacy and Spanish proved popular, and this half term the cross curricular element is extended as habitats is a topic in Science. And I was really pleased with the outcomes of the unit.

You can download the Unit in PDF or RTF from the QCA website.
Below is my medium term plans – being adapted as I go along and discover what does and doesn’t work.

Medium term planning QCA Unit11 El Carnaval del os Animales

Unit 11 is based around and inspired by the Saint Saens piece, Le carnaval des animaux, and the opening lesson was heavily reliant on music. I borrowed the CD of The carnival of the animals from the library, but then found a great website that provided snippets for each animal theme. The site being in Spanish with short comments on the music makes it a possible resource for more experienced linguists to use in the discussion of music in Spanish rather than the English we used for ours. And it’s a gift for the teacher who can point the pupils in the right direction if they’re struggling.

We began by looking at the title of the Unit. I asked pupils to suggest what they might be learning in this topic, encouraging them to explain their ideas e.g. it’s something about animals I think – the last word looks like animals; ‘carnaval’ looks like carnival etc. None of the class made the association with the piece of music as none had heard of it. Having established the title, I asked them to suggest what sorts of things they might learn – they’re good at this as AfL is a focus this year at WCPS. Lots of suggestions hit the mark and others would’ve been good avenues for exploration given more time.
Then we listened to snippets of the music, in order, and I asked for suggestions as to the animal it represented. As I’ve already mentioned, this was done in English and was much more successful than I had thought it might be. As my lesson allocation for the class covered their music lesson too, we were able to spend more time on Spanish by combining the two lessons. The music topic was based on rhythm and this fitted well. The pupils love contemporary music but it was good to see and hear them discussing a classical piece and passing positive comment. The suggestions of animals were sometimes accurate but some were off mark and this was probably due to not being given an idea of the animals we might be considering, so this half term when I did the same lesson with the other class, I began the same but introduced the vocabulary in Spanish prior to playing the music. This allowed more accurate identification of animals and moved us onto discussion of how the animal was represented / suggested by the music much more immediately. I introduced the animals using the PPT below, accompanied by actions e.g un león was two hands like paws ready to pounce; un gallo, one hand on top of head, one under chin with wiggling fingers like the comb and crop; un elefante with your arm as a trunk etc. Using images and actions we played Beat the teacher, ¿Dónde está …? Simon dice, name the animal from the action and viceversa, to reinforce the vocabulary.

El Carnaval de los animales

The second lesson began with a video of Los pollitos dicen..,I’d downloaded it from Youtube which was fortunate as Youtube is now blocked at school.

We watched a number of times and pupils began to join in with the opening lines as they wanted. Having looked at the video, I challenged the pupils once more to think about one of the objectives for the lesson. Several suggestions were made including habitat, food, mummies and babies, and, the correct answer, animal noises.

We recapped the animal vocabulary using actions, images and also rhythm. As we repeated the words, I clapped the rhythm. Pupils echoed the clap back again and we played games around the rhythm of the words. More of that later..

Moving on, we listened to a number of animal noises and asked the pupils to make educated guesses on the animal that made each noise, commenting on similarities and

differences. We made a great cacophony of animal noises, akin to an unruly zoo as we practiced Spanish animal noises – the class were very amused that Spanish animals spoke another language too! With the noises came additional animals, extending beyond the initial stimulus. Below is a consolidation worksheet that we used to round off the section of the lesson as well as the PPT I used.

Los sonidos de los animales

Worksheet lesson 2 Unit 11

After the lunch break, we decided to make an animal symphony using percussion and voice! This met the objectives of the music unit as well as suggested activities in the QCA guidelines for the Spanish unit. Pairs of pupils were given an animal picture and a percussion instrument to create firstly a sound effect for their animal, and then used it to beat the rhythm of the word in Spanish. we took this further by individually presenting our pieces and then joining them together with teacher in the role of conductor bringing in and cueing out animals. The resulting ‘symphony’ was very interesting and you can listen to it here on our podcast WCPS Spanish (sounded better live, I must add!) A very enjoyable activity and an excellent for trying to maintain a steady rhythm and stay in time with others!

The next lesson was based around time and concluded with a class full of hot sweaty children and two children in first aid! Having recapped numbers 1-12 using a soft ball and various games – always a winner when I start chucking things around the room as I am hopeless at hand-eye coordination – I used an ELC clock to model the time for one and two o’clock before several bright sparks took over for three o’clock, half the class for four o’clock and 28/30 by five o’clock. We played time bingo and completed some questions from the IWB (sadly can’t save those in Doc.Stoc so will have to put them in My Box of Goodies)
With o’clock times stuck in our heads and consolidated with a written exercise, I ventured to suggest we could go out onto the playground and play a game. This was a popular idea – although not so popular when the class discovered that there were three other classes outside and they weren’t working, just running around. However, to their credit, they mostly concentrated and several children from other classes came to see what we were doing! We played ¿Qué hora es, Señor Elefante? , a variant on What’s the time Mr Wolf in which the animal changes each time, and the players have to move like the animal named e.g like an elephant for Sr. Elefante, like a swan for Sra. Cisne etc for the number of steps that corresponds to the time. More practice needed on the movement – never seen a tortoise run, nor a fish! However, lots of volunteers to be ‘on’. We also played El Carnaval de los animales, very like fruit salad but with animals instead of fruit. Having given each child the name of one of six animals in Spanish, I called an animal and all those with that name had to move around the outside of the circle back to their space in the manner of their animal. If I called El Carnaval de los Animales, everyone had to move around the circle like their animal. This was the cause of the scrapped knees in first aid I’m afraid :o( but the injured parties weren’t too sad so it was OK (phew!)

Next we looked at adjectives. Pupils had already commented on the colours of the nouns on their wordlist (see initial PPT) and had met colours in a previous unit. Some recalled the need for agreement and noted why there were two versions of most adjectives.
I used Querido Zoo (Dear Zoo) as the stimulus for the lesson – a familiar story to many and again introducing another couple of animals for those who had already grasped the others as well as great for introducing adjectives describing animals, and the word for ‘too’ – demasiado. Having read the book on PPT, pupils made their own conclusions in groups about the meaning of the adjectives before we discussed (and corrected!) ideas together. Having introduced a few more ideas including rápido / lento, fuerte/débil etc, pupils made up some sentences using es and no es to describe animals. This turned into a guessing game with definitions being offered and others trying to guess the animal, and there was also a pleasing clamour to find out more adjectives using a dictionary – cue impromptu lesson in bilingual dictionary skills!

Habitats came into play next – using the suggested habitats from the QCA unit in a IWB flipchart (again, will have to put it into My Goodie Box!) we looked at pictures and guessed the theme of the lesson before placing animal cards into the appropriate habitat, making statements about where the animals lived. We used the first person, pretending that we were the animal preparing for the written part of the lesson when pupils took the role of an animal to be interviewed. We reviewed personal identification questions and modelled a couple of examples on the IWB before pupils went away to produce their own introductions.

4AT had heard that 5MW had been recording and they wanted in on the act. So we set up our recording studio in a corner and several pupils came to record their work for WCPS Spanish, our podcast. It was great to see all abilities represented in the volunteers, including all SEN pupils, and there were some who were reluctant to go to lunch as they hadn’t had a chance to record. In fact, we even moved the studio to the library during their librar

y session to allow more participation. Great to see them so motivated.

I actually had an extra lesson with the class and decided to continue on the animal theme! We looked at the Build my WildSelf site and discussed the different animals and body parts included (this recapped vocabulary learned in year 3) Having designed their own Wild Self (a very amusing task attacked with great gusto), pupils designed their own hybrid animals on paper and wrote simple sentences about them such as;
Tiene la cabeza de un elefante.
Tiene el cuerpo de un pez.
Tiene la cola de un lagarto.
Tiene las piernas de una jirafa.

I made a display as part of the Unit too, well received by all of KS2 including the staff who liked its vibrant images and interactive quality – all the stuff to make it below! Just laminate! You can see more of the display here .

display

Since completing the Unit, I’ve discovered the following resources

• a Spanish leaflet about putting on a theatrical performance of El carnaval de los Animales – it also includes sheet music for some of the animals – good for recorder/xylophone/glockenspiel playing?
• resources in Spanish French and German from Rosalind Lloyd of Sutton High Sports College, uploaded on the Teachers Resource Exchange. I particularly like the Rags to Riches (Who wants to be a Millionaire-type) game and will definitely be using it this time with 4VH.

Again, hope you found this useful.
Next I’ll report on Unit 14 Yo soy músico – that was a goody too :o)

Having missed a few tasks, I’m really pleased that the Whitehouse Common Primary have contributed to this month’s task for Voices of the World.

The May task is the last one for this academic year and is based around saying Goodbye.

Firstly, we recorded a goodbye greeting in Spanish using Voki– AC_Voki_Embed(300,400, ‘6378d6a5e17b42acb60fc7bd78074a50’, 471963, 1, ”, 0);

Get a Voki now!

Then we went around the school taking snapshots to show the other participants what our school is like. We uploaded them to Photostory3 to make a slideshow.

Finally, 4AT listened to and watched all the Voki produced by the other participants and, using the microphone on my laptop (still having issues with microphones at school), recorded the various greetings. And what a great job they did!

Once we’d added a funky soundtrack, the presentation was completed and uploaded to Teachertube for all to see!

Here it is – hope you enjoy it!

As I sat poking people on Facebook – as I am prone to do as a form of stress release – I was inspired to blog. Not a normal occurence admittedly, being inspired to do anything serious on FB but this time the poke was the catalyst.

As you can see from the image, I ‘celebrated Cinco de Mayo with‘ many of my FB friends, and it struck me that I knew not why I would want to celebrate today! So I
decided to do some research – and it’s nothing to do with dancing sheep!

Wikipedia informed me that …
‘Cinco de Mayo (Spanish for “5th of May”) is primarily a regional and not an obligatory federal holiday in Mexico. The holiday commemorates an initial victory of Mexican forces led by General Ignacio Zaragoza Seguín over French forces in the Battle of Puebla on May 5, 1862. The date is observed in the United States and other locations around the world as a celebration of Mexican heritage and pride.’

and goes on to point out that it is not Mexican Independence Day as this falls on September 16th.

It seems that the day, celebrated with music, dance and food (as all good fiestas should be), is mainly celebrated by Mexicans living in America, and that it is really only celebrated within Mexico in the Puebla region where the battle was fought.

As I was looking for information,I came across a number of interesting web sites that teach more about the origins and celebration of Cinco de Mayo.

Kaboose has a number of craft activities (such as making a taco or Mexican sombrero), recipes and printables (such as colouring pages and wordsearches) for the day as well as a history section.

Here’s the site for the Cinco de Mayo Fiesta in Portland, Oregon, celebrating the festival of its sister city, Guadalajara, and organised by the Portland Guadalajara Sister Association
(I like this idea of having a sister city whose festivals you celebrate – great for broadening knowledge and understanding)

Then I came across a lovely site with a really accessible webquest about Cinco de Mayo, perfect for dipping in and choosing bits that you fancy using. It offers lots of links – most of them seem to be active (sometimes a pitfall I find with webquests I discover is that the links are dead ends which is really frustrating) I also like the student rubric outlining what is expected of a good group member, and how group work will be graded – something to consider for next collaborative topic I set perhaps. There are even teachers notes – as they say, the webquest / topic is designed to last several weeks so it would be a case of picking and choosing!!

And then there’s the 42explore site where there are loads of links to other sites – unfortunately, several of the ones I tested were dead, but you can learn how to make a piñata, or a poncho, or go on a shorter webquest to make an information book about Cinco de Mayo. And at the bottom of the page, there is a short interactive glossary of words related to the festival.

And, just to finish off the post, here are a couple of videos of the festivities. Firstly, a news report explaining the fiesta –

and here are the festivities in Charleston…..

Finally, a traditional folkdance from West SaintPaul, Minnesota.

So – now I know what it’s all about –

¡Feliz Cinco de Mayo a todos!

I’ve been posting powerpoints to Slideshare for a while, first pointed in that direction by Chris Fuller (I think) in the days when he was just a name to me, not the fun person I now know! I knew that it was possible to make a Slidecast, combining audio and presentation but hadn’t made one ….
until yesterday!

I recorded the London ALL Show and Tell at Language World on my iRiver – and so did Joe Dale. I just fancied hearing what other people said – as well as checking out how I sound recorded (very odd is the answer, and not at all as I hear myself!) After the event, Joe mentioned in a Skype chat that he had edited his version of the audio and thought that I should make a Slidecast of it with the presentation I had prepared. As I had lost the lead for my iRiver, I said I’d do it when I found the offending item. (Still haven’t found it but the lead from our camcorder works – in case anyone else has the same problem)

This week, I received a message from Joe saying that he’d send me the audio so I could do my Slidecast. As it’s necessary to have the audio file saved online somewhere, and Blogger doesn’t have that facility, Joe kindly hosted it on his blog and I set about my challenge!

Basically, you upload your presentation to Slideshare – already done!
You click on ‘make Slidecast’ and enter the URL of the audio.
The audio track then appears under the Slideshow and you can decide how you want to synch the slides with the audio – equally spaced or, as in my case, to coincide with when I turned the page to the next slide.
Then you save it and there you have it – a Slidecast.

I found out that I had stretched my 7 minutes to over 10, ( sorry Nick!) that I spent a long time on the first few slides and not very long at all on the later ones as I ran out of time, that i talk very fast, and that my ears don’t hear what everyone else hears.

I also discovered that making a Slidecast is easy peasy lemon squeezy – and I’ll be doing it again in the near future.

Here it is – it features the lovely aforementioned Mr Fuller singing!!

| View | Upload your own

PS just noticed that it’s already been viewed 51 times – that’s pretty impressive. Let’s hope all those who watched it have gained something and will put even one of the ideas into practice.

Subtitle-

Better late than never!

It’s a week since Language World and I have sat down each day intending to blog about it, but everytime I’ve had to do something else first and the post hasn’t materialised. It’s not that I haven’t got anything to say, it’s more that there was so much to assimilate that it’s not something I could do in five minutes! Anyway – here are my impressions.

Kathy Wickstead shared thoughts on the new KS3 curriculum – things that stood out for me were Sir Christopher Maynard’s comment that ‘it’s inviting teachers to be bold’ and also Kathy’s parting comment – ‘we’re being offered an opportunity with this new curriculum – can we afford NOT to take it?’ Check out www.all.nsc.org.uk for all you need to know about the new secondary curriculum for languages – worth it for primary language teachers too so as to understand ‘what happens next’. On the same (ish) subject, Mick Waters spoke really clearly and sensibly about the new curriculum and the ‘big picture’. He seems so passionate and completely committed to the vision of a modern world class curriculum that it’s not hard to catch his vision.

Ewan McIntosh once more challenged and inspired me with his ideas on using technology in language teaching. This time, Thinking out of the XBox suggested ways in which gaming might be used to inspire and encourage creativity in the language classroom. My son was particularly looking forward to me attending this seminar as I bought a Nintendo DS last year following Ewan’s seminar at Language world and he was hoping for a similar result this year, possibly a Wii? Alas for 9 year old, no such recommendation, but he is awaiting the arrival of Myst and Nintendogs from Amazon, and has had a good nose at Samorost (he’s become my chief researcher ;o) Using clips from Youtube and Tim Rylands’ website, Ewan made a great case for being innovative and creative, tapping into what pupils are familiar with and enjoy with the purpose of achieving a greater variety and richness of learning experience and outcome. Check out his blog for his notes – and much more to make you think!

Wendy Adeniji as always shared some brilliant ideas and resources for making the language classroom interactive and fun, specifically based on Rhymes songs and sounds to teach phonics.
Wendy showed how simple rhymes can be learned off by heart and recited, and links made with other vocabulary that contains specific phonemes. I always look forward to wnedy’s seminars as her ideas are easy to implement and very practical.
She recommended a number of artists’ music; for French, Ilona Mitrecy and Henri Des as well as the adorable Pigloo! For Spanish she suggested José Luis Orozco and for German, Detlef Jöcker and Rolf Zuckowski.

Bev Whiteside, Development coordinator for Languages and Sport from the Youth Sports Trust presented on making links between sports and language. A language teacher before joining the YST, Bev talked about the obvious attractions and benefits of sport and the potential links that could be made in terms of skills, values, pedagogy and context. She presented some brief case studies to demonstrate each point, ranging from teaching handball through Spanish, the Young Language Leaders award, creating a fitness DVD in French prior to a skiing trip and a subtitled video giving information about healthy eating and sporting facilities. You can read about some of Bev’s work in a book published by YST.

Day 2 brought Steven Fawkes’ Language Learners being creative with language, including sign language, Russian numbers with actions ( I tried it out on a Russian pupil I teach and she was impressed!) and things to do with a pear! Learned lots and had a good giggle too -the mysterious disappearance of Steven’s trousers last year featured large too – perhaps they’re the same place as my hairbrush that disappeared in Oxford?? There’s a chorister somewhere with very well groomed hair ;o)

I was also pleased to hear an update on the videoconferencing project at Tile Hill Wood in Coventry where Ana Neofitou delivers language lessons to local primaries via a videolink. I attended a session last year introducing the project which seems a very effective way of building capacity in primary languages as the class teacher facilitates within the classroom and works closely with Ana and her colleagues on what is delivered, and how it can be followed up during the time between lessons.

And then the ALL London Show and Tell session – I shared the ‘stage’ with Stephane Derone (authentic resources), Nick Mair (learning styles and gender differences), Monna Brown (motivation) and Helen Myers (using song) – all members of ALL London so I was a bit of an interloper! I delivered my Top ten tips for Primary Languages in a little over my alloted 7

minutes I think (sorry -I talked as fast as I could!) You can download the presentation below (if the songs links don’t work, let me know!) And when I find the lead for my iRiver, I’ll make a Slidecast!

| View | Upload your own

But of course, there is more to Language World than the seminars! I love conferences for the ‘formal’ learning but, as anyone who has met me will testify, I love to talk. And talk I did – incessantly! I met old friends like Joe Dale, Lesley Welsh, Ewan McIntosh, Chris Fuller and Rachel Hawkes, made new ones like Nick Brown and José Picardo and generally talked to anyone who’d listen! Much fun was had at the wine tasting – I think I hold the record for the most Heinneman coffee mugs acquired in half an hour (not all for me!) followed by a quick visit to the pub before the wine reception and dinner. This was followed by bellydancing – no photos have yet appeared (thank goodness!) but I hear we were a sight to behold! Bed was finally reached in the early hours – I just didn’t want to miss a moment of the fun!

Last year I went to Language World wanting to find new ideas – and I was inspired as I told Joe Dale when he VoxPop-ed me! This year I went with the same purpose, but I reflected as I arrived just how far I’d come in a year. Last year I had just learned how to write articles on our school website. I’ve now got a blog, spoken at a number of conferences, attended eTwinning conferences as an ambassador, am becoming ever more techno-savvy and am employing all kinds of new ideas in my teaching! The pupils at school associate language learning with using technology, with doing new and exciting things, and with having fun. And several people came up to me and said how much they’d enjoyed reading my blog or hearing me speak, and how helpful the ideas I’d shared had been – that made me want to sing and dance!

Here are my pictures – started off well but got distracted by talking (surprise surprise!) so you can find more here, listen to VoxPops and read what Joe and José and others had to say about LW2008.

Roll on 2009!

No, I’ve not decided to go back to university, nor been bitten by the urge to row (although if it meant getting near to Matthew Pinsent, I’d grab those oars like a shot!)

Tomorrow I’m off to Oxford for Language World, the Association of Language Learning‘s annual conference. Officially spread over two days, the fun and games actually start this evening with an event at the OUP bookshop, from 7pm, followed by a meal for those who have already arrived in Oxford. The official site says
‘Join us for a glass of wine : the perfect start to your conference and a great way to meet your fellow delegates while browsing in a relaxed atmosphere. There will also be some great special offers available. Anyone attending the conference is welcome, as are ALL members and all languages teachers and lecturers who live in Oxford or nearby.’

So if you meet the criteria, off you go!

I’m looking forward to two days of interesting exciting and inspiring PD – if it’s anything like last year, I’ll be exhausted but buzzing by the time I get home on Saturday night. It was really hard to choose my sessions, although 9 year old insisted I went to Ewan McIntosh‘s seminar- last year, he inspired me to buy a NintendoDS – my son wants to know if I could be persuaded to buy a Wii this year?? Actually, didn’t need much persuading! I’m also looking forward to the followup to a session I attended last year on using videoconferencing at Tile Hill Wood School and Language College to deliver PLL to feeder schools, and also to Stephen Fawkes’ session on learners being creative with language.

I’m also excited about being invited to take part in the London ALL Branch Show and Tell on Saturday by the President of ALL , no less, Helen Myers – I feel like I’ve been invited to a Royal garden party but without the need for a hat :o) I’ll be talking about my blog, and sharing tips and ideas for creative PLL.

And of course, the chance to meet friends, old and new is a big draw. Last year I missed the dinner as I decided to appease Mr Lisibo and spend a night away with him – but only succeeded in getting two enormous blisters on my feet as I insisted that my shoes were comfortable enough to walk in (underestimating the 4 miles I needed to walk back to the hotel) then keeping him awake telling him about all the things I’d learned. So this year, off to the dinner for me.

So see you in Oxford Joe, Chris, Marie-France, Lesley, Rachel, José, Helen, Ewan and Quentin et al. No doubt missed someone but that’s who I know is going!

If you’re an NQT or student teacher, you could get in for free – have a look here for details!

PS Find out what I thought about last year‘s Language World – pre-blog and pre-NintendoDS!