Category: primary languages

Build Your Wild Self

I’ve been having some fun making myself a new avatar. I’ve got a WeeMee (see right), a Yahoo avatar (wearing a Spanish football shirt or a Sevillanas dress), a DoppelMe wearing the Swedish football kit, and a beaver Voki of me pretending to be Mrs Beaver from Narnia (for the benefit of my kids :o))

Build your Wild Self is a site run by the Wildlife Conservation Society and New York Zoo and Aquarium. It allows you to choose a basic body and then add bit of animals, reptiles, birds etc to it to make a ‘wild self’.

I had great fun making myself into a rein-pol-conda-guin-peacock. Cute aren’t I?

I can see using this in the PLL classroom, linking body parts (los brazos, las piernas, la lengua, las orejas, la cola, las alas etc), animals (un pingüino, un reno, un pavo real, una serpiente, un tigre, una tortuga etc), descriptions (colours, characteristics like feroz, grande, tranquilo, orgulloso, peludo etc) and habitats (la selva, la jungla, el Arctico, la sierra, el desierto, el río etc) in a fun activity. Pupils could collectively discuss and describe a model Wild Self, perhaps using a scaffold text. Then they could create their own Wild Self either to match a given description (listening and / or reading) or choose their own design and then describe it (speaking and /or writing).
e.g. Tengo las orejas de un oso polar. Tengo los cuernos de un reno. Tengo la lengua muy larga de una serpeinte. Tengo la cola impresionanate de un pavo real. Tengo las piernas de un pingüino.
Perhaps the class could then play a game with all the Wild Selves – someone says a sentence in Spanish about one of them, and teams have to find the correct image, or perhaps five images and five descriptions to be matched. And what about a quiz akin to the baby photo game – whose Wild Self is whose?

What do you think? Anyone got any further ideas or comments?

As I’m coming to the end of my reports, I thought I’d point you to some other places where you can find out about the Primary Language Show.

In his usual efficient way, Joe Dale has published the show notes and audio of his sessions in Manchester on his blog – Integrating ICT into the MFL classroom.
Si if you want to find out about ICT…so what (free tools that you can use to enhance all four skills in the MFL classroom) or Podcasting from Idea to iTunes, pop along to Joe’s blog. In fact, if you wnat the answer to just about any ICT related question, you’ll probably find it there! Also worth checking out are Joe’s pictures from Manchester – see if you can spot me!

Another colleague with whom I met up in Manchester was Jo Rhys-Jones of Talkabout Primary MFL fame. We spent the two days swapping notes on sessions so I was glad to see that Jo had followed up her promise to tell us more about one of the sessions that had intrigued me most, all about Minibeasts. As the mother of two small boys, minibeasts are something about which I have learned much in the last few years, and Jo reports back on Linda Owen’s session at PLS in which Linda described a spiralling scheme of work covering Reception to Year6. Jo has added has added some of her own ideas too – well worth a read.

The CILT website declared the show ‘absolutely outstanding’ , quoting Lorna HarveyCounty Advisor for Primary MFL in one of our neighbouring LAs, Staffordshire. ‘I got such a lot out of it, as usual. I really appreciate the opportunity to hear from so many people with so much expertise, and this has a real impact on my work.’

I’d agree with Lorna.
Anyone else got anything to share from PLS that I’ve missed? Perhaps an idea that you’ve had, a short report on a session or a comment on the event overall? Feel free to leave comment below.

The last session I attended on Friday at PLS was a really tough choice – so many I wanted to attend but I chose ¡Mira Miró!, ‘a West Sussex KS2 cross-curricular Spanish / Art project, developed by María Roberts (MFL advisor) and Jane Sedgewick (Art advisor) to escape subject silos.’

Maria introduced the project, designed to be cross curricular, not CLIL (most is in English with some Spanish language), and lasting approximately 5 hours / half a term.
The dual objectives were stated as –

• To explore the works of the Spanish painter Miró, using some simple Spanish to describe shape and colour.
• To prduce own art in the style of Miró and be able to simply describe and evaluate it.

Miró was chosen as the artist as he is 20th century, his work is abstract and also not too ‘way out’ in imagery (Dalí would perhaps be a little too disturbing!)

The language involved in the project included the vocabulary of

• shape
• colour
• size
• preposition
• evaluation

Maria showed us a number of activities that were used with the pupils to familiarise them with the work of Miró such as a game involving dominoes based on Miró’s work – each person has a domino and has to find someone with an identical image by describing it (in English) – this was an interesting activity that reminded us that our perception of a piece of art can be different to someone else’s – where I saw a man with long arms, another person saw something completely different, so it took a while to find our partners. The dominoes had been purchased from the Fundació Miró (as had other resources such as the posters that were originally part of a calendar)

Maria then took us through some of the activities that the pupils had done as part o the scheme including:

guess the name of the painting.
Pupils looked at the painting on the right and discussed what they thought its name might be. they were encouraged to comment on the form, colour, texture, lines etc of the piece. The title is Ciphers and Constellations in love with a woman – does it suit the piece? What might be a a better name?
The pupils also learned at this pint that Miró often shut his eyes and painted – interesting and quirky – perhaps they could emulate it?

looking for shapes in pictures
Looking at this painting (left) called Woman in front of the sun, pupils were asked to look for shapes – and this is where some Spanish vocabulary comes in as they describe the shapes they see. In the following lessons, they add adjectives of colour and size to the descriptions – eg hay un círculo grande y rojo.

human sentences
using cards containing images of shape, size, colour and form, we made human sentences, physically emphasising the noun / adjective word order. This could be extended with verb cards for Hay / No hay.
DIY Miró
Having been given a random selection of the shapes from the paintings, we discussed their properties, and then constructed our own picture.

Prepositions
The next step was discussing where things are in the picture – having learned a few simple prepositions, one member of the group was given a very simple extract from a painting to describe whilst the rest drew what they had understood. A good exercise in communication – it’s amazing how clear you think your explanation is until you see how others have understood it ;o)
evaluation. NB accuracy of del / de la was modelled but not insisted upon as the flow of conversation and communication was seen as more important.
How does it make you feel?
Part of art is learning to appreciate it and the end stage was discussing how the painting made them feel. Words such as ‘bueno‘ were banned – words like bonito, tranquilo, calma, alegre, triste, confuso, raro, enfadado were encouraged – I wasn’t sure about the inclusion of ‘horroroso’ as an advisable word to describe another child’s work though!

I’ve scanned the handouts for now (in My Box of Goodies as Slideshare is not liking me today :o(

Maria shared that the hope is to publish these resources on the wsgfl alongside the existing cross curricular packs on Animals and habitats, and Habitats in Spanish (there are also a wide range of French cross curricular resources including The Giant Turnip and the Little Polar Bear, and a couple in German), and also to cover a French artist, Matisse (in his later years his work is suitable!) At the moment, the stumbling

block centres around copyright issues.

I think this is another great idea for embedding PLL in the existing curriculum, and looking in a more ‘joined up’ way at children’s education. Any other ideas out there?

As I approached Conference room 1 on Friday, I couldn’t work out why there was a queue. Was I in the right place or had I taken a wrong turning and ended up by the toilets?
All was soon revealed as ‘boarding packs’ were passed back and we were instructed to fill in our passports before picking three items for our suitcase and collecting our boarding passes. By the time I arrived at the front of the queue with my holiday wardrobe, consisting of a pink bikini, red shorts and green flip flops (there wasn’t much left, and our destination was La Réunion), there was one seat left for me. And, authentically, it was right at the back and involved me climbing over everyone else :o)

We were welcomed aboard our flight by Daryl Bailey, Primary Language Coordinator at Hove Park School and Language College and Hilary Philips from St Andrews Primary. I was already aware of a previous creative collaboration of these ladies – Parachutes and PE: Active language learning in Primary School (downloadable from the Hove park site – link is to German version. Also in My Box of Goodies) so this was going to be exciting!

We were asked to fasten our seatbelts, extinguish cigarettes, and advised of emergency procedure and that our lifejackets were under our chairs, all in French. Then we took off – complete with sound effects and images on powerpoint of the view from the cockpit.

Once airborne, Hilary explained the activity. A week before International Week began at her school, Hilary was inspired to create an unforgettable experience for every child at the school.
St Andrews is a two form entry primary school with 450 pupils with a range of home languages. The idea was that the activity would focus and give context to language work and involve everyone – Hilary came up with the idea of a flight. She considered a flight to a French town before settling on different countries to match the focus country chosen by each class.

having got the staff onside, parents were contacted by letter explaining that despite what the kids may have said, the flight was a fantasy one, not in reality, and asking for any help that could be offered-
did anyone work at Heathrow or have contacts?
anyone have any equipment that might be used?
could anyone come in and give a hand?

In this way, the school discovered that several parents had old cabin crew uniforms in the loft that were worn by staff on the day; an airline captain that someone knew became involved on one of the two days and several authentic posters and articles from airports were lent to the school.

Each flight was for two classes across Key Stages to enable the older pupils to look after the younger ones. According to Hilary, this led to some lovely moments as pupils read to one another, looked after those who looked apprehensive, and helped carry luggage.
The airport was in the school hall so had to be easily moveable to allow for it to be packed away at lunch time and for activities after school. There were checkin desks, a luggage desk with luggage for each flight being placed in a trolley (lent by Iceland!) and wheeled round to baggage reclaim in the corridor after the flight. The caretaker made a metal detector archway from carpet tube and sliver paint, and all kinds of old technology such as old fashioned phones, obsolete keyboards and walkie talkies were discovered and used.
Pupils each had to pack a small piece of baggage with suitable clothes for their destination (researched as part of the activity earlier in the week) and prepare their pass port that they had to present at Passport control where the staff found all sorts of excuses for querying passengers being allowed to board.
Staff had a corporate image – black tops with a chiffon scarf and a badge – and everyone gat involved including kitchen staff, governors and even the local vicar!
Once through passport control, pupils waited in the ‘departure lounge’ where they had a choice of reading materials – magazines prepared earlier in the week about the destinations of the flights. The first pupils through were allocated to the ‘First Class’ loinge, giving a front seat and the best choice of the magazines.

Once boarded on the ‘plane – marked out by tickertape – passengers had a magazine, menu and advertisement sheet to study in a polypocket on the back of the seat in front. At takeoff, a big screen formed the front of the ‘plane on which were projected pictures as if from the cockpit on takeoff with accompanying sound effects of engine noise.
Once airborne, there was even a refreshment trolley before the flight dropped off the first group of tourists, perhaps in Sark (Reception) before flying on to La Réunion (Year6) – bizarre but fun!
The experience was unforgettable for the pupils – Daryl tracked down some pupils who had been at St Andrews last year for the flights, and had now moved on to Hove PArk, and they still recalled the excitement and delight of the whole thing.

Hilary and Daryl pointed to the plurilingual nature of our world and how this activity drew together all the other activities of the week. It promoted teamwork, involved everyone, gave huge opportunities for speaking and listening, offers a context for language learning, brings the wider world closer to home and offers opportunities for FUN! Hilary also pointed out that this linked in with the QCA Geography unit on La Réunion, and was thus also cross curricular.

The Air St André experience sparked and inspired a Chinese Day, links with Travel and Tourism and Enterprise at Hove Park, and perhaps most importantly of all, the pupils are still buzzing about it six plus months on.

A really interesting idea – I wonder how the staff at my school would respond if I went to a staff meeting and made such a suggestion? Might try it out….

Jane Halsall, Primary Advisory teacher for Liverpool and Maria Romeo, a FLA in Liverpool have worked together to develop some ideas for linking PE and MFL. Maria is a trained PE teacher in Spain and brings lots of ideas for warm ups and spontaneous ideas that can link areas of the curriculum. Examples in French and Spanish.

Sardinas en lata

Pupils move around the room as instructed

eg walk / andad, jump / saltad, run / corred. Teacher calls ‘Sardinas en lata de … / Get into groups of…. ’ and pupils have to get into a group of that number; you could get the pupils to lie down head to toe like a can of sardines.

Hoops

Spread different coloured hoops around the hall. As a warm up, name parts of the body as practice

French rap – tête bra main doigt jambe pied et dos de dos

Yeux nez bouche oreilles et stomach.

Pupils move around the room – Marchez vite / lentement / par tout on y va marchez

Dansez

Leader says part of body and pupils put that part of the body in the hoop eg pied (gauche), nez, stomach

After a bit, use colour of hoop in which to put part of body eg pied, rouge; oreille bleu

Julie, c’est quelle couleur?

Coloured cones to mark the designated area, then hoops (or other coloured objects) spread around the room.

One child is ‘Julie’ or ‘Julien’

Group say ‘Julie, c’est quelle couleur?’

Julie says a colour – all touch that colour and Julie tries to catch someone.

If she does, they become Julie o Julien

You could add instructions for saying the phrase eg Plus fort / Comme un elephant etc

Can be adapted to other topics- animals, number

El panuelo

Two equal lines, numbered as high as necessary

Person in centre has a scarf held high.

Call a number and the two people with that number run to the centre and grab the scarf.

To win a point they need to make it back to their line without the opponent stopping them or snatching the scarf.

Could be adapted with two objects and groups race to fetch and get back, or perhaps with a pile of animals or clothes with the caller calling the number and name of animal to find and take back.

1,2 ,3 chocolate

Like what’s the time Mr Wolf

Person who is ‘on’ stands at one end of the room by a wall and chants ‘uno, dos, tres chocolate’ or ‘uno dos tres chocolate, ingles a la pared.’ if you think the pupils need more time, whilst the rest of the group approach. The person who is on turns on the last word to see if anyone is moving. If they see someone, they ask a question eg ¿Cómo te llamas? and send them back ‘atrás por favor’ Once someone arrives at the wall, they become ‘on’

Earthquake

groups of 3 – minimum of 9 people – in each group, there is a devant / derrière / dans. Devant and derrière make as house shape by joining hands as a roof; dans stand in the house.

If the teacher calls devant , all those people move to form new house.

If the teacher calls derrière , all those people move to form new house.

If the teacher calls dans , all those people move and get inside another house.

If the teacher calls tremblement de terre , everyone moves to form a new house.

Cambia si

Learn features like eyes, hair` – can add clothes too

Teacher calls out ‘cambia si …eres morena (swap if …you have dark hair) etc all those people swap places – once the game gets going, specify two features eg Cambia si eres rubio y tienes ojos azules. You can also add how to move – eg Cabia saltando si / swap by jumping if…

C’est quel objet?

Give a flashcard to each grou

p– the group are going to make the shape with their bodies as living flashcards. Rest of class guess the object – in French / Spanish etc.

All these activities link the language with PE and physical activity. They could all form part of a warm up / cool down, or as ‘Wake Up Shake Up’, or simply for those days when you want to do something a bit different!

Similar ideas can be found in Take 10 en français (soon to be in Spanish too!)

The abstract for this session promised –

‘This workshop will look at ways in which Primary Languages can play a central part in a relevant, exciting primary curriculum which engages young learners through stimulating contexts, stunning starts and fabulous finishes! Rather than treating PL as a bolt on extra, & schools in West Sussex have committed to placing PL at the heart of their curriculum. From commotion under the ocean, through lost worlds, empires and eruptions and into the unknown, all with a global dimension…’

Sounded intriguing – and turned out to be inspirational.

Elaine Minett, Primary MFL advisory teacher for West Sussex presented the project to us, explaining that it stemmed from a focus on a creative curriculum in the LA, and on raising standards in Foundation subjects through developing skills, producing successful learners who

• Enjoy learning
• Make progress
• Achieve
• Make progress in attributes, attitudes, skills, knowledge and understanding
• Experience relevant learning opportunities (ECM)

She shared that deep learning was the underpinning concept – how can learning be made memorable? She shared that key thoughts included a learning journey, first hand experience, use of environment, focus on talk, quality texts, celebrating learning, and making meaningful connections. A couple of aspects I’d pick out as particularly interesting are

Exciting contexts –The Romans became ‘Empires and Eruptions /Les empires et les éruptions’; Underwater worlds sounds much more mysterious called ‘The hidden forest / le foret cachée’; Prehistory was renamed ‘Lost World / Les mondes perdus’

Stunning starts and fabulous finishes – each project (lasting a term) had a really special opening activity or experiences – and the kids were hooked, inspired, gobsmacked, the lot for the whole topic. Equally, the end of the project was celebrated and had a ‘fabulous finish’ – bookending the experience.

Some examples of the starters-

– Voyage dans l’inconnu began with the pupils returning from Christmas to discover a crater in the school grounds, containing bits of metal and an advert for ‘jeunes astronautes’ in French, calling for fit young people.

– For Les empires et les eruptions, Dr Who arrived in the school hall in his TARDIS, covered in volcanic ash having escaped Pompeii. Can the pupils find out more about what happened to Vesuvius and volcanoes in general – are there any in France?

– Les mysteres de Paris – pupils ‘flew’ to Paris courtesy of the local college who have half a plane (see later post for another way of doing this if you don’t know anyone with half a plane :o) )

So – what sort of things did they do?

Each school did a baseline assessment of skills, attitudes and integration of MFL into school at the start and from this wrote individualised targets for the school. Then each school looked at existing curriculum and, using the targets as a starting point, created a topic or module lasting 6 or 12 weeks that enmeshed all the subjects including MFL (in most cases French) .

I’ve taken pictures of some of the plans- hope you can read them 😮

(A tip – if you click them, they get bigger!)

(please excuse the scribbles – can’t find the ‘blank’ copy I picked up)

At the end of the project, the results were really exciting. Benefits included:

• increased motivation for pupils and teachers
• increased time spent ‘doing’ French, but no feeling that anything had been squeezed out in doing so
• big impact on literacy
• increased parent – child conversation about school work!
• attendance improved as pupils didn’t want to miss things.

Some quotes from particpants –
‘Science and Maths are linked to French somehow’
‘The talk which went on on the launch day would have fulfilled my Speaking and Listening objectives for the whole term’
‘The children are excited about learning’
‘I’m doing more language but I don’t feel it’s encroaching on other areas’

And the one I liked best:
‘Just because pupils are in KS2, why does creativity have to stop?‘
AMEN!!

I love this approach – I’m all for creative curriculum planning and in the light of recent posts about the preponderance of literacy and numeracy, it’s heartening to see the use of other areas of the curriculum enhancing these skills.

Elaine pointed out that this wouldn’t necessarily be a termly event, but rather something that was done every year / two years. As such it seems a great idea – manageable and a truly thrilling activity for pupils and teachers – one final quotation from a teacher –
‘I don’t know who is more enthusiastic – the kids or me!’

This session was resented by the very entertaining Nigel Pearson, one of the Primary Language Advisor at CILT and Katja Neubauer, Junior Director of the European Initiative at the Kings School in Rochester.

Beginning by acknowledging that unfortunately England aren’t in Euro08, Nigel and Katya suggested ways in which the event could be exploited and celebrated. Here are some of their suggestions –

Use it as an exercise in ICU:

• Look at the logo – colour, shapes used, design
• There are 16 countries taking part from across Europe – what language(s) is /are spoken by each on? Where are they in Europe? (compass points)
• Flags – kids could make them, wave them and chant the names of the countries whilst you bang rhythm on a tambourine.
• Mark countries on am map
• Have a table of progress to be filled in throughut the tournament.
• Trix und Flix are the mascots (descriptions / design your own) – it takes place in Austria and Switzerland from 7^th June -29^th June (dates – how long is it? What day of the week does it start on? Etc) Cities are Innsbruck, Salzburg, Wien, Kalgenfurt, Geneve, Zurich, Bern Basel (country and location)
• Web searches for information about host towns

Nigel and Katya then introduced us to some vocabulary to do with fitness and football such as run, jog, head (the ball), jump etc with actions and a range of games to practice and reinforce –

What’s missing? ¿Qué falta?

Hot or cold ¿Frío o caliente?

Corners – like NSEW

Flashreading – flash the card very fast – ¿qué es?

Echo the word – using different voices

Throwing words – using a ball, throw it at a word – class read word it hits or teacher says the word and pupils throw it at the correct word. (headers whilst counting in TL)

What’s on the card? ¿Qué hay en la tarjeta? Using sí and no, can also be done with drawing part of a gallows to add to the competition, and could also be developed fromsingle word responses into sentences e.g. Un estadio; Es un estadio; pienso que es un estadio.

Memory game – numbers on front of card, guess the word behind it – practices number and vocabulary too. Kids (and us adults playing today!) are fiercely competitive!!

Number football – headers that you count – can always mime! Or a penalty shootout. And why not some Klinsmann dives!

Further football linked activities included –

Describe a player – uses personal identification questions and answers

Footballers are heroes for many of our pupils so why not let the kids research and use ICT for presentation of their favourite (foreign) player?.

Design shorts / strip for football – can add other equipment for football. Add extra information to reuse vocabulary in different contexts eg colours used for school uniform, favourite colours, eyes etc

Blow football – shout appropriate cheers like animo, venga, gol etc

Songs – Katya and Nigel presented a song in German about football to the tune of Frere Jacques– I’ve quickly translated into Spanish:

Juego al fútbol, juego al fútbol

Es genial, es genial

Muchos muchos goles

Muchos muchos goles

Uno a cero.

Uno a cero.

You can modify the lastline to add more scores, add countries etc

España cuatro, Francia tres or

España gana, Alemania pierde – I think you might be able to guess who I’m supporting :o)

Nigel also shared a French song from the World Cup. I quickly opened Audacity on my laptop and recorded it -i

t’s in My Box of Goodies on the right! :o) (Thanks to Nigel who kindly said that was OK!)

Football sans frontières

Ça c’est super.

Brésil et Bulgarie

Pays Bas et Italie

Belgique et Tunisie

(Nigel kindly told us when to go up and down using his hand ‘stepping’ – that’s the ‘hand thing’ referred to for those who wondered!)

The session concluded with a couple of websites that might be helpful – there will no doubt be more nearer the time, and I’ll post any that I find.

www.uefa.com

www.flags.net

As I’ve blogged before, Euro 08 is already in focus at my school through Chris Fuller’s Euro08 project which joins schools across the country as we find out about our allocated participating country prior to meeting up in June for a tournament of our own. Already in training – Jo Rhys-Jones looks rather nippy and Chris Fuller climbs – and that’s just the teachers 😮
There’s room for more schools to be involved – let Chris know if you’re interested!

The ABC of QCA was presented by Sue Colepio – originally a secondary teacher now in Primary Language teaching and Heidi Gallagher, a Yr 6 class teacher for 2 days and is an PLL AST and Comenius KS2 consultant in East Riding.

The QCA schemes are one way of meeting the goals of the KS2 framework, taking the wider Primary curriculum as a starting point – what’s great is that many of the activities are inspired by things that are already done in Primary and it draws on things kids enjoy. Each unit has three sections – presentation (flashcards, puppets etc), practice (songs rhymes and games to consolidate) and production stages (the QCA scheme seems to recommend a final product to celebrate the things that have been done eg displays, assemblies, presentations to the class, exchange class projects).

Heidi focussed on activities for Four friends / Les quatre amis Unit 5 of QCA – aimed at Year 3, towards end of year. She pointed out that the QCA scheme could be an intimidating document for the reluctant or less confident class teacher, and suggested that a couple of activities be taken from the plans in the first instance and then more built in for the subsequent years.

The unit starts with looking at the story – Heidi would introduce animal names first but that’s a matter of debate – is this too near the topic based approach we’re being encouraged to get away from? Would it be better to introduce story first and allow pupils to pick out the relevant vocabulary ?

Heidi the used the activity montrez-moi ….– as informal assessment – pupils show the card that matches word she says. Also thumbs up, heads down – Pouces – with each child putting their head on the desk and holding up a thumb. Four kids are chosen to represent the animals then they squeeze a thumb- the pupils whose thumbs were squeezed then guess which animal squeezed them. I think this would work better if played like ‘squeak piggy squeak’ with all the class shutting their eyes and one child making an animal noise for the guesser to identify – animal and child’s name.

Classroom language can be linked – using the same four animals, each row or table or child receives an animal image and then instructions are given to the specific animals :
e.g. les moutons, levez-vous
les lapins, asseyez-vous
les souris, regardez-moi

The phonic focus for this unit is ‘ch’ in French (often there is one being reinforced) – makes sound ‘sh’ in French –and the action to accompany is finger to mouth. You could use le manuel phonique (French version of the Jolly Phonics scheme)

The story was presented by Heidi in a Smartboard flipchart, using the background in the resource bank alongside free downloadable animations. As it is read, the activity is to focus on phonics – put finger on lips everytime you hear the ‘ch’ . there’s lots of repetition in the story of phrase such as ‘c’est qui?’ ‘ X voit la belle pomme rouge’ and ‘ j’aime bien manger la belle pomme rouge.’ We did it with the text on the screen but the point was made that it’s best to do the activity without the text so it really is listening activity, then clone the page and add text for later activities. Here’s the link to a downloadable version in Powerpoint – seems to have sound embedded too!

The next activity might be to build a word bank of examples that pupils know already that may have appeared previously e.g. bouche, cache-cache, cheveux or that have appeared in the story / unit e.g. cheval, champs, chercher – perhaps have laminated posters for each phoneme – grapheme link so vocabulary can be added with Post-It or board marker as a reminder – also allows it to be an ongoing activity.

Another activity might be looking at how the animals move – galope, sautille, court, trotinne. Or possibly Répétez si c’est vrai – can be done with thumbs, or lollysticks or on IWB with correct answer hidden under a shape

This unit reinforces a previous phoneme – ‘on’(finger on nose to make pig nose) e.g. mouton, marron.

Another activity to reinforce phoneme – look at word then cover – can you write it? What phonemes can you hear? Will that help you? Perhaps show the picture and pupils say and write the word on a flashboard. This allows instant assessment as you can see who has it, who needs more help etc.

Sue took over, showing us Juan, her little man who shows her linguistic skills – English as her head, French as her body as she has studied and lived there, German and Spanish as her arms as she teaches them and Italian as her feet as it’s hard work to talk to her husband’s family. A lovely activity that could equally be done by pupils and even with cultures with which you / they associate.

Asking us to suspend belief and become Year 3, Sue aimed to look at the three sections of the units, suggesting ways of introducing then practicing and exploiting in a final production. She taught us some greetings in Spanish, using repetition and song. Focusing on silent ‘h??

? in Spanish with the example of Hola, we looked at hospital, hamster, hotel, suggesting from the model how we might pronounce these words. We quickly swapped to German, using Hallo and Auf Wiedersehen with actions like Peekaboo (peek out from hands for Hallo and hiding for Auf Wiedersehen), practicing the ‘au’ phoneme with a mirror and then playing Cabbages – I know the game as Squeak Piggy Squeak! Pupils disguise their voice and a blindfolded volunteer has to guess who it was – a good, fun game to practice vocabulary.

She showed us a clip from Early Start German that introduces Wie geht’s? Gut, Sehr gut, Nicht gut, then we improvised a dialogue from our new language.

I would have liked to have seen some ideas for taking the units away from the suggested activities, but it was interesting, as someone who teaches Spanish, to see how the French units work.

Tomorrow I’m off to the Primary Language Show in Manchester. It’s the first time I’ve been able to go for both days and, although I’ll miss the conference dinner (booked out by the time school decided I could go) and am not staying over but travelling in both days from home (don’t fancy hotel rooms at the moment), I am really looking forward to it. As CILT proclaimed today –

The 12th annual CILT Primary Languages Conference takes place this Friday 29 February and Saturday 1 March at the Manchester Conference Centre, and is the biggest event of the year for all those involved in or interested in primary languages.

With language learning due to be in all English primary schools by 2010, and 70% of primary schools already providing some form of language teaching, interest in the show is growing each year and both days of the conference are now fully booked.

With sessions on a wide variety of topics related to PLL including the use of ICT and story, football and dance, there’s something for all interests, and it will be hard to choose which sessions to attend.

I’m hoping to meet up with Jo Rhys Jones and other members of Talkabout Primary MFL for coffee and cake – we might even let Joe Dale (who is speaking on podcasting) join us as the token male if he behaves :o) So there will no doubt be plenty of blogging going on after the weekend – keep your eyes and ears peeled!

Although the conference is fully booked ( I applied four weeks ago and the plenary sessions on Friday and also the dinner were fully booked then) you can still attend the resources exhibition for FREE! So if you’re coming, why not leave a comment or contact me via Twitter.
Hope to see you there!

What do the Kaiser Chiefs, The Bangles and the Pink Panther have in common? Not much you might think, but all provide the backing to French songs demonstrated today by Steph Hopkins at her conference Creating a compelling curriculum.

In a session entitled Phonics, music and rhythm – developing confident speaking, Steph talked of the enhancement of creativity, engagement, independence and communication skills achieved through the use of song and rhyme in the MFL classroom. Citing Heather Rendell and the work of Leigh McClelland and Rachel Hawkes at Comberton Village College as her starting point, Steph quoted research pointing out that a child cannot read aloud effectively in another language if they cannot decode single words using phoneme –grapheme links. Starting from that point, Steph showed us some examples of synthetic phonics in French – complete with very amusing animations – which she has used in her classes.

Steph went on to talk about the rhythms of French, clapping phrases to enable the cadences of the language to be more apparent, and to enable good intonation as well as pronunciation. I’ve always found this effective in PLL as it is something with which pupils are familiar from literacy. I liked the use of ‘encore’ by the pupils to ‘boss around’ the teacher that Steph cited – shows that they have engaged with the task.

And then to the Kaiser Chiefs! With one of her groups in need of practice of the French alphabet, Steph put it to a karaoke track of Everyday I love you less and less by the boys from Leeds – and off we went! Next up, the verb etre to the theme tune of Pink Panther, followed by Eternal Flame by The Bangles for the verb avoir, complete with lines about brown rabbits and mischievous hamsters :o) Certainly works as I’m sitting blogging on the train humming Je suis, Tu es, Il est, elle est, on est etc – and we were also shown video evidence of a class singing – and dancing! You can download powerpoints of these songs from here on Steph’s blog ( I know that Chris Fuller uses song in his Spanish classes – he blogged a lovely video of one of his classes singing the verb ir to Kumbya – and here’s another group recording it on their mobiles!)

Pigloo then made an appearance with a couple of exercises to complete as we listened to the little penguin’s take on YMCA Moi j’aime skier – ordering a text, grouping words from the song and a gapped text with all –er verbs missed out. A comment was made that there was more interest in learning the dance than the lyrics, but, as Steph pointed out, if you’re watching it enough times to learn the dance, something must be going in of the lyrics!

Some great ideas that can easily be adapted for use in any classroom – I feel the need to raid my record collection for inspiration!