Category: primary languages

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Today is International Children’s Book Day and I’ve got a new book!

It’s called Presiona aquí and it’s by Hervé Tullet. It’s the Spanish version of Press here and I bought it to share with FKS and KS1, although I’m sure some of Y3 would also enjoy it!

The book starts with a single yellow dot and asks the reader to ‘presiona aquí y da vuelta a la página.’ Magically, another yellow ‘círculo’ appears on the next page, and there follow lots more pages with lots more instructions and lots more ‘círculos’ – grandes y pequeños; amarillos, azules y rojos. I like the simplicity of the illustrations as well as the text, and I think it would be a fun book to share on the carpet with children coming up to press buttons, or in small groups as a special treat. You can children enjoying it in the trailer for the English version below. In our Y2 Spanish scheme (based on Little Languages) they look at sequencing and this would be a great addition to the activities that include counting and sequencing buttons, shapes and any little things we can find (dinosaurs, cars, fruit…)

I mentioned that I thought Y3 would enjoy it, and with that in mind I’ve been thinking about what we could do as a follow up activity. When we were working on colours before Easter and talking about colour mixing I (perhaps rashly) said that we could do some painting in Spanish towards the end of the summer term when we’ll be looking at shape and colour once more. This would be a lovely way to introduce or revisit some shape and colour vocabulary, and I can see us creating our own versions of the book as a story board, perhaps diversifying into other shapes depending on what action the ‘reader’ does. Or perhaps we could use the same approach, an action leading to the appearance of a new item to create Miró-esque art? Still a developing thought…

After I’d started writing this, I discovered that there are  a couple of videos of the book too – see below – so it would be possible for class teachers who are non specialists to borrow my book and share it with their class. This video actually uses the book but lasts more than ten minutes and the presenter doesn’t just read the story but offers comments too. I wonder if Nursery and Reception would manage to sit still for that long, and worry that the ‘extras’ might put off the non-specialist teacher presenting as they don’t know what’s being said? The video below would be my choice as, although it doesn’t feature the book and the instructions are worded slightly differently, it is much simpler and lasts just over 5 minutes.

Hervé Tullet has lots of other lovely books too – I think I may need to get ¡Mézclalo bien! is this one is a hit…

ISBN 978-1-4521-1287-9

Link to buy ¡Presiona aquí¡ from Book Depository

More Hervé Tullet books in Spanish

There’s a very simple free worksheet on TES resources to accompany the story and here are some ideas of how to use the book including a fun activity called Fizzy colours.

EDIT – I’ve now found a Pinterest board of ideas here.

And I’ll definitely be trying this activity out in the summer – Press Here movement game

as well as making the chatterbox from this post.

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One of the sessions I attended at Language World was given by Sue Cave. Entitled Language Detectives, it shared a project that Sue and a colleague had devised, originally for a day long workshop for more able primary linguists, based around children using their detective skills to decode unknown languages. Sue described it as ‘a morning of training in preparation for an afternoon trying to thwart a multilingual gang of criminals.’

The session referred to and worked on the Language Learning Skills (LLS) and Knowledge about Language (KAL) strands of the KS2 Framework (NB is still a very useful document!) We discovered that gesture is important but that it works best in conjunction with words, eye contact and prior knowledge, and I discovered that I’m not as good as charades as I thought I was. (Sorry Vicky!) We also discovered that knowledge of word classes as well as how to use a bilingual dictionary are skills that a good detective needs, and that listening to the sounds and intonation of a language is also helpful.

Having undergone our (very swift!) training, we used our skills to thwart the gang who spoke Spanish, Welsh, German and Italian, stopping them before they stole a valuable item!

Sue has very generously shared not her presentation but all the resources on her excellent website on the Sharing Good Practice section (scroll to the bottom)

One idea (of the many!) that I particularly liked was the Language Detective certificates that Sue gives out when a child makes a discovery about language and shares it with the class. Sue has generously shared her certificates in the Teaching and Learning section of the Sharing Good Practice page. As I teach Spanish not French, I’ve made some of my own that you can download from the link below.

Spanish Language Detective certificates 

Thanks for an inspiring session Sue, I know I’m not the only one who went away with my mind buzzing!
And thanks to Yvonne too for my ‘lucky dip’ magnifying glasses that fit the theme perfectly and will be put to sue immediately!

PS here are my notes too!

*This is a book review as part of Multicultural Children’s Book Day 2018 #MCBD2018*

The Marvellous Mexican Misunderstanding is a delightful book about a little boy called Adri who  overhears his Mum and Aunt Chiquita talking about the Day of the Dead and gets completely the wrong end of the stick. He asks his sister Tani lots of questions about the Aztecs, the Day of the Dead but she mischievously decides to use his ignorance of the festival as a way of teasing him, and confirms his fears.  Over the seven days leading up to Day of the Dead, every visitor and every event seems to confirm his fear that he is going to die; the Dad brings him a skeleton costume for Halloween, the neighbour brings ‘pan de muerto’, his Mum makes his favourite food. On the eve of Day of the Dead, Adri writes letters to his family and prepares himself. Will the misunderstanding be unravelled or will Adri’s fear come true? You’ll have to read and find out!

The illustrations by Nefeli Malie are wonderful – bright and childlike, and coupled with the lovely prose by Evi Triantafyllides, they tell the story of Adri in a clear and appealing way, at the same time exposing readers to aspects of the Day of the Dead (Día de los Muertos) festival. And the book is not just a story. There’s a dictionary of Spanish and English terms related to the story as well as questions posed as ‘Mexican mysteries’ about the text that highlight facts about Mexico.  The book itself forms part of the first ‘parcel’ offered by Worldwide Buddies.

Worldwide Buddies is a series of fictional, educational stories with characters from different countries around the globe that allow children to imagine a more beautifully complex world. Stories are designed to promote cultural awareness and introduce little ones to the diverse realities and wonders of the world, early on.

“A Marvelous Mexican Misunderstanding” is the first story of the series and will become available for purchase through their website in a couple of weeks: www.worldwidebuddies.com

Alongside the story, readers can also purchase a story box with additional games, toys and activities that accompany the book. You can find out more on their website or via Facebook or Instagram.

As Worldwide Buddies will start accepting orders for the books ($18) and story box ($35) soon. As they are based in the USA, I asked Evi if the book and story box will be available in the UK, and she confirmed that yes, delivery will be possible to the UK too.

As a teacher of Spanish to young children, I love this book as it is amusing and gently makes fun of Adri’s misunderstanding to reveal the wonder of the Day of the Dead festival, explaining how it is a happy festival and a time to remember those who have passed away. I’ll certainly be sharing it with my learners next year in the run up to November 1st. It also leads into a pertinent discussion about our fears often that fit well with the  SMSC (Social, Moral, Spiritual and Cultural) agenda here. I look forward to reading more Worldwide Buddies books!

Details about #MCBD2018:

Multicultural Children’s Book Day 2017 (1/27/18) is in its 5^th year and was founded by Valarie Budayr from Jump Into A Book and Mia Wenjen from PragmaticMom. Our mission is to raise awareness of the ongoing need to include kids’ books that celebrate diversity in home and school bookshelves while also working diligently to get more of these types of books into the hands of young readers, parents and educators.

MCBD 2018 is honored to have some amazing Sponsors on board. View our 2018 MCBD Medallion Sponsors here: http://multiculturalchildrensbookday.com/2106-sponsors/mcbd2018-medallion-level-sponsors/

View our 2018 MCBD Author Sponsors here: http://multiculturalchildrensbookday.com/2106-sponsors/2018-author-sponsors/

We’d like to also give a shout-out to MCBD’s impressive CoHost Team who not only hosts the book review link-up on celebration day, but who also works tirelessly to spread the word of this event. View our CoHosts: http://multiculturalchildrensbookday.com/about/co-hosts/

TWITTER PARTY Sponsored by Scholastic Book Clubs: MCBD’s super-popular (and crazy-fun) annual Twitter Party will be held 1/27/18 at 9:00pm EST.

You can join the conversation and win one of 12-5 book bundles and one Grand Prize Book Bundle (12 books) that will be given away at the party! http://multiculturalchildrensbookday.com/twitter-party-great-conversations-fun-prizes-chance-readyourworld-1-27-18/

Free Multicultural Books for Teachers: http://bit.ly/1kGZrta

Free Empathy Classroom Kit for Homeschoolers, Organizations, Librarians and Educators: http://multiculturalchildrensbookday.com/teacher-classroom-empathy-kit/

Just found a post I wrote 2 years ago and never published! It a companion to this post about Calming songs and rhymes about hands! 

I shared the Chocolate rhyme previously but I think it’s worth sharing again as it’s been so popular with Y2. And, as this post shows with ‘mariposa’, any other four syllable word works. It would work with cucuracha, elefante or even Barcelona! The clapping is the same as for  Double double this this in English so pupils find it less tricky than you’d think!

Or you could try with your feet too 😉

Spanish playground also shares El marinero que se fue a la mar (a sailor went to sea) and Por aquí pasó un caballo (a counting song) – more complicated but still fun!

And Alejandra Lopez on Youtube and her little sister have plenty of other ideas of clapping rhymes, some with words like Milikituli (although the words are mostly nonsense!)

and others simply rhythms like Punchis clap and Palmas en la mesa (the instructions in Spanish obviously!)

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Today I had a ‘random’ lesson with Y6, one of those times in a two form entry school where I only have half the year group so need to do something different.

A series of happenstances made the choice easier:

• A tweet from Janet Lloyd that Primary Language Network were offering a free resource about snowflakes
• A flurry of snow
• Recent work on infinitives and (se) puede.

So I decided that this afternoon, Y6 would work on the poem Los mágicos copos de nieve that I’d downloaded from PLN. 

I removed the snowflake image and the header from the PPT slide so there was no clue to the topic other than the words and asked pupils to discuss in small groups what they thought the poem was about.

They immediately picked up it was something magical; someone suggested it was about a magic carpet; a fair guess.  Someone else had picked up blanco and suggested it was about nine white rabbits, misreading nieve as nueve. Another picked up ‘repaid’ meant fast and another group that ‘frío’ meant cold. Between them they worked out it was about snowflakes.

We then looked together at the middle section where each sentence had the structure ‘Un copo de nieve puede + infinitive’

We identified the infinitives, reminding ourselves that infinitives in Spanish end with -ar, -er or -ir, and tried to deduce the meanings. Bailar and cantar had been met before. We linked girar to gyrate and gyroscope, and I was able to give a clue to volar by linking it to ‘un avión’ that we’d met last week in a lesson on transport and ‘una mariposa’ that we’d met when we drew mini beasts with finger prints: un avión puede volar; una mariposa puede volar’ Planear was a bit trickier but a dictionary soon helped!

We read the poem and then I let the pupils loose on the dictionaries with their imaginations. We only had 35 minutes but you can see in this post some of the outcomes.

Some chose to use the same verbs as in the poem (the resource from PLN has the 5 from the poem already in the template but I removed these to allow for more freedom) but others used their dictionaries to come up with some alternatives. One lad wanted to write ‘calm’; we discussed why that wouldn’t work and I suggested using it as an adverb by adding mente to the end. So he chose a suitable verb and added the adverb. He also decided that he wanted to use ‘despacito’  like how he paired it with ‘bailar.’

I loved the illustrations pupils used to show the meaning of the verbs. I particularly liked  the ones with faces, and the shhh for susurrar!

If you want to download the resource, it’s available here.

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If you’ve read the Lisibo Ltd page of this site recently, you may have read the following under my activities for 2017:

An exciting project for young learners of Spanish – sworn to secrecy but all will be revealed soon!

Well ‘soon’ has arrived and I’m pleased to tell you all about it!

Teaching Spanish to Primary pupils??? Listen our for School Radio’s new Spanish series, ‘Mi Madrid’, next term! pic.twitter.com/mt7YnHXnWX

— BBC Teach (@BBC_Teach) December 20, 2017

In July I was asked to join with Afónica  (a sound production company specialising in fiction and documentary in English and Spanish) to write a pitch for an audio programme, aimed at KS2 learners of Spanish (7-11 year olds), to be broadcast by the BBC. In August we discovered that our idea featuring a Spanish boy, Quique and his new friend Charlie who has moved to Madrid from England, had been chosen. And that’s where some really hard work began, writing ten 15 minute episodes in which Quique and Charlie explore Madrid, discussing culture and language as well as visiting some iconic places like the Retiro Park, the Rastro market and the Real Madrid football stadium, and meeting some of their neighbours. Those scripts were then recorded in Madrid by some wonderful actors, some songs were added (wish I could claim that I’d written them as they are brilliant but I’m not that talented!)and Nicolas of Afónica worked his magic, putting it all together. And at 330am (UK time) tonight, episode 1 will be broadcast on Schools Radio. I am so excited; I may even be awake at 330am I’m that excited. However, you don’t need to get up in the middle of the night as each episode will be uploaded to the website and available as soon as it has been broadcast. What’s more, you can listen to the separate ‘chunks’ already by going to the Mi Madrid Schools Radio website and accessing the Clips section The idea is that the broadcasts can be listened to as an entire episode but also in chunks and that they are used to support the teaching of Spanish at KS2, particularly to students who have already learned some Spanish and are now 9-11 years old. The programmes are predominantly in Spanish with some English used to clarify and explain. Charlie asks questions that the students may well be wanting to ask – about Spanish life as well as the Spanish language – and Quique and especially his mum, Sofía, answer them. I tried to include as many quirky facts and interesting words as I could get away with because that was what grabbed my attention as a young learner, and I hope that this comes through as you listen. Here’s the episode schedule so you can see what’s coming up.   I am really proud of this project and hope that lots of teachers and learners enjoy it. I’m also really pleased that Clare Seccombe of Light Bulb Language fame, has written the Teacher’s Notes to accompany the series as I know they will be amazing. They will be available very soon I hope, and will give ideas on how to use the audio as well as notes on what happens in each episode, vocabulary, and some visuals that will support the content. Please let me know if you listen, if you enjoyed it and how you used it. My favourite episode to write was Episode 8 ¡Hala Madrid! although Episode 6 Masterchef  was a close second. I’ll tell you which I think has turned out best when I’ve heard them all but please leave a comment about your favourites too!   SaveSave

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A brilliant opportunity has come to my attention via the LiPS group on Facebook. If you’re interested in art and/or languages and you live in or near Coventry, or can get there on 28th September by 4pm, I’d say register. And as the blurb says, it’s not just for language teachers – it;’s for any KS1/2 staff member. And if you do go, please report back as I’m disappointed that I won’t be able to attend as it’s just my thing! (Really hope they repeat it on a day i can attend!)

Teaching Modern Foreign Languages through Art
Herbert Art Gallery & Museum
Thursday 28 September, 4.00-5.30pm
Suitable for all Key Stage 1 & 2 teachers and teaching assistants.
Knowledge of a MFL isn’t necessary.
Includes a tour of the new Picasso exhibition
Cost £20
Explore, consider and learn how to use art when teaching modern foreign languages in this cross-curricular workshop.
Finding inspiration from our newest exhibition Picasso: Linocuts from the British Museum, language expert Anna Grainger* will draw on her 20 years of experience to discuss ways in which non-specialists (so don’t worry, you don’t need to be able to speak a foreign language to take part) can use artworks to think about vocabulary, history and culture. This workshop also includes a special private view, tour of the exhibition, and an opportunity to learn more about the Coventry Primary Languages Hub.
*Notes on the speaker: Anna has taught languages for 20 years and is currently a specialist MFL teacher and international coordinator at Alderman’s Green Primary School in Coventry. The school has recently been awarded the British Council’s prestigious International School Award in recognition of its work to bring the world into the classroom.
Booking essential, please contact Nicky McIntosh on 024 7623 4271, nicky.mcintosh@culturecoventry.com

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I’ve just come back from a lovely holiday in Bayern during which I tried hard to use my German – with some success including a heated discussion with a woman in Königssee about passports and plenty of food discussions.

As usual I found myself drawn to bookshops (and dirndls but I resisted those!) and made a few purchases as you can see:

Elefanten-Sommer is a lovely PixiBuch about a little girl called Lina and her elephant, Rufus. They ‘trumpet’ together and are happy until Rufus does something naughty…

And Kasper Mütze is a PixiBuch that contains two stories about Kasper Mütze – Kasper Mütze hat Geburtstag and Kasper Mütze hat Besuch. Each page is very simple and rhymes, the phrases are quite repetitive which is great for me – and for my planned German club who will all be beginners.

Und heut ist Montag – I love Eric Carle books and I’m familiar with this one in English and Spanish so when I saw it in the bargain bin for 2€50 I snapped it up! Days of the week, food and animals – lots of possibilities. And it can be sung too!

And then I saw this book Ich bin das ganze Jahr vergnügt in Salzburg when I was sheltering from torrential rain in a Buchhändlung. Lots of rhymes and songs for different times of the year, some with actions (like In dem Walde steht ein Haus) and others with music. I particularly liked the two above; on the left, a poem with the days of the week, and on the right a poem I could use to introduce a Christmas tradition from Switzerland  called Räbechilbi.

Finally, at the airport I found two magazines that I thought might be interesting to children – and me!

National Geographic Kids is very colourful and has a variety of lengths of text in it as well as quizzes and interesting facts. I particularly like the bilingual facts signalled with the two flags which allow you to compare German and English, and also Check diese kuriosen Fakten. I’m very tempted to enter the competition too – think I might need to find a child to enter for me though…

And Dein Spiegel is the children’s version of the famous Der Spiegel. It’s more complex than National Geographic Kids but there are short news items like the one about the boys in England wearing skirts to school as well as longer articles about Sport, Natur, Kultur, Menschen, Wirtschaft and Politik. I’m hoping that I might learn something about the upcoming elections by reading the section below right. And then there’s the jokes page. Some are a bit complex for me but I like the two below left – my trumpet playing son particularly likes the one about the violin and cello!

I might have spent far more money but tried to restrain myself!

Now that term is at an end I have finally got around to uploading my presentation to Slideshare and writing this post!
As I said previously, it was a very successful day and I hoped that what I had planned to share would live up to that which had gone before! There were lots of encouraging noises made as I was speaking and also some lovely messages afterwards so I think there were at least a few nuggets of gold!

You can find supporting links on this wikipage (link also on the penultimate page of the presentation) including the URLs of the quizzes that we didn’t have time to complete including my Classtools bin sorting and my Kahoot Schwytzerdütsch quiz!

If you have any questions, please leave a comment or send me a message via Twitter, LiPS or email!

On Thursday, I had the privilege – and it really was a privilege – of delivering one of the keynotes at the Primary Languages Network conference in Lymm. It was a day jam packed with ideas and demonstrated the power and value of a community of teachers and learners, bouncing ideas of each other and sharing their light bulb moments. And celebrating those ideas too.

I did my best to sketch note all the sessions, including the Spotlight sessions, and you can see them below. I would recommend that you follow the PLN blog to keep abreast of all the fantastic ideas that spring out of the network (This post was inspired by the day), and even consider joining for further support and inspiration!

Thanks to Janet for inviting me – I had a wonderful day! You can see some of the highlights in the video at the bottom of the post!

Details of my session will follow in the next post!

Keeping it Primary – the wonderful Therese Comfort shared what makes Primary language learning so special, with special stickers from La Petite Souris/El Ratoncito Pérez/ die Zahnfee.

How to identify progress – Dan Alliot talked about what progress looks like in primary language learning, and challenged us to flip the triangle so it’s not always point first!

Embedding phonics in Language Learning – Sue Cave challenged us to pronounce Hungarian words using phonics to support us, talking us through the 7 stepping stones to ‘code breaking’ and sharing ideas of how to practice and reinforce phonics in French.

Throughout the day there were Spotlights – shorter presentations of one or two ideas each from PLN associates and also exhibitors. I’ve tried to capture them all in the above – some with more success than others (spot the pig that looks suspiciously like a cow!) Ideas included songs for EDL, games, purposeful writing activities using technology, AR dragons, using actions and creating raps and poems.

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