Category: resources

Some of you may recall a blog post in July about a group from English Martyrs School and Sixth Form College, Hartlepool, winning Company of the Year and Most Creative Company of the Year in the Young Enterprise in the NorthEast sponsored by The Arts Council NorthEast for their product LanguAges.

For those who don’t, here’s a brief recap from the group ;

Our company, LanguAges, provides educational resources to aid the teaching and learning of French in primary schools at Key Stage 2. We have created a compilation of three different games, The Clothes Game, The Class Card Game and The Shopping Game, and an Interactive CD, which form the LanguAges Pack.

All of our games are tailored to be fun, yet educational, comprehensively covering the Key Stage 2 curriculum, and helping to improve vital comprehension and speaking skills.

Having tested the product and marketed it to Stockton schools, all schools in Hartlepool should now have a copy of the materials.

A representative from the Hartlepool local authority, Tom Argument, said: “Their materials are creative, fun, very practical, and of a high quality. The group present themselves in a business-like manner and have real entrepreneurial potential.”

The group went on to discuss the future-

We realise that LanguAges has a huge amount of potential, and are currently investigating the many options available to us. Several possibilities are being considered, such as selling the idea, or even continuing the company even after the Young Enterprise Company Programme is over.

The prospect of mass producing the LanguAges Pack and even expanding the range to include a variety of other modern foreign languages is a very exciting one.

Today I received news from their (very proud) teacher, Madame Welsh, about LanguAges.

An update….they did brilliantly well at the National Finals, winning the Award for Financial Management. They are working with a company http://www.tts-group.co.uk/ to market their product further afield! They make me so proud!

So well done once more to the LanguAges team for their continuing success – a great example of language learning going hand in hand with other areas of the curriculum.

And a pat on the back to TTS for seeing the potential of the product. TTS is currently one of my favourite school shopping places so I’ll be watching out for the arrival of the products!

I received a missive from the school Bursar last week informing me that I had not spent my budget yet and warning me that if I didn’t get a move on, the remaining balance would be ‘re-allocated.’

Well, faced with the prospect of Art getting more paper and paint that is then locked up so we can’t touch it, or PE getting even more equipment to lose, I set about finding ways to spend, spend, spend.

I am not adverse to shopping and just love a good brochure so it was really a hardship! However, I did resent being forced to spend my money before I’d really been able to decide on the best items on which to spend it for the benefit of the kids. I did toy with the idea of purchasing a fire extinguisher for a certain Scottish Fizzics teacher who is at risk of combustion without one, but then got lost in the pages of the lovely glossy leaflets that I stash away for such occasions.

So, what did I buy?

• borders for displays
• posters for walls all around the school
• a subscription to Babelzone – a bargain at £49 with a wealth of sound files, games, listening activities and more matched to the QCA units.
• stickers
• Spanish syllables and blends pocket charts
• a bingo game
• and various other bits and bobs.

Added to some bilingual books, subscription to Atantôt and set of dictionaries I’d purchased earlier in the year, and the Sónica software that we bought with Tesco vouchers, that’s not bad – and Ive still got another £170 to spend!!

Next on the list –

• more dictionaries and a simple grammar book (working on learner independence this year!)
• some recordable postcards
• an easi-Speak microphone
• a talking photo album
• plasticine (for animating!)
• and I’m tempted by Talk balls (no comments!)

And when the Head gives me the £150 she’s promised owed for cover, I’m going to get Little Tails of the Unexpected too.

So, off to check out more glossy brochures (on and offline!) and make sure that the Bursar is familiar with the details of Linguascope, TTS, Little Linguist, Beelingua, Costcutters and Language Stickers.

Any suggestions as to what else I might buy??

This weekend really is turning into ‘catch-up’ time as I blog things that I really should have mentioned over the last few weeks when they were ‘hot off the press’ but didn’t due to time etc etc!

Talkabout Primary MFL, as I’ve told you before, is a Ning network started by Jo Rhys-Jones as ‘an interactive network for those teaching (or considering teaching) foreign languages in Primary school; a place to share your worries/successes with supportive colleagues.’
When I joined in June last year, there were 10 members – now there are 203 and counting! I’m so pleased that word is out that it’s the place to be for ideas, support and discussion. I certainly make sure that I tell everyone about it when I speak – in fact, joining Talkabout is one of my Top Tips!

Well, now Talkabout has gained a Wikispace! A wikispace is like a word processing document to which lots of people can contribute and share. There are so many people contributing great ideas, writing blog posts, sharing resources and experience, offering advice and support, that things could easily be missed. As Jo explains in her post that announces the arrival of the wikispace,

I’m hoping it will help organise the blog posts as this network grows bigger, and although documents can be uploaded directly, just adding a hyperlink saves space. I am also hoping that any members, particularly those who are members of groups, might like to add/edit their own group pages, simply by ‘joining’ the space. You do NOT have to join the wiki to view it – so to see what I’m trying to describe, click the link below. I’ve only just started adding things – so the more people who volunteer to ‘join’ and add things themselves, the jollier! This space is for YOU to use.

So why not pop along and check it out! And contribute! The more the merrier!

Note to self – that includes you!

Whilst checking my Google alerts for MFL a couple of weeks ago, I noticed a news article about Young Enterprise in the NorthEast. And as I read, I was excited to see that I knew the school whose virtues were being extolled.

Lesley Welsh, AST and SSAT LP, is the Madame Welsh referred to in the article, and it is pupils at her school, English Martyrs Schol and Sixth form College in Hartlepool, who have won not only Company of the Year but also Most Creative Company of the Year in the awards sponsored by the Arts Council North East to reward an innovative and creative way of running business.

Here the group from English Martyrs explain –

Our company, LanguAges, provides educational resources to aid the teaching and learning of French in primary schools at Key Stage 2. We have created a compilation of three different games, The Clothes Game, The Class Card Game and The Shopping Game, and an Interactive CD, which form the LanguAges Pack.

All of our games are tailored to be fun, yet educational, comprehensively covering the Key Stage 2 curriculum, and helping to improve vital comprehension and speaking skills.

The initial idea around which our product is based sprung from a discussion with our business adviser in which we discovered that, as of next year, it will become compulsory for all primary schools to teach a modern foreign language at Key Stage 2. This meant that there would definitely be a market for teaching and learning tools.

We then sold more than £100 worth of shares in our company to get us up and running, which allowed us to design and develop our own prototype games. We tested these in several classes across Key Stages 2 and 3, and realised the LanguAges Pack was bound to be a great success.

Indeed the team has gone from strength to strength, selling several packs, and scooping up the ‘Best Sales and Marketing’ award at the MetroCentre Trade Fair, then going on to gain an order for 12 packs from Stockton Schools and ultimately securing a contract for 34 packs via the Hartlepool Local Authority.

This means that at the start of the next academic year, every Primary School in Hartlepool will have a full LanguAges pack – a true achievement for any company!

Furthermore, we have impressed pupils, parents and teachers alike. In fact the representative from the Hartlepool local authority, Tom Argument, said about us: “Their materials are creative, fun, very practical, and of a high quality. The group present themselves in a business-like manner and have real entrepreneurial potential.”

Our sales revenue is nearly £2,000 which has generated a healthy profit. Shareholders will receive at least a 100% return on their investment, and LanguAges will make a donation to charity from the net profit. However, we, as the directors, will be receiving a well-earned director’s bonus!

Young Enterprise has opened our eyes to the world of business. We learnt about the different departments of a company and the importance of each. Since our product was very time consuming and labour intensive it was essential that we learnt time and resource management. This was the first time many of us worked in a large group, therefore this experience enabled us to gain valuable team working skills. We learnt that communication and problem solving are two of the most vital components for the success of a business.

Of the many highs involved in the running of LanguAges, the development of our sense of team camaraderie has certainly been one of the most enjoyable. The shared responsibilities and experiences have led to solid professional relationships and firm friendships. These particularly flourished during the creative process of developing our product, which we all found both testing and fascinating.

Of course, one of the biggest thrills of business is the pursuit and accomplishment of sales, and this we enjoyed thoroughly with some of the team finding their niche in enthusiastic and mostly successful sales pitches. However, the extensive manual labour involved in the production of our product has at times been difficult to manage, but with close and effective teamwork, this challenge has been overcome.

Our hard work and determination has been recognised with a number of awards. As well as winning ‘Best Sales and Marketing’ at the MetroCentre Trade Fair, we also won Best Company Report at the Tees Valley Area Finals.

We have furthermore very recently forged strong links with an international company, who are acting as business advisers and supporters after appreciating LanguAges’ potential as a viable commercial product at the Area Finals. Working with them has been hugely beneficial and we look forward to the possibilities that this connection will lead to.

We realise that LanguAges has a huge amount of potential, and are currently investigating the many options available to us. Several possibilities are being considered, such as selling the idea, or even continuing the company even after the Young Enterprise Company Programme is over.

The prospect of mass producing the LanguAges Pack and even expanding the range to include a variety of other modern foreign languages is a very exciting one. We also appreciate that there is much scope to produce games, not only for younger or older students, but even for companies who wish to train their staff. After all, you have to think big to be big!

Needless to say, as a company, we have shown creative flair, dedication, and determination to reach the top. We have all greatly enjoyed the valuable experience that is the Young Enterprise Company Programme, and have learnt so much throughout the process. The experience and skills acquired will be invaluable to us in the future, whichever careers we choose to pursue.

So, congratulations to Faye Greason, Gayatri Sivakumar, Sreenag Krishnamoorthy, Jennifer Laws, Joseph Harrison, Charanya Ravi, Stuart Christie, Katie Wheelhouse, Francesca Tosson and Mariusz Cichomski, and of course to Madame Welsh and Linda Ward.

What a great idea – no wonder they won awards by the bucket load! And I will be very interested to follow the progress of the group -hopefully thye will expand the project to other languages and market it outside of the North East. As they say – every school in England could potentially use the product!!

Today I had the pleasure of speaking at Coventry’s Primary Language Conference. After a morning at WCPS teaching Year 6 who were rewriting The Snack Song (more of that later in the week when I blog Unit23 of QCA Spanish SOW), I raced over to Coventry to deliver two sessions entitled Languages i my classroom. Sian James, the Primary Languages Strategy Consultant for Coventry had asked me to split each session into three sections – my top tips, some of my favourite games and then to teach something as I would in the classroom. Phew – lots to fit into an hour!

So, speaking in hyperdrive (what’s new? exactly!), I launched into a shorter version of the presentation I did at Tile Hill Wood last week (see my blog post for the notes) before highlighting some of favourite games – see below for notes.

I showed how to play some of the games as I endeavoured to teach Unit 11 of QCA SOW – El Carnaval de los animales in 20 minutes (it took 6-7hours with Yr4- and we might’ve done so much more!). La orquesta went down well as did my attempts to draw animals in Pictionary and the delegates also proved to be excellent lipreaders. (all resources can be downloaded from a previous blog post!)

The conference was really well attended and had a real buzz about it. Coventry is the home of the Language Investigators model of PLL, and the updated version will be launched in September. Sian has also been working on a brilliant resource called Living Languages, featuring six Coventry children whose first language is not English, celebrating languages, the children who speak them, and the similarities and differences we can see through their eyes. The official launch of this will be Sept 25th – more news nearer the time. Well done, Sian for a really successful day!

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

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)

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!