Category: rhymes

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!

My current fascination with Youtube continues! There will be no doubt be more posts later in the week with more of my discoveries, but here is the first ‘joya’.

The ideal for Primary Language Learning (PLL) is that the learning is embedded in the curriculum.

During my browsing, I discovered some lovely little videos of tables in Spanish. Some are chants and some are drills, ranging from 47 seconds to 1 minute 55, but all have captured the interest of my 6 year old – ‘I don’t know my tables’ – as well as 9 year old who is a maths whizz.

They cover the 2 to 10 times tables, multiplying by up to 10.

See what you think! My particular favourite is ‘tabla del 5’ but I’ve embedded all the videos in a custom player (fancy eh?!)

For more ideas on using Maths in PLL, check out Jo Rhys-Jones’ post on Talkabout Primary MFL.

It’s taken me longer than I expected, but here’s the rest of the input from the Birmingham ELL RSG on November 20th – Let’s get active! – giving ideas on activities for the PLL classroom that get the kids actively involved in learning language.

I’ve already blogged about some games and a song – Jean Petit qui danse – that were suggested by Sara Vallis and also shared my input on using parachutes and also some action songs such as Le fermier dans son pré and El granjero (you’ll find the files in my Box of Goodies on the right hand side of the blog.)

So, all that’s left is to tell you what the ‘experts’ (i.e. the advisors!) said!

Paul Nutt – whose exact title currently eludes me and Google ;o) – started the session by reading us a passage in French about hobbies and pasttimes. It was in the form of a letter and was not a simple text, but the activities he suggested made it accessible to younger learners who had some understanding of French.

The first activity involved us being split into groups and each group being given the name of a pasttime. Our task was to listen for our activity (my group had ‘le rugby’)and stand up each time it was mentioned, with everyone standing up for ‘les passetemps’.

The next time we listened we were given cards with the vocabulary items written on them. Our task was to hold up the appropriate word when we heard it. To make things a little more complicated, we rotated the person who held up the card so sometimes there were a number of hands grabbing for cards!

Following on from this, we were challenged to put the words into alphabetical order against the other teams.

By this time, we had heard the text and the vocabulary items a number of times, and our next task was to write as many of the hobbies and pasttimes in English as we could recall -the cards were taken away at this point so no cheating was allowed :o(

The final part of the activity involved different cards, this time with phrases as well as vocabulary items, from which we were challenged to make sentences. For example,
J’AIME LE FOOT MAIS JE N’AIME PAS LE SHOPPING.
From here, we discussed how the activity might go, with pupils being encouraged to substitute pasttimes and opinions, add qualifiers and connectives, give reasons for opinions etc.

This seemed a good idea and I actually tried it out the next day with Year 6 – I read a passage of personal identification information and I challenged them in mixed ability groups of 4 to put the text into the correct order whilst listening. I know that listening is the skill about which they have the most hang ups – even more than with speaking- so I was interested to see how they did. It proved a success and we took it on to the next stage when we discussed how we might use the activity to inform our own writing. The pupils suggested annotating the slips and substituting numbers, sports, names etc to personalise the passage. Here are some photos of their ideas.

Rona Heald – Comenius West Midlands Regional Manager – shared some activities for the hall and playground.
She began with a song about measuring –

Un kilomètre à pied,
ça use, ça use.
Un kilomètre à pied,
ça use les souliers.

The song continues with ‘deux kilomètre’ etc .
It’s very easy to learn and is sung whilst marching around in a line. Rona suggested using it with instructions as to HOW the pupils should march and sing – marchez…lentement, sur place, accroupis, au galop, à quatre pattes, les mains en l’air, en faissent sauter une crêpe… et… changez de direction.
This reminded me of a session I attended at the Primary Language Show last year about linking ELL with Physical development in Foundation Stage – suggested activities included jumping the rope where the leader holds up two coloured cards and calls a colour then the pupils jump to the correct side to indicate answer, and walking the line where the class walk around a line on the floor whilst singing a song – the above would be a good choice!

Rona went on to present different ways of playing hopscotch from around the world. The names themselves were an education – La Marelle (France) El Muñeco (Spain) Tempelhuepfen(German) Hinkelbann (Netherlands – I think!) Rayuela (Argentina). We were also treated to a discussion of another variation called Escargot or La Marelle ronde’ where the squares are in a spiral and players hop on one foot to the centre and back.
Hopscotch has minimal language content so the suggestion was to perhaps put a picture in each square and to win it, you have to name the item, or put it into a sentence. Also players should count the squares as they hop, not necessarily starting at 1 but perhaps 8 or count in 2s etc., or even r

ecite the alphabet.

Another activity which we tried was La llamada de los animales – the call of the animals. Four children are given a picture of a Mummy animal eg frog, elephant, cat, dog, and they go to stand in a corner of the room. The rest of the class are given a card with one of the animals on it – they are the babies and they need to find their Mummy. As they approach one of the Mummies, they emit the sound of the animal and if it’s their Mummy, they reply. To extend the (very minimal unless you’re teaching animal calls!) languaeg, you could give the pupils lines to use such as ‘I’m a little …. and I’m looking for my Mummy..’ or ‘Come and sit down’ or @sorry, I’m not your Mummy’.

There were many more ideas for games such as Lupo mangia fruta – the fruit eating wolf, and Alto ahí, a Spanish variation on Dodgeball. Many can be found on iEARN Children’s Folk Games, ‘a result of an international networking project run in I*earn Kidscan Conference
during September 1998- April 1999.‘ There are lots of games, rhymes, songs, tonguetwisters and customs in a wide variety of languages – well worth a look!

The next RSG is on 22nd January and I’m really looking forward to it as Oscar Stringer is coming to tell us all about animation – I’m already sold on the educational possibilites so I can’t wait for others to discover its potential too.

Today’s ELL RSG in Birmingham is entitled Let’s get active! and I’m presenting ideas for activities using Songs and Rhymes , and also Parachutes.

I’ve uploaded my presentations to My Box of Goodies (see right) along with some of the materials I’m using. I’ve done this so that people that were at the RSG can download them but also to give access to those that weren’t there – I’m not averse to sharing! I’m also conscious that giving people handouts is lovely but they often get filed away and forgotten – hopefully by encouraging people to be proactive and download the materials they are more likely to use them. And if they don’t want them, I’ve not caused the death of another small forest ;o)

A couple of links –
the parachute stuff is heavily inspired by the work of Daryl Bailey and co at Hove Park School – have a look at their website
You can download their parachute materials in Spanish, French and German from there!
And the materials for Le fermier dans son pré are available from Maternelle de Moustache
by clicking on F. There are lots of other materials there too for stories and songs as well as craft activities.