Category: spanish

I love singing and enjoy using song in my lessons. I’ve written before about the values of using song, rhyme and rhythm to aid learning whilst having fun. Although I’m not averse to making up my own songs, I’m always on the lookout for more songs to add to my repertoire.

In the summer I purchased a CD from Early Learning Centre called Fun with Spanish.
It has traditional songs from Spain (such as Tengo una muñeca) and England (such as Polly put the kettle on) sung in the original language but also translated into the other language. This is good as the tunes are familiar and the gist of the song already known to the pupils, meaning they have no hang ups about meaning.

The CD costs £5 – quite reasonable I think! And if you want to use it, here are the animated presentations I’ve made to go with the traditional English songs in Spanish plus the concluding rap.

Uno_ dos_ tres_ cuatro_ – Get more documents

El barco zarpó – Get more documents

Lingo rap – Get more documents

Me pongo de pie – Get more documents

Polly pon agua a hervir – Get more documents

En la parada – Get more documents

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El Toro, originally uploaded by sparky2000.

I’ve been (re)exploring Flickr this evening. I joined a while ago and uploaded some photos – but then forgot about it. As my husband was delayed by the Heathrow Terminal 5 fiasco, I had a spare few hours that i have spent browsing a multitude of photographs.

So here begins an (occasional) series of images of one of my first memories of Spain – the Osborne bull or Toro de Osborne.

More about Flickr and Osborne bull in future posts!

Sbs k digo? My typing skills haven’t deserted me – I’m texting! If you speak Spanish and/or are conversant with the language of texting, all that makes perfect sense.

I must admit that I sometimes get confused by all the abbreviations and double meanings in English – LOL is laughing out loud but also lots of love – and have to explain some abbreviations I use – I thought ROFL was universally understood as rolling on the floor laughing??

I was interested to read a recent post from Spanish.about.com entitled Spanish cell phone abbreviations – Shortcuts make text messages faster.
I wondered how the language of text would vary between English and Spanish. It was interesting to see how Spaniards use similar abbreviations to us:

• letters and numbers just like us – gr8 = great / 100pre = siempre or salu2 = saludos
• phonetic abbreviations as we do – cu = see you / aki = aquí
• initial letters – brb = be right back / npn = no pasa nada

but also have borrowings like pls for por favor, and also sms for texting itself.

I wonder if we could justify texting as a suitable for Primary learning –
it’s definitely Modern, it’s Foreign to many and it’s a Language in its own right. How about it? ;o)

The ever innovative and very talented Leigh McClelland from Comberton Village College sent me a message on Facebook last week about a theatrical novelty taking place in the West End very soon.

Peter Pan El Musical: Spanish musical adaptation of JM Barrie‘s famous children’s story comes to the West End’s Garrick theatre from 28 March to 27 April. Peter Pan El Musical, which has enjoyed box office success in Spain, features all the familiar characters from this most English of stories – Wendy, Tinkerbell, Captain Hook and Peter Pan himself – who reveal a previously unknown aptitude for languages by performing the musical entirely in Spanish, with English subtitles. Adapted by Cristina Fargas, the show includes 14 original songs, performed by a cast of 25, led by Spanish musical theatre star Miguel Angel Gamero as Captain Hook and Mr Darling. Interesting? Lx

So I investigated further and discovered a website of excitement with photographs, music and news from the production. I particularly like all the photographs of the production.

The production is in London for a month before returning to complete the tour of Spain with Badajoz, Zaragoza and Valencia. A shame London isn’t nearer to Birmingham for a school trip but I might get there. If you want to find out more, go to the website, or here for tickets.

Wishing you all a Happy Easter with a couple of videos of Easter celebrations in Spain.

¡Felices Pascuas!

A couple of local news items about been brought to my attention by Google alerts, both related to young language learners.

The Mirfield Reporter covered the story of a Year 4 class at Battyeford Primary School who learned a song in French, La Meteo, that they performed in assembly. Not just for fun, but also in order to achieve Asset Languages level 1.
The class teacher mentions that they are the first class to achieve the award – how many other schools are already going for accreditation for their pupils? She also thanks the teacher at Castle Hall School for her help. Sounds like an example of cross KS links / liaison to me.

The second article, from the Liverpool Echo is headlined School girl wins award for language.
It reports that Elizabeth Foulkes, whilst a pupil at Grassendale’s St Austin’s Catholic primary school, achieved the highest score of all primary children tested in Spanish for Language Ladder Asset Languages exams. With Liverpool so hot on primary languages, it doesn’t surprise me that the girl comes from that area, especially as St Austin’s is a centre of excellence for Spanish, having a FLA and an advisory teacher working with them as well as a link school in Spain, parents encouraged to learn alongside their children and weekly language lessons for teachers. Shows that the effort is worth it!
Elizabeth has now moved on to high school and is quoted as saying –
“Learning it means now when I’m on holiday in Spain I can understand things, like menus – especially useful because I’m vegetarian!”

The children I teach love learning Spanish and one of their reasons for enjoying it is that they don’t have to do exams and aren’t labelled as ‘level 3s’. So there’s a tension for me between knowing that there is a need for some kind of assessment of progress but also not wanting to remove one USP of PLL. But here we have examples of pupils having fun and learning useful stuff for personal interest, and at the same time gaining recognition for their efforts. Mmmm.

What do you think? Should we be looking at formal ways to assess PLL like Asset, or is informal assessment sufficient?

I’ve been hit by a wave of nostalgia this week – perhaps due to the large number of photographs of my childhood flying around Facebook and at the centenary celebrations at my church (including one of me dressed in a black binbag decorated with silver foil and sporting bright red lipstick and a flashing headband)

In this nostalgic mood I thought back to a few(!) years ago to when I used to teach ‘big kids’ and the fun we had one Prize Giving. Bar the music department who were always expected to perform, no other department ever did anything to showcase themselves, so the head was rather surprised when my colleague Nikki and I decided we were going to get some of the pupils to sing in Spanish – and what’s more, join them.

One year we sang ‘El profesor me fastidia‘ from Vaya 1 ( I remember it well!) – all the kids wore mortar boards and Nikki and I made fools of our selves doing a hula dance (complete with grass skirts) in the instrumental break! They loved singing about how much the teacher was annoying them and our performance became legendary.
Another year we sang an Abba medley – no mean feat as the words made little sense to most of the kids. Some of them didn’t do Spanish and the rest were enthusiastic Year 7s who liked singing and did their best to fit the words in. To their credit, they learned all the words and could still sing the medley the following year – and it was great fun!

Nowadays, singing in language classes is much more common place (look at Steph Hopkins, Leigh McClelland and Rachel Hawkes, Helen Myers …) and I’m sure that some schools have been doing it for years (Un kilo de chansons has been around ages!), but at this ‘challenging’ comprehensive, singing was a new thing and it certainly worked for some of the pupils. I hope they still get to sing and rap – we’ve both moved on now so I don’t know. But for old times sake and to remind myself that HH wasn’t all bad, here are ABBA!

Firstly, an ABBA medley (ours wasn’t that long!!) and then Gracias por la música.

Inspired by Jo Rhys-Jones post on Minibeasts, and her suggestion of some suitable French videos on Youtube to support it, I went in search of some Spanish equivalents – then got sidetracked!

Having followed Jo’s links to Papillons, (complete with operatic French version of Anything I do, I do it for you), I decided to search for Spanish butterflies – mariposas. I came across a clip of ‘Mariposas de Asturias‘ which is very similar (the music is more relaxing!)

Then my search took me off in a different direction when I came across a video clip called Mariposas Silenciosas. Not about butterflies, but a game that can be played in small groups to improve concentration, coordination, and also provide a bit of calm!

Then I investigated Luis Pescetti further and found more videos that I thought might be interesting. Keeping to the minibeasts theme, how about Cienpies about a centipede-

This is followed by an action rhyme with nonsense words – a bit like Gingangoolie (not sure if that’s how you spell it as I’ve never tried writing it down!) – with simple actions that get faster and faster. Amazing how muddling it can be to do simple actions fast! And here’s another – Aiepo – this time, the rhyme is said in different voices depending on the speed, starting as an elephant, very low, and finishes higher!

Another rhyme along a similar vein, but this time with ‘proper’ Spanish words – in this case a traditional Spanish rhyme – Palmas, higos y castañas.

Also on a minibeast theme, scroll down to the seventh song on this page for La canción de la pulga about a flea that jumps on a dog, bites it and then has a full tummy!

In fact, having found lots of his videos on Youtube, I then went to his website http://www.luispescetti.com/ and discovered lots more too see and do. Words and (very usefully) mp3 files for songs as well as videos and jokes. Well worth investigating. From a quick look, I can see a Spanish version of London Bridge is falling down, as well as Un kilómetro a pie (referred to in a previous post on Active learning) and a lovely song called Mocos about bogies!!

And on that note, I’ll leave you to explore for yourself!

I was just having a look at my Google alerts and was reminded that I’d signed up for TeacherTube ages ago. For those who don’t know, TeacherTube is like Youtube but for teachers!
Surprisingly for me, I remembered my password and managed to find my account, including the videos I’d bookmarked.

And I once more came across this lovely video called Three little men. Made by children with severe learning difficulties at Frank Wise School in Banbury, it use Playmobil men greeting one another in Spanish as the pupils practice speaking skills.

There is often debate about the merits of teaching MFL to children with ‘special needs’. I’ve always found that MFL has been a good leveller – by that I mean that pupils who are struggling in other areas of the curriculum find themselves on a fairly equal footing with their peers, particularly if their difficulty is with the written word as there is so much speaking activity.
And as to it being a ‘waste of time’ as I’ve heard many times – well, having watched the video, judge for yourself!

Another of today’s discoveries was a bit of a surprise.

In amongst the Spanish rhymes and songs, I came across some videos with the prefix ‘NannyMóvil’. Reading the ‘About this video’ information I discovered that educamobile is someone called Alfonso from Barcelona and makes ‘Animaciones, canciones y cuentos en los teléfonos móviles de los padres, para distraer a sus hijos pequeños.‘ (children oriented songs, animations and tales for parents’ mobile phones to distract small children.)
You can watch an interview with educamobile explaining and demonstrating the idea here – it’s in Catalan though! – I knew it was worth learning :o)
He has posted some of the videos on Youtube and they do look interesting. You can download the animations and songs etc to your mobile in Spain at a cost of 2€ +IVA (although there is a promotion at present to get ‘la granja’ free)- there’s an SMS number to contact. Doesn’t seem to work from England – I’m investigating how you might be able to download here. giving access to the menu of downloads – There’s also a wap address http://wap.nannymovil.com – can’t make it connect on my phone though :o(
So, I have another plan! Using Zamzar, I’m going to convert the videos from Youtube and then Bluetooth them to my ‘phone. Working out the format is the fun bit!

But even if that fails, the videos could be useful in class. The animations are cute and there are several types. There are the Nannyanimaciones that could be used to present vocabulary. There’s one of ‘bichos‘ (bugs) that would capture the imagination of some of the little lads (and possibly a couple of the young ladies!) I teach, and then there’s ‘animales de la sabana‘ featuring wild animals. Below is the ‘la granja‘ video.

I do think that to maintain attention you would need to selectively show the clips as they could become quite monotonous unless you play a game with them or just show a bit of the video – and the music could be a little more varied.

Then there are Nannycanciones like Que llueva and then Nannycuentos.

The cuento I found on Youtube was Caperucita Roja.
As the ‘blurb’ says –
‘Aquí mostramos a los personajes del cuento de Caperucita: el lobo, la abuelita, el cazador, y la caperucita. El cuento del móvil es mucho mejor. En este video no figuran ni los efectos especiales, ni los diálogos y algunas de las escenas que figuran en el móvil’ –
Because there is no dialogue, this would be a great inspiration/backdrop for pupils to retell the story in as simple terms as they wish – could be just naming characters for younger pupils up to older pupils (beyond primary) using more complicated language; perhaps it could be used to inspire a cross Key Stage / transition project? See what you think – I like the bold characters, especially the wolf dressed as Grandma!

You can find out more on the website – http://www.nannymovil.com
On the site you’ll also find some print and colour sheets and dice to download and make linked to videos. It’s new site so some parts are under construction – I’ve emailed about the possibility of downloading outside Spain so will keep you posted!