I’ll report more fully when the units are completed as to how good, bad or indifferent I found them etc, but as a taster, I thought I’d share a snippet!
Hot off the press, here are Year 5 singing ‘Somos músicos’ with great gusto.
Today I received an email from the Ministerio de Educación y Ciencias about a record breaking attempt at the largest ever flamenco display. Here’s the message!
Come and join the world’s record breaking Sevillanas dance! London’s Regent Street will be given over to hundreds of Sevillanas dancers on Sunday 25 May as they attempt to set a new Guinness World Record™for the largest ever flamenco dancing display.
The record attempt launches a two week festival of Spanish culture in Regent Street, Heddon Street and Borough Market organised by the Spanish Tourist Office, and marks the start of the build up to Big Dance 2008, http://www.london.gov.uk/bigdance/ the week-long celebration of dance organised by Greater London Authority.
Click on the menu to the left for details of Spanish cultural events including live entertainment and the chance to try the best food and wine from Spain.
So, if you’re at a loose end, fancy a trip to London and have a bit of angst to express, why not join in?
I went to ‘sevillanas’ lessons for a year when I first began teaching – I loved it and it was SO therapeutic but the lessons were on the other side of Birmingham and life got too hectic – unfortunately. But I still feel the urge to stamp, clap and look very haughty when I hear the music. This is just the sort of thing I’d have loved to be involved in, but I will be in Spain, possibly not dancing flamenco, but having a great time I’m sure ;o)
5MW have been working on QCA Spanish Unit 14 Soy el músico this half term and today we gave our opinions about types of music. I thought after we’d sung our song and revised opinions and shared our reasons that they’d make posters to show their pinions – displays need changing!
But I felt like being different today!
So out came my laptop from home and my head / microphone combo. I set it up in the book corner and, having set the rest of the class off on their RE webquest about what priests do, I invited anyone interested to pop over to the recording booth and, using Audacity, record their opinion in Spanish.
I was so glad I did it as everyone of the volunteers enjoyed the experience, and the looks on their faces as they listened to themselves played back were priceless.
Zach’s comment made me laugh and cry at the same time! As he listened to himself back, he said ‘Miss, have you done something to my voice?- I sound Spanish.’ I assured him that I couldn’t do that, and that the voice he heard was him – ‘That can’t be me Miss’
So, I’ve spent the evening uploading all the soundfiles to our Podomatic account (signed up last July and didn’t put anything on it until today!) and above is the first set of WCPS Spanish podcasts. Please leave comments if you wish – the pupils will be very encouraged (as will I!) I’m expecting more volunteers next week – we ran out of time today and one of the quietest girls in the class is first in the queue for next week!
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.
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??
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.
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 LadderAsset 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.
