Category: spanish

Updated – all resources that still exist for this unit of work can be downloaded here. Hyperlinks within the post to resources in DocStoc no longer work.

As we near half term (and not a moment too soon!) the time has come to report back and evaluate how the four QCA Spanish units I’ve used have gone.

First up is Unit 5 Los Cuatro Amigos which I used with Year 3. It’s based around the story of four animal friends (hence the title) who find an apple tree and have to work together to reach and eat the lovely red apple that hangs on it. You can download the unit from the QCA site and below is the medium term planning that goes with the QCA document.

Scheme of work for Year3 spanish summer – los cuatro amigos

I had been sent a PPT presentation of the story by a kind person on the ELL-forum so we began by me reading the story from the IWB to the pupils and seeing how much they could understand-

• what’s it about?
• who are the characters?
• any words you think you might recognise? how?
• what do you think this might mean?

Then we picked out the words for the animals and added actions suggested by the pupils whilst looking at flashcards (on the IWB and laminated ones!) – again, thanks to another kind on a forum. I ‘d modified them slightly to be double sided with just the image on one side and the word (colour coded by gender) and image on the other side. The lesson continued with pupils showing their understanding through using the actions as we once more read the story. Already, the class were wanting to join in – especially with the ¡Pom, pom, pom! and ¡Yupí! sections!
To finish off, I’d prepared a simple worksheet with copying and drawing activities based on the new vocabulary.

worksheet lesson 1

The next lesson started with a recap of the story, using the actions once more to show understanding. As we reviewed the animal vocabulary, we discussed the grapheme / phoneme links for ll, j and z and tried to think of other Spanish words that included them – lots of colours and people’s names were suggested. Then, as suggested in the QCA document, we looked at the word galopa and picked out the other action words, using the pupils’ knowledge of sentence structure etc from their own language,their ability to pick out cognates and their understanding of how animals move! They were a bit puzzled by how sheep move but a bit of acting soon helped them catch on to running. We then used a flipchart to link words and pictures, guess the hidden animal / word etc.

Lesson 3 we revised colours – lots of pupils recalled these well, but many of the ones they remembered weren’t featured in the story eg azul, verde, amarillo. We looked for items of that colour in the room, played ‘Búscame algo …..‘ and then focussed on the story with questions about the colour of the apple and animals. WE did the suggested Hoop game making a Venn diagram with two hoops and putting words from the text into the hoops, their position dependent on whether they contain ‘e’ or ‘i’ sound – if both, they went in the intersecting area.
eg oveja = e
ratoncito = i
conejito = e and i
The lesson carried on with a game of pelmanism – animal and word, and then coloured splodge and word. This is always a popular activity :o)
We used the same cards then to make phrases about the animals’ movement – eg el caballo + galopa.
Then once we had successfully done this, I asked the pupils to make phrases including colours. This was intially less successful as several pupils used English word order ie gris + el caballo + galopa (adjective noun verb) rather than el caballo + gris + galopa (noun adjective verb). However, once I drew them back to the text, they remembered last year when they all told me about word order being ‘odd’ in Spanish.

animalcolourverbwordcardsSpanish1

The next language focus was on how to make a sentence negative. Asking questions like ¿Un caballo galopa?, ¿Un ratón salta?, I modelled answers including sí and no and the more confident worked out how to reply in a phrase rather than by using gesture (thumbs up or down) or a single word. We wrote all the animal names and actions on mini whiteboards (allowing spelling practice too) then added some with sí and no, and made human sentences. I asked the question, we answered as a class and then the boards got in the right order. As confidence grew, we asked the question as a class and pupils with boards got up and ordered themselves depending on what the answer should be. And then we added additional vocabulary items, explained through mime such as baila – dances or canta – sings. This led to a riotous game of charades!

action verbs – Get more College Essays

The next week I departed from the QCA a little and planned to do a listen an order exercise with pupils listening to the story and putting cards into order according to what they heard. However, 3AB had other ideas and wanted to do it themselves. So I gave them the cards of cut up text and off they set, trying to put it into order. Some were more successful than others and but I was pleased to be able to discuss with pupils what they were doing, how they had arrived at their answers and also how they might review the order by looking at certain words. After 10 minutes, I read the story and the groups checked their order, making adjustments as necessary.
At this point, my plan had been to look further at the text and see if pupils could identify missing words from their memory. However, once more I adapted to the mood of the class who were really eager to tell the story and record it. Julia volunteered to start eh story, and never really stopped! You can listen to her beautiful storytelling with the class doing the choral parts with great gusto and me adding the odd bit on our podcast (you can see it in the player on the right of this post too). As it was unrehearsed, I was particularly pleased with Julia’s confidence and really quite accurate accent (cogió caused her consistent problem!)

Today was the last lesson on the topic and I lost all but 8 of the class to Area sports trials for half the lesson so we played some games with hoops. Some were not directly related to the topic -such as put your (body part) in the hoop which caused great hilarity; others were based on the vocabulary in the unit. We played a game with the animal flashcards in two different ways:
With the small group, we used the 4 hoops, each with an animal card in it. I called a phoneme eg ‘a’ and pupils had to stand in the hoop that contained a word with that phoneme eg la oveja / el caballo.
With the whole class, we stuck them on the walls and walked (very important as we were in the classroom!) to stand near to the appropriate word. Pupils soon worked out that there was more than one answer possible and we went on to suggest other words containing the same phoneme.

We finished off the topic with another retelling of the story – this time with no pictures – with each table representing one of the animals or the apple. When their animal / apple was mentioned in the text, they had to stand up, and everyone stood up for the apple tree. This was a good test of listening as the word for apple – la manzana and the word for the apple tree – el manzano are very similar.

I consider that the topic has been quite successful – the pupils have enjoyed it and can more accurately identify phoneme – grapheme links thus aiding their pronunciation – and are now self correcting and helping each other with new words. At the start of lesson3 or 4, I asked pupils how many words they could remember from the story and we made a list that filled the whiteboard of words, phrases and whole sentences – and they could spell most of them, and say what they meant. Phrases such as ‘Sí, ya voy‘ and ¿Quién es? are readily recalled now and can be used in classroom situations.

After half term, I teach the other year3 class and will repeat many of the same activities, but will probably add some different ones too, and perhaps explore some further ideas from the QCA document.

Updated – all resources that still exist for this unit of work can be downloaded here. Hyperlinks within the post to resources in DocStoc no longer work.  All of the presentations were shared with me by others -thank you to the kind people who shared – and the story comes from the QCA unit not me! that do not originate from me – thank you to the kind people who shared.

I’m currently experimenting with various Spanish units from the new QCA SoW for KS2. I’m using Unit 5 Los cuatro amigos with Year 3, El carnaval de los animales (Unit 11) with Year 4, Year 5 are doing Unit 14 Yo soy músico and Year 6 are looking forward to some café acting with Unit 23, Poner una cafetería.

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.

This is my first attempt at embedding a player on my blog – if it doesn’t work, you can listen tot he same audio from the Podomatic player on the right ;o)

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.

If you want to take part and help break the record, simply register at
http://tastespain.info/registeration.php?idioma=uk and we’ll be in
touch with details.

If you are also interested in attending free sevillanas lessons in
London, find  further information at
http://tastespain.info/schools.php?idioma=uk

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.

If you would like to receive further information, please go to
http://tastespain.info/masInformacion.php?idioma=uk

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)

Click here to get your own player.

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.

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?