Category: TakeTen

Last night was #DevonMFL Teachmeet. Despite being given warning, life took over and my contribution didn’t arrive in time for the night. However, rather than waste it, I decided to share it here!

So, here is my hastily – but not hastily enough – prepared short presentation on using games to learn Spanish in and out of the Primary classroom.

Teachmeet Devon 3.10.13 from lisibo on Vimeo.

I refer to various things in my presentation that may need further explanation – I’ve linked to some below but feel free to ask questions in the Comments if you need clarification.

Toenail game

La vaca Lola

More games etc can be found in this post/presentation called Games to learn and I also spoke at #ililc3 on using games and activities in the language classroom in a presentation entitled Let out for good behaviour!

What I didn’t say (I was trying to keep under 7 minutes!) was that Take Ten en español is brilliant for embedding language into the curriculum, and for supporting the non-specialist teacher! Check it out here! 

Here is the Slidecast of my second presentation from Brighton.

Apologies for the audio cutting out before the end – no idea what happened there!  Perhaps the iRiver overheated!

Apologies to @wizenedcrone for forgetting her real name – it’s Fiona Joyce!!!

And the German site I mentioned was called GenkiGerman.

I normally make Slideshares of my presentations and add the audio for Slidecasts.

However, the lovely @eyebeams was UStreaming the MFL Show and Tell from Nottingham today so I’m able to embed the video of my presentation!

Hope you find it useful.  Although my pupils are primary aged and some of the ideas are very ‘primary centric’, I think that there are many things that secondary colleagues can take and adapt to their situations.  teh fun doesn’t have to stop at the end of KS2, you know ;o)

Great excitement last week when a parcel arrived from Devon, with a courtesy slip from Devon Education Services.

Our copy of TAKE TEN EN ESPAÑOL has arrived!

As you may recall, I was asked to help out along with some of the pupils at Whitehouse Common Primary School where I teach. The kids have been eagerly awaiting the finished product and are very excited to see how it’s all turned out.

As the blurb on the DES site says ..

Take 10 en espanol is a resource that helps primary school children practise their Spanish in a fun way whilst taking part in short tasks of daily physical activity. In doing so it brings together two major educational initiatives and offers the potential to significantly improve children’s learning potential. A follow up to Take 10 en francais, Take 10 en espanol has all the features plus extra dance section with Salsa and Flamenco.

I’ll be using a song from it with Year3 on Thursday – San Fermin. Happens to fit the topic we’re doing – and serendiptously, it’s one of the ones that WCPS dance on the video!

If you want to get a copy, check out the DES site! You can buy just the book , just the CD/DVD or the whole pack (which is what I would do!)

For the last couple of weeks, I’ve spent my lunchtimes getting rather hot and bothered rehearsing three dance routines in Spanish with a group of Key Stage 2 pupils at WCPS in preparation for an excting challenge.

Following on from the success of Take Ten en français,(see Jo Rhys-Jones’ blog post for more details) Devon Education Services is developing Take Ten en español, and we were asked to take part. I know – Sutton Coldfield is miles from Devon but it all happened after an ‘on the hoof’ chat with Chris Wakeley at Primary Languages Show last year when Jo Rhys-Jones volunteered my services!

Take Ten is ‘a fantastic little resource from Devon Education Services. It’s a handy pocket-sized book full of games and activities that can be used as PE warm-ups or more sedately in the classroom as Brain-gym exercises.’ The English translation is alongside the Spanish and it links languages and physical activities, neatly addressing two initiatives at once!

So, along with five Devon schools, at the start of term we received a DVD and CD with our three dances. When I asked in assembly for volunteers, half of Key Stage 2 wanted to join in – then they saw the dances and quite a few dropped out. Having said that, there were 36 stalwarts and it was SOOO hard to choose the final team of 10 – but choose I did and this morning, the big day arrived!

Tracy Adams and Simon the cameraman arrived from Devon and we set to work dancing our socks off, resplendent in our Take Ten T-shirts. I’m just glad that I was dancing behind the camera as I was getting rather tired by the end – and I am quite fit! The kids did so well that filming was completed in record time – even with chocolate biscuit and juice breaks! In fact, the kids were rather disappointed that they’d finished so we had a bit of a muck around – see our videos!

We can’t wait for the final product to be published so we can see what it looks like. but until then, we have our Take Ten en español T-shirt and photographs to remind us of the day!
As soon as it’s available, I’ll let you know as it’s a really good resource and well worth buying for your schools.