Here is my presentation from the Spanish workshops yesterday.
Entitled Sorpresas y sonrisas, it was a reflection on how to keep everyone in the primary language classroom happy and engaged. For the second time in a row I failed to record myself so I’m afraid no slidecast this time 🙁
However, if you want me to clarify anything, please contact me via the form on the right.
Today I was privileged to take part in the Talleres españoles para primaria run by the Consejería de Educación at Instituto Cañada Blanch in London. I was sharing ideas for the primary classroom from my experiences with a presentation called Sorpresas y sonrisas. More of that later but I thought I’d try to summarise the day as I went along. (No wifi so publication will have to wait until I get home!)
The day started with a presentation on the situation of Spanish in the context of world languages – did you know that all the time we’re losing languages? In 2008 Eyak was lost in Alaska when the last speaker died. With the arrival of the Romans in Spain, Latin was imposed on much of Europe so the languages of the Iberian peninsula as well as other places started disappearing. Over time, Castillian took over from regional languages although some still exist, becoming the common language of Spain. Much the same happened in the South America although until there was little imposition of Castillian by the missionaries or conquistadores, but rather by the independentistas who decided to use Castillian as lingua franca. The Hispanic population in USA continues to grow and will continue to do so. Very interesting to see how Spanish compares with other world languages – it has a greater spread of speakers compared to more localised Russian, less dialectalisation than Arabic, more standardised in terms of written form than Mandarin Chinese and so on. And also to see how the statistics can be skewed depending on who you count as a ‘speaker’ of languages. There are more native Spanish speakers than English but if you add those who have it a a second or peripheral language, English soars ahead. Spanish occupies 5th place in books published, 3rd in books and 3rd in Internet. But it’s not doing so well in Wikipedia entries! And let’s not talk about economic power…. As Munoz Molina said ‘el enemigo del español no es el ingles es la pobreza’
Next I went to a session entitled Learning Spanish and other school curriculum contents (CLIL) with Maria Teresa. She talked about using stories as a starting point for exploring languages. Phase 1 to capture their attention, phase 2 to tell the story and phase 3 and 4 more activities to reuse what we’ve used and then producing something based on what they’ve learned. The story is about un oso pardo who lives in the north of Spain (would our kids know that there are bears in Spain?) ‘Una historia para imaginar’ tells about Mummy bear and her daughter Perica and son Ramirín who are cold as winter is about to come. ramirín doesnt want to go to sleep but Mummy says lets go to sleep and dream. They sleep all winter and wake as spring arrives. What did they dream about? Pupils can use imagination! Having read the story, we can take parts with sections being Mummy, Perica and Ramirín- and a confident child could be the narrator. Then in phase 3 we do activities that exploit the text and take it further eg
1. hopping and counting the paw prints!
2. presenting your family using family tree handout.
3. Reordering the story
4. months and seasons
After recharging my batteries with coffee and choccie biccies, off I went to Irene Wilkie who was talking about integrating Spanish in the curriculum. Irene started by apologising as her presentation was aimed at teachers with little Spanish and the room was more or less full of Spaniards (I’m going to have the same problem) then talked of how we might look at the Tudors in Spanish. Firstly we looked at flags and talked about nationalities -(era) española, alemana, inglesa- and then talked about children – tuvo un hijo / una hija, no tuvo hijos – then how they died – fue ejecutada, fue divorciada, murió, sobrevivió.
With these few words, you can discuss the wives in Spanish, use texts that include more complex structures and ask questions on history in Spanish.
Then we looked at El cuerpo humano – recycling what pupils know in Spanish! Using cognates/ palabras parecidas it’s easy for learners to follow. Short paragraphs lead to a table to match phrases. Then definitions for parts of the body – give the name of the organ. And her third example was healthy eating – lots of pictures with which you can ask simple questions ¿Bueno o malo? Or sí y no. You can do some grammar if you want but you can avoid! Irene talked lots of sense and I’ll certainly be passing on her ideas to my colleagues!
Lunch consisted of delicious tapas – won’t go on but ¡riquísimo! SEGL presented Superdrago their ELE (español lengua extranjera) textbook for 7-11 year olds. Very colourful and imaginative. Need to have a good look before further comment!
Final session I could attend was Learning by doing in a global team – Emocionaros 1.0 para que emocionéis 2.0. Mercedes Ruiz had a suitcase full of bits and bobs like a black skirt that could be a nightmare, a monster; a blue piece of material that is the sky, the sea; gloves to show hot and cold. Then we looked at the book Perdido y encontrado and Mercedes recounted how she’d told a story about an escaped penguin at London Zoo and been believed. So the class made posters to find it again, in Spanish and English. And so started a whole exchange of lost and found penguins across the world – in Zaragoza, Argentina, Thailand. Then the penguin was in lost property and they sent him messages via paper airplanes – they didn’t want him to go back to the zoo. The imagination, creativity and ingenuity involved was remarkable leading to bilingual conversations and cooperation. Mercedes went on to talk about using web2.0 as that’s the language of our learners. They don’t just talk in words but in gesture, video, sound, image. She shared the Osos y leones blog belonging to the younger pupils of Instituto Cañada Blanch on which they share all sorts of things they do.
I couldn’t stay for the last session which is a shame as I might have learned how to carve jamón serrano. However, a really great day, only slightly marred by the inefficiencies and dire lack of information of London Transport making my journeys a nightmare.
And I am VERY proud of my certificate – official stamp and everything!
Posted this on my school website on Friday – thought I’d share it here too because I’m very very pleased!! 
We have just received some wonderful news to start the new academic year – Whitehouse Common Primary has been awarded the Full International School Award.
The British Council website says that “the Full International School Award accreditation is for schools that have successfully embedded internationalism into parts of the curriculum and whole school ethos.” We are very proud that all the exciting things we do at WCPS to look beyond our immediate surroundings and appreciate the lives, culture and beliefs of others has been recognised in this way, and we will proudly display the logo – and certificate when it arrives!
Thank you to everyone who contributed to achieving the award – our partner schools in Barcelona, India and Birmingham, all the visitors who have shared their experiences with us, the parents and families who share in our international work by showing an interest (and especially those who kindly sent letters in support of our application) and of course, most of all the staff and pupils of Whitehouse Common who participate in all the activities which such enthusiasm, interest and joy.
Interesting how different colours mean different things according to culture.
For example, no 16 – death – is represented by black in Western / American, Native American and Japanese or white in Hinduism and Chinese but silver in Muslim culture and green in South America.
Would make quite a fun activity finding similarities and differences.
Languages MiniOlympics packs – Bringing together the two threads of KS2 teaching and languages and the International Dimension – presented by Michaela Howard and Jo Darley
Jo and Michaela – having marvellously overcome technical issues- presented their ideas for how to use the Olympics as the inspiration for language learning activities that are clearly linked to the KS2 Framework and specifically for the class teacher to deliver.
Take 6 athletes from around the world –
*excellent activity with a partner school*
*engaging learning – collaborating*
http://www.mapsoftheworld.com/olympic-trivia/olympic-mascot.html
Design a mascot with 2 places to look for inspiration – info on Beijing mascots and how they were conceived, what they represent etc and from London Olympic mascots – very visual labelled diagrams. (Didn’t manage to note the URL but found the picture!)
A mascot for YOUR area – black cabs are specific to London perhaps – what would eg Lincoln have?
(there’s a mascot maker on the 2012 site!)
How might you use the job of promoting the Olympic games as a task?
In Y3 with the objective “to copy words” you might
In y4 with the objective “to write some simple words and phrases using model and some from memory” you might make
In y5 with the objective “to write words, phrases and short sentences using references” you might design a cartoon strip
In y6 with the objective ” to write sentences on a range of topics” you might
Going back to the 6 athletes and using these two sites, find out the distance the athletes have to travel to London (assuming they live in the capital city of their country!) How long will it take to travel? what time is it in their city when it’s x o’clock in London?
http://www.silkysteps.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1118
http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/distance.html
There are 216 countries competing. Each one has a national anthem. What a lot of music to exploit!
Languages:Reboot
Chris Harte, Cramlington Learning Village
Chris’ presentation is on his website so I’m not going to recap blow by blow – just some notes! Needless to say, he was brilliant and will be missed when he goes Down Under.
3 preconditions to learning
Jeff Petty – Evidence based teaching – recommended reading
Learning is …
Chris has a number plate to encourage independent learning – C3B4ME – try 3 other sources of info before me
Do we want our pupils to be engaged?
Yes, but you can be engaged without being challenged.
Harry Potter clips – OWLs – watch this clip from about 2 minutes and substitute the word ‘spells’ / ‘magic’ for languages. Sound familiar?
A failed GCSE is a lost life chance so we want them to pass but how soul destroying to feel you have to stick to learning chunks of language to satisfy an examiner who wants to test what you CAN’T do.
A textbook exclusively endorsed by an exam board means that I will follow it slavishly because I want my pupils to pass. Where’s the room for creativity?
Testing what you don’t know is not fair.
Look at www.hooked-on-thinking.com to investigate SOLO taxonomy – and also Chris’ post on SOLO taxonomy http://chrisharte.typepad.com/learner_evolution_chris_h/2011/04/solo-im-ridin-solo.html
10 words at word level is not enough in a lesson for our talented linguists
If you want learners to make connections between language, you need to provide them with something with which to make the connections, so we need to give them texta not just words.
Having taught KS3 with films, murder mystery etc, why should we have to go back at KS4 to teaching pencil sharpener!
If you want to see Chris in action presenting on the same theme a few months ago, check him out here and here.
*Part of a series of posts trying to summarise some of the sessions at Language World this year*
The opening of Language World saw a presentation by Anna Turney and Nick Fuller.
Anna Turney, Paralympic Snowboarder
Anna loved snowboarding and wanted to get good enough to compete. She moved to France after her degree, and decided that her best plan was to hang out with the French boys who’d know the place well (so her language skills came in very useful!) One season turned to three then she did a TEFL course, went to Japan and taught whilst still snowboarding at the weekend. In order to get sponsorship, she needed to win some races. Having played hooky one day to compete in a race, Anna crashed and ended up in hospital with 98% chance of walking again. In hospital, Anna had plenty of time to think and decide that she wanted to fight on. Language proved “fun” in hospital with misunderstandings and communication issues, but someone told her about sit-skiing which gave her new hope.
After a year of not being able to do extreme sports, Anna had a go and discovered it was harder than it looked! After practice, Anna came back to England, was spotted sit-skiing and invited to join the development squad, but had to self finance. A mystery donor bought her first monoski and off she went, on the road to Vancouver.
Anna set out to be the fittest and best she could, spending long periods of time away from home. Olympic values of friendship, excellence, respect, cooperation have been really important to Anna, and the buzz at Paralympics was enormous. Everyone has to wear team kit and it’s an amazing sight. When someone who’d won a medal came in, the whole dinner hall clapped. In Alpine skiing, each country is given an area of the hill, and countries need to work together to set courses. It is hugely competitive but there is a real togetherness about the whole experience too. The volunteers are amazing too.
Anna’s achievements in Vancouver – 6th in sitting slalom with which she was really pleased.
Anna acknowledges the debt she owes to all the people who have helped her – volunteers, family, sponsors, training partners – it’s a team effort.
Nick Fuller, Head of Education at LOCOG
In London there will be 170 nations.
Pierre de Coubertin saw Olympics as a sporting cultural coming together – it’s more than sport! The vision for 2012 is to reach young people around the world. That’s been done through linking schools across the world, reaching millions of kids.
GetSet is delivered through a digital platform – www.london2012.com/getset
Cross curricular resources – themed and free!
GetSet schools have a strong local agenda as well as a national / international one. Big opportunities to work together too – National Sports Week has just ended! Also Musubi in East Midlands where Japanese team will be based.
Language and sport joined together eg handball in Spanish
Greenwich are offering free courses in Spanish, French, Japanese and Chinese – a focus on functional language.
Let’s get cooking around the world – recipes in Spanish, French, Chinese, Hindi, Portuguese – encouraging schools to engage the community and parents in language teaching and learning.
MYLO – Track list – to build a training track for French team
Get Set goes global – recognises that we’re literally just about to welcome the world to UK. In September – Get Set for the Olympic Truce – to promote peace through sport and culture. In November, we’ll be encouraged to choose our Olympic team to support and find out about it. 25th June 2012 World sports day in Sports week.
Resources available from September onwards.
There are rewards and recognition for GetSet network by filling in a short form – access to benefits and a plaque!
Does the legacy of the Olympics revolves around West Ham vs Spurs? No, it’s more to it than that – it’s looking to inspiring young people, capturing hearts and minds, instilling values and inspiring lives.
Really enjoyed this session as it brought together two of my favourite themes – languages and global / intercultural understanding.
I’ve just received notification from the Consejería in London –
I am writing to offer 2 “last minute” grants for Primary school teachers interested in attending a course in Santiago de Compostela University at the end of this month. Everything, but trip, will be paid by our Ministry.The grants will be given to the first 2 applications we receive.
The requirements are that you have level B1 Spanish – that’s intermediate – more details in the attached document.
If you want more details, please contact me via the contact form or contact the Consejería
There isn’t much time left and the Consejería are quite anxious to fill these places!
I’m in a session at the moment led by the wonderful @tecnoteach talking about using QR codes.
So I’ve decided to have a go at using my new knowledge to start a ‘website of the week’ QR code on ¡Vámonos!
Here’s your first one!
If you want to read it, use an app on your mobile device like QuickMark or i-nigma.
Whilst we’re there, we’re looking forward to meeting lots of people, including Miquel who works for the Consorçi de Educacció and who visited school last year.
You may recall that about this time last year I came over all excited about Miquel’s hobby and had a little go at making “human castles” or castells myself. See photos below!
Here’s the post I wrote afterwards and another later in the year. Also on my school website here and here. It’s not something you should try at home as it takes lots of practice, but Miquel is an expert!
He has just sent us some information in English about Castellers. Fascinating – what an awesome sight it must be to see towers of people 10 levels high! I was awestruck by seeing 5 levels!
¡Soy fuerte!
En Miquel
How it should be done!
Not sure I'd trust a random person to hold my child on their shoulders...
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