Category: Uncategorized

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...

CC image by Lauren Manning

This afternoon I’m at Knox House at the Martineau Centre in Birmingham delivering the second showing of the Sound and Vision session I ran last week at Bishop Vesey’s Grammar School.

All materials from the sessions – presentations, examples, helpsheets –  have been saved on my wikispace for easy access.

Hope you enjoyed it if you came, and that you find the resources helpful even if you didn’t!

It’s TeachMeetBrum tonight! Whoopee!

Not too late to come along – or join the online streaming if you’re too far away! Details here!

Below is my presentation – or the things I will talk about as I don’t do ‘slides’ for these things – I thought the idea was that you didn’t have any!

Random stuff we did this week!

1. Stories

We’ve used all sorts of storymaking tools – Storybird, Storyjumper, ZooBurst – but this week we discovered Little Bird Tales which allows you to narrate your story.

Here’s one I made earlier!

2. Postcrossing

Looking outward is something at which schools are becoming increasingly good. At Whitehouse Common we have a Connecting Classrooms project going on with India and a Comenius Reggio project with Barcelona.

One very simple way we’ve made looking to the world a day to day thing is by using Postcrossing, a postcard exchange site. I spoke about it in my talk at #ililc on eTwinning and mentioned how we’ve used GoogleMaps to have a constantly updated and graphic idea of where our cards are going to and coming from, as well as the display we made (below) which we’ve now had to dismantle as there were too many postcards!

3. Polldaddy

Son needed to do a survey for his Maths homework and complained that it was a bit silly setting that as there are only 4 people in our house. So we PollDaddy-ed Twitter! And he wrote the URL in his book so the teacher knew he’d not made it up!

4. International links

As I said our school has many links and here are some clips we’ve used to make Barcelona seem all the more real to our pupils and to provoke discussion.

• Used to inspire work on letters for WorldBookDay using iPod Touches to capture letters in our environment

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYeVU2beaJc

• Used to discuss homes and housing in different countries

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUeFgN9YCMs

• Used to show pupils at our link school learning English

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xbpw3qSyHvw

Following my post last night about Little Bird Tales and the problem with the accents on the title page, I received two comments before I woke this morning – one from Amiee Klem, co-founder of Little Bird Tales saying that they would sort out the accent issue I’d highlighted, and then another a coupel of hours later from her husband Michael telling me the problem was sorted.

THAT is good service for you!

This ‘story’ is a particular favourite.

Called El hecho y la opinión, it’s not really a story but a collaborative exercise in which 2nd grade pupils give a fact (un hecho) and an opinion (una opinión) about a picture in the book.

Good exercise to distinguish between facts and opinions – and an interesting use of the site!

And then there’s this great combination of storytelling, plasticine and history!

• Click to view my story.
• 

Gracias a @rubiales62 for sharing this wonderful storytelling site on Twitter.

Little Bird Tales is a storytelling site which allows you to write, illustrate and narrate stories and then save them to a public gallery or embed them on your own site. Your illustrations can be uploaded from file (so it’s possible to use photos or pictures made elsewhere) or you can use the on site paint box to draw your own. I’ve written a quick example below in which I imported a picture from my iPhoto library and then drawn on top. I found another Spanish story, and a French one,  in the Public Gallery too.
I like the way you can record a voiceover within the site -this adds an extra dimension to it as a storymaking site.

Good news – accents work well in the storybook.
Bad news – for some reason they don’t work on the title page!

 

• Click to view my story.
• 

A really interesting video here from the RSA Animate series on how we use language.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-son3EJTrU

Warning – contains innuendo and (cartoon) nudity!

The third of the tools I may or may not have time to mention at ICT Links into Languages conference in Southampton is DomoAnimate.

Below is an example in French, German and Spanish of how this tool has been used in other languages. Note lack of accents :o(

DomoNation.com: Mes Prochaines Vacances by Alex Olds

Like it? Create your own at DomoNation.com. It’s free and fun!

DomoNation.com: Schule by Sheridaan

Like it? Create your own at DomoNation.com. It’s free and fun!

DomoNation.com: Las Aventuras de Domo:El encuentro con los aliens1 by AlejoCortes

Like it? Create your own at DomoNation.com. It’s free and fun!

Also as part of my presentation at ICT Links into Languages conference I’ll be mentioning ToonDoo so here are a few examples of how it’s been used in MFL.

Mi Vida Loca

Comparisons on Mandarin

In this Spanish story, Charlie and Bon QuiQui go out to lunch.

And some French comic strips on introductions

And a couple of German examples –

Today I’m presenting a session at ICT Links into Languages Conference in Southampton entitled Tell me a story. As part of the session, i’ll be showing delegates how to use Zooburst and have therefore been having a look at some of the books already on the site.
Here are a few examples of how it’s been used in MFL.

A story in French about the consequences of kicking your ball through someone else’s window!

An Italian Zooburst – a recipe!

Another French one here – where are Dracula’s teeth?

A Spanish story about a Prince.

And here’s a variation on the Prince story.

A brilliant Zooburst here packed with information about El reciclaje

And finally, a German ‘story’ of someone’s sporting activities for the week.