Category: writing

I had the joy and pleasure of going to France last week for the Practical Pedagogies conference at International School of Toulouse. It’s not every day you get to go on a course that involves a ‘plane journey, and I was wondering about the wisdom of my exploits as I sprinted from one side of Brussels Airport to the other with 20 minutes to make my connecting flight thanks to high winds delaying my incoming flight… I made it, and it was well worth the travel and the late night.

What a conference! Why? Well, there were many reasons!

1. The welcome received at IST was wonderful. The staff went out of their way to help us. For example, I tweeted that I was having plug adaptor woes (mine didn’t have a ‘top hole’ so wouldn’t go in the socket, the one loaned by the hotel wouldn’t work either as my plug wouldn’t go into it…) and within minutes I was presented with a working adaptor and was able to charge my ‘phone (thanks also to Chris Mayoh who seemed to have a case full of adaptors that he was lending out!)
2. The organisation. Never have I been to such a well organised conference. Things ran to schedule, the gaps between sessions meant that you always had time for coffee even if you stayed behind to ask a question at the end of the previous one, and I never felt the vertigo I often feel as I rush from one place to another without breathing.
3. The company. What a great bunch of people! I laughed until I cried at points and enjoyed the friendship offered by those I already knew, those who I’d only previously known online, and those who were completely new acquaintances. Fun and games involving hats, Lycra, yards of beer and bowling alleys spring to mind.
4. Ewan McIntosh. That man has been so pivotal in my thinking and development as a teacher and learner, right from when he was still a language teacher and spoke at Language World at Oxford Uni. He will forever be known in my house as ‘the man who made Mum buy a Nintendo DS’ for which my sons are very grateful. Every time I hear him speak or read his blog he challenges me to think and consider what I do, how I teach and how I can best facilitate learning. And he is also very human and it’s great to talk to him. Loved this description of him:

Two inspirational keynotes (plus a workshop) that were like rich Dundee cakes in content & depth of ideas from @ewanmcintosh at #pracped15

— Andy Day (@Andyphilipday) October 16, 2015

And  5. The variety of sessions was amazing! Covering any subject you could name plus cross curricular ones as well as technology and even ukelele playing. It was very hard to select just 7 (I was told I had to choose my own session) but I did.
To sum it up in a tweet:

Great ideas and lots of collaboration in a lovely location with wonderful people inspiring great thoughts and actions. And fun!! #pracped15

— Lisibo (@lisibo) October 18, 2015

 

  I tried to sketch note all the sessions I attended, only failing twice as I couldn’t draw during the Drama workshop and it was hard during the AIM one as I needed to use my hands to gesture (and I’m also rubbish at drawing hands!) Anyway, I’ve uploaded my notes below.

Ewan McIntosh – opening keynote @ewanmcintosh @notosh

Novel departures – Estelle Ash and Isobel Patrick (IST) @estelleash @isobel_patrick

Boosting language acquisition through a FUN reading program – Patricia Burgaud and Joanne Allcock

Stimulating writing using technology to encourage reluctant readers – Julian Wood @Ideas_Factory

Immersive Learning – Ewan McIntosh @ewanmcintosh @notosh

Practical Straegies for teaching EAL students – Nick Fretwell (IST) @Nick_Fretwell

All in all, an amazing time during which I’ve learned a lot and laughed a lot too. I hope there’s a #PracPed16 – or 17 if Russel needs longer to recover 😉 – already planning what I might offer to present! (This year’s offering is in the next post!)

If you want to find out more, check out Russel Tarr’s reflections on the event, and notes etc are here

PS I think that every good school needs a ‘crime scene’ in the foyer complete with police tape, forensics suit and evidence. Talk about capturing the imagination!

My idea to share at the Show and Tell was based on a post I wrote in August –

El que busca encuentra

The picture I shared is on that post (in two parts) and below I’ve uploaded it as one image. I’ve also shared another couple that don’t have questions.

Mujeres célebres

Grandes científicas

Grandes genios de la informática (arriba)

Grandes personajes de terror (abajo) – perhaps for next Halloween?

Apart from the ideas in the previous blogpost, I was going to suggest that any Where’s Wally?/Où est Charlie?/Wo ist Walter?/¿Dónde está Wally? could be used in a similar way:

1. explain where Wally is using prepositions/positional language.

2. provide descriptions of other characters to be found: could be done as a reading or a listening activity .

3. learners could do the above with a partner, or in small groups

4. learners imagine the life of one of the characters and provide a biography, or put themselves into their shoes and introduce themselves (a little like Janet Lloyd’s ‘In the picture’ activity)

and so on!

(Apologies for taking so long to upload – I’ve suffered severe post -#ililc5 exhaustion this week!)

I love visiting IKEA and wondering around the children’s department as my attention is invariably grabbed by something I think I can use. It’s not often that a  specific lesson is ‘born’ as I browse, however.

Meet Señor Brócoli. Our eyes met and I was inspired!

I saw his pockets and thought of using him like a food triangle , filling his pockets with play food. And a lesson was formed, which was a bonus as I had a lesson observation looming and this was perfect!

I had adapted a presentation by Rachel Hawkes that she had shared on TES Resources previously for use with Year 4 in their unit on healthy eating but felt that it would work well with Year 6’s unit on food as well. The preceding week had been healthy eating week and we had made Wordles and Tagxedos of healthy eating vocabulary (they only had 40 minutes to find the words, type them in and print them so it wasn’t in great depth!) That was the starting point for the lesson.

We then played ‘ping pong’ with food vocabulary, seeing how long they could keep the rally up.

Having gone over pronunciation, pupils used the vocabulary from slide 3 cut into slips to classify vocabulary according to certain criteria using Tesoro o basura sheet; feminine nouns, plural nouns and finally healthy foods were the treasure.

The next step was to consider what healthy means as it’s not easy to decide definitively. That’s where Señor Brócoli came in. Using plastic play food, pupils ‘fed’ him, placing food in his pockets. The pocket into which they placed their food item corresponded to the frequency with which you should eat it – top pockets are smaller and correspond to a veces, the middle pocket to a menudo, and the bottom pocket to todos los días. The pupils all wanted to take part and say the appropriate phrase in Spanish.

They then classified the food in the triangle (slide 7)

I assigned each table a text from slide 8 to read, and encouraged them to ‘magpie’ useful phrases. They compiled lists together and then shared them with other groups.

The final part of the lesson was to write their own short text using slide 10.

If we had had more time, slide 11 was the extension activity with pupils suggesting food to match the definitions.

Pupils really enjoyed the lesson and didn’t want to go to lunch – and that’s very unusual. And it proved to be an outstanding observation too.

Throughout the lesson pupils RAG-ed their work using the fruit scale  – ¿eres un tomate, una naranja o una manzana? That was a hit too; much more appealing than traffic lights!

Señor Brócoli will appear again soon; Year 4 are looking at healthy lifestyles too!

Download the presentation – adapted from Rachel Hawkes’ PPT and with Tesoro o basura from LightBulb Languages La_Comida_sana_y_malsana final

Download lesson plan sano malsano lesson

A journey through seasons by Luiza Vizoli

Having worked on adapting a verse of La Primavera by Antonio Machado last week (see here and here for previous posts about this) , Year 5 were set a new poetic challenge this week.

Whilst I was out of action with my broken ankle, some students from BCU taught my Y5 classes using the QCA SoW unit Las cuatro estaciones as their starting point. They taught about the weather, the months of the year and the seasons, and judging by the recap lesson we had, they were successful in their aim!

This week we reviewed the seasons and thought about how we might write simple poems about them. I suggested we thought of colours as everyone was familiar with at least 5 colours that they could match to a season. I  introduced other adjectives, including reminding them of ones we had used in connection to music (Autumn term) and the planets (Spring term)

I modelled a simple structure, saying we were aiming for something like a Haiku not a sonnet; about half of them understood what I meant!

La primavera es verde y amarilla.

La primavera es bonito y alegre.

Me gusta la primavera.

Having given a sheet with some adjectives on it (including some unsuitable ones for this task like alto and bajo) and access to dictionaries, off they went.

And I was really pleased with some of the results.

Amelia has missed most Spanish lessons since Christmas as she has spent Tuesday afternoons at a local secondary school doing some G&T work.  Today she wrote the poem below in 10 minutes.

And these children impressed too, especially this one from Sam who finds Spanish tricky at times.

They are simple, yes. But they demonstrate to varying extents that they can

• write at varying length, for different purposes and audiences, using the variety of grammatical structure that they have learnt
• broaden their vocabulary and develop their ability to understand new words that are introduced into familiar written material, including through using a dictionary
• write phrases from memory, and adapt these to create new sentences, to express ideas clearly
• describe people, places, things and actions … and in writing       (Languages Programmes of Study: Key Stage 2)

Looking forward to next week when we will continue in this vein and present our poems using technology!

As it’s World Book Day or El Día del Libro in Spanish, I thought I’d share some ‘books’ written by year 5 at WCPS. After a session by Clare Seccombe on Minibooks at #ililc4 and a circular “All about me” mini book I saw on Pinterest, I came up with the idea of making a planet book.

Originally I’d planned on making it with lots of circles and a split pin like the Pinterest example, but my idea developed and I decided to use a paper plate to keep the book stronger and more rigid. The lines around the edge of the plate also made me think of the rays of the Sun so it seemed a perfect idea! I made a prototype, drawing around numerous circular objects to make the different sized planets (vaguely the correct proportions!), colouring the front of the circles and writing sentences in Spanish on the back. I punched a hole in each planet and joined them to the plate using a split pin.  However, I found that whilst the split pin joined all the parts together, it was impossible to read the writing on the backs of the planets. So Mark 2 used a treasury tag as they have a longer ‘stem’. Below are images of my example.

I shared the idea with Year 5 who had spent a few weeks on their planets unit. Unfortunately I was ill the penultimate week of term and they therefore had less time than I’d envisaged to complete their books but below are some pictures of their efforts – made, written (they had practiced some sentences in previous weeks but put them together in this lesson) and constructed in an hour. I’m really pleased with their efforts and how they tried to use vocabulary they knew in new contexts e.g. talking about the Sun which is not a planet, using negatives and looking up words in a dictionary.

Here’s a link to the cheesy song with which I always start the Planets unit! And below that, some links to helpful material on Los Planetas

httpv://youtu.be/qE78tXPYb-Y

My Pinterest board

Quizlet flashcards

LightBulbLanguages resources 

Planetas del Sistema Solar

El sistema solar infantil 

Poemas y adivinanzas sobre los planetas

Discovery Channel – Los Planetas

Progression in reading and writing … and STILL having fun!

Presented by Jan Lewandowski, Bedford Borough Council

Ina  whistle stop tour of reading and writing in KS2, Jan showed that teaching reading and writing need not be onerous, scary or boring, but fun and creative!

Here are my notes – I was too busy drawing, singing and making up stories to write more!

Y3 Nous promenons dans le bois (comptines)

www.jeuchanteenclasse.com/promenons1.swf

Show with words – even if they can’t read the text, it makes links with word and sound.

 Y4 Loup (Olivier Douzou) (story)

There’s an unexpected ending – he’s going to eat a carrot , not the person / rabbit that you might expect.

So much to do with it – the simple language lends itself to repetition, rewriting and easy comprehension.

Looking at the (French cursive, joined up) writing – good or bad?

Use it with a visualiser to overcome size, or make your own big book – Jan has one with a paperbag wolf finishing with upside down wolf with ‘prune’ in stomach (false friend)

Structure Je mets…. /Pongo… can also be used for setting table and talking about what you put down and then what you eat.

Y5 Un petit bonhomme (poem)

‘topics’ – fruit and veg.

Split sentence work

Make articulated veggie/fruit people – talk through process in French / Spanish.

Then link to Arcimboldo – part of the existing art curriculum so great for embedding

http://www.wga.hu/art/a/arcimbol/vertemnu.jpg

http://www.artsology.com/gfx/Arcimboldo/my_arcimboldo.jpg

Y6 Qui était Arcimboldo? (short text)

Looking at highlighted words – why? Some cognates, some links to ‘our’ language, some near cognates.

Jan finished with showing us some ‘sous-main’ or learning mats that she’d found from French schools to support recollection of language. A great idea. I’ll now be looking for some in Spanish!

Not one for Primary language learners perhaps, but nonetheless a find, I think!

Videos are available in English, Spanish, French, German, Italian and Dutch, and are rated easy medium and hard. You can then choose easy medium or hard tasks. Having said that, I chose easy and an easy task – and it was quite tricky as you have to type as you hear. I think if I listened to the song first I might have had a better chance. There is help – you can rewind the last line with the back space and use the tab to skip words you really can’t get! At the end you’re given a score based on how many words you successfully filled in and the time it took you in comparison to the actual length of the song. This is how I got on with Himno de la corazon