Technology in Modern Foreign Languages – A practitioner’s perspective is a post by José Picardo in which he announces the online publication of a series of blog posts that originally appeared on his blog Box of Tricks over December/January, written by a wide variety of language practitioners about their experiences of and advice for using technology in the MFL classroom.
If you didn’t read the original posts, they’re well worth a read (even the one I wrote!) – and now they’re downloadable in one go.
At the ELL Local Support Group (LSG) last week, we were talking about short activities that needed minimal preparation and could be used for the ‘little and often’ model.
One of the activities discussed was I spy…
In Spanish there is a lovely little rhyme that goes with the game – check out the East Riding sitefor sound files, instructions and words. A good game for playing with kids who have a wider vocabulary, but also for discrete groups of words eg food, sports, colours. You could change it to ‘tengo tengo’ (I have..) and play with items in a bag even.
Veo veo I see, I see,
¿Qué ves? What do you see?
Una cosita. A thing
Y ¿qué cosita es? And what thing is it?
Empieza con la ……. It begins with ………
¿Qué será? ¿Qué será? ¿Qué será? What can it be? (x 3)
I also came across this catchy sung version of the rhyme – here I’ve chosen the kiddies version rather than the tropical island and bikinis! Lyrics below.
Veo veo ¿qué ves? una cosita ¿y qué cosita es?
empieza con la “A”, ¿qué será?, ¿qué será?, ¿qué será?, alefante
no no no eso no no no eso no no no es así
con la “A” se escribe amor, con la a se escribe adiós
la alegría del amigo y un montón de cosas más
Veo veo ¿qué ves? una cosita ¿y qué cosita es?
empieza con la “E”, ¿qué seré?, ¿qué seré?, ¿qué seré?, eyuntamiento
no no no eso no no no eso no no no es así
con la “E” de la emoción estudiamos la expresíon
y entonando esta canción encontramos la verdad
Veo veo ¿qué ves? una cosita ¿y qué cosita es?
empieza con la “I”, ¿qué serí?, ¿qué serí?, ¿qué serí? invidia
no no no eso no no no eso no no no es así
con la “I” nuestra ilusión va intentando imaginar
cuan insolita inquietud una infancia sin maldad
Veo veo ¿qué ves? una cosita ¿y qué cosita es?
empieza con la “O”, ¿qué seró?, ¿qué seró?, ¿qué seró? oscuela
no no no eso no no no eso no no no es así
no no no eso no no no eso no no no es la hora del final
Veo veo ¿qué ves? una cosita ¿y qué cosita es?
empieza con la “F”, ¿qué seraf?, ¿qué seraf?, ¿qué seraf?, final
And there’s a link to the Universidad de Illinois ‘Los árboles son fabulosos…aprende más con Pedro‘ Pedro is an acorn who teaches you all about trees. A great resource for CLIL lessons interesting science and Spanish.
‘Las árboles’ is a mini-tema on the site which means it has numerous actvities linked to it. However, there is a wealth of other activities on the site including
downloadable sheets for every letter of the alphabet;
animals from various habitats; songs and rhymes;
animated stories;
activities for special days such as San Valentín and also cultural events.
Particularly catching my eye were the resources linked to the Winter Olympics – very topical! There are colouring pictures and posters for all the events at the Juegos Olímpicos – that would’ve saved me trying to act out luging on a tray!!
A site well worth checking out if you teach Spanish, or even if you want to introduce a little bit into FS/KS1 through colouring activities or stories.
It’s a long time since WCPS Spanish was updated – very remiss! However, we’ve been recording all sorts of things, and i’ve finally got around to podcasting some of the soundfiles this evening, having downloaded 140 files from our Easispeaks – and there are still two Easispeaks ‘AWOL’ ;o)
So, check out Year 4 talking about their freetime, Year 5 speaking about the planets in Spanish – our first tentative steps towards CLIL – and Year 6 talking about their town.
Today is Shrove Tuesday – I’ll be making pancakes very soon for my hungry ‘bichos’. However, in Spain and other Hispanic countries, they celebrate differently – as we found out at WCPS during our eTwinning project.
This time of year in Spain sees ‘carnavales’ . Coming from ‘carne’ = meat and ‘valle’ = farewell, festivities mark the start of Lent with parades and dressing up. The event was banned under Franco’s rule and recovered once democracy was established in 1981.
Check out this guide for more information and to find out about celebrations in different places around Spain.
I’m Secretary and ‘web guru’ of the ALL Spanish Committee and would like to bring your attention to the following event that’s fast approaching.
¡Vida Latina! will be held at Aston University, easily accessible by road and public transport, and will be a day of celebrating all things Hispanic.
As you can see from the flyer, there are a variety of sessions covering travel, dance, literature and teaching ideas. Guaranteed to be a good day with things to entertain and also make you think.
However, it’s a very long time to have neglected to blog my thoughts. I have been exceptionally busy since then – excuses excuse! – so much so that I’ve been struggling to keep up with life let alone blogging.
However, I was reminded that there is a clip of me doing what comes naturally – talking! Leon Cych asked me if I’d record a minute of my impressions of BETT – well, it’s a bit longer than that! Excuse me if it rambles a bit – I was very tired and had an excruciatingly sore back!
I think what I said having only been at BETT for 2 hours was still true after a day and a half. What makes and made BETT special for me is meeting people and sharing ideas. I did see a brilliant weather making green screen thing on the Kudlian stand – Jo Rhys-Jones and I got rather excited about the prospect of using it in language learning – Chris Fuller disowned us at that point!! And I had a marvellous time on the 2Simple stand – their products are brilliant (please could they make them Mac compatible though ;o)) But mostly it was TMTakeover, Teachmeet and meeting up with random people that made my BETT.
There are lots of other OSS videos with Dawn Hallybone, Zoe Ross, David Noble too. Check them out on the OpenSourceSchools channel on Youtube.
