Elmo y Clara cantan sobre la importancia de lavarse las manos.

Following on from my previous post about Elmo, here’s a lovely little video all about washing your hands – very topical!

Here are the lyrics if you wanted to join in!

(spoken) El agua está lista. El jabón está listo. ¡A lavar las manos! ¡Sííí!

Si tu salud quieres ciudar, tus manos tienes que lavar.
Los gérmenes eliminar y el agua siempre conservar.
Frota arriba. Frota abajo.
El jabón para lavar.
Del meñique hasta el pulgar, cada dedo de tus manos.

Después de jugar, antes de comer.
Luego de ir al baño, me lavo las manos x2

The last line of the chorus drove me bonkers as I just couldn’t work it out so I did some research which led to the Sésamo website where there are a multitude of resources including links to further handwashing videos (see the end of the post) and this worksheet in the section LIMPIOS that accompanies the song. It has four pictures for children to colour then cut out and put into the correct sequence to wash their hands.

However, I found no lyrics so I needed to call on some Spanish speaking mates who were equally puzzled. Sin embargo, a bit of detective work by @SpanishSam and @amandasalt and the line ‘Del meñique al pulgar’ was found. As we discussed, el meñique (meaning little finger) isn’t a word that sprang to mind although we’d heard it before.

Amanda found this section of information that suggests playing a handwashing game – give two or more children water and the same amount of soap and see who can produce the most bubbles whilst they sing the alphabet song (or another well known song!)

Sam found it in this really helpful document that accompanies the series, giving lesson ideas. activities and other resources to promote good health. Needs further investigation I feel but in the section related to this song it suggests playing ¿Lavarme o no lavarme? giving a variety of scenarios and ask children to decide if they need to wash their hands or not, and also suggests some cross curricular activities linked to Maths, Science and Food.

If you want to investigate handwashing in greater depth, this 12 minute videos explains why we need to wash our hands and sees Elmo finding out about the science behind handwashing whilst trying to escape from a huge germ that chases him!

There are also links via the Limpios section of Sésamo to other videos on handwashing:
Lavarse las manos antes de comer
Lavado de manos antes de comer (with another song!)
Lavado las manos después de ir al baño
Lavarse las manos después de it al baño

Finally, in these times of Covid-19, Elmo and his friends have been encouraging children to wash their hands for 20 seconds as well as offering advice to parents on how to talk about the virus. More information here
I’ll leave you with a couple of videos. Remember ¡lávate las manos!

As we continue with ‘lockdown learning,’ I’ve made another video for my pupils. This week, I move away from chocolate and rhymes and ask the question ¿De qué color es Elmo?

Years ago on a trip to Spain, I found some Barrio Sésamo books in a random shop and two have become permanent favourites. Unfortunately ¿Qué oye Epi? disappeared many years ago but I still have one of them which is great for practising colours and the question ¿De qué color es?

In my video we meet Epi and Blas, and discover other members of the Barrio Sésamo gang who aren’t the same colour as Elmo in the story. Here it is.

There are lots of Barrio Sésamo videos that you might like to use in the classroom. I particularly like this one in which Elmo and Abby learn with Rosita how to sing ‘Si estás feliz…’

In case you wanted the words:

Si estás feliz, tú puedes aplaudir. (If you’re happy, you can clap)
Si estás feliz, tú puedes aplaudir.
Si en verdad estás contento, tu sonrisa es el reflejo. (If you really are happy, your smile is the reflection)
Si estás feliz, tú puedes aplaudir.

Si estás feliz, golpear con los pies. ((If you’re happy, stamp your feet)
Si estás feliz, golpear con los pies.
Si en verdad estás contento, a tu rostro es el reflejo. (If you really are happy, your face is the reflection)
Si estás feliz, golpear con los pies.

Si estás feliz, tú puedes gritar ‘¡Hurra!’ (If you’re happy, you can shout Hurray!)
Si estás muy feliz, tú puedes gritar ‘¡Hurra!’
Si en verdad estás contento, tu sonrisa es el reflejo. (If you really are happy, your smile is the reflection)
Si estás feliz, tú puedes gritar ‘¡Hurra!’

Si estás feliz, tú puedes aletear. (If you’re happy, you can flap)
Si estás muy feliz, tú puedes aletear.
Si en verdad estás contento, a tu rostro es el reflejo. (If you really are happy, your face is the reflection)
Si estás feliz, tú puedes aletear.

Si estás feliz, tú puedes hacer todo. (If you’re happy, you can do it all)
Si estás muy feliz, tú puedes hacer todo.
Si en verdad estás contento, tu sonrisa es el reflejo. (If you really are happy, your smile is the reflection)
Si estás feliz, tú puedes hacer todo.

Following on from my post last week, here’s another rhyme all about chocolate that I’ve recorded for my pupils. It involves counting and syllables, and a bit of cultural knowledge.

The rhyme goes like this:

Uno dos tres CHO

Uno dos tres CO

Uno dos tres LA

Uno dos tres TE

Bate, bate, chocolate

Bate, bate, chocolate

Actions – count on your fingers for the first 4 lines then rub hands together to mix the hot chocolate with the molinillo. I like this rhyme as it’s simple, has actions and promotes cross curricular and cultural links about chocolate originating as a drink in South America and being brought over to Europe by explorers.

Here’s the video.

And here’s a clip of someone making chocolate caliente – Mexican style.

Next time, I promise the rhyme won’t be about chocolate!

Like many of you, I’ve been trying to keep my Spanish ‘teaching’ going in this time of lockdown and no ‘school school’ by providing activities for them to do at ‘home school’.

Today I was making a ‘hello’ message for one of the schools at which I teach and decided to add a little Spanish activity to it. And then thought I’d share it with the children at my other school. And then thought I’d share it with you in case you think it’s useful.

I’m sure many of you will know the chocolate rhyme; indeed, I’ve mentioned it here before in posts about clapping rhymes (see below). I love the way that you can use other words as well. Mariposa was taught to me by the children at CEP Antonio de Ulloa in Cartagena which led me to think of elefante and caramelo. I’m sure, with more than a couple of minute’s thought I could think of more words too!

Here’s the video! Enjoy!

Here are other posts about chocolate, sweets and clapping rhymes:

¡Chocolate!

Some Spanish clapping rhymes

Sweet inspiration

Yesterday I visited London in my role as a British Council Schools Ambassador to meet up with other ambassadors, reflect on last year and look to the future.

Throughout the day I sketchnoted the sessions, a variety of presentations giving information and sharing of international projects carried out in schools, clusters and organisations. Below are the results; I did tweet as I went along, but decided to retake the photos as they had shadows on them!

It was an interesting and inspiring day, and I hope that the notes give you a taste of the day, and what a wonderful thing international work is!

I’ve written another lesson plan in the latest issue of Teach Primary. This one is based around the book Veo Veo by Antonio Rubio and Oscar Villán.

You may have read my previous post a couple of years ago on the subject. It’s a really simple board book about two ‘media lunas’ or half moons that go for a walk to the park and play I spy. They spy a series of random objects in unexpected combinations. This lesson plan expands on some of the ideas and adds some new ones.

The lesson is downloadable below:

And you can access the accompanying presentation here.

Whilst the examples are in Spanish, there is no reason why you couldn’t adapt and translate them into French, German or any other language. Hope you find it useful!

Other related post:

How to play Veo Veo

This book is amazing! It has flaps, dials, double page factfiles, stories, quizzes, jokes and puzzles, all teaching facts about our planet – Planète Terre. In fact, it’s so amazing that I couldn’t just take photos, I had to make a video!

It’s the kind of book that would go down well on the class bookshelf for children to access in their free reading time. The facts are short and therefore less threatening than in your average non fiction book, allowing learners to concentrate on decoding a few unfamiliar words using their knowledge of cognates and other languages as well as context and of course their existing geographical/scientific knowledge. And although Spanish is the language we learn at my schools, I would still put this on the bookshelf as children like variety, some go to French club and others just enjoy looking at texts in other languages.

If you wanted to guide children’s reading of the book, you could compile a list of words in English that could be written in French by looking in the book (there are many words written in bold that would suit this activity) or perhaps create some sentences with gaps to be completed by reading a certain page, or even pose the six questions below and ask more advanced learners to answer in a sentence or two.

I’m off to find more of these – in Spanish this time!

I love a bargain, and am also a great fan of recycling so I am particularly pleased with a new pile of German children’s books!

Some were purchased via LiPS, one was found in an Oxfam shop in Bath, and the other three were a Christmas gift from my son who is currently studying in Germany and found them in an Oxfam shop there.

So here they are!

This lovely book is all about four legged friends playing Hide and Seek (Verstecken spielen) It has a touchy feely cover and features cute dogs a cat and a rabbit. I like the simplicity and repetition of the text as well as the animal noises. A fun book that would be great to read to FKS/KS1.

Ohren wackeln, Beine zappeln is another cute board book featuring animals. This time it has holes in each page in which you insert your fingers to make the ears (Ohren) or legs (Beine) of the animals. Each page has two lines of text and is written in rhyme – great to read aloud and practice your pronunciation as well as spotting the verbs. And of course, good for finger wiggling!

This a short board book is from the Disney Babies series and is all about baby Goofy going to bed. It’s written in prose and features Pluto as well as Goofy. Very cute!

Two books from the same series here! Kennst du das? – Do you know that?
Each is a word book with bright photographs to illustrate the meanings. They include ‘usual’ words such as Pferd, Hase, Katze, Tiger and Elephant, but also more unusual animals – Streifenhörnchen, Rotfeuerfisch and Wandelnde Blätter and vocabulary – Zange (pliers) Reißverschluss (zip) and Qualle (jellyfish) It also indulges my love of looking at German words, ‘literally translating’ and seeing language links:
Dreirad = three wheels = tricycle
Nacktschnecke = naked snail = slug
Stinktier = smelly animal = skunk
Fledermaus = flying mouse = bat
Nashorn = nose horn = rhino
Flusspferd = river horse = hippo

Finally a board book with sliding windows (Schiebefenster) to learn numbers 1-10. The windows slide to show either the numeral or a number of objects so could be used for numbers and then extended to use the vocabulary pictured, in singular and plural forms. Perhaps older learners could have a look in a dictionary for the words whilst others will begin to recognise the correct item from three after several readings.

I was really surprised to find this book in an Oxfam shop in Bath, and even more surprised when I realised that the buttons still worked! I like reading books based on series that we watch in English as it’s possible to compare names and ket features in the other language. For example, Ryder and Chase have the same names in both languages and the PupPad in German is called the Pfot-o-fon (Paws ‘phone) I’m looking forward to sharing this book with the little ones at school. And I don’t think the enchantment of this book is limited to little ones..

So these are my new German books. What do you think? It’s a bit of a shame that I don’t teach German on a day to day basis but reading them aloud is great fun!
A reminder that there is a catalogue of my (ever growing!) collection of German children’s books here, and there is also a French list and several for Spanish – fiction, nonfiction, rhymes poems and songs, plus an ‘other languages‘ list too!

Yesterday I spent an interesting day in London at the Institute of Education, University College London attending the Festival of Social Science 2019 – Primary Languages Policy in England – Making it happen!

The blurb at the top of the agenda explains the purpose of the day:

Learning a modern or ancient language became a part of the statutory curriculum for England from September 2014. Five years into the new policy, there are still significant challenges in meeting national curriculum requirements, leading to inequity from school to school and region to region.
This event will address key issues affecting the success of primary languages and put 10 recommendations from the recently published RIPL White Paper to the test. Come and join leading practitioners and policy makers in an interactive day where your views will directly feed into a draft implementation strategy to inform the way forward for primary languages in England.
The session will take inspiration from the World Café process, combining short inputs, followed by small round table discussion of key questions, captured by graphic recording/posters, leading to plenary feedback at the end of the session, connecting main findings and agreeing points for action.

Blurb on RIPL programme

Throughout the day we considered six questions that covered the 10 recommendations of the RiPL White Paper. An ‘expert witness’ spoke for five minutes and then we discussed the questions at our tables with someone scribing onto large posters. I was designated scribe for my group that was chaired by Dr Rowena Kasprowicz and included Jenny Carpenter (President of NALA), Yvonne Kennedy (Herts for Learning) and Marnie Seymour (University of Winchester.) After each question, each group’s poster was collected and displayed. Half way through the day, responses to the first three questions were summarised by the ‘question chair’, a member of RiPL.

As well as scribing I tried to sketchnote the day. The five minute ‘opening comments’ are in black for each question, and the summary is presented in the coloured pen.

It was a very interesting day, discussing how primary languages can move forward and what needs to be done for that to happen.
You can read the White Paper in detail below – or read the one page summary!

Also. do check out the RiPL website – it’s full of information and research about Primary language teaching and learning.
I particularly like the One page summaries of longer research papers; a time saver and also gives a taster so you can decide if you want to delve deeper.

The latest edition of Teach Primary magazine has been out for a couple of weeks and features a MFL focus section between pages 140 – 153. There’s an article about the relevance of language learning in Brexit-era Britain, another on a language awareness model of Primary language learning and one from Clare Seccombe on Putting Pen to Paper (writing) in the primary languages classroom as well as a couple of pages of ‘Partner Content’ from Primary Languages Network and Language Angels about why you should use their schemes. Oh, and as you can see above, there’s also an article by me about storytelling! It’s on purple paper (my favourite colour) and I even got a ‘trail’ on the front page!) You can read it above.

I’m going to have to take out a subscription as I have to keep begging copies from friends, and don’t know I’ve been published until someone congratulates me.

My previous content in TeachPrimary:

• La Medicina Maravillosa de Jorge – lesson plan
• Using games to learn colours – lesson plan
• Link music and language with Saint Saens – lesson plan