“Watch this beautifully animated, and heart felt, short film about a little girl who visits the land of the dead, where she learns the true meaning of the Mexican holiday, Dia de los Muertos (sic).” Student Academy Award Gold Medal winner, 2013!!

httpv://youtu.be/jCQnUuq-TEE

You can download the colour by numbers ‘calavera’  below (completed version on right) from this post on Spanish Playground  There are also links to a number of online ‘rompecabezas’ related to the festival – you have to move the pieces to make the complete picture.

Other helpful links
How to build a Día de Muertos altar (photos)

National Geographic talks about the festival in images and simple captions

Here are some images to colour

How to make sugar skulls

And this website has lots of information and activities for Día de Muertos including how to make sugar skulls (calaveras)

One of the Links into Languages Linked UP projects took Día de Muertos as its theme – the resources are brilliant but you’d need to start several weeks prior to the event to cover it all!

And finally, AZCentral has this PDF of resources that is freely downloadable.

A bonus post today as I’ve just had this great infographic brought to my attention by @HodderMFL and @jacksfeed

I like how the names of the present deliverer from around the world are written on the map as well as information about certain countries.

Click on the map and you can zoom in!

Thanks to Jen Turner for telling me about this fun site on which you can make a jigsaw puzzle of any image, specifiying the number and shape of pieces as well as difficulty.
To demonstrate, I’ve made a couple that could be used for Spanish cultural awareness.

20 Roscón de Reyes

30 Sardana

Zachary Jones’ site Zambombazo is a great source of inspiration for all things Hispanic.

And I love it because it proves time and again that there is always something to learn about a language you thought you knew quite well.

I’m often challenged by pupils when I can’t recall the word for ‘meerkat’ or ‘spark plug’ that ‘you’re supposed to know Spanish’ to which I reply I don’t know every word in English. Especially when it comes to colloquial useage. I mean, my son tells me that when he says soemthing is ‘sickage’, that’s great. I’m not so sure…

So, I particularly like this map that Zachary has made – ¿Cómo se dice ‘cool’ en español?

As he points out in his post, the answer to that question depends on lots of factors including the country or even region you’re in, your socioeconomic status as well as your age. The post also offers ideas on how you might use the map to increase vocabulary, to encourage intercultural discussion and to promote discussion of current linguistic useage.

One of the aspects of our Comenius Regio project that I have particularly enjoyed and that has given me great pleasure is the change in perceptions about being ‘foreign’ and by extension different.

Although pupils at WCPS are bright, and have had some contact with children in Spain previously, many still thought that every town in Spain was near a beach, that it was always hot, and that everyone steak and chips whilst speaking English. Their idea of a Spanish person was a lady with dark hair wearing a sevillanas dress or Lionel Messi (who isn’t Spanish!)

As one of the strands of the project was Intercultural Understanding, challenging and changing these perceptions has been key to the success of the project.

As pupils have met teachers from Barcelona in person, and children from Els Pins via Skype, and asked them questions, many things have dawned on them – for example,we all wear similar clothes, our food isn’t so different although we eat at different times and that we have many interests in common like sport and the environment. It’s also been noted that, whilst they do speak English quite well, people in Spain speak Spanish , but people in Barcelona also speak Catalan.

Now that we’re more aware about Spain- and India through Connecting Classrooms, being ‘different’ has become cool and there are several pupils who would never have ‘owned up’ to having another first language who are now wanting to share.

There’s always further to go of course and whilst this infographic is deliberately provocative, how many of the ‘perceptions’ can be identified as not just being held by Americans?

If we were to draw a similar map based on our perceptions, what would it look like?

Might be interesting to ask learners what they know and think, and then set about challenging the accuracy of their perceptions.

 

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August 1st is Swiss National Day and across Switzerland people are celebrating with parades, parties and fireworks.

A couple of years ago, we arrived in Interlaken just as the parades began meaning we were stuck at the station for a couple of hours (we weren’t that bothered!) (see Animoto above!)

And 19 years ago I first conversed with a certain John Stevens as we watched the men of Oberwald in the Swiss Valais ‘ga-donging’ huge bells hung around their waists as they paraded down the street. A twisted ankle, a trip to Interlaken, a broken down bus and a swimming pool- the rest is history.

However, there’s another reason why I highight Swiss National Day this year.

Tomorrow marks the real start of an adventure which is very exciting but also rather scary!

You see, I’m moving to Switzerland. Tomorrow, my husband goes to start his new job (the reason for the move) and I’ll follow with the boys later in the year once school, housing etc are sorted. We’ll be living near Zürich so I’ve started learning German (you may have noticed if you follow me on Twitter!)

So next year, watch out for the picture of me ‘ga-donging’ and blowing my alpine horn with the best of them!

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.

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*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.

www.annaturney.com 

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.

The second video I’d like to share –

A story about a girl called Maria finding some lines on the ground at the base of a mountain in Peru opens up the possibility of looking at the history of a Spanish speaking country, the culture and heritage, and the art of that area. Here’s some background information that might help!

I think it’s be a brilliant way of integrating lots of different areas of the curriculum – what about making your own Nazca lines on the school field?

Nazca lines

Nazca Lines and Cahuachi culture

Nazca lines facts

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PMPsqBAMfw]

My two minute presentation is about Postcrossing. I have mentioned it before but it’s worth mentioning again as it’s always so popular when I do!

In its simplest terms, you “send a postcard and receive a postcard back from a random person somewhere in the world!”

Really easy! Writing a postcard is a short focussed activity that can be done anytime there’s a spare five minutes – even the most reluctant writer can manage a few lines. Pop it in the postbox and off it goes. Then you wait – and you receive a postcard from somewhere in the world! It’s a surprise!

We made an actual display of all the postcards with pins on a world map – but as we have 3 buildings at our school this was a bit ‘exclusive’ so we made a virtual map too on Google Maps.

And the postcards themselves are artefacts that we have used for all sorts of activities to enhance international awareness and ICU. One example is year 6 making fact files based on the cards with famous people from tht country, language, music and so on, plus an impression.

And I LOVE the motto!