Yesterday I had the pleasure of speaking as part of the Language Show via Zoom. Slightly dauntingly I was opening the conference thread For Language Teachers so i was conscious of makiing a good impression and setting a precedent for quality!
My talk was similar to the one I delivered at the Talleres de Educacción in June with some additions based on what I’ve done since, focusing on ways that the theme of animals can be used as the vehicle for primary language learning, speciifically in Spanish in my case.
Those that attended live seemed to appreciate the ideas and forgave my fast talking, particularly as time flew by and the last part was a little hurried!
I did promise that I would expland more on the books section so below you will find a list of links to blogposts on books, and also a slide showing several books I recommend followed by some notes on why.
¡Muu Bee Así fue! – love this book as, although it’s a translation, it has the rhythm and rhyme. Also love it because I read rhe English version to my chidlren when they were younger! It’s all about the noises that animals make, although some aren’t quite right…
Un bicho extraño – a lovely book that challenges the way you see things… Good for body parts and descriptions. And the Consejería de Educacción has created activities to accompany it
El pájaro, el mono y la serpiente en la selva – a story told in rebus form – that is, words are replaced by images so it encourages learners to join in.
El pequeño conejo blanco – a story about a rabbit who needs help to evict the goat that is squatting in their house but none of the other animals want to help. Good for empathy and discussing the emotional journey of the characters.
¡Mamá! – a book with very very few words – mostly just a child shouting ¡Mamá! – so great ,for practising intonation and expression, and deducing meaning using picture clues. Numbers 1-10, animals and rooms of the house would be vocuabulary that could be ‘taught’ with the story.
Oso pardo ¿Qué ves? – a classic, along with many other Eric Carle books, due to the repetititve nature of the story. Good for animals and colours (often people change pardo to marrón to link with colours but ti’s good to point out the name of the species of bear is un oso pardo)
La siesta perfecta – if everyone has to wake up on time for an event, who do you leave in charge of ensuring they do? A sloth of course! Will it manage the task? Read and find out!
Cuckoo – a traditional tale from Mexico with ‘crafty’ illiustrations
Tengo alas and Tengo cuatro patas – both very simple, very repetitive board book that lend themselves well to being rewritten and reinvented by learners.
Azul el sombrero, verde el sombrero – another Sandra Boynton book featuring animals, colours and clothing, and a repeated refrain ¡Ay caramba! [see me read it here]
If you signed up for the Language Show, you can watch the replay of my session for the next few months. If you didn’t, you can still sign up and watch all 100+ sessions at your leisure. I’m enjoying working my way through the sessions I picked out in advance, as well as a few I’ve caught along the way!
Over half term I went to Colmar to visit my youngest who is working as a British Council Language Assistant for the year. Whilst there I discovered what a beautiful and interesting place Colmar – and Alsace as a whole – is.
Whilst there, as usual I spent a while in the bookshops and picked out several books as potential purchases before settling on this one for several reasons.
It’s cute!
It’s repetitive.
It’s culturally and linguistically specific to Alsace.
The story is a traditional tale, the basis of which is familiar in many countries including the UK.
It has a moral – working together they succeed in their ‘quest’
It explains what I was eating from the bakery!
Everywhere you go in Colmar you see these two ‘characters’ –une cigogne or Störig, and une fillette avec un schlupfkapp (a little girl with a huge bow in her hair) If you click the words, you can find out more about them.
And when I went to the bakery next to where Jude was staying for our breakfast order, I saw this sign. I already knew that Jude would want one as he has been a great fan of the Grittibänz in Switzerland. However I had no idea that it had it’s own story!
So to the story. It’s one of a series of 5 stories from around France including Le Cheval de Camargue and Le Pêcheur et la sirène de Belle-Île.
The story is recognisable as it follows the same structure as the Gingerbread Man. Maman is baking a ‘mannele’ for her 7 children who eagerly await it coming out of the oven. As soon as Maman opens the oven door, off he shoots crying – “Je suis le mannele et je cours plus vite que vous. Si vous voulez me manger, il faut d’abord m’attraper!”
The children and Maman set off in pursuit and are soon joined by a knitting chicken (une poule en finette que tricote des chaussettes) a cow in slippers (une vache en schlappe) a stork carrying triplets (une cigogne qui apporte des triplés) a cycling granny (une mémé en vélocité) who chase la mannele across the countryside until he nearly runs in front of a train only to be saved by a little girl with a huge bow in her hair, riding a scooter (une fillette en trottinette avec un schlupf sur la tête) who picks him up and prevents him from being turned into une crêpe. In spite of this, le mannele still finds himself eaten as everyone goes back to the house and… Quel délicieux goûter!
The story is fun and I liked the repetition of the Mannele’s cry as well as the list of the pursuers which all contain a rhyme. However, my favourite part was the use of a glossary explaining Alsatian terms/vocabulary:
la mannele – un petit bonhomme de brioche quel’on confectionne traditionnellement à la Saint-Nicolas finette – maillot de corps schlappe – pantouffles (prononcer << chloppeu >>) Nounndabouckelnoramol! – Écriture phonétique, intrduisible un schlupf – Nœud à la alsacienne (prononcer << chloupf >>
I also learned the word une mémé which I don’t recall having met before!
Whilst in Colmar I discovered that they call the little brioche men manala (as Jude said like Malala but with an n!) I can also confirm that they are delicious!
I’m excited to be speaking once more at The Language Show 2025. Held annually, this three day event has latterly been held online and this year comprises nearly 90 sessions.
My session is entitled Animal Magic or Animania. details below.
It’s a bit daunting to be kicking off Friday, and in fact the whole event, in the For Language Teachers thread; however I’ve done it before and know that the number that attend live is always much smallere than those who have signed up and will watch later. In fact, that’s exactly what I do!
At £13.50 for access to the whole three days live and also on playback for about 11 months, a ticket is very good value when there is such a variety of sessions in three threads: *For people who love languages – Talks, tasters, entertainment and insights *For language teachers – CPD for teachers in primary, secondary, HE, FE, adult *For language professionals – Interpreters, translators and those who want to put their languages to work.
You can find out more on the website where you can also buy tickets
Here are some of the sessions I’ve picked out as interesting me. One’s even caught the eye of my [non linguist] husband!
I’m very much looking forward to the Talleres de español at Instituto Español Vicente Cañada Blanch in London. This yearly event organised by the Consejería de Educación en Reino Unido e Irlanda and la Junta de Castilla y León is always well worth attending not simply for the learning but also for the delicious lunch! I’ve attended many times before and always look forward to it.
As you can see, there are streams for secondary and primary contexts as well as general sessions. This year there are several based around the arts – acting, dancing, music, fashion – and I am particularly looking forward to rounding off the day with some Zumba!
My session will be entitled Animania and will take, as the name suggests, animals as a theme and look at how they can be used in the primary classroom. Ideas will include using fiction and non fiction texts as well as music, movement and poetry, and discuss grammar, phonics, progression and motivation along the way.
And if you’d like to get a taste of previous years’ Talleres, there’s an archive here or you can find out my thoughts on previous events in these posts 2022202120162011a2011b
Today was the annual ALL Primary Languages Conference, otherwise known as Acapulco. This year the theme was MAKING A DIFFERENCE. The programme was very varied with sessions on SEND, Transition, Using AI, Supporting non-specialists and much more.
I wasn’t able to join the conference until after 11 so need to catch up on the first two or three sessions but all the ones I attended were packed with practical ideas and thought provoking suggestions, and I was certainly inspired.
I was really pleased to conclude the conference delivering a session entitled Making a Difference – Languages and the International Dimension Anyone who knows me, or has read this website will know that this is an absolute passion of mine and consequently I had a lot to say – too much really for the time! However I did manage to briefly share the international journey of my school, explain WHY I think it’s important to explore and promote the international dimension, give some examples of the activities that you could try and signpost ways to find and make partnerships including a few sources of funding.
I promised that I’d make my slides available (you can access them (slightly reacted) below by clicking on the image) and those who bought a ticket for the event will get access to the recording so you can watch again. If you didn’t, and want to know what I (and others!) said, tickets can stioll be bought until 24th November using this link www.tinyurl.com/confpl24
If you want to find out more, I did a slightly different presentation at Language World last year that you can find here, and of course, you are more than welcome to ask questions in the comments section below or by emailing me. I’m more than happy to help!
Thanks to Russel Tarr for the photograph. What an amazing room!
I was really excited to attend the Practical Pedagogies conference in Köln last week. Having attended the previous iterations in Toulouse (2015 and 2016) and Cologne/Köln (2018) I knew it would be an amazing two days of collaboration and learning.
In my previous post I shared my sketchnotes from the sessions I attended. When i counted them I momentarily couldn’t work out why I only had 9 when there were 8 workshops, a keynote and an endnote until I remembered that I presented and couldn’t sketchnote myself!
My session was entitled A Few of Our Favourite Things and in it I shared as many of the activities as I could squeeze in, drawn from pupil feedback on our language lessons. I teach primary Spanish, so most examples that were language/phase specific refelcted this. However, most ideas were transferable to other languages and phase, perhaps with a little adaptation here and there!
As promised, my presentation can be accessed below by clicking on the photo.
This afternoon I had the great pleasure of presenting at the LEAD KS2 conference via Zoom. Unfortunately I was unable to join for the whole time but I caught the end of the previous session which actually tied in with one of my points, and one about which i’m particularly passionate. If you’re interested in my ideas for European Day of Languages, they’re collated here (or look at the post before this one!)
My presentation was entitled More than words with the subtitle Language learning is about more than learning lists of vocabulary. In it, I discussed my ‘idea of what ‘list of ingredients’ for language learning, particularly in the primary context. After discussing OFSTED’s 3 pillars and 3Is, I moved on to present my 7Cs!
And what are my 7Cs? Context Consolidation Confidence Communication Culture Celebration Connection
What do you think? I wonder if you have any other Cs that you think I’ve missed? I thought of collaboration but then decided that it comes under communication, connection and celebration – plus it spoils my little joke! Let me know in the comments.
If you’re interested in what I said, I actually recorded a back up in case my connection failed which you can see below.
Today I attended the Trent and Tame Language Hub (TTLH) Primary Launch Event and was asked to share some ideas for European Day of Languages.
I’ve posted a few ideas in the past on my website – have a look at using a song or the Omniglot website – but felt it might be useful if I wrote up some of the ideas I shared in one place for those who weren’t there, and for those who were but would like a reminder!
European Day of Languages or EdoL (over recent years the o has been added to avoid misunderstanding!) is celebrated each year on 26th September. It is a Council of Europe initiative and has been running since 2001 and is celebrated across Europe with the aim to promote plurilingualism. Each year there is a focus. This year it is Languages for Peace. You can find out more on the website https://edl.ecml.at/ where there are competitions, resources and opportunities to join with learners across Europe to celebrate our linguistic diversity. This year they include the pronunciation of Irish names and a summary of Words of the Year from various countries. In previous years we’ve used Lara’s Journey and also quests involving the language stickers that are associated with the event.
September 26th isn’t far off the start of the school year so you need to plan ahead, even before you break up for the summer. There are lots of quick ideas that you can use to celebrate that can be the launchpad to bigger/wider initiatives. This is one (the only?) advantage of how soon in the school year it occurs. Below are a few that could create a buzz that can then be built upon.
Expanding on a few of those – you can read about what happened at my school when we each class chose a language in this post from 2008! If you need some help with different languages, the Digital Dialects website is amazing. Also tap into languages known in your school community and ask children, parents and neighbours if they could support you. – when dressing up, rather than ending up with a legion of French onion sellers and sevillanas dancers, why not ask learners to dress in the colours of or as the flag of a country, or in the national dress of that country, or as a famous person from that country. Stereotypes are worth discussing but not reinforcing!
Holding a Bake Off is great fun. We did it a few years ago and I had the pleasure of tasting every one of the more than 50 entries! The brief was to create a bake that either represented a country (flag, colours, in the shape of etc) or that came from another country. As you can see if you watch the compilation videos below, we had some amazing entries and the children really enjoyed it. They do love a competition! It was a shame that we couldn’t let the children eat the cakes due to allergy worries but children took them home (apart from the ones that made it to the staffroom!) It was lovely to see creativity in action but also to celebrate some traditional bakes from Sweden, Germany, Australia, Spain and India.
KS1 entries
KS2 entries
Another idea that worked well and also had a huge impact on the school was around celebrating linguistic identity and the ‘superpowers’ of many of our learners who already know two or more languages before they learn Spanish with us.
We used the Language Profile template on the Multilingualism in schools website and asked chidlren to consider their linguistic identity – whihc languages do they speak, have they experienced, do they feel a connection with or simply like or enjoy learning? Initially it seemed to many that they only wanted to add English but having talked about it with others, all sorts of feelings came to the surface including solidarity with eTwinning project partners, languages related to reading matter, and some interesting thoughts about being bilingual! This was coupled with finding out which languages were spoken by the children and adults in each class, and the creation of a poster for the door. This led to children learning that there weren’t the only speaker of their home language, and also the revelation of some hitherto unknown skills! Both of these activities feed well into Cultural Capital, British values and celebrating our diversity, all very high on the primary curriculum agenda.
Another idea on a similar theme is to hold a Celebration of Languages in which the learners are invited to share. We’ve had several of these, most recently as you can see above on Mother Language Day. Each time we’ve held the event we’ve had a mixture of songs and rhymes, role plays and greetings and even a clapping game this time. Sometimes children share their home language, sometimes a language that they’re learning or that is ‘in the family’ and sometimes learners have learned something specifically for the event. It takes guts to stand in front of your peers and speak, and I am often struck by how often children who are reluctant to speak in class volunteer to share. It’s quite humbling to see how they value these special language opportunities!
Perhaps you want an activity that can be completed over a week, a little at a time, or that can be set as a homework task, or even a competition. The British Council has a Great Languages Challenge that can be downloaded from the Resource section of their website. As you can see from the image above, it’s available in a language non-specific version as well as one for Spanish, French, German, Arabic, Irish, Mandarin and Welsh. You could ask classes to complete it with learners or groups of learners assigned certain tasks, or set levels for the number of tasks completed eg Bronze might be 8-12, Silver more than 13-17 and Gold for 19 or 20 of the 20 tasks. We awarded certificates for all attempts and small prizes like stickers, pencils, rubbers with books for those who had completed the task independently. We also celebrated and shared in assembly including a memorable rendition of Happy Birthday in Yoruba! Activities like this can count towards a British Council International School Award (ISA). You can find out more about how the requirement and how to apply (it’s free!) on the website but feel free to comment or message me if you need support as I’m a British Council Ambassador and have been trhough the process several times, most recently in 2022.
Last year the Global School Alliance held a competition to celebrate EdoL, asking learners to complete the sentence ‘For me, learning a language is…’in any way that they wanted – using art, video, poem or song, writing an essay or creating a poster. Entries were uploaded to the GSA platform so all participating schools could share the results, and an award ceremony was held online to celebrate and congratulate the participants and winners. Some of the entries were amazing, and I was overjoyed that two of my pupils earned a ‘special mention’ in the Primary category for their entries. You can watch the video below – our bit is at 24 minutes! I’m sure that there will be another event in 2024 so keep your eye on https://www.globalschoolalliance.com/ for news. However, there’s nothing to stop you holding your own competition with the same sentence to be completed!
Awards Ceremony – held online to celebrate entries from the UK but also from around the world.
Perhaps you’d like to use EDoL to dip your toe into cross country links. A good way to do that is to explore the Global School Alliance. Once registered you can browse other registered schools, look at project ideas or post your own. It’s an excellent way to find a partner (or more!) for a short exchange – perhaps you could exchange a culture postcard from your schools, or meet online to teach other greetings, or work on a common theme of peace for example. The initial activity might be so successful that you want to take it further but equally it could be that short!
Let’s be honest, school life is busy and it’s not always easy to plan and/or fit in activities that can be done by classes but each year I make sure that we at least hold an assembly that celebrates EDoL. In fact, it’s now on the school calendar so I have little choice! If we’ve held a day or week of activities, we share what we have done and celebrate our learning. I’ve mentioned above our Celebrations of Language but we’ve also had ones that have been done in classes based around books – can you identify the titles of these books and the languages in which they’re written?
Answers are at the bottom!
This year I took inspiration from the British Council resource Let’s Talk about Languages which begins with a song fromThe Little Mermaid in many different languages then has a guessing game based on the (literal) meaning of a variety of words including barbe à papa (Dad’s beard – candyfloss in French) and buwchgochgota (short red cow – ladybird in Welsh) I was inspired to continue on this theme and explore favourite words in English as well as other languages.
I shared some of mine – serendipity (English) and burbuja (Spanish for bubble) because I love the sound of the words, the untranslatable pesado in Spanish and so on. I was helped by a couple of books I have called What a Wonderful Word! and What a Wonderful Phrase! that revealed words like poronkusema which is the distance that a reindeer can walk without needing a wee (a popular revelation!) I asked staff for their favourite words and several shared, and then asked the children for theirs. Some had an immediate idea but I invited anyone who wanted to share their word to write it down and give it to me during the week. Below are some that I collated for an article I wrote about it for Languages Today, published by ALL.
There are many more things you could do to celebrate. I haven’t decided how we will mark EDoL in September yet but perhaps I’ll go back to past post and explore Silbo Gomero, a whistling language that is used on La Gomera. Whatever we do, I’m glad of the prompt to have a think and start planning.
If you have any ideas, feel free to leave them in the comments below.
I’ll leave you with a couple of links to other people who’ve shared ideas and a video that could be used as an introduction to the day. Nattalingo Teaching Ideas (Some lovely ways of making it really cross curricular
And the answers: We’re going on a bear hunt – Greek The Hungry Caterpillar – Punjabi Room on a broom – Italian The Three Billy Goats Gruff – Turkish Mr Tickle – Portuguese
The Young Language Learner Award (YLLA) is an exciting story-writing opportunity aimed at 6-11 year olds. Children are encouraged to send in a story or comic written in a language of their choice, other than a mother tongue. bSmall will provide a template, notes for teachers/ parents/ tutors and a downloadable entry form for entrants to submit the finished story. All entrants have the chance of winning up to 10 books of their choice from the bSmall website.
More details of YLLA will follow as it opens on 15th April 2024. You can sign up on the bSmall site to stay informed, and also look at last year’s three winning stories all on the theme of Celebration to tie in with King Charles’ coronation as well as read a two page review of last year’s competition. You can also read about YLLA 2022 here.
This year the theme is…
TEAM SPIRIT
Image created using AI
Start date: Mon 15 April End date: Mon 10 June Winners will be announced: 24th June
I’ve once more been asked to help judge YLLA and am really looking forward to reading all the entries. So encourage your children to start having a think about the theme and get ready to enter!
After a six year hiatus, Practical Pedagogies returns in 2024. To say I was excited when Russel first floated the idea would be an understatement!
Practical Pedagogies is a conference like no other. Over to Russel Tarr to explain:
Educational conferences can be prohibitively expensive for ordinary teachers, and often focus on abstract theory rather than real-world ways of immediately improving classroom practice. In contrast, “Practical Pedagogies” believes the best training is delivered by practising teachers, sharing effective and creative strategies and resources at an affordable price.
Three successful Practical Pedagogies conferences took place in 2015, 2016 and 2018 at the International School of Toulouse, France and at St. George’s British International School Cologne. At each event, teachers from all over the world delivered upwards of 100 sessions in a vibrant, friendly and enriching event over two days. Lunches, refreshments, and evening gatherings provided social opportunities for carrying on the conversations with old friends and new acquaintances.
After a COVID-imposed hiatus, we hope that the next conference in November 2024, once more in Cologne, will be the biggest and best so far… and delegates will be encouraged to purchase their tickets from March onwards.
Having been at all three previous conferences I immediately signed up to present and am looking forward to talking about A few of our favourite things! Activities for the Primary Languages classroom
You can find out what I thought about and learned from the conference in 2015, 2016 and 2018 by clicking on the dates and reading my reflections accompanied by my sketchnotes (subject of my 2026 presentation!) If you want to know what others think, check out the testimonials here including mine. I stand by my assertion that you can’t leave unchallenged and unchanged! One of the things I particularly value is that, as it is an international conference, you get a wider view of education and a different perspective on familiar topics. I love picking up wisdom from other education systems and curricula as well as debating the current issues facing us all.
This year I’m looking forward to finding out about Using Thinking Maps to enhance instructional experiences for variable learners, learning more about AI (no point burying your head in the sand!) and also catching up with Laura ‘smiley’ Riley-Genton who has had a busy time since I last saw her (getting married, becoming a Mum and changing job!) and attending her session More than just a language:ideas to teach foreign languages to mixed nationalities. I’m also looking forward to catching up with Carol Allen although I unfortunately won’t be able to attend her session as I’m speaking at the same time. You can check out the programme for yourself here.
125 workshops have been confirmed, led by educators from all over the world – including me! – and delegates can pick 8 to attend over the two days. There are a limited number of Early Bird tickets available if you’re quick! It’s worth it as the price rises after that.
I’m also looking forward to visiting Cologne/Köln once more.It’s a wonderful city and this time I can even speak almost passable German! I’d love to see you there. Lisa x
