*This is one of a series of posts about some of my favourite story books for Primary Language Learning*

One of my favourite occupations in Spain or France – and now Switzerland/Germany – is sitting on the floor of bookshops, supermarkets and any other likely looking shop, poring over children’s books. I could – and often do – spend hours searching for gems that I can use in the classroom. I consequently have a large collection of books but many are either out of print or “don’t exist” in searches as I bought them in supermarkets. De quelle couleur est ta culotte (shared earlier this week) is one such out of print book – you can get it but it costs a week’s wages! Two of today’s books belong to another category – they ‘exist’ (obviously as I have copies!) but can’t be found for love nor money! However, I’m still going to share them as the ideas can be used with other books of a similar vein, or with homemade presentations instead of a commercial book.

I found ¿De qué color es Elmo? in a shop in Benalmadena about eight years ago and it instantly became a favourite, particularly with Nursery/Reception. The book poses the question ¿De qué color es Elmo?  and each double page spread offers a suggestion as to his colour on the left hand page with the response on the right hand page indicating that another character is that colour as well as an object in the picture, before finally suggesting the correct colour on the final page!

The book is popular for a number of reasons

It’s repetitive – it’s easy to respond to the question with a loud ¡NO! however old you may be! Or join in with the suggested colour when I pause ¿Es Elmo….? by looking at the colour of the writing!

Sesame Street is always a winner as the characters are so friendly. Many younger learners don’t know the English names for all characters but they do know Elmo! And those that recognise Big Bird are quite happy to accept that he’s called Paco Pico, or that Grover is called Coco!

The pictures are clear and interesting. Once we’re familiar with the book we look for other objects in the pictures that are the colour suggested. For example, the house – la casa – is suggested on this page. Then we turn the page and look in other pictures. And then we start looking around the room for more ideas. Sometimes we play “Traeme algo ….” – this worked really well when the age of my pupils spanned 1 – 3 years as the little ones were happy looking and pointing whilst the older ones needed a bit more challenge! As a follow on activity we might build up a collage of images in the different colours, like mini mood boards with a character at the centre of each. Older learners might label them.

Someone recently said on a forum that they didn’t like little books as not everyone can see them in a class situation and that is true (although it’s a good way of staying warm as everyone squishes up close…) However, there is a very limited supply of big books, particularly in other languages. To get around this problem, I photographed each double page and blew it up to A3 size and laminated it, making my own ‘big book’. If I had had a projector in the room, I’d have simply projected the images from my computer onto it, straight from the photogallery  (the quick answer) or in a presentation (the longer lasting solution!) Lots of classrooms have visualisers now so why not use that to show the book? (Alex shares here how you can use a USB webcam as a  really cheap visualiser!)

As I said, I bought this book years ago along with another called ¿Qué oye Epi?, a lovely story about what Epi (Ernie!) can hear as he sits by his window. Unfortunately that book went missing and I can’t replace it. Fortunately I had ‘blown it up’ into a display so can hopefully find where that is (I’m a bit of a hoarder!) and use it again.

Another book I have that is good for very little ones is Descubre y aprende los colores con Fido. I found this in a discount bookshop in Spain along with Descubre y aprende los números con Fido for 2,95€. I’m sure that there are many equivalent books out there!

Each double page focuses on a colour – verde, azul, rojo, amarillo and marrón (not an obvious choice for me but it works!) – and has a number of things to do.

• three examples of e.g. brown things (adjective after noun isn’t something I’d point out but sometimes a bright spark points it out for me!)
• ‘point to the colour’ on the colour grid
• turn the wheel to find the e.g. brown object
• other labelled items that ‘go with’ the object on the wheel – in this case, things in the garden around Fido’s kennel.

This book works best with small groups of children or as a book for independent learning although you could use a visualiser to share it with a whole class, inviting individuals to point/turn the wheel whilst everyone else watches on the screen.

My final book (for now as I haven’t found them all yet!) on the subject of colour is Harold y el lápiz morado. Harold is a little boy (in a onesie!)  who decides one night, after much thought, to go for a walk in the moonlight. But there’s no moon… so he draws one with his purple crayon. And then he draws the path and the adventure begins as the purple crayon brings Harold’s thoughts to life.

Whilst it has lots of words in it and I wouldn’t necessarily read it all to the class in one go, I love the idea of “taking a line for a walk” (not quite in the same way as Paul Klee!) guided by your imagination! Added to that, it’s very visual as the drawings are clear you can follow what’s happening without understanding every ward. So I’d read it as an experience of listening to a story in Spanish, deciphering meaning from pictures, gestures and tone of voice. And then we might take our own lines for walks to see where they might take us! Perhaps we might even take it in turns to add an image to the story that could then be narrated in Spanish by the teacher (or that convenient native speaker in my class!)

Harold y el lápiz morado is available from Abebooks and Amazon

Taking a break from my favourite books for primary language learning, I thought I’d share some ideas from someone else!

On her blog, The Architect and the Artist, Debbie Palmer has written two posts about Learning Spanish with children’s books.

The first highlights a few series of books that she has found useful –

Froggy books by Jonathan London which are quite long but have good stories

Oso books (Barefoot bilingual series) for basic vocabulary

Dr Seuss – familiar and fun!

Eric Carle – timeless!

All the links are to the US Amazon store so I searched UK sites to see what was available.

There are Froggy books available on Amazon.co.uk; Froggy se viste, La mejor navidad de Froggy, Froggy juega al fútbol although I’m not sure that El Primer beso de Froggy is worth THAT much money!

The Oso series can be found on the Little Linguist site for £5.99 e.g. Oso en la ciudad and  are also available (for a reasonable price!) on Amazon.co.uk

Likewise Eric Carle books can be purchased from Little Linguist e.g. Oso pardo, whilst Un pez dos peces and Huevos verdes.. are only available on Amazon.co.uk.

Then I remembered Abebooks.co.uk which searches all over the place for hard to find books – and sure enough, up popped several of the titles including lots of Froggy books at much better prices (although watch out for shipping costs!)

The second post recommends book thematically e.g. colours, numbers, family, house and home, weather, prepositions.

Debbie lists several books for each category and stars some of her very favourites, some of which I haven’t seen before. She’s linked to where you can pbtain them if you’re in the US so I’ve looked for those and linked to sources for UK buyers.

NB I’ve highlighted books that I’ve read/used in RED; the others, I’m going on Debbie’s recommendations!

	Elefante tiene hipo (out of print but available from Abebooks if you’re willing to pay the postage!)
	Demasiados globos (Abebooks once more!)
	Salí de paseo (Abebooks and Amazon)
	Go away big green monster/ Fuera de aquí horrible monstruo (LittleLinguist and Amazon)
	De la cabeza a los pies (Amazon and Abebooks)
	Ruidos en la casa (Amazon – with Kindle edition!)
	Si yo tuviera un dragón (Amazon, Abebooks)
	Yo tenia un hipopótamo (Abebooks)
	Chumba la cachumba (Abebooks – Amazon only have it at a ridiculous price!)
	Azul el sombrero… (Little Linguist, Abebooks, Amazon)
	Los animales no se visten (Amazon, Abebooks)
	Un recorrido por las estaciones (Abebooks, Amazon)
	Quiero más fideos (Amazon, Abebooks)

So now I have a list of books to investigate to add to my library! I hope that’s helpful to someone – and obviously thanks to Debbie for the ideas!

PS If you’re not in the US or UK, Abebooks does have other “nationalities” of site as does Amazon of course!

*This is one of a series of posts about some of my favourite story books for Primary Language Learning*

When I was in Barcelona a couple of years ago, I found a couple of books by Imapla that I loved, both very simple but also quirky.

Tu ¿cómo estás? is one of them, a large board book about how people are feeling, using ESTAR. Each double page has just three words – name + está + ’emotion’ adjective and a  drawing of the child in question. The quirky drawings  show the emotion but so does the font in which the emotion is written. And the final page asks the question of the reader with a mirror.

I love reading it as a bit of over acting is ‘required’, and learners love joining in. After the first reading, I reread it substituting the names in the book with those of members of the class; as a child is named they get to act the emotion or feeling. On the final page, I ask individuals to respond by choosing an emotion from the story. I model the first person ‘Estoy…’ with my response but don’t necessarily expect it to be used in responses. We might then add more emotion words to give more choice, then make our own versions. We might make a storyboard with 6 boxes, the final being the question. Or a mini book from a single sheet of paper. We might take photographs of learners demonstrating emotions and make a big book with the photographs. Or we might use BookCreator app on the iPad to make an ebook with photographs or drawings, text and embed audio as well.

This book is a great one for linking with PSHE about feelings – many classes have a board on which pupils indicate how they’re feeling at certain times of the day by moving their name to an emoticon, and having read this book, this activity could be done in Spanish too. And another aspect of the book, the use of calligrams (writing the word to show meaning), links well to word processing and ICT, or alternatively art if you do it by hand!  Nervioso might be quite straightforward, but how might you show enfermo or celoso? Would you use colour, shape, texture?

(examples in English from Twinkl)

So, lots of ideas from a very short, simple book!

20/08/13 – I’ve just recalled this Storybird that I wrote that. although not all the feelings go with ESTAR, fits well with this story.

In this Youtube video Imapla shares another of her books – I haven’t found that one in print. Yet! But I’d like to use it as it challenges the colours we normally associate with objects like the sun and the sky and gives colours to things like the wind and holes.

I’ll share the other book tomorrow in my next post.

*This is one of a series of posts about some of my favourite story books for Primary Language Learning*

When I first started teaching Primary languages, I went on a course run by LFEE in Salignac for French teachers (thoroughly recommend it – I worked hard but had the time of my life and rediscovered a love of French that I’d lost when I was made to start from scratch at secondary school.)  During my time there we went on a trip to Souillac and several of us spent a while in a bookshop looking for suitable books to use in our classrooms. And this was the one we all loved.

De quelle couleur est ta culotte? is a lift the flap book that poses the title question to a series of animals.

Each animal has a name that rhymes with its species e.g Lucie le Brebis, Mumu la Tortue and Émile le Crocodile …

and you lift the flap to find the answer:

At the end there’s a big surprise as Armand l’elephant is a little forgetful…

I’ve used this story with EYFS – and younger in fact. They love the animals, recalling their names, and the colour of their pants. And everyone giggles hysterically in mock horror as the surprise is revealed – because we are, of course, surprised every time we read it ;o) I ask questions e.g. Valentine a la culotte rouge ou bleu?   Qui a la culotte rose? De quelle couleur est la culotte de Aimee? offering choices if needed and then we read it again with choral responses as we lift the flaps; sometimes a particularly confident child will want to ask the question too although it’s more usual to just say the name of the animal. When I shared it in Reception, we drew a washing line of pants and coloured them in for the animals. I’d probably make it into a game now, either on the IWB with a race to match the animals and pants, or as a team game with images of the animals and coloured underwear. And I’d also look to make the story our own, perhaps not about pants this time but about another item of clothing: De quelle couleur sont tes chaussettes? perhaps or a teddy bear: De quelle couleur est ton nounours? or even change it a little and ask Comment est ton chapeau? which could be answered with adjectives other than colour.

I used to teach Kindergarten at the (Catholic!) school with children from 18 months to 3 years, and was sharing this book with them when an inspector arrived. My momentary fear that the inspector wouldn’t share my love of the book, and that of the Kindergarten head who had a great sense of humour, was unfounded as she was giggling along with all the children and said she thoroughly enjoyed the French lesson!

I’ve found a sound file of someone reading the story too! De quelle couleur est ta culotte? sound file

*This is one of a series of posts about some of my favourite story books for Primary Language Learning*

Moving to Switzerland added German books to my book case where previously there had only been French and Spanish. Not very many as books are exorbitantly priced  (I mostly borrowed them from the library) but some.

I love books. I am indeed a bookaholic and whilst I am very fond of my technology (and this series will feature ebooks), I’m not sure I’ll ever stop preferring the smell and feel of a ‘proper’ book to swiping an electronic device. So I had to purchase this book –

Esel (Donkey) asks Was hast du denn da?

Affe (Monkey) replies Das ist ein Buch.

Esel has obviously not seen a book before and wonders if it texts, needs wifi or Tweets; Affe patiently replies Nein, das ist ein Buch until he decides that it would be best to let Esel read the book …

I love Das ist ein Buch because I’m Monkey when most people think that I’d be Donkey. I also like the ‘there’s more to life than swiping and tweeting and making noise’ message.

I think this would be a great story to share with a class, certainly the “Das ist ein Buch” refrain would soon be picked up, and the language is quite easy to decipher with clues from the pictures supported by actions from the reader. And it lends itself to adaptations with the scaffold “Kannst du…+ verb?”  with other things that a book might be able to do.

Below is an animated telling of the book and the whole book appears one one sheet here.

httpv://youtu.be/nYl_nyuyn5Y

My second book is Wo ist mein hut

“Mein Hut ist weg. Ich will ihn zurück” says Bär. He patiently asks the other animals if they have seen his hat but noone has until the deer asks a good question that jogs his memory!

I like this book as it is again repetitive with Bär asking each animal “Hast du meinen Hut gesehen?” and thanking them politely when they haven’t “Schon gut. Trotzdem vielen dank” so lends itself well to class reading. It could also be developed into a game where learners hide an object whilst one of the class is outside for them to discover on their return (good question practice) or in small groups with cards, with question Hast du ……… gesehen? and reply Nein, ich habe……. nicht gesehen if they don’t have the card or Ja, es ist hier if they do. You could easily substitute the verb for gestohlen (stolen) gegessen (eaten) versteckt (hidden)and so on.

So that’s two of my favourite German books – others include the Lieselotte series about a mischievous cow, and all the Pixi Bücher that you can buy very cheaply wherever you see the stand below as well as in supermarkets. I’ll post again with my favourite ebooks another time!

As I am virtually housebound (that’s ‘nearly completely’ not  ‘housebound in a virtual world’!) I’m looking for things to occupy my time so decided embark on a blog series. I then concluded that I could kill two birds with one stone by cataloguing my books (especially as I’m being reunited with many of them out of storage!) and blogging about them. And I woke this morning to see that Clare has blogged about her favourite French and Spanish books so it seems that now is a good time to share!

So. over the next few weeks, I’ll share some of my favourite story books and try to share how I use them or might use them in the classroom. It’ll take that long as a)I have lots of books b)some are still in storage.

First post is coming right up after this one!

I’ve blogged about César previously and linked to his Soundcloud – previously Cesar a Chinchila and now renamed Lalalingo.

César emailed me recently to say that he was trying to ‘kickstart’ a new project with his songs that involves animating the songs and making a DVD, and I’m doing my bit to spread the word. If you click on the image below it takes you a video in which he explains the plans for the project. (Afraid I can’t get the iframe to embed here!)

You can also check out the blog for videos songs and worksheets, or Like their Facebook page. They also a Youtube channel singalingua Spanish and on Vimeo they are Lalalingo.

If you want to support financially, that’s great. However, you can support in other ways by sending a message, sharing the idea or using the resources. I’ve embedded one or two of the songs here to give you an idea of what Lalalingo looks like.

httpv://youtu.be/-t03JNus1vI

httpv://youtu.be/lEnuVL7shBY

Via (soon to be defunct) Google Reader, I’ve found details of this conference in June 2013 that may be of interest to those preparing to implement the DfE’s proposals for Primary language learning in 2014.

I’ve inserted the PDF flyer below. It looks like a great event, and I know that anyone attending will learn lots. Intrigued by the Alien family on tour resources! So if you can get to Warrington on 20th June, I recommend you go – and if you do, please report back!

If you teach children aged between 6 and 11, why not encourage them to enter the bSmall Little Linguist competition.

As the bSmall website explains;

We would like you to write and illustrate a short story in a foreign language on any subject you like. We will pick two winners from the entries and publish the winning stories as e-books on our website. Each winner will also receive a b Small library worth £100 for your home or your school.

The story should be no more than four pages and you can use lots of illustrations to help tell your story. You must write your story in one of the following four languages:

– French
– German
– Italian
– Spanish

The website offers two templates for the stories, a comic book and an illustrated story book, and there’s a list of words to help as well.

There are two categories – 6-9 year olds and 9-11 year olds, and you can write a collaborative story with classmates (hence the overlap in age categories) The story can be about anything, and the closing date is June 1st with winners announced on July 1st. Entries can be sent via post or electronically, accompanied by an entry form.

Find out more on the bSmall website and happy story writing!

Thanks to Pinterest I came across the blog Mummy Maestra today, and thought that this post would be well worth sharing for those of you that are back to school in time to make use of the resources mentioned.

Día de los Reyes Magos Lesson plans, Books, Activities mentions a number of books and associated lesson plans which may not be so useful unless you already have the book(s), but the craft activities are great. I particularly like the 3D Reyes Magos and the more challenging Wee Three Kings beanbags! And the link to the website El Boricua has a good account of the whole festival as it happens in Puerto Rico in English; likewise, Rosca de Reyes has details of celebrations around Reyes as well as recipe!

Below are three images linked to websites – the first is to a simple story about Los Reyes (click on the initial image in the post and the story is easier to read!); the second links to an online jigsaw puzzle, and the last to the download of the colour in flag – print one per child and make a garland!

Thanks Mummy Maestra for the ideas!