Thanks to @AliceAyel on Twitter for flagging up a great post on a blog called Teaching Spanish w/ Comprehensible Input by Cynthia Hitz. The post is entitled Using videos of children’s stories and lo and behold, there was my son’s favourite story as a child, playing to me in Spanish.

Entitled Click Clack Muu, Vacas escritoras (Click Clack moo, Cows that type) the story is set on a farm where the cows get hold of a typewriter and start sending letters to Farmer Brown demanding electric blankets. And then the ducks get involved… Isaac is now 14 and can still recite it verbatim. And so can I! So it’s great to see this post with so many ideas of how you might use it in the classroom. If only I had a class with whom to share it.

httpv://youtu.be/MQS-_5_MP-Q

I found these Resources from PBS  – they’re in English but there are some great ideas that could be translated into Spanish.

Gracias @sonrisadelcampo and thanks Isaac for the memories ;o)

So the Olympics are finally here. The Opening Ceremony is tonight (although the action has already started with football!) so why not have a look at the Spanish page on London2012 and start identifying the Spanish participants in the Games.

Just for fun –

Who are these people?

In which sports do they compete?

And which one of them is carrying the Spanish flag in the opening ceremony?

You can also access information about the team on the Comite Olímpico Español (Spanish Olympic Committee) website.

And if you are (by any chance!) teaching Spanish at the moment, why not check out these resources to help you!

TES Olympics set scroll to Spanish

MFL Sunderland Olympic resources

Linked In project on using Olympics French and Spanish

MFLHampshire wiki has lots of ideas too!

And of course, let’s not forget that Spanish is spoken by many countries other than Spain! Check out Mexico, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Panama, Venezuela and many others!

¡Que comiencen los Juegos!

Not sure how I got to this today – I think the cold in Konstanz has wiped my brain! However, I just had to share this lovely magazine in Spanish for small people, downloadable free from elnuevodia.com All you need is Acrobat Reader and the PDF downloads for you to read it.

The graphics are big, bright and bold, and the topics covered fit well with the primary curriculum – healthy eating, family, the world, animals, festivals and so on. Lots of puzzles and activities, and short pieces of writing make it ideal for using with young learners.

I like the current issue which celebrates the 13th birthday of Mi pequeño día, with lots of lists of 13 things including 13 great inventions, 13 places to visit in Puerto Rico (the country of origin of the magazine) and 13 ecological habits.

I also enjoyed the issue Somos más about the world population reaching 7000000000. It includes some nice activities about people of the world and someone talking about their life.

It seems that you can only access the last 10 issues so might be worth visiting periodically and downloading some for future reference…

Yes, it’s another Barcelona post but nothing to do with football – promise!

Last week when I was in Barcelona on a Comenius Regio visit, my colleague Jane and I hared around numerous sites in the city, collecting resources.

One place we visited was the Zoo de Barcelona. Are all zoos the same, we wondered? Well, no! Whilst there were plenty of animals in common, this was nothing like Twycross (our local zoo) You could get very close to the animals (a little too close we felt in some cases – aren’t hippos and rhinos rather dangerous animals to be kept in enclosures with 2 foot high walls) and the information was in three languages – Catalan, Castillian (Spanish) and English. Hence I pootled around happily snapping signs to the amusement of anyone who saw me, ready for comparison of languages activities, guessing games and reading activities.

I also took plenty of animals pictures to fit into our creative learning journeys – Are you my Mummy?  The Circle of Life. Big teeth. A walk on the wildside. The Blue Planet. And more.  It’s amazing how many links you can come up with when faced with a near empty zoo and armed with a camera and a creative thinking colleague to ‘bounce’ off. We tried to get some footage/ images for Down Under but the kangaroos were uncooperative, lying on their backs in the sun and  refusing to hop.

Anyhow, I’ve been thinking about these ideas and will be collecting the many pictures into folders and writing up some ideas for colleagues as well as giving them the opportunity to think for themselves given the footage and photos. And I had a look at the website to see what I could find.

Like the Zoo, it is tri-lingual and I LOVE IT! At last I’ve found a site in Spanish to rival the French Zoo Palmyre

There’s an interactive map that allows you to click on an animal silhouette and discover photos and information about that animal – scientific classification, habitat, how endangered it is and also a lovely chunk of writing about the animal too. And it’s all available in the three languages – great for Spanish teaching but also good so that the non-specialist who wants to use the Spanish version has a ‘safety net’ ;o)

Then there’s the Espacio Lúdico or recreational area where there are some fun games. One involves solving clues to find out to which animal the pawprints belong. Simple sentences that can be decoded with minimum help and a bit of previous knowledge of animals perhaps! And so easy to use in non discrete language lessons – which had be jumping up and down excitedly!

Other sections caught my attention such as the zoo rules, the history of the zoo and even the map of how to get there and the price list. Some people say I have a one track mind and never switch off from learning mode – I guess I do! And it doesn’t bother me much to be honest! If only there were enough hours in the day to explore all the ideas that come to mind in a place like that!

As we work on our ideas at school, I’ll try to share as many as I can here.

I’ll leave you with Copito de Nieve (Floquet / Snowflake), for many, the (sadly deceased) face of Barcelona Zoo. A powerful image and thought.

Lisibo’s been shopping again.  This time, though, it’s not IKEA that has inspired her but TK Maxx that has come up trumps.

In the sale (!) I found this Very Hungry Caterpillar felt set.

Ideal for –

• telling the story to the class
• getting pupils to follow the story actively by adding / moving/ substituting the felt pieces
• animating – and because it’s a felt board, you can do it horizontally or vertically
• small group work
• independent play

Sad that Year 3 have finished with that story for the year and we’ll have to wait until next September to ry it out with them.  perhaps it’s time I invaded Foundation stage again…

The Hungry Caterpillar is a great story to use with kids as it’s familiar and repetitive.  The vocabulary is simple and everyday – numbers, colours, food – and it looks at healthy eating as well as the life cycle of the caterpillar / butterfly, so very cross curricular!

There are great resources all over the place for this story including

• videos on Youtube – one two three
• a whole series of lessons here
• a page full of ideas here
• a lovely song here – with music file too
• a powerpoint of the story in Spanish
• a PDF of a teaching sequence including cross curricular links
• another PDF with ideas and the pattern for a caterpillar mobile
• some art / craft activities to do with butterflies and caterpillars

And that’s just gleaned from a quick Google search!

A tweet the other day about a visit to IKEA and the purchase of hats and things reminded me that I hadn’t shared my latest purchase from the great Swedish home of fun!

Those who have been reading ¡Vámonos! for a while will know that I am a great fan of IKEA for resources that can be used in teaching languages (and other things too!)

Last time I went I bought a fruit punnet and vegetable basket and this purchase continues on the food theme.

How might I use this IKEA breakfast set?

Well apart from naming the items of food e.g. pan, un huevo frito, salchichas, queso, beicon – if that’s how you spell it now ;o) – etc, you could use this set to work on negative sentences ‘Para desayunar, tomo un huevo frito’ Para desayunar no tomo salchichas.’  Or you could introduce phrases of frequency  e.g. ‘Normalmente, como pan tostado para el desayuno’, ‘A veces desayuno un huevo frito y beicon’, ‘Nunca como tortitas/panqueques’. Opinions would also work.

Alternatively you could use it for some intercultural understanding and comparison of eating habits. What is a typical English breakfast?  What would an American eat for breakfast?  And in Spain? France?  And that allows opinions too!

Think they need to add some yoghurt, cereal and some drinks to the set!

Wonder what I’ll find on my next visit?

On Tuesday I was in sunny (yes, it was sunny!) Manchester, delivering my AQA course.

Apart from the problems with the internet, I believe a good day was had by all – lunch was once more a highlight!

Rather than repeat all the links, can I refer you to my last post where you will find all the ‘new’ links about PLL, and also some recommendations from other delegates of sites and learning materials that they’ve found useful.

I forgot last week to put a link to a resource listing many many games and quick activities for the PLL classroom, so here it is.

I am a great fan of IKEA.

As I have shared before, I find it a goldmine for teaching resources.

On my latest visit, I made a couple of purchases-

1. finger puppets

Great for speaking tasks to encourage reluctant speakers, to encourage imagination and to ‘distract’ from repetitious or disliked activities.  This set add to my already large collection of animals, fairytale characters, sea creatures and other random puppets I’ve gleaned from parties, charity shops and toyboxes!

2. fruit and vegetable punnets

These were my favourite find this time.  Soft fruit – banana, grapes, kiwi, orange, apple and watermelon – and vegetables – leek, carrots, cucumber, mushrooms, garlic, tomatoes and lettuce- in a punnet / basket.

Just the thing for –

• discussing fruit and vegetables
• looking at colour
• talking about healthy eating
• giving opinions – I like / dislike and why
• reenacting stories – Handa’s Surprise, The Hungry Caterpillar – or writing your own

and I’m sure there are more things that could be done with them given more than 10 seconds thought!  If you’ve got any ideas, leave a comment below!