Languages ,Literacy , Joined up thinking -making primary languages special!

I do love joined up thinking!
As you may already know we have a network of 110 schools, all loosely working aournd a shared SOW or atleast able to dip in and use resources as they fit best with the individual school curriculum and language learners.

Should you want to know more about JLN membership here is a link
Membership of Janet Lloyd Network (full or local) 

Below is an example of how working as part of team and a network plus sharing information that we learn from others is benefitting our young language learners!

In Year 4 we introduce our learners to the extra terrestrial family - our aliens .Everyone loves the aliens and most of our network members will introduce and use the resources with their classes at sometime in their teaching and learning! 
It is very miuch a case of  team work between four primary language teaching practitioners!
Ana Garcia draws the family,I create the simple stories and activities around the family and then Emilie ,Barbara and Ana provide the accurate French,Spanish and German language and authenticity! 

Thanks to Little Red Languages Company we are now creating several animated stories in French and Spanish to share with our network members and the schools participating in the DFE Language Learning for Everyone  programme too. 

This project though is very much Janet Wallbank's (one of our associate language teachers and the class teacher and children from Parish CE in St Helens!

• I visited the school to observe Janet W.She was introducing the alien family.
• I  happened to explain to the children that the grandma and grandad alien had been created by Barrowhall CP School in Warrington ,the year before! They were fascinated by the fact the children at Barrowhall  had added to the story ppt and began to suggest their own additional characters.
• Janet W and the class teacher decided it would be a good idea to ask the children to create their own drawings of new family members,The class selected  an uncle, an aunt and the pets: an alien dog and an alien cat ! 
• As the family alien focus in  Spring 1  leads to describing the physical features of monsters and aliens in Spring 2, describing the new characters fitted in really well too!  
• First of all though the characters drawings had to be judged and who better to judge the characters than the artist and the alien stories' author (Ana and myself!) 
• Here is the winning picture of the Aunt alien....

• .....and here is the winning picture of the Uncle alien

•  With a "special congratulations letter" from the author and the artist, the winners were revealed to the class and all the class received mini easter eggs for their efforts!
• Janet W and the class had real purpose to learning -how to make physical descriptions of people  because the children needed to be able to do this to complete own JLN story ppt - about their characters! They added names too.Below is  "Asteroide " the dog.

• Last week Janet W shared  the finished ppt with us and then thanks to a tweet by @valleseco Janet W was inspired to create a Youpublisher PDF Flipbook of the story! Hey presto ! We have magic! We have a page turning book ...... and now we can share the book with our other network member schools and  hopefully inspire them too!  

La famille extra terrestre Parish CE

Keeping a creative spoken record of progress in primary languages

It is so important to keep our tracking of progress "primary" and creative and the teachers who work with me in our network are doing just that! How are we finding ways to track our progress in the spoken language?

Last year Emilie @EWoodruffe took up my challenge to her to try out some APPS with our young learners.

With the wonderful Sylvie Bartlett Rawlings from Kent she set up a spoken class to class swap of family raps.
They used Autorap .
You can listen in here to two of her year 4 children describing the family and facial descriptions.
Emilie heard the children read out loud their written texts before they were recorded and so was able to track pronunciation and intonation etcetra. 

family rap 

She then went on to try out Yakit for Kids with her own take on a fashion show.Simple, effective and we realised that we had a way of capturing children's spoken language and use of grammar ( adjectives after nouns etc)

fashion show yakit for kids clip

fashion show yakit for kids

You can find out more  about all these ideas here in Emilie's presentation  at our JLN annual conference 2013.

Using technology to advance creative learning in our network schools 

Recently we have received from one of network school teachers - Lynsey McHugh, clips  of her children performing their creative Puppetpals dialogues based on personal information conversation.Here she can keep evidence and a track of how well the children are engaging in conversation. You can ee more of Lynsey's Puppetpals clips on our Facebook page  Janet Lloyd Network Facebook

And recently we have realised how easy it is to track progress through songs.We have run a carnival song competition which has allowed our Year 3 beginner learners the chance to show off their pronunciation and intonation.

This year.2015, we have used Yakit for Kids to record and keep evidence of use of simple sentences - noun,verb,adjectives with Year 4 designing monsters,thanks to Ana by the way!

And to once again thanks to Ana and her year 5 children we have a record of our children in 2015 ,talking about clothes they have designed - using adjectival agreement and placement  

Any Word X Word APP and bilingual dictionary practise

I have recently tried out Alan Peat's Any Word XWord  APPs in French,Spanish and German.It exists in other languages too.

I found that it was  really simple and easy to use and a game that could be played in pairs, tables or individually by all stages of language learner.

What I like, is the immediate freedom and challenge it gives a young primary beginner language learner.The learner has to think for his/herself and for example think of three letter target language words they may know and try to fit them in to their own puzzle.If the learner forgets the accents the game prompts you - as the word isn't accepted until correct.You can play against other children too - to add competition.There is an option to keep a record too.

As always I think we could take it further...... and make it a useful learning tool when exploring  how to use bilingual dictionaries.

Here are my ideas ......

The APP could allow us to investigate bilingual dictionaries.....

1. Game One: Working in pairs ,Partner A says the word he/she wants to write and Partner B has to find the word in the bilingual dictionary (even if the meaning is already known) .Both partners need to check spelling before Partner A is  allowed  to write it down on the APP crossword board.They then  swap roles and move on to find the next word that will fit on the crossword board.
2.  Game Two: Working with a partner- Partner A locates a word in the bilingual dictionary and writes it on a mini whiteboard.Partner B must try to apply sound -spelling knowledge to say the word and try also to remember or work out its possible meaning.The meaning needs to be checked in the dictionary before the work can be added to the puzzle.The children then swap roles.
3. Game Three:Working in pairs , Partner A locates a word in the bilingual dictionary and Partner B must find out something grammatical about this word- is it a verb (is it a reflexive verb?) /noun/ adjectives.Is it masculine/ feminine or neuter? Now Partner B can add the word to the puzzle.
4. Game Four: Two pairs working together, can both pairs complete a simple level one board and then share the board with the other pair.The second pair must look up the words in the bilingual dictionary and write them out on rough paper with grammatical information included e.g noun, masculine , feminine , neuter etc , adjective, noun.The second pair must now try to write complete sentences that contain some of the words.This could be a sequence of sentences or one sentences using several of the words.

Alice in Wonderland and describing people in speaking and writing

What a gift these new commemorative stamps are to celebrate 150 years since Lewis Carroll told his first story about Alice in Wonderland!

In the new DfE POS we are asked at KS2 to offer children the opportunity to:

"speak in full sentences"

"ask and answer questions"

"engage in conversations"

"describe people in speaking and writing ""

The article on CBBC news about the stamps is clear and child friendly with brilliant pictures of the stamps.Click here!

Here is a perfect way to engage our young learners in speaking,writing and creating descriptions... and as I write I am about 7 miles from Daresbury ,where the village celebrates its connections to Lewis Carroll. Indeed there is a strained glass window to celebrate Alice in wonderland in the church and our local town Warrington has a stone table statue celebrating "The Mad Hatter's tea party"  

Thanks to Ana and Emilie here are some of the main characters' names in French and Spanish

French:

Alice - Alice

Madhatter- le chapelier fou

Cheshire cat- le chat du Cheshire

The white rabbit - le lapin blanc

Spanish:

Alice- Alice

Madhatter- El sombrero loco

Cheshire Cat -- el gato de Cheshire

The white rabbit- el conejo blanco

  

So first of all let's have a tea party! 

Of  course we could act out what we see and hold a simple food, cafe or at table conversation.  

We can use all the language we have practised based on foods, likes, dislikes and if you follow our SOW table language from Year 6 to animate this picture of the table with speech bubbles and to create the perfect menu too.....  

Now let's create our own stained glass window

Let's investigate the series of stained glass windows in Daresbury church with characters from Alice in Wonderland.Take a look at the stained glass window here.

• Let's change the speech bubbles and add our own questions and answers between the characters - as simple as necessary of course ( ranging from greetings,farewells, feelings, likes, dislikes, the time etc)  
• Let's make it a piece opf Art with tissue [paper and clear glue and add our speech bubbles and writing
• Let's bring the pictures to life by importing the pictures in to APPs such as Tiny Tap  and adding a recording of the children's voices as sound patches over the  the speech bubbles in character.Can they say the words in character too?

Let's explore the characters!

Show them the film trailers in the target language! (Alice et les pays des Merveilles is French version and Alice en el pais de Maravillas is the Spanish version and the German version is Alice im Wunderland)

Show them the stamps and the images

A simple description:

Ask the children who are moving on learners (Year 4 /Year 5) to use bi-lingual dictionaries to write two simple sentences using the verb to be and two simple sentences using the verb to have about a character.We could record our spoken language on Yakit for kids. Here is an example......

Alice est jolie

Alice est petite

Alice a les cheveux blondes

Alice a les yeux bleus

Adding challenge to the description

Let's see if the more advanced young learners (Year 5/6) can complete some present tense sentence descriptions about the characters and add at least one independently written sentence of their own.Here is an example :

le lapin blanc est..............

le lapin blanc porte..........

Le lapin blanc n'aime pas .........

.......................................

Now let's bring the characters to life with animation using Funny Movie Maker where you import your picture of the character and add spoken words (so the children's description).There is an android version of this too.

And let's keep a written  record of the descriptions 

• as posters in a class book of Alice in Wonderland or 
• as our own commemorative A4 stamps with a picture of the character and the words and sentences around the character that the children have written in the target language.
• as PicCollage posters with imported additional pictures of the book in the target language from the web!

APPs and links between KS2 and KS3: first achievable steps

I am not an expert with IT and would never suggest that I was, but I do love my ipad and the fun you can have with all sorts of APPs to use in language learning! So yesterday was exciting CPD opportunity for myself as well as others because yesterday Joe Dale visited us here in Warrington for a twilight linked to our DfE project Language Learning for everyone

We had 55 teachers in the room ,six high schools were represented plus we had primary WSTA SCITT students too.
There were teachers from St Helens,Halton,Knowsley,Warrington.Wigan ,St Helens and Cheshire who ranged from novices and beginners with ipads to more experienced ipad and APP users.It was fast and furious but there was plenty of food for thought and ideas, plus I think every teacher went away with next steps to try out in the world of APPs!

Words such as AfL ,understanding of prior learning, shared learning,continuity,transition activities again spring to mind!

I have had an ipad for a year now and love it.I enjoy looking at the ways we can use the APPs often recommended on Twitter to create learning opportunities for the language learning primary school children we work with.
We have had great success with Yakit , Pic Collage and Sock Puppets plus colleagues have tried out Tellagami and Zondle. We also love a programme from www.smule.com (Autorap) to record children and create raps of their simple recordings.

This Christmas we are using Twinkle Twinkle Little Star with both Yakit for Kids with younger children and Autorap with the older children  Most of my colleagues have to work with one Ipad in class their own and a VGA cable to connect to the main system and share via the screen in their classrooms. 

One of the main intentions of the CPD twilight was to bring primary and secondary teachers together at the same training event to meet and to consider links through technology between KS2 and KS3. 
So now I am putting on my KS3 hat and looking at the possible links between the APPs Joe shared with us and how we can create purposeful learning opportunities between Y6 and and KS3. Thanks to Joe for the answers to my questions during CPD about possible ways to do this.......

Google Drive 
Setting up a shared folder on Google Drive between KS2 and KS3 language teaching colleagues seems to me the first step! 
Teachers can see what children are doing and share good practice plus shared activities can be accessed from these folders.These can be across all 4 skills and look at grammar too! Words such as AfL,quality assurance, support,creativity, continuity , transition activities spring to mind!

 Yakit for Kids 
Joe showed us how to create the characters and then add voice recordings with this APP.I asked Joe if one person could create the characters and then if this was shared in Google Drive could another person add the voice recordings and I was delighted to hear the answer was yes!  Well there is potential here for a Year 6 challenge . 

• One Yakit for Kids clip with characters  (it takes about 5 minutes maximum to source and make) 
• Shared on Google Drive by a KS3 teacher,downloaded by the KS2 Y6 teacher for the Y6 children to add the voice recordings .
• What do they think the characters are saying? 
• I can see this being a termly challenge based on a theme or focus that is pertinent to Y7 term 1- revisiting personal information, talking about objects and describing them etc.
• There is limited time of 15 seconds but then Joe showed us a clever technique to stitch Yakit clips together so children who can or want to  say more can stitch together the identical clips but with continued question and answer dialogues! Words such as AfL ,understanding of prior learning, shared learning,continuity ,transition activities again spring to mind!

I-nigma
Ever since I found out about QRs I have really liked them. I can see links between drama, music and QRs and performance ! In a primary language learning context I have suggested using QRs on display to share good language work with parents and carers or sending QRs home to parents to see the work they have done. 
A teacher  in the audience did ask the question yesterday about what happens if parents don't have the correct equipment to read the QR and Joe does know a way to do this but maybe you need to ask him this....
And yesterday I realised once again what an easy way this would be to:

•  set up question and answer treasure hunts for Y6 children 
• created by either language assistants in high school or older pupils.
• Simply create a set of recordings (either visual and spoken or just spoken), 
• load on Google Drive in a "treasure hunt" folder and share with Y6 teachers.
• Can the Y6 children piece the  QRs together so that they make sense and flow as one piece of information text or dialogue.......  Words such as AfL ,understanding of prior learning, shared learning,continuity ,transition activities again spring to mind! 

Book Creator
I have tried out Book Creator as a class activity with one class at KS2. I would say that the children are more adept than myself at using this and enjoyed showing me how to add, insert , put in sound clips.
Joe showed us how to add sound clips though that become transparent icons on the pictures and again it occurred to me that this could be a Y7 - Y6 activity:

• Simply take photos of objects in a Y7 classroom and school.
• Ask your Y7 to record a description of some of the items in the pictures
• Conceal the sound files and then pop in to a book creator  template.
• Share via Google Drive with Y6 teachers and the children in Y6 can have a virtual tour of the high school in the target language.
• All the class needs to do is hover over each object and listen to what has been recorded. 
• It works the other way round too - allowing Y7 language teachers to meet the class of Y6 at a specific school in a specific year via a photograph.
• Simply take a photo of the class and ask each child to introduce themselves in the target language (personal information,likes,dislikes etc) Words such as AfL ,understanding of prior learning, shared learning,continuity ,transition activities again spring to mind!

Book Creator can allow the children to share writing,to annotate work and to add pictures of events that have taken place or performances the class have taken part in- not necessarily one book per child,but one "special 2 book per class over the course of KS2 or throughout Y6 would enable KS3 teachers to look and see and be able to refer to prior learning activities and events with their new Y7 intake.

Using Book Creator KS3 colleagues could set up activities based on nouns, adjectives and verbs by simply sharing on Google Drive via the Book Creator APP.Accessed and used by the classes in Y6 as one off revisiting and practising activities and the results recorded in Book Creator and shared back to KS3 teachers via Google Drive.  Words such as AfL ,understanding of prior learning, shared learning,continuity ,transition activities again spring to mind!

As with all CPD events, a health warning needs to be applied here.

• Small  and achievable steps are best .One simple trial project with a small and willing group of schools or with one link primary school.
• Careful and clearly planned activities and expectations
• Carefully selected APPs that all staff and children understand and can use
• Realistic time limits 
• Activities that can be achieved with one ipad in the room or with a class of children with access to ipads

But what a way to build transition links ... AfL, shared learning, quality assurance and support, continuity and creativity.

Autumn celebrations and a touch of creativity

Over the next couple of weeks in primary school you will be busy getting ready with children to celebrate harvest time and Autumn. We celebrate Autumn in our SOW and it's a great way to practise simple familiar and useful language.

Here is my second blog on ways to in corporate Autumn in to your language teaching this half term.My first blog are simple word games and activities that all staff and language learners can take part in from beginners to learners who are moving on.Take a look here.Autumn celebrations blog one


The incredible harvest of fruits and vegetables! 
This is a an activity to get the children practising using adjectives with nouns and also to start thinking out of the box with primary languages.
A few days ago I saw this! White strawberries!

The idea is simple.
Ask the children to design a bush with magical powers that can create fruits in fantastical/ unusual colours. Ask the children to draw and label their fruits and then to share their ideas in a spoken dialogue activity with other children .The children need to practise the question: "What is that?" or "What type of fruit is that? and the children can then share their incredible harvest of fruits or vegetables. the activity will allow you to reinforce with more advanced learners adjectival agreement and position too!..... and of course now I am thinking Art - still life with a twist! Papier mache DT! Fantastical fruit poems if we can also add flavours ( maybe our ice cream flavours from Year 4?) The list could go on!!!

Woodland creatures 
Thanks to le francais et vous I was reacquainted with one of these glorious posters in French.This one is all about woodland animals.Take a look!

A great way to look at masculine and feminine nouns with our Y3 and Y4 classes ,particularly this in stage two (Y4 ) of learning . We can look for cognates and semi cognates.

We can add colours and we can create our own art work and drawings using a French stimulus.

With Stage 3 and 4 learners (probably Y5 and 6 who have been learning a language already for at least two years) so more advanced learners. let them go on a woodland creature hunt, giving each table a poster and descriptions of different animals in the poster.Can they read and understand the descriptions (make sure there are words in the descriptions that they need to look up on a bi-lingual dictionary  to add challenge) and can they add descriptive labels to the creatures?

Add a touch of Yakit for kids (using and APP where the photo talks ) and the children can make this an animated poster with spoken labels or woodland creature descriptions!

Twit twoo!

Looking for woodland creatures I found these two target language pages with instructions on how to make an owl that would be a useful way to develop reading comprehension activities with our more advanced learners:

In German Eulen basteln ( with a very simple template labelled in German that the children will need to read/puzzle out and then construct their own owls! 

and in French Julie Prince @princelanguages alerted me to this page for marionettes de automne from this blog http://nounoulolo88.centerblog.net/

Autumn poems

I think we can all source Autumn poems but yesterday I found this brilliant Spanish poem/list of all the things that are associated with Autumn .You can see it here below!

  Take a look here

Maybe it's a text to read and unpack learners or to use as stimulus to write with more advanced UKS2 learners our own lists of things we associate with autumn using nouns, verbs and adjectives. with younger learners we can make our own written and visual class autumn list perhaps using bilingual dictionaries of the colours, fruits, vegetables, weather, animals etc etc we associate  with Autumn.

What does Autumn and  harvest time mean to you?

Finally this morning I found these making activities on  the French website

http://www.teteamodeler.com

It's a time when we can look at culture and the lives of children in different countries and the crops and harvest time activities that they will be involved in for example la vendange in France is a time of grape picking and village festivals......Here's une boite aux raisins to make ...

in Spain the children will hear and possibly celebrate

 LA CASTAÑERA

Evidence of progress in primary language learning .

Yesterday whilst  training teachers in Manchester I was able to share some of our network’s evidence that progress over four year primary language learning is being made and that on a regular basis we see this progress.

In Speaking children are progressing from simple utterances to dialogues to simple conversations

In Writing children are progressing from writing single familiar words to writing sentences (noun verb adjective and to writing a range of sentences and short texts with accurate basic grammar using nouns, adjectives and verbs.

How?

Well the primary teachers are planning for progress.The progress has been developing over a period of years.This is not a quick fix!  The network has developed in to it's own support structure where teachers support teachers and resources /ways of approaching language teaching and learning are shared either through myself or through informal links and sub- groups )e.g Emilie's upskilling group). It has taken time.

To make good and substantial progress as would therefore be expected they are working from long term overviews that develop considers ways to introduce, revisit ,re-use in new contexts and build upon language learning. The network and the support helps of course! Here's the link to the page on the JLN website where you can see the colour coded long term overview which many of the network schools use or refer to help their initial planning.Last month I blogged  about what the associate language teachers who work in 32 schools as visiting teachers or language assistants are identifying as progress across KS1 and KS2 

Yesterday I required concrete tangible examples that classroom teachers an achieve and that have been generated by real children in real learning circumstances. Here are the everyday language examples I selected to share with  the teachers in Manchester to show how progress is being made.

The examples are as follows:

Listening and Responding to single words and phrases and saying short utterances

Firstly I shared children listening  ,responding and joining in with a playground PE activity using numbers and colours.(Listening and responding at stage one of learning).These examples come from a Year 2 class at Christ Church CE and you can see examples of their spoken work on their school website Christ Church CE

Moving from questions and answers in a spoken dialogue to building a simple conversation

Then I was able to show how children after 18 months of formal KS2 French learning at Christ Church CE are demonstrating different stages and skills in speaking within the class itself .I have these lovely clips from the school coordinator which show children participating in speaking conversations  as groups of four children .To achieve this ,the Year 4 children ( March of the academic year) 

• recalled, revisited and gathered familiar questions and answers together in spoken and then written form 
• written their own simple scripts drawing upon content from the some of the language they have practised across the 18 months (personal information ,feelings, family and illnesses are included in this sketch)
• practised and remembered their conversations
• worked in differentiated skill level groups of four to support each other.

For myself the fascinating thing is to see the spread of language skills after 18 months – two children are speaking short phrases and two children are performing a strong question and answer dialogue and one of these two children is pushing the boundaries with asides and reactions that is moving toward holding a conversation. Neither of these two clips is flamboyant but show the product of a sequence of lessons and the skills the children are developing at this stage on their learning.

Independent speaking and writing: short accurate texts 

For us all yesterday it was probably the evidence you can hear in the clip below and the evidence you can see in the short written document below that made us sit up and think! 

You see I have known for a quite a while  that many of the schools  in the network are moving on.I am grateful for the fact that the language learning in local schools did not stop when languages in primary schools were doubtful.This means that in many of our schools we have been able to build upon prior learning consistently, draw upon local good practice and examples and therefore make effective progress and support other schools to aspire/ achieve the same. What I hadn't realised was how this would have an impact on other teachers from different areas where they are just starting off.It didn't frighten them it gave them goals and ways forward.

A short accurate written text

The written script is just one example from a local primary school (St Philips) where the teacher in January this year did some work around likes and dislikes and fruits and vegetables. She brought me several examples of the written work in best handwriting as it was ready for display in the classroom and here is a remarkable example to our subject coordinators CPD afternoon. Some of the children had written longer sentences using correct language in simple sentences but this example stood out because this child had thought carefully and worked upon accuracy in adjectival agreement and position and had used the class bilingual dictionaries to find words to describe the fruit that s/he really wanted to say.The example below is something that most children can achieve and that's why we decided to share this with colleagues .It has to be achievable.

Speaking independently :accurate descriptive text 

Finally there was a clip from my wonderful colleague Emilie @ EWoodruffe at our conference and which she shared as part of her presentation on the use of technology #JLN2014 .

We have known for a while that children in network schools are  producing accurate imaginative and independent descriptive spoken and written short texts .We know that one of the times we see this is in their third year of learning a language when the children work on a context based on fashion shows through the ages. 

This year Emilie captured this brilliantly for us all to share at the conference with the Yakit for children APP. The final creative products by the children are after several weeks of work  on clothes and descriptions and in February Year 5 ,so two and a half years after they have started learning a language. The example I selected yesterday was just a random selection from these recordings but it made light bulbs go on around the room! The recording is a culmination of listening, speaking , reading , writing , remembering and working on grammar with adjectives. Take a listen!

St Elphins CE fashion show yakit example

So at the end of a good year within the network and with many more examples of progress and teachers planning for progress ,my questions for myself and colleagues must be – what next? 

This is progress that we are now seeing at different stages across approximately 90 schools- some schools are being supported by other schools in the network but on a weekly basis such evidence of progress at different stages of language learning is shared with me.Exciting and challenging questions which I hope to begin to address with my colleagues next year .... 

• Where will language learning progress to next year in the network? 
• What  can we begin to achieve as these children some of them now at the end  of Year 5 leave primary next year and enter Year 7 and secondary language learning? 
• How will we build on this platform for learning?

Dame Tartine

This week at our conference we had the opportunity to consider ways to develop phonics activities in target languages that help children understand the reading code of the new language. We consider the use of song, phonics in a target language,ways to record creatively written work, use of APPS and we briefly considered simple drama activities .
Let's bring these all together and celebrate their use linking this to an authentic text in the target language!
I have chosen for this example the comptine "Dame Tartine" ,as it's nearly the end of the school year and has a feel of a celebration cake!
We will be focusing on one verse only but here are two video clips with subtitles that can help your class to read and practise and sing along with the comptine.

Here is the verse we will focus on....

Il était une dame Tartine,

Dans un beau palais de beurre frais.

La muraille était de praline,

Le parquet était de croquets.

La chambre à coucher

De crème de lait ,

Le lit de biscuits,

Les rideaux d’anis.

It's an amazing palace that's being described made from tasty sweets and cake ingredients.

Step One - let's practise the comptine (listening,reading,joining in and singing)

• Let's listen to the whole comptine.
• Now let's listen to the first verse again with the subtitles visible.
• Now let's join in and try to practise the first verse
• Now let's sing along.
• Play the first verse again and conceal the screen - how well can the children remember song?

Step Two:Phonics and phoneme-grapheme/letter string recognition

• Draw an outline of the bedroom(walls/floor/bed/curtains) described in this verse and give each table an outline.Give out the five ingredients as word cards to each table.Ask the tables to decide where they would put each ingredient from the rhyme. Ask the table to say the rhyme to each other and decide where their ingredients should be stuck with blu-tac on the outline.Share the tables decisions.
• Now take the children phoneme - grapheme/letter string shopping like Julie Prince demonstrated at the conference.Each table needs a bag with a grapheme or letter string of a sound contained in one or more of the ingredients.Take a look at the picture here.

Remember!

This really brings out the competitive element! More than one table may have a sound on their bag this is contained in the ingredient noun. The table that reacts quickest and loudest will win the ingredient!

Step Three:Word recognition/memory and listening-reading

• Can the children match the items in the rhyme to the ingredients.Give out to pairs the words for the items and the words for the ingredients .
• First they must say them and match them
• Then they must say them , match them and order them as they remember them in the comptine
• Play the comptine first verse again ....where they correct? Or do they need to reorder some of the components?

Step Four:Speaking for a creative purpose with drama and the use of Yakit APP   

• Now add a touch of drama and performance.Ask the children to imagine that they are museum curators. Can they take it in turns working with a partner to show visitors around an the very special bedroom of this "palace".Can they not only make it sound delicious but also look delicious too?
• The children could draw the "delicious" bedroom and create a Yakit voice over of the bedroom- just like Emilie showed us at the conference. Take a look here at Emilie's fashion show  Yakit to give you an idea how this could work

Step Five:Making a written record and writing creatively in the target language.

• Let's make a mini book record of the Dame Tartine.A glorious celebration cake shaped mini book with flaps for the door where "la dame Tartine " can be seen and a flap (upon which is written the description of the items from the comptine) .When you open the flap it reveals the bedroom with the floor, the walls, the bed and the curtains all decorated as calligrams with the words for the ingredients.
• Why not let the children create another bedroom in the palace with calligrams of different ingredients - you can decide how many of the ingredients must rhyme with the items depending on how challenging you want this to be.

Find out more about @vallesco's mini books here.

Using the template described in the blog above to create your own sequence of lessons 

One sequence of lessons leads to another and one of the great things about the colleagues mentioned in this blog is that we all inspire each other and challenge each other to try new ideas. Julie Prince has developed a sequence of lessons, inspired by this blog post on one of her favourite action rhymes trois petits chats. I love it! Hope you find it useful too!

Making an Easter Movie

Making an Easter Movie 

Several years ago with a Year 6 class and a French language assistant from the local High School  we created an opportunity for the class to generate movies of simple animal songs which were sung to a very familiar refrain - 10 Little Indians 





The class loved ICT  and as you can see from the example below were able to create simple movies using windows movie maker that explained the song they heard the language assistant sing . It was helped by the fact that the language assistant had a beautiful voice too.

It was a simple song known by a lot of us in French we then changed and to describe different animals and their associated movements : 

Un petit,deux petits, trois petits lapins ,

quatre petits, cinq petits , six petits lapins

sept petits , huit petits , neuf petits lapins 

dix petits lapins sautent!

As a class we were practising nouns for animals ,linking these to  action verbs  and looking at regular er verbs in French - so we had rabbits that jump, lambs that run and birds that fly in our three songs .It was Easter time - hence the lambs ! 

We used this simple book to explore animals and their movements .The book is still on my book shelf and is still used with classes  as they love learning about  real animals and exploring simple real factual information in the target language contained in the book

Recently looking at all the new APPS that we can use to create movies with the children I decided that it would be good to challenge the language teachers and assistants that work with me to challenge their classes to create their own Easter Movies .
An APP like Story Creator would be ideal - for children to record the story with pictures and then on the final page to sing the whole song 


With Year 3 the children can sing the song , record themselves and then create their own group movies 

With Year 4 the children can alter the song - change the animal and the action and create their own group movies 

With UKS2 the children can work on writing their own songs about an animal and an action and create in pairs simple movies . 

Using the Educreations IPad APP to explore how to respond to , use and create instructions and commands

Using the Educreations IPad APP to explore commands 

With all our classes from Year 3 onwards we work  on how to respond to , say and then be able to give instructions firstly to friends and then to groups of people . Over the course of four years of language learning the children develop their linguistic ability to :

1. understand and physically respond to instructions and commands in the second person singular and plural (e.g listen , sing , walk , run , skip , hop etc)
2. give a simple command in the second person singular 
3. generate a simple an instruction or command in the second person singular 
4. generate a simple an instruction or command in the second person plural 

It's important that they progress from listening and responding to speaking confidently,to being able to create a spoken command independently and then to move on to being able to read and try to write instructions (with support and/or independently).

Yes, we play games such as Simon says or last man standing bingo.We create mirror spoken activities with one partner following another partners commands or we become physical robot machines or puppets programmed by our partners commands and instructions.We write simple instructional messages for others to follow and we write instructions as part of our messages in a bottle Year 5 writing for purpose focus.

Yesterday thank to @lisibo and her brilliant blog İ Vamonos ! I explored how we can use simple technology to create listening , responding and spoken activities linked to two of our core focuses in the Summer term with Year 4 and Year 5 . I found that Educreation's Interactive Whiteboard APP simple to use. The drawing pad is just like the IWB and with immediate recording facilities and different coloured pens it allowed me the chance to develop some creative and effective simple target language activities .

Firstly I generated for myself  symbols to represent physical commands (this could be a really engaging activity for the children what shapes and what colours would they associate with actions such as walking ,running ,swimming etc )
Here are a few examples of mine .

Walk 

Swim

Jump

Along with other symbols we create as a class- we could use these to practise saying the commands/ writing the actual word for the command in the air on a whiteboard or a sequence of written instructions and we could give children two or three symbols to convey in the target language to a partner who must respond appropriately.




In Summer Year 4 will focus on the World Cup .
World Cup symbol

I trialled using Educreation's APP to draw the "sense " of each of four movements that you may want the children to understand, react to and say to partner or a group if you were practising sports instructions e.g  jump,run,turn and stop.
Educreations enabled me in English (you will hear my best Northern accent!) to draw symbols and say commands at the same time.You can hear and see the very simple creation of mine below:

World Cup Actions

I am now able to pass my message over to someone else to listen to , respond to physically and then write out in the target language as a sequence message or menu of commands for a third person to follow and do.

The Beach 
With Year 5 we go to the beach and I decided that the APP could help me to create the physical sense of the freedom of going into the sea . Here is my recording plus drawings . with Year 5 we are exploring longer sentences and short texts . This recording would enable two people to write in their own order commands they associate with actions on the beach , swap tablets , listen to each others and then use the actions they have either physically or in their imaginations taken part in to create full first                                     person singular sentences about time spent on the                                       beach !

Here's the drawing and recording for you to listen to. 

Time on the beach

What first person singular  present tense simple sentences using colours as adjectives would you write ?