Revisiting numbers and physical listening and responding.

Every year you think that all the children have "got" those numbers ....and then at the beginning of the year you realise that ssome of the children really haven't "got" those numbers yet!!
Here is a physical and  novel ways to revisit and practise the numbers and keep everyone engaged and interested, no matter if you are still practising one to ten or counting up in tens or even three digit numbers!

Firstly children need to be standing in a clear space- away from chairs and tables and with sufficient space inbetween each child.The hall or the playground woud be an ideal space.


Physical Warm Up with Numbers (Listening and responding activity) 

• Everyone stands up .
• Tell the class that the number they represent standing up is a specific number e.g "eleven".You decide the number and this  number can be changed as you go along.
• Ask the class to stand very still and listen...
• If they hear a number higher than "eleven" (if that's the number you have chosen as the standing up straight number) they must reach to the sky with their arms and hands.
• If they hear a number lower than "eleven" they need to touch their toes.
• Start with one number and say it slowly 
• Speed up the numbers- who can keep up?
• Say a sequence of numbers (mixture of numbers,higher and lower than eleven ) which children can deminstarte a correct pattern of movements.
• Ask for a volunteer to lead the activity.
• Play the game as "the slowest to react is out"!  

Making progress with listening.Activities using all four skills.

This year we have been focusing on how we make progress in language learning with our children and how we can track this and record this.
Here is a simple activity which can be used with all four skills...... to see how children are progressing.
In our JLN SOW we offer teachers sound files and podcasts to support themselves with upskilling in the target language, but we find that teachers can use these too to develop their own listening activities .The podcasts are great for children moving on from word level! 
Emilie Woodruffe @EWoodruffe   amd Ana Lavado Garcia @AnaLavadoGarcia have worked alongside me to create podcasts and sound file for every half term from Year 3 to Year 6- so we have lots of listening texts to work with .These ideas are therefore replicable with other podcasts. Simple too!

Step One 
Select the podcast and text that contains the language content you have been focusing upon with the class.
I have selected podcast one from Year 3 for this example (it's all about Emilie in French or Ana in Spanish)

Give out a series of words from the podcast text you want to use- in a muddled up order.:

1. Can the children look at the words and decide what the listening text might be about?
2. Can they spot any key language they have been practising e.g,question words,months, numbers?
3. Can they put these to one side- you can now see who can identify these words individually.
4. Can they anticipate in which order they may hear the words?
5. Ask the children to listen to the text and put the words in the order from top to bottom in a vertical list as they hear them. 
6. Would they like to listen again and see if they are happy with the order they have generated ?
7. You can take photos of sample vertical lists of the children that you are following as progress pupils in the class  
8. Now can they discuss with a partner what they think the listening text is about?

Step Two

1. Can they now look at their list of words and gather facts about Emilie or Ana for example: 

Here is another opportunity to take photo samples of how the children can comprehend and link together sequences of words that belong together.

Step Three

1. Give out the words written out on a table that the children have been sorting.
2. Working in pairs can they create spoken sentences that use all of the words (Remember they have listened to a modeled text already).In this text they can create up to four or five  sentences  speaking as of they are ~Emilie in the first person singular- name/age/ birthday/ where Emilie lives/ feelings
3. Ask the children in pairs to write down their sentences .You can collect in  their work after the activities and keep samples as evidence of progress in writing from memory.
4. Ask for volunteer pairs to show and read out loud  their sentences for the class.Now you can listen for pronunciation and intonation  as they read aloud their sentences. 

Ding!Dong! Bell!From phonics to language recall to beginners writing!

The activities in this blog post are additional ways to exploit our simple Christmas greetings song: Feliz Navidad or Joyeux Noel .
You can read about our original activities in listening and speaking ideas here Ring out those bells tonight.

The activities in both blog posts  are transferable to other contexts.
In my opinion the activities below allow us to explore the following DfE POS objectives:

• explore the patterns and sounds of language 
• speak in sentences using familiar language
• write phrases from memory

The object of the activities below is to continue the theme  of bells and ringing bells but to deconstruct the language so that we are looking at letter combinations and listening for key  sounds in the target language.We then reconstruct the Christmas greetings songs line by line from memory.It is helpful therefore if you have practised the greetings song in the blog post mentioned above first.(In French we use the key phrases : joyeux noel / à tous /à vous)

For the Ding Dong Bell activities .....

• Teach the words to our simple Christmas greetings song
• Sing the song in a round and play the game with the phrase cards (see Ring out those bells)

• Create your own bell letter combination cards for the key sounds in the text.You will need a template 

• On each bell write one of the key letter combinations here in Spanish (for example: fe/liz/na/vi/dad/mis/a/mi/gos/mi/fa/mi/lia)

• On the reverse of the bells you need to add a  symbol to represent a recent and familiar piece of language for example with our beginners we have chosen stars  symbols in different colours,numbers,gapped months of the year and smiley or non-smiley faces to suggest feelings.

• Now the language learning fun starts! Give out the bell cards and ask the children to become bell ringers. They ring their bell when they hear their sound.Children without a bell come to the front and they are your carol singer
• At the end of the song ask the children to swap bells and make sure your carol singers get a go at bell ringing too
•  Finally ask the children to help you to either peg the sound bells to a classroom line or blu-tac the bells to the board to reconstruct the complete song 
• Children could then take responsibility for one bell and one sound and create their own classroom Christmas decoration – like a bell paper chain of the Christmas greeting song

Make it a class challenge

• Divide your class in to four teams. give each time a different phrase - say it orally do not give them the written phrase.

feliz navidad

mis amigos

mi familia

feliz navidad

• Blu-tac the bells to the board with the sound/letter combination face up.
• Each team must try to win the bells for – that once they are put back together, make up the line.
• Can each team take it in turns to select a bell ,say the correct sound , suggest in which word it is located in the song
• If they are correct ,turn over the card and can the team give you the Spanish for the number, colour or month clue on the reverse of the bell?
• If they are correct they can keep that bell .Can they collect and create a full line from the song before the other team does? 
• Can the class reconstruct the whole greetings song and sing it one final time?

"Rudolph and your nose so bright" guessing game

Just found these Rudolph pictures on the internet! 
Brilliant for a simple warm up game in a December language learning lesson.
The objective of the lesson will be to ask and answer questions based on colour of Rudolph's nose!

Here is the link

1. Just print out a class set and cut out each Rudolph so that you have enough cards - one per child.
2. Make yourself three large versions of any of the Rudolphs for yourself and make them into finger puppets. 
3. Ask the children to greet the first Rudolph you show them and to ask him how he is feeling.Respond as if you are Rudolph. ask the children the colour of Rudolph's nose
4. Can the children guess the colour of the nose of the other two finger puppets you have made?
5. Now set up a simple game for the children ,based on "Knock, knock , who is there?"In French we are going to say:

                                                                       Toc,toc,toc!

                                                           Qui est là?

           Rudolphe avec le nez ……..?

    Le nez .......

Oui/non

(The child who is guessing the other partner's Rudolph and the colour of the nose says the phrases in red.The child with the Rudolph being guessed says the phrases in blue)

In Spanish we are going to say :

¡Pon,pon,pon!

¿Quién es?

Rudolph con la nariz ……

La nariz……

Si/no

Adding extra challenge?

Have you noticed that the Rudolphs on the sheet at the top are also wearing ties? 
Well now this will work brilliantly in French as we can look at the adjective spelling change for some of the colours and the way we therefore pronounce them , when we use a "le " noun or a "la " noun.
Now we can add a DfE POS objective based on understanding basic grammar too and use this activity across all our language learners from KS1 and beginners to moving on learners with differentiated challenge !

And in Spanish? Well we can use la nariz with adjectives that agree and change the tie to a soft neck scarf and use the masculine noun el  pañuelo

Finally in German! We will need to tweak the verse abit for younger learners but can add a differing degrees of challenge with adjectival endings for more advanced learners....

Klopf,klopf,klopf!

Wer bist du?  

Rudolph und meine Nase ist .....

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

Ja/ nein

To be more challenging add the preposition"mit" and practise the positioning of the adjective before the noun with the correct adjectival ending

( Rudolph  mit der ...........Nase) 

Or to add even more challenge introduce the changes in the definite article too by using die Nase and also das Halstuch ( e. mit der .....Nase/ mit dem........Halstuch) 

Take a simple authentic rhyme and explore language learning skills

On Thursday this week I will be looking at how one simple resource can support the introduction, practise and revisiting of many language learning skills . We will consider how progression can be built in to primary language  learning very simply and we will look for links with literacy and/or across the primary curriculum.

For teachers, just setting off on the road to delivering effective primary language learning or supporting staff to do so, the activities will hopefully act as  sign posts to help the school plan sequences of meaningful and purposeful language learning activities.

Schools, where staff have limited target language skills can plan to use authentic texts which have been carefully selected because they are  not too challenging for the non-specialist.We find that such texts should repetitive language,clear sound support files if possible,introduce key language and words and not be too "wordy".

Above is the authentic and familiar rhyme "tengo dos manitas" , sung clearly with the words appearing on the screen in the clip.The clip is repetitive and uses simple language.There are obvious actions to the text. 

Word warm up 

Practise the key language from the text preferably with actions/ movements or a physical routine .

Here we have core body parts' language (manitas/ojos/nariz/boquita)

and two key actions (aplaudir and sonreir)

Add a fun, memorable element immediately.

Ask the children can they smile / clap using the body parts in the rhyme

e.g. Pueden sonreir con los ojos/la nariz/la boquita/las manitas

       Pueden aplaudir con los ojos/la nariz/la boquita/ la manitas

Get to know the rhyme and make it your own!

• Practise the rhyme- as this rhyme has a clip to accompany it , when you feel the class are comfortable , turn down the sound and ask the children to be the sound file to the clip!
• Add actions and focus on rhythm.
• Practise in pairs with the words and the actions
• Practise in fours and make the rhyme "your own". Each group can decide how they want to say and perform the rhyme
• Performance time- one group of four performs for a second group
• As a class perform the rhyme and as this rhyme repeats the verse over and again let one group lead the whole class each time - sharing their own special version and actions etc.

Class warm up song or recall song

Now you have a rhyme to say , sing or perform at the start of a language lesson over the next couple of weeks or to use to recall children and bring them back together after another activity.

Take another look!

Languages are not always about racing on.Learning some language and then moving to the next goal doesn't make confident young language explorers in my opinion.

Let the class enjoy the rhyme and actions and then plan to return to the rhyme and activate memory to use the rhyme to explore languages further.  

Missing words or Volume control games 

Come back to the rhyme or song at a later date and this time ask the children to miss words out or to observe you as you operate a pretend volume control ,so that there are times when the children whisper or don't even say the words but do the actions instead.

Rhythm raps 

Can the children help you to create a new version of the rhyme - a rap - made up of the beats and cadence of the rhyme- no words just the beat and rhythm of the text?

Go sound fishing!

Identify the key sounds in the song or rhyme for example here I would identify:

j/o/qui/re/ir/au/iz

Can the class work in pairs and say the rhyme to each other and spot these key sounds as they say the words?

Can they decide in which order the sounds are heard and how often?

Can they spot the key sounds in the written words displayed by you at the front of the classroom.

Bringing the written word together!

Using their knowledge of the rhyme and their visual knowledge of key words can the children reconstruct the written text ,putting the text back together from word cards.  

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

Art and language learning , my blogs so far ....

This blog post is my own mental note and list of  the Art and language learning blogs I have written so far- to help the associates, colleagues within the network and me  plan purposeful and language rich learning opportunities:

3D Art and verbs using Renoir the Boating Party - Drama and Art /spoken activities (personal information , feelings, 1st, 2nd and 3rd person singular questions and responses)
3D Art and verbs stage one
3D Art and verbs stage two
3D Art and verbs stage three

KS2 Matisse Cut Outs Art and colour - dance,drama, spoken language , reading and writing
Matisse Cut Outs

Conveying emotions through Art - using the target language
conveying emotions

Rousseau and shape jungle animal sentences for jungle display  (noun verb adjective and animal descriptions) 
shape sentence jungles

Poster Power Poems (revisiting familiar language : weather,people, reactions,emotions, activities etc) - using the visual evidence in a poster to create spoken activities and performances (based on the Tour de France but activities can be used with lots of different posters etc)
Poster power poems

Preposition Picnic: creating our own sculptures using foods and cutlery/crockery and prepositions-using all 4 skills
Preposition picnic

Sentence calligrams- creating our own suitcases of Summer clothes - full sentence descriptions of items for a class display
Sentences ,objects and calligrams

Abstract Art - how we can use art to revisit and practise basic core vocabulary- colours, numbers 
Abstract art and beginners language

3D Clay and conversations - using clay sculptures to generate dialogue and conversations
3D clay scene questions and answers

If a picture paints a 1000 words. Portraits of women's faces through the ages used to practise eye, hair colour, target language names and emotions. Linking Art , Drama , music and language learning,
If a picture paints a 1000 words  

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?

Parts of the body puppets and puppeteers

As I am off and about at the moment supporting schools to find creative ways to deliver simple and primary focused language learning lessons, I am finding that schools want lessons where the children can explore language linked to their primary curriculum. 

Below are a sequence of activities I love.As a Primary Languages and Drama AST I often used these activities as a puppet workshop.Children really engage with the activities.

The core activities are to allow you to :
learn parts of the body and see how we can make a very primary lesson out of some straightforward language.On the way we will introduce to the children or reinforce for them the use of nouns, adverbs and a command or two .

The language you will need:

• parts of the body with their definite articles (le/la/les in French/ el/la/los/las in Spanish etc)
• two commands "move" and "touch" ( touchez/bougez in French and tocad/ moved in Spanish)
• two adverbs for fast and slow ( rapide/lentement in French and rapido / lentamente in Spanish)

You are going to need space for this activity. and this would work really well in the hall or on the field.

Step One 
Introduce Parts of the body as spoken language
Introduce maximum 8 parts of the body which the children will find easy to move or touch etc (so for example you will find it easer to touch rather than move your nose)

You can introduce these words by pointing,saying clearly with the definite article , asking the children to then point and repeat for themselves." 

Step Two 

• Reinforce the nouns and see the words

You can reinforce the key nouns using a song such as "Heads, Shoulders , Knees and Toes or in French "Jean petit danse" and in Spanish " Juan Dedo baila"
Draw a simple human outline on a large piece of paper and ask the children to help you to label the human outline with word cards of the nouns.
You could create the skeleton people  have described before in the blog post about the skeleton here.

Step Three

• Listening and responding to the nouns 

A great game for listening and responding is "Last Doctor Standing" . It's Stand Up Bingo to you and me. All the children must touch a part of their body for which you have learned the noun in the target language. Call a body part and any child touching that part must sr down. Start the activity again. Who will be left at the end of the game? 

Step Four.
Introduce the two commands - move and touch 
Ask the children to be an exact mirror copy of you as touch or move the body parts you have introduced. Add exaggerated movements. They  must mirror you exactly . Remember in a mirror everything must be in reverse.

Step Five

• Whole class challenges for individuals and for pairs

Hold mirror challenges "Mirror Mirror on the Wall who is the best of them all". Challenge children to come to the front and mirror your actions exactly. Score the children for their accuracy in what they say and do . who is "the best of them all"?
Set them a task  to challenge as many children in the class as they can in 5 minutes ,using the commands and parts of the body in a "Mirror Mirror  on the Wall , who is the best of them all" mini- competition. They have to complete two challenges per child before they move on to the next person and must speak only on the target language. 

Step Six

• Creative spoken language

Organise your class in pairs.In each pair there needs to be a puppet and a puppeteer. Their  bodies become the puppets and their words the strings that move the puppets.
Try the activity with commands and body parts.
The puppeteer needs to stand behind the puppet and pretend to pull strings this will allow children to know whether it's the left or right leg/arm etc that they should move, unless you feel that you can add left and right to the body part information (if the children are moving on in  their target language learning from beginners' stage) .
Can the puppeteers make their puppets move with their spoken "string" commands .
Swap roles and try the activity again.

Step Seven 

• Add adverbs !Make it more dynamic! 

Introduce the two adverbs for fast and slow . Add them to the commands the children can already say.
Have a trial and see if it works - so ask the children to do what you say e.g move the arm quickly / move the eyes slowly etc
Now send your pairs back to try out adding this new dynamic to the activity.

Adding Challenge
Additional challenges for more able language learners ....with your moving on and advanced learners add extra adverbs and look at how you say "your arm/your leg/ your eyes...) Can the children try to remember to use these new adverbs and to use "your" accurately with the body parts.?

Sometimes we should also think out of the box - so maybe when you feel confident with the steps below you could add an extra dimension by asking the puppets and their puppeteers to move like footballers/dancers etcetra  

Five commands and so much impact in a beginners target language lesson

Five little words....
Five commands , but you can have so much impact with beginners listening,speaking,reading and writing!
We can encourage young target language learners to be involved in dynamic and engaging activities right from the word go!

Today at a start up staff meeting we focused on 5 very physical imperatives:

jump

run

walk

dance 

move 

The aims were to try out beginners listening, speaking , reading and writing activities using these 5 little words. We wanted to  see how much impact you can have over all four skills and language learning strategies and skill with just five words in a target language.We found that we had a full lesson of activities , practising and reinforcing skills of learning a language that a non- specialist could deliver and develop creatively.You then have 5 commands ready for links with primary PE and dance using the target language commands.

Maybe once you have tried the activities below you could move on to "Powerhouse machine imperatives  drama and grammar activity described in this blog post!

Listen and respond

• Introduce each of the commands as a physical activity - jumping on the spot, running the spot, marching , disco dancing, wiggling slowly up and down on the spot
• Ask the children to do each of these actions for a specific amount of time and before you start the activity to check their pulse , after three actions done for a specific time, 30 seconds each, to check their pulse and at the end of the activity to check their pulse. What's  the difference and why?
• Play a game of Simon says as a whole class game with the movements.
• Play a game of class puppets . Call an action and the children must do that action and change actions as quickly as they can ,when they hear you say another action.

Saying simple words and phrases

• Ask the children to say and perform the movements, making the commands sound just like their actions.
• Split the class in to groups of four and play team simon says - each child taking responsibility for a 60 second game.
• Allow each child in the group to be a group puppeteer.The other three children must listen to the their commands and do what they say , changing from one action to another action as quickly as they can and as soon as they hear the new command.

Reading familiar command words.

• Lay large command word cards out on the floor as if they are stepping stones across the floor.You will need 5 of each word card ,laid out in a random order. 
• Invite a group of five children at a time to stand at one end of the stepping stones. Invite the line of children to step across the cards from one side of the hall or room to the other.
• As they step on a particular card they must read the action command and perform the action command.They move from one card to the next when you tell them to do so.
• Repeat the activity with a second group
• Play the game as a small group game 

Writing our favourite familiar command words.

• With beginner learners we need now to practise writing. The teachers loved this activity today and I am certain that children will do too.Display the command cards at the front of the room . 
• Ask the children to select their favourite command and action. 
• Can they write the letters of the word in the style of the action they performed e.g jumpy letters, wiggly letters in a vertical top to bottom line, dancing letters etc.
• Can they share their large in the air command writing with the class? 

Add three simple adverbs and try the activities all over again!

Add challenge and also revisit with a twist by adding adverbs that slow down or speed up the actions e.g. 

move slowly 

dance quickly 

jump fast

run slowly 

walk quickly 

.

Simple songs and first step language skills

How many familiar refrains can you hum? (frère Jacques, London’s Burning, Nice One Cyril, Here we go gathering nuts in May)

How many familiar refrains can the children hum and remember from songs in KS1 and links to traditional songs?

Let’s build on these simple refrains  to support initial language acquisition of transactional language ( e.g questions and answers in the first and second person singular , numbers and a key question ,colours and a key question etc.

Why? Well a traditional refrain means we don't have to worry about the tune - just the words and we can use the familiar refrains to focus on syllables  , repetition and  putting song (the words ) into memory and then recalling the words when we need them in a different context.I think                                             lots of us already realise this and use these methods!

Here's one way of developing this approach:

• Introduce key simple phrases and add actions in the target language that generate a dialogue e.g greetings, feelings, a farewell
• The actions can reinforce the number of syllables in the word (e.g. hallo in German is two syllables- so we would shake a hand twice)   or the type of sound we have to produce (we need to roll our “r” in French words such as “merci” so let’s use or hand to roll up from the bottom of the throat to remind us to try and roll that “r”) or maybe it’s a question – so let’s use our famous question mark(thanks Amanda Ziebeck one of wonderful former associate language teachers) with a flick at the end when we need our intonation to go up at the end .
• Try this and see how it works. Draw a question mark in the air as you say “Comment ça va?” and add a flick upwards  on the last word….your intonation will automatically rise!
• Discuss with the children why you have added the actions you have – can they think of their own too to help them remember the words or accurately reproduce the sounds?

• Create a song to a familiar refrain of the phrases you have been practising with the children. Ask the children to listen to your song and just do the actions as they hear the words.
• Set the children the task now of putting these phrases to new music- to a new familiar refrain and listen and watch what they come up with.
• Alternatively before you sing or play your own song, ask the children to invent their songs and then see how many of their songs are very similar to your own.

Simple effective fun! and works every time!  A re-usable teaching and learning tool that involves listening , repetition, responding to spoken language ,rhythm and use of sound patterns and a little bit of  creativity!