Look who it is ! Simple Year 6 fiction and fact activities

Today I have been training teachers in a school where Year 6 are just moving into their third  year of language learning but where the teacher wants to develop some more sophisticated Year 6 approaches to the language learning.
I suggested this idea that I used whilst teaching Year 6 French in a local primary school.I used the idea over several years and  was always surprised what topical conversation and questions it raised about our World and famous people in our World .The beauty of the activity is its transferability and the flexibility to use it with different stages of learners and to encourage appropriate levels of spoken and written outcomes and also to revisit and bring the activity out time and again with new pictures etc.the children enjoyed seeing how they had improved/moved forward etc. Great peer AfL and peer assessment opportunities too and a task that could easily be used in Y7 KS3 too!

Take a topical picture...maybe this one 

Or maybe this one ......

Or on a less political note ......

Or this one .....

Or humorous like this one

Firstly do the class know who the two people are?

This will be interesting and throws up lots of topical questions etc

Fictional not all fact dialogues 

 Working in pairs ....fictional spoken personal information  dialogues 

You need about 15 different pictures of different people or pairings  so that only two pairs have the same picture to work with.

I tried to give two pairs the same picture but the two pairs were working in different parts of the classroom so that they couldn't hear or see the discussions of the other pair using the same picture as their stimulus 

• What facts do they know about the people - nationalities, jobs, likes, dislikes etc?
• Can they now brainstorm the personal information questions and answers they already know?
• Can they create a simple dialogue between the two people? They may need to use language tools such as bilingual dictionaries to help them and you may need to remind them of all the ways they can use simple language such as likes and dislikes etc to give information about somebody.
• Can they use gesture and facial expression, stress and volume with their utterances to portray the characters they are depicting?
• The more language the children know, the more detailed the dialogues can be  and each  pair's dialogue will differ from the rest of the class because of the way they present their dialogues.

Now they can share their dialogues with another pair !

Fact not fiction flap files.

This is an activity where the children convert their 1st and 2nd person singular dialogues into 3rd person singular facts about the two characters in their pictures.

You will need to model the activity and try to keep the use of verbs to regular present tense of course!

Can the children create a "written over- flap" of each person in their picture, so that their pictures are covered and we can just read what the children have written on the flaps?These can be displayed so that all the class can try to decide which characters are underneath the written fact not fiction flap files.

Drawing sketches of animals using target language to link KS2 and KS3 creative learning

I have spent a wonderful couple of days in Germany  have purchased a selection of books.some of the books I have selected have been to support local teachers to develop transition resources between KS2 and KS3. I found this glorious book: "Wir zeichnen Tiere".Before you dismiss this as just to use in German,the ideas are so transferable!

Here is the link to the description of the book by James Kruss the author.

The description is in English and the clues are in this text as to why I think this book could help us primary practitioners to link work by our older children in Year 6 or also as a transition project between Year 7 and KS2 children  

Exactly as the description says the simple instructional rhymes linking letters,shapes,actions and animal sketches allow the children to create a veritable zoo of animal sketches that dance across the page!

The grammar included is present tense, commands, present participles ,use of nouns ...

I can see how the language used to draw the animals  can take young learners of a target language - who have progressed through two,three years of target language learning -on to the next stage of sentence structure, because they want to be able in the first instance to understand certain instructions to draw the animals and then move on to create their own instructions. 

Language focuses I can see in the simple instructional rhymes are as follows:

• sounds of the alphabet (for a practical creative purpose- using the letter shapes to create the animal shapes)
• recognition of sound patterns and  rhyming links to create the rhymes and the rhythm of theses instructional texts
• identifying and understanding commands
• reading comprehension - trying to understand and draw objects from the original text or from a text created and then written or spoken by a partner in the class
• creating simple written rhymes
• recognition and recall of names of animals
• locating and using nouns of different objects to create  new rhymes about different objects e.g clothes items/foods/furniture etc

Transition Idea!

So how can I see such activities being useful ways of developing projects between Y6 and Y7 pupils?

• One year group creates and writes(in the target language) the instructional rhymes to create a series of objects.
• The texts are swapped with the other year group and the children must read ,understand and then draw the creations in the written texts.
• It may be that one year group reads and responds only or maybe that both year groups write,read and respond to texts! 
• Different levels of grammatical challenge can be set for the Year 6 and the Year 7 pupils.
• With Year 6 children can be encouraged to include commands, nouns,interesting and descriptive present tense verbs and pay attention of possible to the rhyme and rhythm.
• In Year 7 the expectation could be that the pupils should have specific structures etc included in their rhymes.

Drama and Art activities 

You may already know that I love Drama and can see opportunities with this book and the rhymes to create performance opportunities:

• A performance of zoo animals that appear before our eyes as the children in pairs or groups become the shapes,actions etc to form their animals 
• Physical drawing in the air as if we are artists at the zoo of the animals - in the style of different artists!
• Spoken presentations that bring the rhymes they have explored or created to life- voice,cadence, rhythm, actions..... 

  

Gute Nacht Gorilla! A brilliant KS2 Year 6 taster story to explore

Well I am in Germany and having a great time looking around for the books we need to support our local schools where they teach German in KS2.

Firstly I wanted a really simple book that has a sophisticated punchline for taster German learners in UKS2 that @JoBeeG73 can use when she goes out from her secondary school to her local primary cluster and Year 6.See her blog for as she shares her German taster sessions over the course of the academic year.

This morning I found it and I love it! (It does exist in English but in German there is so much to unpack and allow young language learners to explore when they have been learning a different foreign language at primary school throughout KS2)
It's called "Gute Nacht Gorilla! "by Peggy Rathmann

Such a simple story but with Year 6 beginners,who have acquired language skills in a different foreign language in KS2 you can continue their skills development and :

• practise simple spoken language :greetings and farewells,
• transfer the skill and look for cognates/semi cognates in a new foreign language: in the jungle animal names between English and German
• transfer the skill and practise key sounds in German for example (Nacht /Löwe/Hyäne etcetra)
• transfer the skill and practise using a German- English bi-lingual dictionary and change the animals and practise the pronunciation
• continue to be grammar explorers and look at the use of capital letters at the start of all nouns
• allow the children to share and create with you simple recall games,based on games they have enjoyed in their previous target language learning in KS2
• practise pronunciation,intonation and memory skills and create your own memorable and humorous spoken performances of the simple story (perhaps to share with a younger year group)  
• create a written record as a cartoon strip and allow independence so that the children can add their own animals or change the greetings or the visual  punchline
• take a cultural tour of zoos in Germany and compare the animals with those we see in zoos here in England 

And so it's over to you now Jo! I loo forward to reading your blog reports!