The Magic Roundabout,practising French language and culture

Recently I was inspired by the title of a whole school focus "The Secret World of Toys" posted on a Facebook page I subscribe to.
What a brilliant idea!
I am busy creating Cross Curricular and Creative Units for our VLE .More details here should you be interested Primary Languages Network Limited

A few years ago Emilie and I took a look at the "Magic Roundabout" with a class here in Warrington, as part of her work on a 1960s project.A gift really as it is a French cartoon and story!

We met the characters in French and built simple personalities for the characters.Then just as luck would have it on a holiday in France I came across meringue Dougal cakes for sale in the market! Here was Polux .....an authentic French cake and an authentic French character from a children's TV programme!!

Then I came across this wonderful song!



So now I have a sequence of lessons- from joining in with a song,to simple conversations to more challenging spoken and written activities and a bit of cake making and culture in there too!

• Practising the song for the magic roundabout for a class assembly- maybe adding actions and puppets! 
• Creating a display in English and French about the magic roundabout
• Designing Magic Roundabout paper puppets using my paper puppet design and holding simple conversations.Take a look at my blog post Paper puppets with a purpose ...but obviously creating Magic Roundabout characters!
• Creating character descriptions or profiles of each of the characters in French
• Creating a new character for the Magic Roundabout - name, age , physical description and personality, likes and dislikes
• And don't forget creating French meringues in the shape of the characters! Here is the photo I took of Polux!

Spooky goings on at Evermoor! Familiar target language use in a new context!

What a gift for local teachers near to the town where I work and potentially a gift for lots of the UKS2 language teachers out there! 
Take a look at the clip here embedded in the Newsround website about  Evermoor Disney Series Warrington
Disney has come to Warrington!
We can use this link in lots of ways in our work in languages this term .......

The launch of this series could allow us to set up learning opportunoties where our young language learners to explore their ability  to use familiar language in a new context. 

Getting to know you: actor profiles of these young actors above, especially as one of the lead actors comes from Worsley in Manchester!

A tour of Arley Hall - as this is in Warrington and is being used as the setting for the Evermore series!

• Lets' set up a fact guide about the history of the hall .
• A family tree about the family that has lived here.
• A floor plan guide of the hall .
• A spooky haunted house guide to fit in with our Year 6 Autumn 2 focus
• A voice over using Tiny Tap APP to hover over different windows and explain which room is insoide and what you will find in the room.

Describing an imaginary spooky village: In the Newsround article we find out that Arley Hall sits in an imaginary "spooky" English village ..... so now we can take simple language about describing a town and add a spooky twist .

This will fit so well with our Y4 and Y5 autumn 2 focuses and fits in nicely too with Halloween and all things spooky!

For me it's an opportunity to act out spooky roleplays between shop keepers and residents of the village.

For others it will be an opportunity to design the map of a spooky town or to hunt the magical owl from the series with treasure map instructions and clues around the town.

A spooky owl ! This owl can change in to a human and can speak! We could create other spooky animals witgh mystical powers too!  

Great to use a current topical TV programme to allow our young language learners to explore their ability  to use familiar language in a new context. 

Countryside comparisons :location detective lists and poster presentations

Having spent some time last week in Pays Basque, visiting France and Spain, I not only found an ideal way to compare seaside between France and Spain,using the target language Simple seaside comparison with verbs, conjunctions and sentence structure , but I also visited Ainhoa!
What another gift!I realised that with UKS2 we could create a simple unit of work comparing Grasmere in the Lake district and this French/Spanish border town.



So why do I think that we can make a comparison between Grasmere and Ainhoa and why am I so specific in my choice? 
We are going to be "location detectives" and eventually create our own poster presentations.(It would work well using Book Creator too with sound clips etc)

Ask the children to keep two lists of key comparisons between Ainhoa and Grasmere.
Each list has a heading phrase "Ainhoa" or "Grasmere".These lists are called the "location detective lists"

Now let's start our comparison investigations.....

Here is the first clue! Take a look at this!

The Gingerbread shop in Ainhoa is in a very old building and is just a small counter where you can buy the flat oat- like gingerbread.If you have ever visited theSarah Nelson's Gingerbread shop in Grasmere you will know that this is a very small old building with a counter and the gingerbread is the same consistency.

So bingo! Here we have our first comparisons......

Step One :A "Gingerbread" investigation 

• Share this video of the Ainhoa shop and making gingerbread wth the children- just to give them a sense of the produce
• Taste some simple gingerbread biscuits
• Can the children collect adjectives to describe the look of the gingerbread and the flavours in gingerbread?

• Take a look at the buildings where the shops are in Grasmere and Ainhoa

Here is the Sarah Nelson's  gingerbread shop in Grasmere

And here is the building in which you find the gingerbread shop in Ainhoa.

You could also discuss the fact that we share traditional tales and listen to the shared traditional tale about the Gingerbread Man in French




Step Two
Make a comparison record on our "location detectives lists"

• Can the children working individually or a small supprted group start their comparison lists.
• Can they use infinitives of verbs to describe:

What you can buy (On peut acheter....) 

Where you can find this (On peut trouver le magasin dans un vieux magasin)

What you can eat and what it tastes like (On peut manger...... C'est ......)_

You may like the children to look at recipe for both gingerbreads and compare ingredients using bilingual dictionaries. 

Step Three 
Both villages are beautiful and traditional and are visited every year by many tourists.They are both situated in the heartof the countryside. So here we can make our second comparisons!

• Share pictures of the two villages - you can google pictures of the two towns to find the schools, the churches, the rivers , the hillside and the village/town centres.

• Ask the children to note down the names in French for the buildings- both villages have a church , hotels , a cafe, a primary school,shops
• And the countryside features  they can see in both villages? Both villages are surrounded by hills and mountains and there is a river in each village.
• What colours can they see? Ainhoa is red and white and Grasmere is grey stone with black and white buildings.
• Are there any other adjectives they want to use to describe what they can see? Give the children time to find these in bilingual dictionaries.

Step Four
Make a comparison record on our "location detectives lists"

• Can the children,working individually or a small supprted group,continue their comparison lists
• Can they use the phrase "il y a...." and the correct use of the indefinite article to describe:

The buildings and use colours / additional descriptive adjectives

(Il y a...........C'est .....)

The countryside around the town and use colours / additional descriptive adjectives(Il y a .....C'est ......)

Step Five 

You can also describe the local sports! 

In Ainhoa you can play pelota and there is a court on the side of the church building with seating for spectators.

• Try the game with your class.
• You need a tennis ball (rather than  the traditional hard ball) and  bats- for the  players.Play the game against a wall.

• Watch some of this lonely planet video , which shares the game of "pelota".(You may want to watch the video first to check you are happy to share this with your class)

• And now take a look at the Grsmere Games ( the sports of tug of war, wrestling, tossing gthe caber, and fell runnig all come to mind!)
• On You Tube you can find examples of "fell running" during the Grasmere Games ro show the children.Share some of the video clips of the Fell run with the class

Step Six
Make a comparison record on our "location detectives lists"

• Can the children explain the sport of "Pelota" in Ainhoa- ask the children to write down a simple description with the verb "jouer" - Where do you play? How many people play? What do they play with?
• Can the children explain the sport of fell running using the verb "courir"- Where do they run?(Up a hill/over a stream/ in the mud/ across fields etc) How many people run at one time?

Now it's over to your location detectives to create a poster presentation, comparing a country village in French Pays basque with a country village in the English Lake District!

Simple seaside,geography comparison,verbs and sentence structure

It's great to actually visit the target language countries and cultures of the languages we try to share with our young language learners and last week I was lucky enough to be able to do just that!
I spent part of the week in Basque France and Basque Spain. This next half term with Year 5 our focus is the seaside .We have looked at the seaside before with our younger learners and so I am always looking for more sophisticated approaches to the theme of seaside.
Well here staring straight back at me was a                                                                             sophisticated seaside and geography focus!


It's so simple! 

• Take a look at the map. Last week I visited Biarritz and then later in the week San Sebastian! 
• Here we have an ideal describe,compare and contrast series of activities .
• These seaside resorts are so near to each other!
• The activities can be completed in French or Spanish and will engage our learners in sentence structrure, use of common verbs and the use of conjunctions to make comparisons......

Step One - the country,the resorts and language investigation!

1. Share  the map with the class.Ask them to look at the seaside and coast.Can the class identify the border between two countries? (You may want to explain too about the basque country and their own language- can the children think of similarities in the United Kingdom e.g English and Welsh/ the coast in NW England and North Wales etc)   
2. Can the children investigate the map and find the three resorts.
3. Can they work out how far away the resorts are from each other?
4. Can they decide which languages are spoken in the three seaside towns? Can they write a simple present tense sentence using the verb " to speak" to explain the target language they think they would hear in each town - e.g "A San Sebastian on parle espagnol" and "A Biarritz  on parle français
5. Can they now add a conjunction and create an extended sentence with the two sentences they have written? Give the children a choice of conjunctions - which do they prefer to use e.g et/ mais/pourtant ? 

Step Two - the weather report

1. Ask the children to investigate the weather with you in Biarritz and in San Sebastian during one specific week.All you need to do is google the weather for the two places and find the weather forecast for that week. Can they write a weather report for the two towns using conjunctions e.g "Le lundi  à Biarritz il fait beau mais à San Sebastian il pleut"?

Step Three - the resorts and the food 

1. Let's investigate the food.Can the children find out what food they would eat if they had "tapas" in San Sebastian or ordered cakes in a "salon de thé" in Biarritz?
2. Can the children help you to make a list of foods that they could eat in these two places...."On peut manger ............ à Biarritz, on peut manger ............à Saint Jean de Luz et on peut manger ........... à San Sebastian"
3. Can they now add their own preferences from the lists of food using the conjunction "pourtant"?

Step Four- the places and the activities

It's here that the children will see that the seaside resorts may have different foods, sometimes share or have different weather but that the resorts share similar geography and seaside activities! 

All we need to do is:

San Sebastian

Biarritz

• Give out two pictures of the beach- one of San Sebastian and one of Biarritz- to pairs of children (same pictures for each pair).
• Can the children make a list in the target language of the geographical features and the buildings they can see in the pictures?
• How similar are their lists for San Sebastian and Biarritz?
• Can the children investigate the pictures and make a list of verbs as infinitives to describe the activities they think they can see on the beach in each picture?
• Can they now make a list using "you can ..." e.g in French "on peut..." of the activities and explain that the same activities take place in Biarritz and in San Sebastian?

Step Five -Writing a description

Can the children now write a descriptive text comparing the seaside in San Sebastian and Biarritz?

What  have they found out?

What are the similarities and differences between the two resorts? 

Putting poetry in to French primary language learning

Today is a "clearing the decks" type of day and I have collated the blog posts I have written about using poetry in French primary language learning in to one blog post- mainly because a school recently asked me to recommend a poem and I had to scroll through my blog posts to find the one I wanted.Could be useful to others too though! (nearly all are based on authentic texts, but where i have added a poem we have created ourselves I have added an asterisk *) 

Practising a simple rhyme with actions: mon chapeau a quatre bosses

*Creating a very simple rhyme to remember numbers sunflower rhyme 1-10

School daily routine verbal phrases  A performance rhyme for daily routine

An authentic seaside song/rhyme  as part of unit of work on the seaside les petits poissons

Drama and cafe culture with UKS2 dejeuner du matin ,jacques prevert

* Making our own eye in the sky poems

Addressing 4 skills and grammar with an authentic children's poem Dame Tartine

Travelling the world in a poem Sept couleurs magiques

French "poem painting" of a Summer's Day

Writing about a day at the seaside using a poem as stimulus summer french authentic poem

*Hearing and identifying prepositions of place with a nonsense rhyme positioning rhyme

KS2 leavers' poems using a text in which we explore how colours make memories through a poem

School, memories and doodle poems based on Pierre Gamara's mon cartable 

Autumn percussion and performance poem based on French poem  les feuilles mortes

*Fireworks performance poem 

House,home,prepositions,performance all based on the personification of  la nuit

Possessive pronouns mon,ma ,mes , performance too with this poem in French mon chocolat

A twist of grammar to the familiar French poem/song Twinkle Twinkle Little Star

Aspects of Winter in a poem for UKS2 onwards  about icicles

Colourful creative poetry using les crayons as a stimulus text and scaffold.







 

Making Links Abroad

"Who are you?" and scarecrow caricatures of "I am....".

A few years ago on holiday in France , we drove in to a small bastide to find a very special festival taking place! A celebration of the local jobs and shops in the village! What a gift to a teacher of foreign languages .
Every shop keeper had created a full size caricature version of him or herself and his/her role in the village! 
These pictures allow us to practise and  consolidate children's knowledge of  the first person and second person singular of the verb "to be".

Scarecrow caricatures 
Take a look here!
Can you spot the baker,hotelier, butcher (!!!),pharmacist and doctor?

Take the pose!

• Share the pictures with your class.Can they decide what jobs they might do in a town or village?
• Do they know the names of the jobs in English? Can they find the names in a bilingual dictionary in the target language.What might they notice about jobs in the target languages - is there a different word for a male or a female person with that job title? What do they think about this? Do they think this is a good idea?
• Ask them to find some new nouns for jobs in the target language using the dictionaries- are there male and female versions here too?
• Write up on the flip-chart all the nouns you have found.Can the children "take the role" and in a voice which reflects the job they do  e.g mixing the dough or slicing the meat ,carrying heavy suitcases or looking carefully at medicine ,can they practise full sentence spoken introductions of each of the people and their jobs. The children will be using the first singular of the verb to do this (I am .....)

Guided scarecrow caricature tour of the town

• Now let's try adding "Who are you?" and begin to conjugate the verb "to be" 
• Ask children to volunteer to be a character  and help create a "scarecrow caricature tour" of the town.
• Each volunteer  must think of an action representing the job you give them (If you can get hold of  the dressing up box from KS1 then they can get in to character with an item of clothing or a prop too). 
• Can they take the pose?
• Can they create the voice - what do the characters sound like? 
• Can they add an action?
• Can they put it altogether and become the scarecrow caricature?
• Can the rest of the class ask as a choral question of each scarecrow  caricature in turn..."Who are you?"

Scarecrow caricatures

• Can the children design their a scarecrow sculpture of one of the people you may find working in a town.Can they add the written question "Who are you? and the full sentence response "I am ....." ?      

Primary Physical Target Language Maths

This week at a local primary school,where the staff are working together to establish a pattern of language learning delivered by the class teacher I wanted to look at some simple Maths activities to help the teachers see how language learning can be both useful and easy to link across the curriculum.

Physical Maths 
Last week I was reminded by my colleague Emilie in her bonjour madame blogpost how much the children love "physical maths in the target language".  
This tried and tested activity led to discussion amongst the staff about how this would make a good simple AfL activity both in the target language and listening /responding and also if we then thought about how this could become a Maths pen and paper activity.Here are a few of these very simple and easy to manage ideas..... 

• You could  ask the children to write on their whiteboards the mathematical sentences that they have just watched in the physical target language maths
• You could give out mathematical sentences and ask children to create the physical French/ Spanish/German etc maths performance for other children to then say in the target language  
• You could give out a written French/Spanish /German maths sentences and ask pairs to create the physical performance which then the class need to write on their whiteboards as mathematical sentences and compare against the original card instructions.

Months and Physical Bar Charts

We then went on to consider months of the year as this is part of our SOW next half term Year 3.The teachers were all very comfortable with the idea of physical bar charts and counting up children to see who had a birthday in which month etc. We added a twist - because the months of the year labels were randomly placed around the room and the teachers had to first find their birthday month, reading and recognising their month of the year in French.

Once the teachers had gathered around the correct month, they had to put themselves into calendar order.This meant that each birthday month group  called out its month in French and one volunteer listened and organised the groups into calendar order and then into a bar chart formation.

All they had to do then was count up the number of birthdays in each month and create a written target language record - month and number!

Months,physical bar charts and dates 

With Year 4 onwards I have added a challenge to this physical bar chart in the past. With children who knew numbers 1-31 or with children who can form the date in the target language then the individual month groups can share with each other their birthdays e.g "10 August" and put themselves as a birthday month in to numerical order within their bar chart line!  

This allows you now to  handle data - by asking children to say their birthdate in French/ Spanish and German etc and asking a volunteer to spot the same date but different month - so let's put all the children who have a birthday on the second of a month for example together etc!

PE games in French and Spanish

Yesterday evening with a group of coordinators and SLT who are looking for simple ways to develop staff confidence in primary language teaching and learning we took a look at a couple of simple PE games. 

Traffic light colours and numbers 
We watched a clip of local children playing a very simple French traffic light game in the playground where colours prompted physical activities. Red meant stop, orange meant walk and vert meant the children had to run. when the teacher called jaune ,the children jumped in start shapes counting up to ten and then when she called bleu they jumped in star shapes all the way down to zero. These were Year 2 children and they were having fun!

Very easy to facilitate and the teacher and the children were revisiting colours and numbers.The light bulb independent moment here must be to then allow the children to create their own rules with the colours and Lightbulb mocreate their own warm up games in groups. These activities will work well across KS2 too!

Reaction times!Ball!

Our children and teachers love this game!It's a five minute sitting down at the desk activity or a five minute running and seeking/retrieving activity in PE or a pair activity sitting cross legged in the hall at the end or start of a PE lesson.

We call it ball because initially it can be played with a ball . Teachers could then add other items/ objects/ a choice of the same items but in different colours or sizes.

Place the "ball" (any object) in between a pair of students or place the ball/item in one of the corners of the room etc.

Students must respond to teacher instruction by touching what is called out. 

When teacher shouts BALL, the first student that grabs the ball is the winner

Make it a simple reaction game with the words to the song of heads ,shoulders ,knees and toes- first to touch "head" when the teacher or a child calls a body part from the song!

Light bulb moment! Make it an  ongoing team challenge and ask the children to make the descriptions of items ever more challenging e.g have three balls all the same colour but different sizes or three pictures of an animal but with a slight;y different feature e.g blue eyes/brown eye/ green eyes.

North East South West-

This is a game we are sure you already play with the children in PE.

Label each wall of the hall North, East, South and West in the target language.

Generate a warm up activity ,where the children standing on the spot stretch toward each compass point as it is called and hold each stretch for a number of counted seconds (in the target language of course!)

Now it's a speed challenge!

When teacher calls out wall label e.g. ‘North’, students must run to the wall without being last to arrive.

(The labels can be changed to whatever your learning focus is - so they could be clothes items/ foods/ days of the week/ months of the year/ a group of nouns on one corner/ verbs in anther and adjectives and adverbs in the other corners)

Progress the game by incorporating rules such as ‘freeze’ where if "freeze" is shouted, pupils must freeze immediately. 

Incorporate mini –forfeits for the losing pupil e.g. Name 5 colours in French

Spanish words to help you ....

North	Norte
East	Este
South	Sur
West	Oeste
Freeze	Quietos

French words to help you......

North	Nord
East	Est
South	Sud
West	Ouest
Freeze	Gèle

Light bulb moment would be to ask the children to take turns in being the teacher from the initial warm up to the playing of the different games. Children could also decide what language to put in each corner of the room.

Red light/ green light

Again we think this will be a game you already play with your classes.However here we have added a target language touch!

Students line up, touching one wall in the hall or room.

Aim is to get to the opposite side of the hall and back first

When teacher shouts ‘green light’ they can go, when teacher shouts ‘red light’ they must stop

If pupils fail to stop, or move when red light is called they must return to the start.

The teacher chooses the method of travel for pupils for example ‘come back to the start hopping’, skipping, jumping , swimming , sliding,

Spanish words to help you ....

Red light	Luz roja
Green light	Luz verde
Stop	Para
Return to the start	Vuelve a la salida
Hopping	Saltando a pata coja
Skipping	Saltando a la cuerda
Jumping	Saltando
Swimming	Nadando
sliding	Deslizando

French words to help you ......

Red light	Feu rouge
Green light	Feu vert
Stop	Arrêtez
Return to the start	Retourne au départ
Hopping	En sautant à cloche pied
Skipping	En sautillant
Jumping	En sautant
Swimming	En nageant
sliding	En glissant

Light bulb moment! Ring the changes and give the children three different types of movements they need to make to get back to their starting position or change the movement command mid activity or add the word "Freeze"! Let children take the role of teacher and call the actions etc.

Role Tag Game

2 players selected  as ‘the person’

The ‘the person “’ players have a list of skills cards

If a pupil gets tagged by the ‘the person" they are provided with a task to complete to free themselves.

Tasks could be ask a question , tell me your name  or an activity such as :count to 10 , greet me ,

The tagged pupil has to move to the side and complete the task before they are free to move on.

You could add children who are the ‘referees’, and stand at the side of the hall and decide whether the children who are tagged have completed the task 

You will need task cards.

Light bulb moment will be to ask the children to create their own task cards and decide what spoken target language challenges they want to ask other classmates to do before they are freed. 

  

Abstract art and beginners target language learning.

Sometimes the simplest things inspire! Take  a look at this simple but wonderful book that I have just bought  myself ! I love "Art" and particularly abstract art. 

This week @valleseco  has been sharing ways to make sure that schools can make the time  for primary language learning and has listed and described ways that schools can make time for languages across the curriculum as additional activities:Time for languages.

Simple ideas that many of us already consider and ways that many of us already plan for and use to generate additional language learning.These ideas work just as well where the class teacher delivers the language learning or where the class teacher engages with the languages teacher, be it a visiting teacher or a PPA swap.In these instances there is definitely the scope to add five and ten minute "class teacher ownership " learning opportunities.Why not go cross curricular?

So how do the book at the top of this blog and the article about time allocation link together? Well this book is just one example of how we can create effective cross curricular links with language learning ,.... (and possibly use authentic target language literature as well)

Take a look inside! Go to Amazon.co.uk here 30 cercles and get a taste for this very simple book which could be used in target language learning for five minute additional activities to 

• practise numbers, (Maths)
• colours, size, (Maths)
• commands like "find","touch","draw"  (classroom communication skills)
• explore famous Art and artists. (Art)

For example : Vassily Kandinsky cercles concentriques 1913

Kasimir Malevitch cercle noir vers 1923

I am certain that primary minds are now buzzing... why not create your own abstract art books with colours or squares or lines?????

Mondrian comes to mine and Kandinsky once again....

Ask the children to create their own group abstract art books with numbers ,colours and shapes from 0-10 or 11-20 or 20-30 and ask them to name their pieces of art too.Each child must take responsibility for two pieces of art in the style of an abstract artist.