Christmas Cracker Content!

Christmas Crackers have always entertained my friends from other countries! They love them! This year I thought we could make a simple UKS2 lesson on similarities and differences in Christmas traditions and add a focus on sentence structure and grammar too.



We are going to create a box set of christmas crackers - each containing a full sentence made up of a part of the verb "to have", a noun and an adjective.The noun and the adjective are the surprise content of the cracker and the children are going to be able to determine the content! 

In this activity children will be practising

• nouns, 
• adjectives and adjectival agreement 
• and the verb "to have"

You may want to practise the verb "to have" before you attempt the activities below.Here is a festive approach to practising the verb "to have"Christmas Cracker and Christmas Carol style !
Christmas Carol Verb Singers






You will need Christmas crackers made as follows for this activity:

Plain card tempates - two per cracker.

First template is the base, 

Second template is cut in to three sections - two ends and a middle.

On the left hand end write part of the verb to have.

Gather all the right hand templates together and also make a pile of the centre sections you put to one side.

On each of the right end templates you are going to write adjectives that agree with the nouns you will write on the centre sections .

The activity

The children are going to be able to select a noun and an adjective that agrees with the noun to complete the class "Christmas Crackers" .

Each noun should be a festive object and you should aim to have examples of masculine and feminine singular nouns and plural nouns too.

Randomly place the christmas crackers with the parts of the verb on the board 

Can the children help you to create a Christmas box of crackers - so that the crackers on the board are in paradigm order?

Now ask the children to select nouns for each cracker (perhaps even the objects you find as presents in the cracker or characters and objects we associate with Christmas).

Can they now add the correct adjective- remind them that the spelling of the adjective must suit the noun they are describing!

Blu-tac the noun and the adjective to the cracker selected by the children

Can you make a box set of crackers each with the object and its description!

Time for your own crackers! 

Ask the children to design and create their own "Christmas Crackers Selection Box" ,creating their own full sentences and adding a picture of the object on the reverse of the cracker. 

You can support children by allowing them to use the language you have practised or you can stretch children by asking them o think of their own objects , find the noun and describe the noun with their own choice of adjectives.

Autumn sentence trees

It's just a pile of Autumn leaves - or is it?
In this pile are many spoken and wrtten Autumn messages.Just how many can your children create?

Let's make an Autumn sentence tree

You may find my previous two blog posts help too!
Autumn word sorts and game

Autumn descriptive sentences with the verb "to be"


In this activity the learners will create spoken and written interesting sentences about Autumn using nouns,adjectives, common verbs, a conjunction and possibly an intensifier.

Your learners will need to have access to bilingual dictionaries and will need to be moving on or advanced primary language learners.They will be  at a stage where as a class you are exploring adjectives and agreement and  parts of verbs to be and to have.You could take this further and explore common regular verbs in the present tense associated with Autumn too.

Each type of leaf represents in this activity part of a sentence: 

Nouns associated with Autumn or Harvest time

The verbs "to be" and "to have" and /or verbs about harvest time

Adjectives to describe Autumn

Intensifiers and conjunctions to make our sentences more interesting

• Discuss with the children what each leaf shape represents.
• Write on the whiteboard clearly a sentence in the target language about Autumn which uses the following:

noun,verb,adjective,conjunction, noun, verb intensifier ,adjective

(e.g. the apples are red and the apples are very sweet)

(e.g.the birds fly fast,but the hedgehogs are very tired)

• Read the sentence aloud for the chldren .Can the children identify what type of sentence you have written- does it compare two Autumn objects or does it give more than one descriptive detail about a Autumn object?
• Can the children help you to read aloud the sentence and then identify which leaf shape represents each of the part of the sentence.Place each leaf shape above the correct part of each part of the sentence.
• Give the children time to re-read the sentence and to try to remmeber it.Cover spme of the parts of the sentence with the leaf shapes.
• Can the children say the sentence to a partner and remmebr what is behind the leaf shapes?
• Can the children write out the sentence?
• Share with the children a leaf shape sentence like below:

• Can the children create their own interesing Autumn sentences which follow the leaf shape sentence structure ?
• Ask partners to check each others sentences
• Now ask the children to draw and write out their sentences ,placing the words in the correct leaf shapes they draw. 
• Now you have your Autumn sentence tree drawings ready to go up on an Autumn sentence tree display.

  

Autumn descriptive sentences with the verb" to be ".

It's just a pile of Autumn leaves- or is it? In this pile are many messages both spoken and written.Let's explore!

Take a variety of Autumn leaves and create explorations of sentence structure and creative comparisons! Here is the second blog post....Take a look here at the first blog post Autumn word sort and game
 My Autumn leaves pile allows us to explore sentences and to say and write sentences of our own and create a decriptive comparison of Autumn.

Each leaf shape represent a structure within a sentence.
In this activity the leaf shapes represent the following:

An Autumn noun: a leaf,fruit (s), vegetable(s), animal connected with Autumn (e.g squirrel,hedgehog,bird)

Part of the present tense of  the verb "to be "  in the target language

An adjective to describe our Autumn noun

You may at this point want to play the gathering game from the previous blog post Autumn word sort just  to gather nouns and adjectives and as a class to identify parts of the verb "to be" and the verb "to have".

Autumn twig sentences 

Can the children on mini whiteboards write their own Autumn sentences: a sentence using the verb "to be"  (noun,verb,adjective)

The sentence can be checked orally with a partner or the class and then the children can transfer their spoken sentences to their own visual display sentences.These are twig sentences to go on our class display of the verb "to be " Autumn tree.Take a look here:

Autumn word sorts and game

It's just a pile of Autumn leaves- or is it? In this pile are many messages both spoken and written.Let's explore!

Take a variety of Autumn leaves and create explorations of sentence structure and creative comparisons! Here is the first blog post... the rest are to follow!

My Autumn leaves pile



Each leaf shape represents a structure within a sentence that our primary language learners are exploring as they develop their ability to speak and write sentences in the target language.

Take a look at what I mean:

My "noun" leaf

My verb leaf:

My adjective leaf:

and for the learners that are now moving on in their ability to form target language sentences here are:

my conjunction and intensifier leaves 

  

 Now let's go on our first  Autumn Exploration!

Step One 

• Can the children help you collect words: nouns or adjectives or verbs linked to Autumn and colours or animals associated with Autumn, going for an Autumn walk or harvesting fruit and vegetables?
• Can the children make the decision as to whether the word they have thought of, remembered or accessed in the bilingual dictionary is a noun, adjective or verb?
• Ask the children to write out clearly on pieces of paper or card their favourite Autumn words that they have remembred or investigated.
• Attach the leaf symbols too the top of the class board.Now ask the children to help you place the nouns under the noun leaf on the white board, the adjectves under the adjective leaf and the verbs under the  verb leaf.

Step Two 

• Collect together the cards or write out the words onto cardsthat the class has found -you could ask the children to do this for you.
• Place the written word cards in a pile on the floor or the table. 
• Play a sorting game .
• Can the children help you sort the nouns, adjectives and verbs in to three piles?
• Now you are ready as a class to play the Autumn Word Game (see below)

A Possible Step Three

With more advanced learners you coud take the activity one step further and add conjunctions and adverbs too!

The Autumn Word table game 

• Children to play the game as a table game.
• Object of the game to win as many Autumn words as possible.
• Ask tables of  four to six children to write out as many of the words as the class has collected on to cards.Give the children a time limit for this.
• Now give each table a set of Autumn leaves.Each group needs two of each of the noun, adjective , verb autumn leaf cards. 
• Ask the children to put all the written Autumn word cards face up on the table in a jumbled up order - so not categorised as nouns etc.
• Autumn leaves cards face down in a pile on the table.
• Set a time limit for the game!
• Each player takes it in turns to select an autumn leaf card and then to select a written word card that matches the leaf e.g a noun, adjective or verb.As the game progresses a player may not be able to find a noun or an adjective or a verb written card and will have to pass on his or her go.
• With more advanced learners challenge the children to see if they can create an Autumn sentence with one of the nouns,verbs and adjectives that they have collected.... 

Daisy Chain Clauses and Conjunctions

This idea has been on my list to write for quite a while now! 
I have selected a daisy chain because it reminds me of Summer.It's now that we have the opportunity to assess what our moving on learners can  say and write.

They are going to write about their likes and dislikes with nouns and adjectives and use conjunctions to join their sentences together.

Take a handful of conjunctions in the target language:in French let's use "mais,et, car, pourtant,"

• First let's physically feel and make the sentences.
• Ask the children to make a list of favourite things - using nouns thye know for foods,clothes,animals or finding new nouns in the bilingual dictioanry 
• Now ask them to list adjectives ,two per nun thjat they would use to describe the nouns they have sleected.
• Ask them to think about the adjectival agreement with these nouns.Are the nouns masculine, feminine and in German neuter? 
• Do they need to use each of the nouns in the plural or singular?
• Ask then to check their adjectival agreement against the criteria above.

A physical daisy chain
Now it's palm of your hand time.
You make daisy chains with your hands so we are using our hands as the physical planner for the daisy chains we will make later.

• Ask the children to open up the palm of their left hand and wiggle their fingers.
• The index finger on the right hand is their pen with invisible ink!

• Each finger and the palm of  the left hand represents a key part of the sentence

Thumb- personal pronoun 

Index finger verb

Middle finger noun

Ring finger first adjective

Little finger second adjective

Palm of your hand conjunction

• Ask the children with the index finger on the right hand to touch each finger on the left hand as they say their physical sentence to themselves quietly.
• Now they need to add the conjunction in the centre of their sentence by drawing a circle in the plan of their left hand with their imaginary pen and the index finger of the right hand.
• Can they now add the next part of their setnece - using their fingers again as the prompts for the parts of the sentence?
• They may need to reorder their finger roles if they use in French adjectives that precede the noun.
• Once again they add their conjunction and move on to make their next physical clause in the long sentence.
• If they can they should make five  clauses using the four conunctions.

A visual daisy chain!
And now they can make their daisy chains.

The centre of the daisy is the picture of the item- the noun they like.

There will be 5 petals on each daisy .One for the each a part of the sentence and the green stem of each daisy is the conjunction leading to the next daisy .
Now you have your daisy chain!    

Making a statement to describe jobs and roles in the future with Year 6 leavers

As our KS2 Year 6 get ready to leave primary school, next half term could be a wonderful time to ask them to reflect on what they want to be in the future.

It is also a time to celebrate what they can now do in a foreign language. 

Last week in Spain I found this wonderful book and it gave me an idea about how we can could create similar books with our Y6 language learners in all languages! 

They can demonstrate  how they can now use a bilingual dictionary to access the language they want to use.They can show how they can manipulate simple sentence stucture , nouns and present tense verbs too!

The book is made up of pictures of different types of people.You can see four characters on the front of the book .
As a concept itself it's a brilliant book- just to read and have fun reading and muddling up the sentences with the children on Spanish 

However the concept translates really well in to language work on sentence structure in any language.On each double page spread there is a bright colourful caricature picture of a type of person (pirate/cook/clown etc) and on the left hand page of the double page spread, the page is divided in to three sections and each section can be turned over individually.

The top section is the statement about the character (present tense of the verb to be in first perspn singylar e.g I am / soy / je suis /ich bin ) plus the noun  for the character (e.g. pirate / cowboy etc)

The middle section is the verb in the first person singular present tense associated with the character's actions ( e.g. cowboy - I ride   / cook - I prepare etc) plus the noun that is linked to the action ( e.g cowboy- I ride - my horse  / coook - I prepare - the meal) .

The third section is about where the character's actions take place (e.g. cook- in the kitchen/ in the restaurant etc)

(Turn over one of the three sections and the sentence  is correct grammatically -but the meaning becomes slightly odd or bizarre.That is part of the beauty of the book!)

I think we can use the idea of the double page spread though to create our own entertaining end of our primary school career book .
Each child needs to generate their own three section statement to explain what they want to be when they grow up.It's a description of the job, the role and the objects/people /place involved in the role.

Section one - first person singular of the verb to be and the appropriate nooun for the role or job chosen
Section two - present tense first person singular verb associated with an action involved in the role or the job plus a noun representing an object or person connected to the actipon
Section three - the place the action takes place

e.g"  I am a doctor/ and I help the patients/ in the hospital " 

• All we need to do now is create a large card book with double page spreads for each child in the class. The children draw a caricature on paper of the role or job they have chosen.This is glued on to the right hand side of the double page spread.
• The children then write their messages in the three sections which have been ruled  off on the left hand side of the double page spread.
• Once the book is complete all you need to do is cut to the centre fold the three sections along the ruled lines .

Now we have our own book! 

We can read it as it should be read or see also what types of entertaining sentences we can make by turning individual sections and understanding the new information  we read!

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? 

Sandcastle Sentence Building

One of our focus themes this next term is "Seaside" and synonymous with the seaside must be building sandcastles! As teachers of young language learners we are endeavouring to develop children's understanding of basic grammar and sentence construction.

Seems to me that "building sandcastle sentences" could be  a great way to enable our moving on and advanced language learning KS2 children to reflect  upon and apply their  growing knowledge of how language works!  
As the class teacher you can decide on the appropriate context,content and the structures (nouns,personal pronouns,parts of verbs, adjectives, conjunctions etc).

We can build simple sentences, sentences made of two clauses, sentences requiring conjunctions to make their more complex and apply word order rules and build our own new sentences with words and structures we select and  want to use .Just like we will fond lots of sandcastle building competitions on war m teachers in target language countries such as France and Spain then we can hold our own sandcastle sentence building competitions and set challenges that match the level of our language learners!

The "Sandcastle Sentence Building Challenges below are based on: 

• context - describing what we eat at the seaside
• content- ice creams
• grammar focuses- identifying and constructing simple present tense sentences using the personal pronouns and the verb " to eat"

In developing the following activities with your class, you must consider the language and word order of target language sentences, consider the punctuation of the sentences as signposts to the construction of the more complex sentences and select a context and content base that fits with your own class' target language knowledge.

Sandcastle Sentence Building 

Share with the children the building blocks of an empty simple sentence.

Can the children discuss with you how many parts the think are going to be in your sandcastle sentence (five in this sandcastle).Set the scene- if we are describing eating an ice cream ,do they think with a partner they can discuss what might words and phrases  be in the sandcastle?(Encourage them to think of words like je / manger/ glace/ flavours of ice creams)

Explain that every good sandcastle needs a flag to mark the spot and to go on top of the sandcastle.

In our sentences explain that this is going to be a personal pronoun.

Share with them the blue flag shape with the personal pronoun you want to use,written on it.I have chosen "Je" in French in this case.

Can they tell you the meaning of the word and explain its function in the sentence?

Give them pair talking and thinking time to do this. 

Now share with the class the building blocks of the first "sandcastle sentence".Can they decide in which order the sandcastle, starting with the personal pronoun flag at the top, should be built?

Why do they think that the word "mange" is written on an orange piece of card? 

Discuss with the class what this word represents as a structure ( verb) and why is it important  in the construction of a good sandcastle SENTENCE? 

In their heads can they "virtually" build your sandcastle?

Who wants to come out and build the sandcastle? 

Does everyone agree with the construction? 

What is the the sandcastle message?   

Share with the children a second personal pronoun flag.What does this allow us to do as sandcastle sentence builders? (We can build a new sentence).On mini whiteboards can the children try to build a new sandcastle sentence about a different flavour of ice cream?

Remind them of the importance of the orange building block in the sandcastle to make certain that they are building a SENTENCE .

Listen, look and share as a class some of the sandcastle sentences they have constructed and drawn .

Now share your new building blocks for the sentence that you would like a volunteer to construct as your new  "two tower sandcastle" made up of two clauses, so this time it will have "two tower sandcastle".

How does the class know which personal prononun to start with (capital letter on "Je")

How does the class know which flavour goes with the first ice cream here ( comma after "au chocolat,") 

How does the class know which is the final word of the two tower sentence and why? (Well it is the correct word order but also it has a full stop "vanille.")

Invite a  volunteer up to build what is now the "two tower two clause sandcastle sentence"!  

Can they cut out and write in pairs a "two tower two clause sandcastle sentence" as a challenge for another pair?

Sandcastles often have bridges and become more elaborate.We can introduce the use of conjunctions in this way too to our "Sandcastle Sentence Building" challenges.

Here are two conjunction bridges in French below.

Discuss with the children what role these two red bridges play on the sentence and identify that they have target language conjunctions written in them. Make sure that the conjunctions are familiar words for the children.

Can they change and improve the  "two tower two clause sandcastle sentence"above with one of these conjunction bridges ?

Which conjunction would they like to use?

For my example  below , I selected the conjunction bridge "et" in French to join my two clauses.

Can the class design and build their own "two clause conjunction sandcastle tower sentences" to share with the rest of the class?Their designs must also be based on the content you have been practising.

With more advanced language learners set up a "Sandcastle building challenge".

Give each pair a set of sandcastle building blocks in random order as below, to construct a "three tower,two conjunction sandcastle complex sentence". 

Here the children need to select the correct part of the verb to match the personal pronouns and to identify which flavour can not be at the end of the sentence(because of the comma) but also to decide which of the other two flavours will be at the end and make sure that they remember to add that full stop!

They need to decide where and how they want to use the two conjunction bridges- maybe they want to use two new conjunctions.....

........and then they can construct their "three tower,two conjunction sandcastle complex sentence".

Now it is time for the class to get on their construction thinking hats and build new sandcastle tower challenges for the rest of the class!

The class can now hold their own "Grand Class Sandcastle Sentence Building Competition!"