Here is a video clip that shares with its audience the magic of Christmas for a young child (it's based upon a visit to Lapland) and it's an opportunity for us to develop some reading and writing activities with our more advanced primary language learners or with KS3 Year 7 pupils.No words are spoken in any language,but the short clip tells the story of the magic of Christmas for this little child! Let's make our own"Magic of Christmas " advertisements!
Here is the link to the video clip In the clip we can see a little boy asleep, who wakes up, gets out of bed , goes to the window and sees the snow.He goes outside to play in the snow with his dad and then goes back inside.Father Christmas arrives , the little boy see him and receives a present!
So let's make our own video clip,using these reading and writing activities based on nouns and verbs.
Step One Let's watch the clip and then arrange the key nouns in the target language from the video clip as a story ladder from beginning to end.Share each noun in the target language with the children (may be they need thinking time or bilingual dictionary time to understand the noun they can see).Ask the children to sort the nouns in to the correct order they saw them in the video clip , Key target language nouns to source : bedroom,bed,boy.window.snow.sledge,father, house,Father Christmas, present)
A drama and language activity opportunity Create freeze frames of the key target language nouns or actions associated with the key target language nouns Step Two Give out the key phrases that describe the action.Ask the children to use their prior knowledge of daily routine phrases from their work on their own personal routine to locate and identify the key verbs and target language.Give each pair a set of key verbal phrase strips,so that the children can make a verbal phrase rolling script of the events as they watch the clip again (in the third person singular - or as less of a challenge in the first person singular) Key target language verbal phrases in third person singular: he is sleeping,he wakes up,he gets up, he walks to the window, he sees the snow, it's snowing, he plays with his father outside, he goes inside, Father Christmas arrives, he sees Father Christmas, he receives a present)
A story board script Collect in the verbal phrase strips and blu-tac a pack of them to the flip chart or white board.It's important that three phrases are missing from the pack of phrases.Ask the children to read what they can see and working with a partner can the children identify and remember which phrases are missing and write them on individual white boards or rough paper. Take feedback and then reveal the missing strips. Changing the script Now ask the children working in groups of four to write their own story board scripts.They are allowed to use four of the verbal phrases exactly as they are written in the activities above.They must change two of the items in the story on two other phrases and they must try to add two new verbal phrases of their own( e.g a change of weather or an additional piece of information about the weather and who the little boy is playing with outside in the snow). The magic of Christmas ! Using the picture at the top of the page as the back drop or illustration they can now tell their own story about the Magic of christmas as a spoken or written text...........
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!
What a brilliant idea I have just come across. Take a look below! It's creative, imaginative and a wonderful way to bring together questions and answers to create simple exchanges of language. The site on which I found this wonderful idea is a site called "Val d'Arve news" as part of the Ecole Val D'Arve. Thank you so much! Here's the link to the Val d'arve news.
What do I like about this?
Well for a start it links art,literacy and dynamics of people's conversations and situations with target language knowledge.
It's an opportunity to practise accurate independent writing of questions and answers at whatever stage your language learners may be.
It's a great way as well to set up some real life drama snap shots too - like physical instagrams.
It's also a tool that we can use in KS2,in KS3 if we work with the Art and Drama departments and possibly to create our own "Wallace and Grommit" or "Morph" sketches using APPs and IT in KS2,3,4 and 5
How should we approach this?
Firstly ask the children to work in pairs to generate questions and answers that demonstrate the dynamics in a relationship between for example :
a mother and a child
two friends
a husband and wife
a teacher and a pupil
a policeman and a lost person
etcetra!
Ask them to consider what might be the potential questions and answers between these people and and how would the people sound and what actions would they use?
Ask the children to draw their dialogues as cartoon sketches ( sure a lot of us already do this)
share with them some of the scenes and clay models on the Val d'Arve site.
Now make it 3D with clay models and sets - just like the teacher here in the Ecole Val d'arve has done!
Take a look at some of their clay models (how they convey the dynamics of the situation and the people) and scene sets (how they have cultural references in the back drop) and how they have added their speech bubble questions and answers (which add the text we need to interpret the event)!Brilliant. Thank you for the ideas Ecole Val'd'Arve!
This sequence of activity based around French castles and creating our own class chevaliers was inspired by a tweet by Emilie @EWoodruffe who works with Janet Lloyd Networkin a primary school teaching
French, where language learning is a
part of the whole school creative curriculum model . Her challenge this half
term is to link language learning to the year group focus : “Castles” .
I have created a sequence of language learning suitable for UKS2 French
with listening , speaking , reading and writing performance and DT .
Activities below can take your class on a journey to
France , to the Loire , along the Loire and the castles , inside a creepy
castle and to meet knights and give these French chevalier personalities ,
equipment and physical descriptions . You can mix and match activities to suit your class focus and they all lead to the creation of your own class chevaliers!
Stage One : Les châteaux de la Loire
Pretty obvious place to start. Here is an evocative clip from You Tube introducing les châteaux de la
Loire
We love using child friendly maps of France to bring
the country nearer to the children, with symbols and
information they want to know.
Often in UKS2 we will use these maps alongside Atlas work looking at the geographical features of the
country .
For this focus we need to locate the Loire on a map Below are two of favourite child friendly maps of France
Once you have watched the video clip with the children ,
located the Loire on one of the child friendly maps and taken a virtual tour of
the Loire and the castles via google maps , then it’s time to ask the children to
annotate with Art work a simple map of the Loire valley and the châteaux. You
could use a map like this one and allow the children to decide how they want
to annotate five castles along the Loire
Take the children on a story journey into a creepy castle,
and listen to the wonderful Dark Dark Tale in French. You find a clip of the story on You Tube , search for "une histoire sombre , très
sombre"
This French school’s website below has a wonderful PDF of step by step activities linked to literacy which may like to try:
You could come back to this castle
and the creepy story once you have learned about the knights who might have
lived there …..Children love changing what is in the box at the end of the
story and this time it could be something linked to the knights’ equipment or
characteristics etc that the children
are about to learn about .
Play Quiz Quiz
Swap and investigate names and personalities
Each child can be one of the Knights from a selection you decide of
6 cards from this pack .The children can practise introducing themselves as the
different knights . I would select five or six so that we can practise the names as a class and look at
their portraits and decide how they would bow or introduce themselves
flamboyantly .
Now give each child one of the 6 cards you selected . You will need enough for each child The children can walk around the room with a card and play Quiz
Quiz Swap (just ask a question – name – give a response – name of knight – swap
cards and move on).
Play this a second time and build dialogues ( ask and answer questions about names
, (pick a castle from Loire) where someone lives , how are they feeling and
make sure to add a greeting and a farewell )
Hold "listen ins " where the class need to stop and listen
to a dialogue between two of the children who deliver their dialogue performing as the knights would do and then the
class restarts the conversations and the Quiz Quiz Swap game.
Stage Four : Jousting
Knights and jousting go together ! So we could go back and revisit familiar
language and families of words during this unit by introducing an ongoing
“jousting match” between tables of children that takes place for five minutes during the period of time in the term that we are working on our theme of chevaliers . Each table is given one of the
knight's names from the cartes de chevaliers as their table's knight .
Jousting is between tables or as an "in front of the class" competition. A class “jousting league table “ is required , to record points that the “chevaliers” win . If one table wins a joust
it gains 3 points , if it’s a draw then both tables of chevaliers gain one
point. Set up table jousting matches
where the tables have to select a knight to go into battle with a knight from
the other table. These are games where each player speaks alternately
e.g. I speak , then you speak , then I speak etc.Hesitation means the other knight wins!
The jousts could be based on the following ……
·Saying the months in chronological order.
·Saying the months in alphabetical order
·Say the months from December backwards
·Counting in twos from 0-30
·Counting backwards from 30
·Saying the days of the week in alphabetical
order
·
Stage Five : Knights
and parts of the body calligrams
Revisit the parts of the body that the children already
know and introduce new nouns you may need for the following parts :heart, brain, body
What type of body does a knight need to be the best?
Here
are a few suggestions…
A brave heart
Powerful body
Fast legs
Strong arms
Clever brain
This is an opportunity to work with the children on the
physical attributes of a knight and to look at the position and agreement of
adjectives after nouns.
Working in pairs ask the children to investigate with
bi-lingual dictionaries the key adjectives and to find the gender of the key
parts of the body that are needed to describe their knights .
Build your own class chevalier
Draw round a child and then stick the outline to the wall
. This will be your class knight and will work as a memory prompt , a working wall and a focus for other stages as we build our class chevalier
Give out key body parts and ask children to place them in correct positions
on the outline
Give out the key adjectives as cards to other volunteers Where do they
think the adjectives fit best?
Now ask a final group of children to add any adjectival agreement
they think is necessary to the adjectives and/ or to move the adjectives around
if they think they fit better next to a different part of the body.
Last knight
standing
Ask the class to help you decide upon an action for each
physical description and then play our favourite type of bingo “Last knight
standing” .
Ask the children to freeze frame in an action linked to
the physical description. Call out a physical description and any children
freeze framed in this action is out and must sit down Knights remaining must
change their freeze frame action and play the game again. Who will be the last
knight standing?
Knight calligrams
Give out the outlines of the knights . Here’s a simple
knight template
Ask the children to create a calligram of
the physical description of the knight you have built .
Stage Six : Personality
of knight
Set the scene with this wonderful song. Thanks to @Janejanehegfor this suggestion by the way! Chevalier de table ronde
Today we are creating personalities for the knights.
Children need bi-lingual dictionaries to look up the French meaning of key adjectives to describe their ultimate
knight e.g. brave, kind, trustworthy etc that you have written on the
flipchart.
Collate the list after the activity on your flipchart or
whiteboard.
Play Chinese whispers with
the attributes
Create a memory game with the attributes with children working in groups of six where
they have to say what was said before and something for themselves and include
the phrase
Now the children need to create in their best medieval
handwriting on a scroll template an advertisement for a new knight.
They have the language
to physically describe a knight , say what personality attributes he
must have and they have the key phrase “Je cherche un chevalier qui est ……”
.You will need to help the children to say also “Je cherche un chevalier qui a
….+ physical description
Stage Seven : The
armoury of knight
Look at the possible equipment a knight might need :
Select from this equipment key language to create a game of lotto
First equip your
class chevalier
Using the large outline you drew of a knight and physical
description ask the children to help you using pictures , cognate recognition
and bi-lingual dictionaries to decide where you should now add the equipment for the knight
that you have selected .
Introduce each item to be placed on your knight by saying
“le chevalier porte……”
The volunteer who comes to place the equipment on the
knight must say the complete phrase too.
Now play lotto – who will be the winning knight?
Finally have a game of
table armour beetle drive with six pieces of armour that the children need
to win for their own knight’s template (use the templates from the knights’ calligrams) . The children must take it in turns to throw a dice, name the item they
throw which is linked to that number – picture and number clearly displayed at
the front of the classroom - and then draw the item in the correct place on their template. If they
throw a number that they have already thrown they mustn’t draw anything and
wait until their next turn . First
person to complete the armour wins the game . They must tell their table what
their knight is wearing
“Le chevalier porte ……………!”
Stage Eight : The identity of our class chevalier!
You are now ready to create an identity for your class
knight .
Ask the children in pairs or on tables to create an
identity for the unnamed class knight
He needs a name , a castle where he lives , a physical description , a
description of his armour and a description of his personality .
You will have to decide whether the class is ready to write in the third person singular or if you want to ask the children to write in the first person singular as if they are the knight.
The children need to present their descriptions to the
class and the class needs to vote on the best knights description , marking it
on the following : pronunciation,
fluency ,
interesting description
( each area
can be awarded a maximum of 5 points ) .
Which descriptions win?
From these
descriptions which one will the class decide to keep when they hear them one
more time?
And finally
Following the instructions here your class chevalier needs to have a selection of shields in his armoury! The shields are to be made by every child and then used as display around the chevalier , displaying their handwritten descriptions of the class chevalier that they created with a partner
