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.

Christmas heroes!

My previous blog post about Mog the hero of the Christmas night has got me thinking!


What about creating descriptions of christmas characters as heroes of the celebrations?
we can explore the verb "to be" , adjectives and the agreement of adjectives with the masculine and feminine characters!


Step One 

• Show the children part of the clip of Mog saving the Christmas celebrations in the Sainsburys advert for 2015 or discuss with the children what Mog has done to save the celebrations without viewing the clip.
• Discuss how this makes him  a hero!

Step Two 

• Brainstorm or share adjectives with the children in UKS2 that we associate with heroes.
• Look for cognates and semi cognates 
• Check for false friends

Step Three

• Write them super hero style in the sky - so the children are looking at the spelling and practising the spelling

Step Four

• Show the paradigm of the verb to be to the class.
• Practise saying the verb "super hero" style
• Idenitify the parts of the verb yoou will need to say "He is...." and "She is..."
• Ask the children to tell a partner a super hero sentence for Mog in the target language and then to write  the super hero sentence in the air. 
• On the board with the class write 5  "Mog the super hero sentences" - use the "He is ..." part of your paradigm of the verb "to be" plus five of the adjectives you have been investigating
• You could stop here and create Mog the superhero christmas posters or .....
• Ask the children to create a poster about their own superhero character (Rudolph the reindeer or Father Christmas or a Christmas elf- the character must be a masculine noun.Again you could stop here and create your own super hero posters or .........

Step Five 

• Introduce the Christmas fairy .(This must be a feminine noun). 
• Using the "She is ...." sentence from your paradigm above and the adjectives you used to describe a super hero,write some super hero sentences for the fairy on the board.
• Can the children read the sentences with a partner
• Can the children in pairs now say the sentences in their own preferred order for the Christmas fairy from most true to least true
• Can they cross refernce the sentences abouty the Christmas fairy and one of the masculine christmas super heroes you have prepared sentences about (see above).Can they spot the spelling changes to the adjective?

And now using the People Pillar Poem activities from blogpost in May 2015 you could  create your  own Christmas superheroes pillar poems and 3D characters !Ths time focus on the 3rd person singular of the verb to be and the correct agreement of the adjectives to describe the character's super powers! 

People pillar poems and template

Mog, negatives and positives at Christmas

Most of us will by now have seen Sainsburys Christmas 2015 advertisement.It stars Mog the cat.There is a beautiful story by Judith Kerr about Mog at Christmas too- a much less disastrous story!
Here are some ways I think we can exploit the video clip with moving on and advanced learners in UKS2.

Let's take the clip and use the footage for language learning purposes before Christmas in UKS2.
First watch the clip and look at the language content- house,home, kitchen,food,decorations, actions,emotions etc....
First why not try out some of the observation reading activities I wrote about here:

You can revisit familiar language, explore new vocabulary (house,home,verbs ,adjectives, empotions, adverbs etcetra etcetra!)and broaden vocabulary and then get the children to observe the clip and identify when they see key written language.
Revisiting language observational games







Let's be a bit negative!
The clip describes how everything is spoilt by a fire in the kitchen.....
Why not practise the negative with the children in UKS2?

• Look at the structure of the negative using "there is/there are "in the target language.Ask the children to watch the clip and pause the clip at points and ask the class to write individually or in pairs or with TA support a negative sentence e.g pause as the tree falls down ... can the children write "There is no tree".
• Share the sentences!Ask volunteers to share their sentences either in spoken or written form.Write them out clearly on the board.
• Now let's add a touch of positivity! 
• Can the children help you to change their negative sentences to positive sentences! 
• Write the positive sentences out clearly too! 

Let's be melodramatic! 

• Ask the class to practise with a partner saying a negative sentence from your list and then the opposite "positive" sentence" from your list
• Can they add emotion in their voicesand facial expressions?
• Can the class mimic what they hear and see as children volunteer to perform their melodramatic negative- positive sentences?

Let's share the good news!

• Create simple negative- positive lift the flap strips - 
• Ask the children to write a negative statement on the top flap and a positive statement to rectify the situation on the bottom  flap
• Encourage children to find new target language vocaubulary for items associated with celebrations!  

Writing an Autumn Poem- Leaf Style!

This writing activity is based upon encouraging the children to use the language they already have learnt and to create their own poems about Autumn
The poems need to sound like an"Autumn walk"
It's an activity that all stages of learners can do as it relies upon recall and use of language they already know.
All you need are six leaf shapes.


The children should work in groups of four or with more advanced learners in pairs.
No poem will be the same in the class! 

You will need: 
Each group needs six leaves- numbered 1- 6 .
Each leaf shape  has a number on it.
Each leaf shape has an instruction written on the reverse side.

Writing a poem game- leaf style!

• Spread out the six leaf shapes number side up
• Roll the dice!
• Select the leaf with the number on that is shown on the dice.
• Turn the leaf over and create the line of the poem, according to the instruction on the reverse of the leaf shape.
• Once the line is written, the leaf must be placed back on the table number side up and can be selected again if that number is the one that appears when the dice is rolled.
• Each team or pair's poem will have atleast six lines as each numbered leaf must be used atleast once.
• You could make this a time trial too - where the first pair or group to use up each of the numbered leaf shapes and completes their written poem are the winners.

What's on the reverse of the leaves as instructions?

Well there are prompts on the reverse of the leaves: 

1= nouns we know

2= adjectives we know

3 = a sequence of numbers we know

4= a sequence of colours we know

5 = instructions or commands we know

6 =an opinion word or phrase we know.

Let the children be creative.remind them that their poems need to sound like autumn walks- crisp, crunchy,snappy ,swirly etc

Can the children use their target language nowledge, repeat key words etc in the lines of their poems to create the atmospheric feeling of an Autumn walk

e.g.in its simplest form.................

Chien, chien , oiseau!

Grand,petit,gros! 

Trois, six, neuf

Noir,marron, orange!

Ecoutez! Regardez! Marchez!

Excellent, excellent,excellent!

A bit of performance and a bit of technology!

And of course if you know me well , then I would want to encourage the choldren to perform their poems and even record their poems as speaking leaves using an APP or a QR!

Spider's web.Reading and Writing Creative Game

On a walk the other day a good friend of mine took this fabulous photo. We saw this web and we knew it was a spider in the middle but look carefully and you could ask yourself ....."Is it a spider , is it a tiger....?" The colourings and the dew mislead you! 

As it is Autumn and some of us will also be looking for ideas for Halloween ,I thought this idea would fit well with writing in UKS2 in the target language.It makes a great guessing game and an interactive reading display too!

1. Show them the picture and ask them which animals they can see.
2. Ask the children to think of imaginary spider's webs and mystical powers.Ask them to look up in their bilingual dictionaries possible animals and adjectives such as colours and shapes to describe them.
3. Ask the children to note down their findings.
4. Brainstorm other possible animals that you might see in an imaginary spider's web
5. Discuss the possible colours , size and shape of the animals
6. Note down the language you discuss on the whiteboard
7. ask the children to write three inetersting setences about the animal that they want caught in the spider's web 
8. Ask the children to draw a spider's web.Can they then write their sentences clearly and carefully long the threads of their webs.
9. In the centre they need to create their spider.Under the spider will be a picture of their own animal that they have described.
10. To create their spider they must fold a piece of paper in two and on the outside flap draw the spider.Cut out the shape of the spider.It must be a size that can sit in the centre of the web the child has drawn.
11. Now the child should add on the inside of the folded paper a drawing of the imaginary animal that is described in the written sentences. 
12. The folded spider flap needs to be added to the web
13. Each child is now a spider's web creator and must find partners in the class to work with
14. The partners in the class must read the sentences, draw on a mini whiteboard what they expect to see caught in the spider's web.Then the partner can lift the flap of the spider picture in the cnetre of the web and see if the drawing matches the original drawing of the spider's web creator?
15. The children swap roles and the reading activity starts again.
16. The children can swap partners several times and once you collect in the webs you have a wonderful display! 

Mille feuilles moments!

Inspired by the Great British Bake Off  yesterday evening I realised what great fun we could have with writing in the target language - creating our own mille feuilles ! 

It is such a simple idea and would work with children writing at different stages in their language learning and although it is very much a French cake , I can't see why we couldn't use this in other target languages too!

• Each layer in our mille feuilles will be a layer of paper.
• Each piece of paper will have some special writing upon it .
• Each layer of filling will be the additional information we want to add.
• The icing decoration on top will be the "Word Art" depiction of the writing we have done throughout our layers- it will give our readers a  taste - a clue to what they are about to read!
• As with all good cakes the proof is in the eating! So we are going to let our class friends read our writing and decide if the word art gave us the correct clue to the writing

How will this actually work?  

1. Identify the content you want the children to write about- personal information, likes and dislikes, family , the weather, animals etc.(Simple familiar content for beginners...perhaps more challenging content with more advanced learners)
2. Brainstorm key language with the children
3. Give each child five strips of paper or ask the children to cut paper to the correct size to make a mille feuille cake.Show the children what one of these cakes looks like.

I have selected two current focuses from our own VLE and SOW 

Beginners: Simple Colour Cakes
Now we are ready to make our cakes.Our cakes are going to be about colours.

Bottom layer - a strip of paper.Write our first sentences -a sentence to tell someone a colour we like.
Filling layer- second strip of paper- a pictionary of items in the colour we have just written about.
Third layer - new strip of paper- a sentence about a colour we don't like.
Filling layer- a pictionary of items in the colour we have just written about
Top layer- our Word Art decoration- just how are we going to add our icing and decorate the top of the cake so that our readers have an idea about the messages we are giving when they geing to read the cake and deconstruct the cake layer by layer?!

Moving On: Autumn Cake Walk Poems 
This is going to be an Autumn poem using commands, counting and colours.
Bottom layer - a strip of paper.Write our first sentence: a command, colours and numbers to set us on our walk.
Filling - a strip of paper that has simple sentences about leaves we find on our walk
Third layer -a new command, colours and numbers to continue on our walk.
Filling - a strip of paper that has simple sentences about animals we find on our walk
Top layer our Word Art depiction of our poem and the type of walk our readers are going to go on, when they start to deconstruct the cake and read the information!

Klee facial expression flap phrases and picture gallery

I love Paul Klee and the way he uses building blocks of colour in his Art to convey emotion and meaning.... so what an ideal artist to use to allow the children to create their own "facial expression" art work .

I suggest that you use this picture,Senecio:

This Art and writing lesson follows on from the lesson blog post I posted  Universal facial expressions ,emotions and different languages.

We will be using the ideas in both these blog posts to celebrate Euroepan Day of Languages 2015.

Additional resources and lessons guides are available on the VLE  for the Janet Lloyd Network 

1. Revisit emotions, facial expressions and target language phrases the children can say that add "sound and language" to the emotion.
2. You could hold a "physical face display " here with a card picture frame that the children use, by holiding up and using their face and the emotion and target language phrase to fill the picture frame and become the picture.You will need to model this first.
3. Take a look with the class at Klee's picture "Senecio"
4. Ask the children to follow Klee's model and to draw a picture of  the outline of a face.
5. Give the children coloured card or paper and ask the children to add blocks of colur made from the card on the face .
6. Each block of colour represents an emotion and acts as a flap under which the child draws a symbol or face to represent the emotion and writes the appropriate target language or target languages phrase linked to the emotion.
7. Create a class display of "Klee facial expression flap phrases and pictures"

 

Mirror mirror on the wall......

Start of the new school year and time to revisit the personal information questions and answers from previous years of language learning.
We have put in to place lots of games and activities over the last couple of years to make the revisiting of core language a challenge, a competition, a way to reflect on what we have learnt.

Here is another way that I think we can use at the start of the year to bring back in to focus the language we learnt last year etc to describe ourselves and ask questions of others.

The idea of the mirror on the wall allows us to practise first and second person singular questions and responses!
Each child needs an oval piece of paper:

Question and Answer Mirrors

On one side of the paper ask the children to write down the key information they think they can say about themselves in the target language.So for example a beginner learner from last year should be able to say  a name phrase/ a feeling/ where he/she lives/ his or her age and something he/ she likes (animal or colour or food).This is the "answer mirror"

On the other side of the paper (remember this is a mirror on the wall) ask the children to draw some symbol prompts for the questions: for example a beginner learner's symbols could be : a name tag / a house outline/ a birthday cake with candles/ a smiley face/ a heart shape.This is the "question mirror".

Play a game of spot the question and answer!

• Ask the children to have their oval shapes infront of them on the desk with the answer mirror face up. 
• Call out a question to elicit the information the children have put on their oval shapes.
• Ask the children to listen to your question and to point to the response they would give.
• Ask a child the specific question and ask them to read out their resonse.
• Ask the children to turn over their ovals and this time to listen to the question, identify the symbol they have drawn as the question prompt and whisper to a partner the question that you as the teacher have just said.  

Mirror Mirror on the Wall!

Working with a partner, ask the children to take it in turns to ask and answer the questions  on their mirror oval shapes.

One child places his /her mirror "question mirror" face up on the table or on the wall with blu-tac.

The other child must look at the question prompt symbols, point to the symbol  and ask a question.

Can the first child give the answer that he/she has written on the answer side of the mirror?

Mirrors on the Wall .

Create with the children card versions of mirrors - whichever shape the child wants to use.

Ask the children to draw a sketch of their own faces on the mirrors.They will need to use pastel colours for this

Over the top ask the children to write their favourite five questions and five answers about themselves that they can say on the target language.They will need to use a dark crayon or felt tip for this.

On the reverse side of the mirror ask the children to write in English two more details they would like to be able to use in their personal information questions and answers this year in the target language to describe themselves in more detail.

Hang the mirrors on the wall - as a mirror mobile!

  

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!    

Sunshine Sparklers !

This is my "sunshine sparkler" and here is a simple idea to use toward the end of the term with LKS2 emergent/ beginner target language writers!

The idea was inspired by this wonderful picture below of Versaille and its the illuminated fountains. I spotted it on Twitter

You can find out more about the fountains here on the le monde website

Firstly let's play simple games with "Summertime" words.
The following words immediately come to mind and you will probably be able to think of more!

picnic

sunshine

park

seaside

walk

swimming

holidays

• Play familiar games like "Simon says " with an action for the words or charades and guessing the word as class mate has mimed or hunt thw word around the classroom or match the parts of words so that we can complete the word.Games that are class favourites fit here.
• Then let's encourage children to look accurately at the words and write individual words high up in the air with their "sunshine sparkler" stick. Invisible but ,magical and everyone is taking part! and don't forget flicks and twists and wiggles for all those wonderful accents etc!
• Each child could add their three top favouirte summertime words from the list to the sunshine symbol or start at the top of the sunshine sparkler sticks to take home too!
• Can the children create their own "sparkling Versaille fountain style painted word art"" to add to a class display of "sunshine sparkling words.They could pick their favourite word from the list you have been playing games with and which they have written in the sky with the sunshine sparkler sticks. You could focus on the cursive writing of ther target language and ask the children to try to write the word in their word art in that cursive style !

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? 

People Pillar Portrait Poem

I am looking for really easy and effective ways to create writing opportunities with young learners who are working out how to use nouns and the relationship between nouns and adjectives in the target language.
For all the ideas you need a picture stimulus and bilingual dictionaries and card strips  to write down their people pillar portrait poems .
i think that this activity would work  really well to for a Father's Day focus, for a Year 6 leavers focus on what describes  a Year 7 "ready to learn" new starter etc .... the potential is almost limitless

Stage One  
Focus on one masculine singular noun and a stimulus picture e.g "un clown"

• Ask the children to look up and cross reference adjectives to describe a clown
• Are there any adjectives that the children need to write in French before the noun- talk about these first!
• Ask the children on rough paper to write the adjective in the correct position next to the noun in a list - therefore you repeat thre noun"clown" and write a different adjective next to the noun each time.

Un clown amusant,

un clown actif,

un grand clown,

un clown .........,

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

• The children can now make your first "people pillar portrait poem".All they need to do is to write their list written in rough on to the card strip. 
• Create plasticine or blu-tac feet for the card strip and add clown heads to the pillars.

Stage Two 

Focus on a feminine singular noun and a stimulus picture e.g. "une reine" 

Ask the children to look up and cross reference adjectives to describe a queen.

Ask the children to anticipate the familiar changes that they can remember to the spelling of the adjectives if they are being written next to a feminine noun

Explore the spelling of unfamiloar adjectives and find the feminine ending spelling 

Are there any adjectives that the children need to write in French before the noun- talk about these first!

Ask the children on rough paper to write the adjective in the correct position next to the noun in a list - therefore you repeat thre noun " reine"  and write a different adjective next to the noun each time.

Une belle reine, 

une reine magnifique,

une  petite reine,

une reine.....

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

• The children can now make your second "people pillar portrait poem".All they need to do is to write their list written in rough on to a new card strip. 
• Attach the new card strip to the  plasticine or blu-tac feet  so that the card strips for the clown and the queen are back to back.Add  a queen's clown head to the new card pillar.

Stage Three 

• Ask the children to find their own two nouns -one masculine and one feminine.The nouns should represent people or professions.
• Ask the children to create their own people pillar poems and challenge the children to try to use some of the same adjectives to describe both the masculine and feminine nouns.
• This will allow the children to make comparisopns on spelling of the adjectives when being used with a masculine or feminine singular noun.

Making the activity 3D

Clare Seccombe and I have been busy challengimng each other to take ideas we have generated or found and add a twist.Recently I challenged clare to create a 3D version of the People Pillar Portrait Poem. The challenge was successfu; and here is Clare's blpog post response....

3D People Pillar Portrait Poem

Languages ,Literacy , Joined up thinking -making primary languages special!

I do love joined up thinking!
As you may already know we have a network of 110 schools, all loosely working aournd a shared SOW or atleast able to dip in and use resources as they fit best with the individual school curriculum and language learners.

Should you want to know more about JLN membership here is a link
Membership of Janet Lloyd Network (full or local) 

Below is an example of how working as part of team and a network plus sharing information that we learn from others is benefitting our young language learners!

In Year 4 we introduce our learners to the extra terrestrial family - our aliens .Everyone loves the aliens and most of our network members will introduce and use the resources with their classes at sometime in their teaching and learning! 
It is very miuch a case of  team work between four primary language teaching practitioners!
Ana Garcia draws the family,I create the simple stories and activities around the family and then Emilie ,Barbara and Ana provide the accurate French,Spanish and German language and authenticity! 

Thanks to Little Red Languages Company we are now creating several animated stories in French and Spanish to share with our network members and the schools participating in the DFE Language Learning for Everyone  programme too. 

This project though is very much Janet Wallbank's (one of our associate language teachers and the class teacher and children from Parish CE in St Helens!

• I visited the school to observe Janet W.She was introducing the alien family.
• I  happened to explain to the children that the grandma and grandad alien had been created by Barrowhall CP School in Warrington ,the year before! They were fascinated by the fact the children at Barrowhall  had added to the story ppt and began to suggest their own additional characters.
• Janet W and the class teacher decided it would be a good idea to ask the children to create their own drawings of new family members,The class selected  an uncle, an aunt and the pets: an alien dog and an alien cat ! 
• As the family alien focus in  Spring 1  leads to describing the physical features of monsters and aliens in Spring 2, describing the new characters fitted in really well too!  
• First of all though the characters drawings had to be judged and who better to judge the characters than the artist and the alien stories' author (Ana and myself!) 
• Here is the winning picture of the Aunt alien....

• .....and here is the winning picture of the Uncle alien

•  With a "special congratulations letter" from the author and the artist, the winners were revealed to the class and all the class received mini easter eggs for their efforts!
• Janet W and the class had real purpose to learning -how to make physical descriptions of people  because the children needed to be able to do this to complete own JLN story ppt - about their characters! They added names too.Below is  "Asteroide " the dog.

• Last week Janet W shared  the finished ppt with us and then thanks to a tweet by @valleseco Janet W was inspired to create a Youpublisher PDF Flipbook of the story! Hey presto ! We have magic! We have a page turning book ...... and now we can share the book with our other network member schools and  hopefully inspire them too!  

La famille extra terrestre Parish CE

Tea bags full of adjectives and flavour!

Today,whilst training teachers,we explored creative ways to expand my blog post ideas on hilding a cafe conversation based on a Mad Hatter's Tea Party!
One of the ways we explored ,was based on the work we did earlier in the CPD session on adjectives and looking for adjectives in the bilingual dictionary and thinking about the agreement of adjectives.
There are two levels to this creative activity.....

• First of all each child needs a tea bag- made of paper, folded like a tea bag with an opening at the top- wide enough to pop a  small strip of card through
• The children also need access to bilingual dictionaries.

Level One 

Each child has to create an original "fantastic" tasting tea!

In French and Spanish the noun is masculine - so this makes it ideal for  level one activities,as there is no agreement required.

All our children need to do is to think of persuasive and exciting adjectives in English e.g. refreshing, sizzling, tingling, sharp, spicy

They  need look up these adjectives in the english section of the bilingual dictionary.

Cross reference the adjectives in the target language section of the dictionary to check meaning.

Write each adjective on a small strip of card - one per adjective ,making the written adjectives look the meaning of the word.

Now they have their words to describe their  fantastic tea! 

Adjective by adjective they need to squeeze out the tea bag ( take out each word and create a fantastical sentence about the tea in whichever target language you teach:

" the tea is sizzling, spicy and fruity"  

Now they can create their own drawing of their tea bag with symbols on the bag to explain each fantastical part of their drink of tea and the sentence written under the tea bag itself!

Level Two 

In French and Spanish , a cup of tea has  a feminine noun! 

So now each child can follow the activity described in the stages for Level One ,collecting adjectives and writing them on cards and putting them in their paper tea bag containers.

The children then hand their tea bags and adjectives to  a second child in the class.

This child has a template of a cup of tea:

The second child empties the tea bag of its card strips and must write the adjectives on the tea cup with correct adjectival agreements to match a feminine noun in the target language!

Now can they use  the adjectives to create a complete sentence in the target language? e.g "the cup of tea is fruity,sparkling,warm and refreshing!"

They can now make a poster to advertise their cup of tea with a complete sentence.

And finally can they remember their sentence and act it out for the class to try and sell this fantastical cup of tea top the class?

Under the sea fish puppet and triarama performance

A while back,a colleague of mine, Clare Seccombe sent me this triarama picture of "under the sea" and I added it to one of my Pinterest boards  Janet's Language Learning.She was interested to know how I would use this triarama to create a piece of spoken performance and/or drama!Well here we go ....!

It is an ideal " under the sea" triarama for our Seaside project as part of our DFE funded WTSA/ JLN project.Find out more here Language Learning for Everyone and li ks really well with our other Seaside "fishy" ideas.

The triarama you can see in the picture is from a www.crayola.com blog post on colourful sea anenomes. You can find the instructions here in this blog on how to make the physical triarama.

My ideas below link this 3D triarama to the story book and the adjectives used to describe fish in this wonderful book: 

Setting the scene

1. Read the story book to the class in French or German and share the wonderful drawings or create your own drawings and creative your own fishy emotion phrases in Spanish .Have a look at the blog post here to get a feel for the book and the ideas I have already written about.Fishing for feelings
2. First create one large class triarama of an under the sea picture.Here is my class backdrop triarama.

Now let's focus on the adjectives.....

1. Adjectives add colour to nouns and give nouns character.Look at the sea anenome in the centre of the triarama at the top of the blog post, that's so colourful! 
2. On strips of coloured card as the children to write the phrase "I am ....+  an adjective  that describes a specific  emotion - in the target language.Ask them to select a piece of  coloured card strip that they think conveys the meaning e.g red - angry , green- calm, yellow- happy , blue - sad etcetra. 
3. Now ask the children to concertina their card strips with the written phrases on them,to make a sea anenome in the centre of your class "Under the sea " triarama".

Time to practise "performance".

1. Invite children to the front to select a coloured strip from our sea anenome and to mime the emotion that they can read and understand on the coloured strip.Can the class guess the  emotion?  
2. Now we need to add the fish and build a performance.Ask the children to work in pairs and to create four fish characters of their own.Each fish needs a colour, a fantastical fish name and an emotion.Each fish needs a character conveyed by the way the speech bubble information is delivered
3. For example here is a fish I have just made ......how would you convey the colour,emotion and name?

The grand class "under the sea"  performance!

1. Ask the children to work on their tables (project tables would be best here so that we have a fair range of language speaking and writing ability on each table).The children on the table must  display all the fish characters and speech bubbles they have created.Each of the other children now selects a fish character to present in the class "under the sea" performance.
2. They must attach their selected fish and speech bubble to a puppet stick, practise the way the fish sounds and moves and learn their lines!
3. Invite each group with their fish to the front to use the class triarama stage set as their "under the sea" back drop for their "fish" performance!(Remember the fish puppet stick must have the fish and the speech bubble at the bottom of the stick as the child puppeteer will operate the fish from behind and above the triarama stage set)