Creating magic with personalities and adjectival agreement

Creating magic with personalities and adjectival agreement !

We want to help all our young learners in UKS2 understand the use of Grammar to speak and write correctly . We are taking a "magical " approach with adjectival agreement and describing ourselves in  our Year 6 focus on presentations about ourselves .

We are about to look at adjectival agreement with adjectives to describe our personal qualities . We have looked at adjectival agreement before with clothes and animals but somehow this is different and more personal!

So I have been trying to think of ways to make this a physical learning activity and this is what I have created .

You will need:

2 A4 cards ,six small word cards , a large envelope and some blu-tac

The children will need whiteboards and a piece of paper for their draft tweets

One A4 card has a picture of a boy on it and you are going to add the phrase in the target language "I am ....." 

The second A4 has a picture of a girl on it and again you will add the phrase in the target language "I am 

You just need to add some target language. Here's on of the cards I use 

primary languages character for adjectival agreement 

  You then have two sets of adjectives that can describe someone - pick regular adjectives where the ending will change letter when used with the girl for example ……………..

three french personality adjective cards masc and fem

 Put the feminine agreement adjectives in the envelope and on the front of the envelope draw a large magic wand. 

 At the start of the lesson , explain that the class are going to try describing themselves. Can the class be your language detectives?

Show the class the magic envelope , blu-tac this to the wall and say that the class are going to help you to do  some "language magic"

First 

Show the children the key adjectives with no agreement and practise the pronunciation of the key adjectives.

Discuss the meaning and add actions  .

Create with the class the facial expressions for each quality – what might a “strongman” look like facially? How do you look when you are shy etc?

With the class perform an  adjectival expressions face warm up . This involves the children moving their face to express the emotion or quality e.g. clever/ shy/ strong etc as you call them out. Make the activity quicker and quicker by saying the adjectives faster and faster

Second :

Give out a picture card of a girl to a girl and a picture card of a boy to a boy and ask them to stand at the front .

At the bottom of each card is written "I am  ...."  in the target language . Explain that this means "I am ...." . Can the class practise this with you.

It's two sounds-  so ask the children to practise the sounds with you and add two points of a finger at themselves - one for each sound .

Can they sound proud … they are making   announcement   about themselves. Ask them to say it at least 5 times each time more confidently  !

Now add an adjective   e.g. "I am strong"  . (Children should also do the actions - two points of finger for "I am "  and facial expression for adjective). Can they sound like the “strong man”, the shy person , the intelligent person etc .

Ask them to share the way they say the statements with a partner.

Practise asking the question “What are you like?”

Can the children ask and answer the question around their  tables- just using the phrases you have practised as a class?

Play Physical Quiz Quiz Swap .

Each person says and performs as above one of the three phrases – all masculine adjectival agreement for now.

They walk round the room , shake hands with another child- say and act out their statement and they  must  take on the statement and the actions of the other child and move on to a new partner saying this new statement and with these new actions . The Quiz Quiz Swap starts again!

Third

Show the children a  masculine agreement adjective  word card - so  one  of the words you have already practised and shown them . Introduce all three words and ask for three volunteers to stand to the left of the child holding the picture of the boy 

 Can the class help you say and then write three sentences about the boy in first person singular e.g. “ je suis  fort “ ?  You are all going to write these sentences   in the air with imaginary magic wands . All the words they need are on the cards that they can see at the front of the classroom   ? 

Now can the children tell a partner what they wrote in the air.

Take feedback and listen to sentences from volunteers

Fourth  

Now ask them why you have a picture of a girl with the same phrase?

Give them a clue and say it's all to do with the magic in the envelope and point to the envelope you blu-tacked to the wall

Ask them to discuss possibilities with a partner.

Take feedback - don't give any answers away yet though!

Ask them to discuss with a partner  which  words they could they use from the boys sentences about the girl ? 

Do they think they can say a sentence using the girl not the boy . They will say sentences that they wrote in the masculine etc . Agree with them but show them the  envelope with the magic wand on it the correct spelling of the adjective - so from the envelope you will produce the card with the feminine agreement spelling of each of the three adjectives . Ask three volunteers to stand to left of girl . Can the class spot spelling changes i.e. the extra letter? 

Can the class help you make a simple  rule  to help the class ? Ask them to discuss this first  with a partner .

Fifth

Blu-tac the two pictures to flip chart with the three correctly agreed adjectives (masculine or feminine) to the left of the correct picture

 Make it a class challenge. Ask the children to write a statement as if they were the boy on their whiteboards - I might start with air writing again as this is non-threatening and inclusive.

Repeat the activity with the girl 

Ask the children to share with the class what they have written . write two correct examples on the whiteboard .

Look at the rule and highlight the added letter.

Ask the class if they had to write the spell on the magic wand what would it be - effectively you want the class to help you to write the rule they have been practising. I would write this up on a magic wand template and place this on our languages working wall - to remind them.

To you class Magic wand add a  tag that says "Our class magic rule for the spelling of adjectives when describing a person is ……………………”

Sixth 

Can they write one sentence about themselves?

Firstly let them write sentences with the words on the board .

Secondly remove the words as they become more competent and encourage independence .

Thirdly  introduce two new regular agreement adjectives and let  them practise using these  adjectives and direct the class as to whether they are describing a male or a female by placing the adjective next to either A4 boy or girl picture card 

Fourthly can they write two more sentences about themselves? .

Extend the activity….., can they write a truthful sentence about themselves and use a bi-lingual dictionary to find the word to describe themselves  and add an adjectival ending if  necessary.

And finally….

Set up a draft tweet activity ...our children love the draft tweets .

Can they write a draft tweet dialogue between two characters- one tweet per person in the dialogue . Ask the children to select a favourite character from a book -one male character and one female character or a famous character from a history project  or two imaginary characters from an Art  project . Can they think of a personality trait . Can they remember how to ask the question “What are you like? Can they write the name phrase to introduce the character “I am called ……”. 

Each child should attempt to write one tweet from the boy and one tweet from the girl in first person singular . Keep to regular agreement adjectives . Give the children a list to select from Remind them they only have 140 characters!

And as a follow up ...
Why not create a two sided concertina character .I was inspired by this cartoon on this site educationcenter. com 

I would put a male and female head on this character . One side would be male and one side would be female . I would ask the children using the same set of regular ending adjectives to complete the concertina character as above but in the target language for the female concertina character on one side and on the other side for the male concertina character