Function machines and the processing and recording of grammar knowledge

One of the best things about working with groups of class teachers is often the links that teachers make with language learning using tools and focuses across the primary curriculum.On the first day back after October half term Emilie and I worked with a start up school  in their first year of rolling out primary French.When we work with schools where languages are new this year,we often hear them ask  "what about the grammar?"

Well today we were considering nouns and I have in the past blogged about ways we can approach breaking down the understanding the function of nouns and how to support children to grasp that in other languages there is more than one word for "The" and"A" (Teachers are often afraid too!) (Here is my blog from June on nouns and definite/indefinite articles or the washing machine grammar device)

Over the last couple of CPD sessions Emilie and I have been asking the teachers to realise that nouns in French have "tags" .

Emilie explains how she is teaching her own little boy French and always introduces new nouns with a tag (un cochon/la tante) never a noun alone!

We make sure that the teachers can see that words "masculine" and "feminine" do not mean " male and "female" and we ask them to visualise pulling nouns out of  "masculine" /"feminine"  tag labelled drawers.The idea of physically opening the drawer and being able to select a noun, take it out and use it seems to work well.Teachers also like the idea of the tag being a "function button" on a virtual drawer.It works.We can quite easily  get the teachers to see the link then between the  le/un  or la/une.We love it when the teachers then feel that they confidently use and also explain nouns over a period of time to young learners. They can see and identify the stages in the process of practising and becoming confident in the use of nouns too! It's a lightbulb moment!  

  

Today I clarified this with a flow chart .... and then that was the magical moment,when a teacher amongst the staff who enjoys the logical process of maths suggested she would like to add "function machines" to the children's learning journals we had been discussing. She explained that this would help her and the children she teachers and then receives the following year to progress through the stages of learning from beginners, to moving on to advanced! She explained that clear diagrams help her to process and use information and data.Do you know I completely got this! Faced with teaching Year 6 Maths whilst on supply along time ago the class and I created function machines not just to help the children but to help me as the teacher who wasn't an expert to understand how to grasp new mathematical concepts!

And do you know I think that this will work for lots of us - teachers and children in language learning.Hence the robot machine at the top of the page as here is our link to functions and processes.It's also a learning tool that we can pass from year group to year group and even pack in our virtual suitcases at the end of the academic year. 

We then went on to explore how over four years we could build up these function machines on nouns, adjectives and verbs so that in Year 5 or 6 a teacher can ask the children to refer back to their function machines to independently look for and use new language! It gives the teacher in every KS2 year group and especially up in UKS2 a point of reference and support too!

Nouns, the verb to be and adjectives to create our own book front covers in our own class book shop window.

Today is 31 October and  as I was looking around for ghost stories in target languages I came across this book front cover and fell upon the simplest of ideas!

Here we can see a noun , a common verb "to be" and adjectives that agree with the plural noun.In fact we also have an example of the superlative form of the adjective too! What a gift with UKS2 or children who are revisiting months and need a new slant or angle to encourage interest!

Why not create a class book shop window "display" of target language book covers - one book cover for each month of the year?

Using our magical magnifying glasses (read about this here), we can analyse the text on the book cover we have found or the one at the top of the blog or possibly one we have created for the class to look at - with a sentence that we can unpack (noun,verb to be, adjective/s possibly in superlative depending on level of understanding of the young learners).

Take learning walk along the sentence.

• Look for signs of a singular or plural noun
• Find the verb in the sentence and locate the verb form in the present tense of the verb "to be" 
• Discuss with the children why they think the form in the sentence has been selected and how the noun plays an important/key role 
• Change the noun and see what happens to the verb (alter the noun from singular to plural etc)
• Locate the adjective and look at how it is spelt.find the adjective in the dictionary and see if it has changed its spelling and revisit and discuss why this is the case
• Try out some different adjectives with the same book cover focus
• Now set the class a new book cover focus for a different month ( December offers lots of opportunities) Ask the children to create a table/ group version of a book cover for the month of December.
• Look at what they create and discuss the sentences - two stars and a wish of course- two things that are good and one thing that can be improved etc 

Now it's time to create our own bookshop window display!
Revisit the twelve months in the target language
Talk through with the children something we associate with each month of the year- preferably something visual (record the children's ideas for future reference as they work on their own book covers) 

e.g.

January : the three Kings 

February : a heart

March: Mothers Day

April: Easter eggs

May :blossom and flowers

June: a local festival or sunshine

July: the holidays

August : the beach

September: back to school

October: Halloween

November :fireworks

December: christmas presents

• Divide your class in to pairs and ask each pair to create a book cover for a specific month of the year
• Give each pair a month of the year as their focus and ask the pairs to design a book cover for their month.
• It must have a key picture associated with the month and a target language sentence using a noun, the verb to be in the correct form, an adjective that agrees with the noun and possibly the superlative form,linked to the picture. 
• Now you have the book cover posters for your class book shop display and you have revisited the months and practised nouns, verbs and adjectives with agreement plus possibly practised the superlative! 

"Mon ,ma ,mes" and a little poem about chocolate!

So when do you use mon,ma,mes in French? So often we are asked this question
With Year 4 and 5 we will be buying Christmas presents in French  using the JLN SOW for our family and friends - so this poem could be a great way to reinforce when you use the three little words mon,ma, mes ........

I love this poem by Maurice Carême. It's all about who this child loves and how chocolate is the mood changer in his/her life! It's also a great way to practise "mon.ma,mes"

J’aime mon père

J’aime ma mère

J’aime mes soeurs

J’aime mes frères

De tout mon coeur

Et tante et oncle

Oui tout le monde

Oui tous sauf moi

Quand je n’ai pas

Mon chocolat!

How should we use the poem?!

• Let's read the poem with the children and spot the members of the family!
• Can the children help you to understand the punchline- how important is chocolate to the child in the poem and can they spot it's not just anybody's chocolate - it's "mon chocolat!" This will help you to talk to the children about the three little possessive pronouns in the poem "mon,ma,mes".
• Let's go on a " mon,ma mes hunt" , maybe using our magical magnifying glass.
• Let's colour code our " mon ,ma, mes finds"! for example blue for mon. green for ma and yellow for mes
• Let's be dictionary detectives !Ask the class to help you find clues as to the use of mon,ma ,mes by looking up the key nouns and seeing if they are masculine, feminine singular or plural nouns.Can we make up our rules for the mon,ma,mes mixture and when to use each of the words? 
• Let's try it ourselves! Can the children identify two more nouns ij the poem( oncle and tante) and try the mon/ma/mes mixture that we have decided upon.Ask the children in pairs to write on mini whiteboards what they think the word should be?share and compare
• Read the poem again with the children and ask them to add the feelings and the emotions that are conveyed in the poem by the use of the three possessive pronouns "mon,ma mes" 

Now we can create our own new poems using the familiar content of personal possessions ( e.g dolls/toys/ toy cars/ ipads/clothes etc) as we learn about Christmas presents or perhaps we could use another focus such as  animals.

Use  the poem as a scaffold and encourage the children to replace the highlighted words with the new content making sure that the content matches the mon ma mes - by checking in those all important bilingual dictionaries!  

J’aime mon père

J’aime ma mère

J’aime mes soeurs

J’aime mes frères

De tout mon coeur

Et tante et oncle

Oui tout le monde

Oui tous sauf moi

Quand je n’ai pas

Mon chocolat!

La nuit .Unpacking and exploring a challenging poem with more advanced French language learners in KS2/ early KS3

This next half term with our Stage 3 or 4 language learners I wanted to find a poem that was sophisticated in message and familiar in context but that had sufficient challenge to move our more advanced language learners forwards.These young learners have a good understanding of present tense sentences made up of nouns, simple common verbs and adjectives.Most of the children can add adjectival  agreement relatively accurately and will be revisiting and practising prepositions in the context of house and home this half term

I found the appropriate challenge and context in this poem by Luce Guilbaud and what a fantastic poem too! 

La nuit

La nuit est entrée dans ma chambre

sur ses pieds de velours

elle s’est cachée derrière les rideaux

elle a cueilli des roses dans le vase

installée au fond du grand fauteuil

elle a lu tous les livres

elle s’est roulée sur le tapis

elle était si bien endormie

Quand la lumière a jailli

la nuit surprise a fui

elle a   escaladé la fenêtre

et disparu dans le jardin

derrière les sapins

Luce Guilbaud .Poèmes tout frais

La farandole. Scanédition

Why do I like this poem and why do I think that our learners care up to the challenge?

Well in ,my opinion because you can break this poem down in to component parts and because it evokes the feeling of night passing through a room like a cloak that moves from one side of the room to the other.Night comes in through the door and climbs put of the window and disappears in to the garden .The poem could act as a stimulus material to some wonderful poems in english where the children personify weather or times of the day etc.Plus on a more simple note there is the content of house ,home and prepositions in this poem and the ideas are sophisticated enough for 10,11 1,2 year olds!

Do I realise that the poem is written in the perfect tense - a past tense?

Yes but I want to challenge the children to look beyond the grammar and understand the pictures and images that are created.It's an opportunity to introduce and expose the children to the written form of the perfect tense but not to  focus on how the tense has been formed.

The activities below would form two lessons of language learning

Activities: the night's cloak

1. Discuss with the class in english the difference between light in the daytime and the darkness of night
2. Can they think of adjectives in english to describe the night? Give them thinking and pair talking time and take feedback
3. Share with the class the idea that the night is like a cloak that passes over the world and moves from one area to another and as it leaves the daylight arrives.Explain that this is just like being covered by a cloak
4. Ask the children to look up adjectives in a French/English bi-lingual dictionary that they think are powerful adjectives to describe the night
5. Take feedback and collect the adjectives on the whiteboard and ask the children to share the french and the english meaning so that all the class can understand the adjectives.Take a class vote on the top five adjectives by using a class tally chart and a show of hands.
6. Show the class the french word for night "la nuit" .Ask the children to tell you something important about this noun( we want the children to identify that this is a feminine singular noun because they can see "la" in front of the noun)
7.   Share with the class your cloak to represent the night ( A4 card folded to resemble a cloak). In the centre you can see "la nuit est ...." and around the cloak are written some adjectives spelt to agree with the feminine noun "la nuit"
8. Ask the children to help you complete the gaps next to the stars on the cloak with other favourite adjectives to describe the night- making sure they are spelt accurately to agree with the noun
9. Now let the children create their own cloaks of the night:

I think this would work best with black A4 card and chalks for a class french display.

Activities: movements and actions in the poem

1. Before you read the poem with the children you will need to unpack the poem so that all the children can successfully access and enjoy the poem.Explain to the class that they are first of all going to look at the ingredients and ideas that a french poet has put together to create a very evocative description of the night passing through a room in a house.
2. Ask the children to think of verbs that might describe the way the night might move in its mysterious dark cloak through the room .Listen to their ideas
3. Share with the children the movement cards that track the night as she moves through the room in the poem.Can they think of verbs in english that would explain the movements. I have selected  the following key past participles from the poem and drawn simple symbols to explain the movement.The blue arrows indicate the type of movement (entrée/cachée/installée/roulée/escaladé/disparu):

 4.Now give the children the key past participles as separate cards.You will see that I have highlighted in blue key clues in the words that will help the children associate the french past participle with a specific action.Can they match the words to the symbol cards above.

5.Ask the children to share their decisions with a second group to see if they have matched the same symbols with the key word cards, for example ......

6.Have the children been able to work out the meaning of all the movements? discuss woth teh children which ones were easy and which ones were more challenging and did they think that for example escaladé meant escaped? Ask the children to check the meanings in  bilingual dictionary by looking up the infinitive - you may need to write the infinitives on the whiteboard for the children.

7. Explain to the children that these actions have all taken place and the poet has recorded what has happened - so how would you say these actions in english if you wanted to explain the same idea? 

8.Now ask the children to find a space in the room - this would work best in the hall - and to become the night as she moves through the classroom. Can they stand in their space and mime carefully the night's actions as you call out the past participles from the poem.

Activities : investigating the poem

1. Give the children picture cards of the key objects in the poem.Explain to the children that they are entering a room in a house.Can they put the picture cards in order as they find them from the beginning to the end of the poem.Do any of the pictures belong outside of the room? (chambre/les rideaux/le vase/fauteuil/ les livres/le tapis/la fenêtre/le jardin/les sapins)
2. Now read through the poem with the children- explain first that there will be parts of the poem that they do not yet understand fully but that they are now on a mystery tour with the night through the room. 
3. As you come across the following phrases see if the children can help you to understand what the meaning of each statement is to build up an even better picture of the night and how it behaves.Remind the children that the night is acting like a person so they need to look for the nouns they can understand.Perhaps they will need to use the bilingual dictionary to find out the meaning of words they think could be important but don't understand plus  look for familiar clues in the unfamiliar words.

sur ses pieds de velours

cueilli des roses dans le vase

lu tous les livres

bien endormie

Activities: the key to the poem

1. Can the children help you to see what happens to the night when the daylight arrives? Give them the key to the poem: la lumière
2. Can they locate the word in the poem and see the change in the behaviour of the night after this word is mentioned?

Activities: la nuit - making the poem your own

1. You could use the hall space and read the poem for the children and let them act out the movement and behaviour of the night as it travels through the space of the hall.
2. You could create chalk drawings of the night as it passes across the paper as if it's passing through a room and then on white paper show how the night behaves once daylight arrives, using pencil sketches this time

Beginning with languages blog 3

Across our network we work with schools who are all at different stages of setting up and delivering primary language learning and each year we welcome new schools who want to set off on their own individual school's language learning journey.

This year these specific "Beginning with languages " blogs will try to offer "bite size chunks" of indirect help and support to schools, who are doing exactly that .... just setting off and implementing  a language learning curriculum .

In September this year I wrote : beginning with languages blog 1 and in October beginning with languages blog 2

Your checklists so far have been:

Sept - Oct (first half term) Checklist

• It's all about establishing a whole school support system for all your staff
• It's about small steps and simple language learning
• It's about children and staff beginning to enjoy language learning

Mid October an additional new checklist bullet point!

• So how are you all getting on? How do you know that primary languages are being implemented in all the classes and are the teachers and children having fun in their learning? 

And now your new checklist bullet points for November are.........

• How can you build in "revisiting" opportunities to build the children and staff's confidence with the language you introduced last half term - probably greetings, numbers 0-11, simple questions and answers about names and feelings and perhaps some colours will be in this list from last half term? What about a game like Bingo or Splat or maybe a game of Quiz Quiz Swap (Quiz Quiz Trade) around the classroom where children ask questions and swap cards with someone else as they move around the room and greet/ ask names and feelings and say farewells.Or why not try out a simple colours and firework song and activity like this one Colours and rockets particularly with the younger learners in KS1 and Y3/4

• This half term you can focus on celebrations too .There is Saint Nicolas Day at the start of December on the 6th December (here is some wikipedia information ) and then there is Christmas of course!Why not select a simple Christmas song now and start to practise in your classes ready for a whole school target language performance in the school Christmas assembly?

Continuing to make progress and to upskill staff and children in the target language 

• Make sure that teachers and children continue to make progress.
• Introduce a new focus for example n the month of November practise and develop their language learning skills.Take a look at months and days and practise with the children ways to remember the new words, looking for cognates and semi- cognates (words that look similar)
• Possible songs to support you are below :

French months : les mois de l'annee 

Spanish months:       los meses del ano

German months :       Monate

• Begin to look for ways to link language learning to another area of the curriculum to embed language learning as an integral part of learning for instance why not try out a "physical bar chart" based on months and birthdays. Take a look here Physical primary target languages maths

Looking for a Christmas song for all the school?

Here are three target language examples with sound files and words on the screen to support all staff to familiar tunes and which are international Christmas songs/carols 

Here is Jingle Bells in French: 

and in spanish




or what about Stille Nacht (Silent Night) in German

Fireworks performance poem

Below are the core phrases to the Firework Performance Poem that we have been using in schools in Warrington with our  "moving on" learners (so stage two) to explore a simple poem for grammar, to use reading comprehension skills and to develop a spoken performance and our own written poems.We can use it with beginners but then we explore less of the grammar and focus more on the performance. 

We use colours, three key present tense verbs, and the phrase "there is" or "there are" with the noun for stars.the poem has two verses and repeats the three verbs and the phrase "there are a lot of stars". 

Here is the French version of the poem.:

Bleu 

rouge,

jaune, 

vert.

Zoum, zoum!

Ils glissent

Ils montent

Ils descendent .

Il y a beaucoup d' étoiles!

Violet,

orange,

or,

argent.

Zoum, zoum!

Ils glissent

Ils montent

Ils descendent .

Il y a beaucoup d' étoiles!

So as you can see it's a very simple poem, but it leads to some interesting discussion:

• use of colours as adjectives,but written alone and not next to a noun - however you can ask the children to see what happens when they place them with a noun in the target language - especially of you introduce both a masculine and a feminine noun to describe with a colour. 
• colours that look like the english word but sound slightly different
• colours we may already have met as nouns to (orange/argent/or)
• silent letters 
• and final silent letter combinations on the verbs
• meaning of the verbs because they look like an english word e.g montent- mountain/ glissent ( they often think means glisten but then they can see glide when it's explained too!)
• using picture and colour context to determine meaning of words we aren't sure of - as this is part of a powerpoint where the stars fly in at the end , the colours are written on the correct colour etcetra

We rearrange the colours into alphabetical order or add new colours using the bilingual dictionary

We use the verb examples to look for own verbs with children who have begin to think about verbs and how to change endings and the pattern here is regular with "er" verbs so it's an achievable task for all the class! 

We change the ending and think of /look for new plural nouns for the final word- as a surprise for own listeners and readers  

And then we prepare our performance - with younger learners it's a class performance with actions and sounds and with older learners then it's a performance with a twist -an added verse of their own.It needs actions and sound of course too!

These activities lead very well in to our physical sentence prompts activities which you can read about here : 
Physical sentence prompts

And the Spanish version  .....? Well here it is :

azul

rojo

amarillo

verde

¡fantástico! ¡ fantástico!

suben

bajen

hay muchas estrellas

violeta

naranja

dorado

plateado

¡fantástico! ¡ fantástico! 

suben

bajen

hay muchas estrellas

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les coquelicots et les bleuets

It's 100 years since the start of the First World War and many of you will be thinking of ways to commemorate the event.
This is a real opportunity to combine target language learning and cultural understanding.Thanks to the language coordinator at St Philips CE in Warrington , Sam Snodgrass and her very simple an effective idea to generate class displays of poppies as word art (there is an example below)

I have taken this idea and created some other simple language learning opportunities.

La valse des coquelicots  is a music and picture clip of fields of poppies- just beautiful to watch and share with your classes and explain the significance of fields of poppies.An opportunity to create a dance performance too.You will be able to use this clip as a creative backdrop to some of the activities below too.......

Les coquelicots et les bleuets

In France ,people remember the 11 November with both poppies (les coquelicots) and also cornflowers (les bleuets).
Why not create both word art poppies and word art cornflowers ( blue petals and yellow centres) for a mixed display- just simple flowers likes Sam's flowers above?

And here is also an opportunity to look at the people behind the flowers and the remembrance too and to create a display that thinks about the people and what happened to the people during the first world War. How?

Well let's create a display of people represented each time by a flower either one of les coquelicots et one of les bleuets

• Talk with your class about the families and the impact on families during the First World War.
• Share with the children pictures of people from the period- children,women,men,soldiers.The pictures in this video below gives children the sense of life for the soldiers and the women and children of Paris during the first World War .You could use the clip and pause the clip on a specific picture from which the children can then take their inspiration and select a person to write about. Each table is responsible to create a family unot of people

• Ask the children to work in pairs and to create the character of the person behind the picture. Can they give the person an age, a role in the family (e.g mum,dad etc), a profession if the person is an adult and can they decide if the person is a soldier.) 
• Give each child a flower to create either a poppy or a cornflower. For each flower ask the children to generate a face of the member of the family,drawn as a free sketch from the photo of the person   from which they have created their character.This is the centre of the flower
• Around the centre they must draw four flower petals and in each petal in the link colour (so poppies read and cornflowers blue pen) ask the children to write a fact about the face - name/ age / profession/ role in the family.  
• Why not take the music from la valse des coquelicots and play this as gentle background music whilst the children share their flowers and the personalities they have created with other members of the class.They simply walk around and quietly share their target language information whilst the music plays in the background.
• And now you have your display- just add the photos of the people as a background and over the top add the flowers your children have created as a mixture of the poppies and the cornflowers in a field of remembrance!

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