A sample of our network year so far- to share!

We have a "Network News" section as part of our membership update and we share this with the wider community as the ideas and activities may help others too! Indeed yesterday ,whilst working with Lynsey McHugh primary languages coordinator at Christ Church CE. we discussed the "joy" of the network.she reminded me how much teachers do appreciate sharing local successes and progress and how this sharing helps us all in our language teaching, learning and planning for next year.It's probably been one of the contributing factors why we never stopped teaching primary languages in 2011!

You can visit this part of our website here: 
Network News
We started Network News in September 2013 and we have seen so many wonderful primary ideas and activities that local colleagues have shared with us.

Today I have been loading up yet more ideas and pictures and reflecting on my conversation with Lynsey.
I decided to put together a sample of the types of language learning activities shared  so far this academic year. 


So here we go - pictures of real,simple to organise, achievable and effective primary language learning practice in our local NW area.
It's a sample in academic calendar order just from Summer 2014 to May half term 2015.


Summer 2014

Taking a trip abroad
A report back from the Callands CP trip to Normandy with Year 6 in the Summer holidays

Celebrating learning a language across the whole school
Whole school French celebrations at Locking Stumps CP .Great to see teachers and children having such a great time!









September 2014 

Making the transition from one year to the next
Unpacking those virtual suitcases of favourite activities that some of us packed with the children at the end of the last term! Ready to learn a language again! Sharing with new teachers and classmates.

Linking with a French primary school
Building links with a school near Carcassonne .Miss Perkins shared her Summer French upskilling CPD and the school she visited with her class.Ready for a year of snailmail and contact with real French children at St Barnabas CE

Learning about French children and practising French handwriting
French cursive handwriting at St Luke's Catholic Primary 
Thinking about the similarities and differences in boys and girls names in France and England

Linking language learning and literacy.
Roald Dahl Day and describing characters in Spanish at Barrowhall CP 

Practsiing familiar language in  new contexts European Day of Languages and a child's assessment from Culcheth CP of a "grand day out at our virtual French language learning street festivals

Food tastiing and working with a native speaker European Day of Languages and food tasting with Jose at Latchford CE!









October 2014

Using bilingual dictionaries  Dallam CP independently using bilingual dictionaries to write their own descriptions of an ideal school 

Puppets for role play Puppets, personal information questions and answers and monsieur grenouille at St Teresa's

Retelling and rewriting a story Linking languages, the Hungry Caterpillar and the class literacy project at Holy Family in Halewood.







Creating target language display ,written by the children.

Je me présente bunting all about themselves French writing from Y4 at St Phillips to decorate their classrooms during their school project.

Linking language learning to the seasons
Writing independently about the colours of Autumn at Rainford CE in Spanish







November 2014

Linking language learning to national and global events  Poppies at St Philips CE to celebrate Armistice Day

Linking language learning to national and global events
Writing and thinking about Armistice Day at St Barnabas CE 

Practising phonics Sounds and colours games with Y3 at Woolston CP

KS1 language learning linked to projects Animal puppets for KS1 farm project at St Gabriel's 








Exploring other areas of the curriculum through language learning

Linking geography and languages with a tour of North America at Our Lady's Catholic school

Exploring the planets at Plantation CP 

Learning more about the target language country
Starting to create a 3D map of France to be added to over the year at St Andrew's CE Wigan
Over the year new objects , cities and key geographical features are being added.








December 2014 

Celebrating Christmas and practising language A sapin de noel made up all the numbers the children in Year 3 have learned since they started French in September at St Andrew's CE in Warrington.

Celebrating Christmas and practising language
Playing a snowman beetle game at Winwick CE

Celebrating Christmas and practising language
A festive French grammar lesson based on Twinkle Twinkle Little Star at Woolston CP

Communicating with other local children in the target language Oakwood and Latchford CE Spanish Christmas card swap!









January 2015

Making our own target language food Investigating a real Spanish Epiphany at St Gabriel's 

Practising our sound spelling links Making your own letter string galette games -so many of you really enjoyed this!

Developing a project between French and English school children  Cinnamon Brow CE's "Who is who?" project with their link school! A parcel arrived ... great excitement! 

Making language learning current and topical Barrowhall designed snowmen -" because it was snowing" and they were practising body parts and they sang a song made up by their teacher to the tune of Frozen!

Exploring texts linked to the language learning focus Birchwood CE used the Herve Tullet book to investigate eye colour! 

Learning about nouns and sound spelling links
Moorfield CP beginner language learners sorted their animal nouns in to sound boxes!







February 2015

Extending our spoken language with opinons
Carnival Time and so many of you enjoyed the triaramas 

Listening to stories in KS! and joining in
Dallam CP Year 1 listened to the hungry caterpillar in Spanish , joined in with the story and made their own fruit caterpillars

Cross curricular language learningOur Lady's Catholic primary went to the circus!

March 2015


Theatre performances in school Westbrook Old Hall invited a real French theatre company in to school to work with their UKS2!

Using target language texts to reinforce a Science project St Michael's in Halton listened to and joined in with una rica merienda and listened out for healthy and unhealthy foods as part of their cross curricular work.

Outdoor language learning Nutgrove Methodist YR went on an outside French animal hunt

Using objects of interest to explore new language
Park Road CP investigated a real French doll's house,donated by a kind grandad to look at the rooms and colours in the house

Putting on a performance Cuddington CP practised their samba style masks and dance for their Mother's day assembly

Putting on a performanc to share and celebrate a unit iof language learning! Beech Hill CP Year 3 Spanish learners performance of Brown Bear as part of their animal unit

Taking part in competitions
Parish CE found out who were the winners of their design an alien competition









April and May 2015

Making role play real LockingStumps hold their French cafe afternoon for their Year 6 learners as part of their cafe culture unit

Creating our games to practise language Bruche create a life size game of the hungry giant for their food unit - and play as a class !

Using our imaginations to revisit and reinforce language St Ann's hold a madhatter's tea party

Making language learning an integral part of the whole school development Beech Hill CP hold a fiesta enrichment day with "tapas" for their Year 5 and 6 in Spanish!

Visiting the country and using the target language for "real"! Latchford CE Year 6 go to the real market in Malaga and practise their language

Dame Tartine

This week at our conference we had the opportunity to consider ways to develop phonics activities in target languages that help children understand the reading code of the new language. We consider the use of song, phonics in a target language,ways to record creatively written work, use of APPS and we briefly considered simple drama activities .
Let's bring these all together and celebrate their use linking this to an authentic text in the target language!
I have chosen for this example the comptine "Dame Tartine" ,as it's nearly the end of the school year and has a feel of a celebration cake!
We will be focusing on one verse only but here are two video clips with subtitles that can help your class to read and practise and sing along with the comptine.

Here is the verse we will focus on....

Il était une dame Tartine,

Dans un beau palais de beurre frais.

La muraille était de praline,

Le parquet était de croquets.

La chambre à coucher

De crème de lait ,

Le lit de biscuits,

Les rideaux d’anis.

It's an amazing palace that's being described made from tasty sweets and cake ingredients.

Step One - let's practise the comptine (listening,reading,joining in and singing)

• Let's listen to the whole comptine.
• Now let's listen to the first verse again with the subtitles visible.
• Now let's join in and try to practise the first verse
• Now let's sing along.
• Play the first verse again and conceal the screen - how well can the children remember song?

Step Two:Phonics and phoneme-grapheme/letter string recognition

• Draw an outline of the bedroom(walls/floor/bed/curtains) described in this verse and give each table an outline.Give out the five ingredients as word cards to each table.Ask the tables to decide where they would put each ingredient from the rhyme. Ask the table to say the rhyme to each other and decide where their ingredients should be stuck with blu-tac on the outline.Share the tables decisions.
• Now take the children phoneme - grapheme/letter string shopping like Julie Prince demonstrated at the conference.Each table needs a bag with a grapheme or letter string of a sound contained in one or more of the ingredients.Take a look at the picture here.

Remember!

This really brings out the competitive element! More than one table may have a sound on their bag this is contained in the ingredient noun. The table that reacts quickest and loudest will win the ingredient!

Step Three:Word recognition/memory and listening-reading

• Can the children match the items in the rhyme to the ingredients.Give out to pairs the words for the items and the words for the ingredients .
• First they must say them and match them
• Then they must say them , match them and order them as they remember them in the comptine
• Play the comptine first verse again ....where they correct? Or do they need to reorder some of the components?

Step Four:Speaking for a creative purpose with drama and the use of Yakit APP   

• Now add a touch of drama and performance.Ask the children to imagine that they are museum curators. Can they take it in turns working with a partner to show visitors around an the very special bedroom of this "palace".Can they not only make it sound delicious but also look delicious too?
• The children could draw the "delicious" bedroom and create a Yakit voice over of the bedroom- just like Emilie showed us at the conference. Take a look here at Emilie's fashion show  Yakit to give you an idea how this could work

Step Five:Making a written record and writing creatively in the target language.

• Let's make a mini book record of the Dame Tartine.A glorious celebration cake shaped mini book with flaps for the door where "la dame Tartine " can be seen and a flap (upon which is written the description of the items from the comptine) .When you open the flap it reveals the bedroom with the floor, the walls, the bed and the curtains all decorated as calligrams with the words for the ingredients.
• Why not let the children create another bedroom in the palace with calligrams of different ingredients - you can decide how many of the ingredients must rhyme with the items depending on how challenging you want this to be.

Find out more about @vallesco's mini books here.

Using the template described in the blog above to create your own sequence of lessons 

One sequence of lessons leads to another and one of the great things about the colleagues mentioned in this blog is that we all inspire each other and challenge each other to try new ideas. Julie Prince has developed a sequence of lessons, inspired by this blog post on one of her favourite action rhymes trois petits chats. I love it! Hope you find it useful too!

CPD and food for thought on primary language teaching and learning

So what did we learn yesterday at the conference?(JLN2014)
Well ....

• First and foremost the importance of networking and working together and having strategic direction to support us.
• We have networks within networks but they are all held together and moving forward. We are fortunate enough for example to have networks of language learning teachers, networks of subject coordinators, some cluster networks,associate language assistant and teacher networks and schools..... 
• Teachers need to meet , to share ,to listen , to learn . Yesterday demonstrated this so clearly.Emails this morning say how great it was to go away with practical ideas, to have taken a different look at an area that already exists in school or is a new challenge and to have met familiar faces and new friends.
• There is a great deal of good practice and knowledge out there around primary language learning that when it comes together in one place can allow everyone to see the bigger picture.
• The power of social media to share with colleagues who couldn't be at the event but can take a close look at the event and follow the strands of the conference back in school
• Teachers take ideas and make them their own- again this morning the emails say that teachers are thinking of ways to use Clare's mini-books, are already trying out Julie's phonics ideas, want to share with their class Emilie's two selected APPs for speaking and have practised Joanne's warm up greeting song in French, Spanish and tried to put it in German!

The big picture to take away from the conference:

• Song ,games and short burst activities keep all the children engaged and allow us to practise and revisit familiar language and build children's language knowledge.
• Songs are engaging for all ages and stages. It's what,how and why you use them in your lessons that matters.Delivery , joining in and performance bring them to life and make them stay in the memory!   

• Phonics play a huge role in the development of both children and staff's confidence to be able t work with an unfamiliar target language
• Phonics should be a shared learning approach throughout KS2 and also in our schools where we teach languages in KS1
• Phonics is a one of the major keys to unlocking the reading code of a target language and helping to solve the mystery of |"I am no good at languages!"amongst teachers and children
• Physicality in learning and the use of drama and mime allow children to operate in a target language beyond repetition for repetition's sake
• Time to try, talk and share is paramount to disseminating good practice 
• Teachers do focus on reading and writing and should b be encouraged to look for creative ways to read and write and this is not always reading authentic literature or writing the word down
• Creative written outcomes such as mini books lend themselves to whole class activities ,imaginative use of simple target language sentences and a focus by each individual child on basic grammar

• Teachers and children love story books that are engaging with great graphics ,well designed, have purpose,link to the learning content and contexts, lead to creative outcomes and can be read again and again!The raffle prizes had purpose below .. as each book links to a context and content that teachers will plan to teach next year and guess what they can share their teaching and learning at a Spring network meeting!

• APPs can make a difference to children's accuracy in speaking and writing, when they are chosen for a real and specific reason and  the outcome is a quality product that can be shared and revisited. APPs can support teachers to encourage children to maximise potential in  a target language.
• Using clips that are available to us on the internet to bring a city or a place to life for the children such as Emilie's virtual tour of Paris, add interest and purpose and a deepening understanding of the target language country at an age appropriate level.

Food for thought for myself and maybe for others about the future of primary language teaching and learning and the workforce we need to engage to achieve this.

• Yesterday at the conference there were colleagues who speak a foreign language well , are native speakers , have a degree in languages,were trained as specialist primary languages teachers, have an interest in languages,are keen to promote languages in their own schools, are improving their own language,identify their own strengths and weaknesses in a foreign language 
• Each colleague was there because s/he has an identified role in school to deliver effective primary languages. Each of them was engaged, looking for own next steps, found support from colleagues, engaged in healthy debate about best next steps and left the conference with a positive next step in mind.
• Primary languages is about engaging the whole  community of learners no matter what level or experience they have in language learning and allowing individuals to thrive with as much support as they need to do so.
• Networks within networks, support for everyone,clear goals and achievable next steps all come to my mind .... helping everyone to feel that they can be part of and contribute to the agenda and providing them with the building blocks to succeed. 

JLN Conference 2014