Physical Tour de France Grammar Game !

The class need to decide on three symbols to represent nouns, adjectives and verbs.

Stand up right for a noun, wiggle your body for an adjective and pump your arms for a verb 

(just like you would have symbols in Charades for book, film, musical etc).

Warm up the class first -

• Show the written word for a noun (discuss this) and ask the children to show you the correct actions
• Show the children the written word for a verb (discuss this) and ask the children to show you the correct action
• Show the children the written word for an adjective (discuss this) and ask the children to show you the correct action.
• Show the same cards again but don't say of these are nouns/verbs or adjectives.Ask the children to demonstrate the action. they think matches the word type.

Divide your class into “Tour de France t-shirt teams- different coloured t-shirts . No team should be le maillot jaune/la camiseta amarilla or das gelbe Tshirt. This one is for the winners at the end of the game! 

Let’s brainstorm nouns, adjectives and verbs that we associate with sport and particulary with the Tour de France. You couod suggest that the children check and access these in the target language in bilingual dictionaries first!

Here are some to start us off  ……….

Nouns

Cyclist , bike , wheel, tyre, puncture , race ,helmet , t-shirt , shorts ,road ,city ,start, finish ,speed, power….

Adjectives

fast , fit ,tired, thirsty, determined , exciting, powerful , competitive ,breathless,sporty

Verbs

to push , to pedal ,to race ,to compete, to challenge , to cheer, to watch , to participate, to win , to lose , to pass , to crash, to celebrate

Put the individual words as written target language words on to cards in a bag.Select five nouns, five adjectives and five verbs .

Check that the children have had time to look at and remember the meaning of the words with a partner in their team before you put the words in the bag. 

Rules of the team competition!

1. A volunteer  from a team selects a word from the bag and decides if it’s a noun, an adjective or a verb. 
2. They must mime the word type action to their team.
3. The team receive one point for guessing this correctly
4. The volunteer must mime the meaning of the word- one more point for the team if they can guess and say it in the target language.
5. If you play this UKS2 Year 6 or with KS3  there are two bonus points if they can put the noun or the adjective in to a simple sentence e.g the helmet is blue (etc)
6. There is one more bonus point if the team can create a first person singular present tense statement if the volungteer has pulled a verbmout of the bag! (e.g. I push , I pedal, I race etc )? 

Full circle spinners

End of the year!.
Time to collate what we can now say and the growing bank of questions and answers .
Each half term we have extended what we can say, based on the contexts and content we have been considering. 

For example our Year 3 children have already  explored how to ask  a name, ask about feelings , ask an age, ask where someone lives, ask about favouirte animals, ask about fruit or animal likes and dislikes...... .

This is  an activity for the children to make,to play in pairs and to take home and play again over the Summer so that they keep practising these key new spoken questions and answers .

• Give each child a circular piece of card.Ask them to divide the circle in to six equal segments that match on both sides of the card.
• Ask them to colour each segment a particular colour and to make it match on the other side of the circle too! 
• Explain that this is one way to aid memory - to have a visual prompt ....

• They need to pierce a small hole in the centre of the circle - large enough to push a small pencil through.This will create the spinning mechanism and  action.
• Now they need to discuss with you the questions and answers you have practised over the year.Ask them to brainstorm with a partner first. 
• Collate the information they give you on the whiteboard.

Gather our questions and answers

• Can the children select their six favourite new questions and answers or the ones they think are most useful or the ones they are proud that they can remember and use!
• They must write the questions on one side of the spinner and the answer to each question on the other side of the spinner of the identical coloured segment. 
• Now they are ready to try out the game......

Let's spin!

• Try it out alone! Ask the children to push their pencil through the central hole in the spinner and make sure  that the questions are face up.
• Each individual child spins their own spinner.
• Can they say the question the spinner lands on and can they also say the answer they have written? Ask the children to turn over their spinners to check the answer they have just spoken.
• Thye can play this as an idivudual activity several times.
• Now give the spinner to a partner - who spins the spinner and must try to read out loud the question the spinner lands on.
• Can the partner (to whom the spinner belongs) say the answer to the question that is written on the other side of the spinner and matches the question in the correct coloured segment?
• The two children now work with the other partner's spinner and change their roles in the activity.

Roll! Add! Write ! Number Game.

Our beginner learners are moving on! Time to explore numbers between 12 and 31!
Firstly we need to practise and explore the numbers , use them in listening,speaking and reading activities,write them individually and play games with the numbers to increase confident and accurate use.The game below will encourage accurate written use of the target language.

Here is a game that can be played again and again and will suit all ages of beginner learners.A game that can be used with higher order numbers if you add multiplication and division too so we can play this in Y7 as well

• Divide you class in to groups of four.These are now the teams. 
• Each child needs to bring a dice to the game!They need to make the dice.You can find an empty  dice template  here.They now need to add the six basic numbers 1-6 written as words in the target language.
• The game also requires a shared mini whiteboard  which has a line across the middle of the page.If the number the player has on his/her card is higher than  the number they can add up with the dice numbers rolled, the player who is "on" puts a tick above the line.Equally if it is less than the number added up , then the player puts a tick below the line- this helps the rest of the team guess the number.  
• Each player needs a mini whiteboard and pen or a piece of rough paper

1. Each child is responsible for writing a selection (three or four) of the numbers between 7 and 31 on to individual cards or pieces of paper.The children must put all the written target language number cards in the centre of the table.
2. The cards need to be proof read by the team for accuracy against a class reference - flip chart/whiteboard/poster etc list of the written numbers.(The reference document needs to be concealed during the rest of the game)
3. All these cards need to then be put into the "player's pot" (a box in the middle of the table from which the children take a card when it is there turn to be the "player" in the game.
4. Now each child takes it in  turns to be the "player".
5. First player takes a card from the pot and reads the umber but does not show anyone else. 
6. The player rolls the four die the team have brought to the table (you can decide that only 3 of the 4 die should be rolled).
7. Each member of the team adds up in their heads the total sum of the numbers revealed when the die have been rolled.The team members all write down on rough paper the total in the target language.They all reveal their whiteboards/ rough paper written totals .do they all agree? Have they all written the target language correctly?
8. The player now indicates by ticking above or below the line of the shared mini white board ( as described above) if the number on his/her card from the pot is above or below the total.
9. Now the rest of the team need to write down individually in the target language what they think the number on the card could be.
10. The player reveals the number on the card.
11. The rest of the team reveal their written target language guesses.
12. There are points to be won! A maximum of four points....Points are awarded as follows- who added up the dice correctly? ( one point),who guessed correctly that it was a number higher or lower than the player's number on the card? (one point),who guessed the player's number correctly? (one point), who wrote it out correctly?( one point)
13. Now it is the turn of a second player to select a card, roll the dice and the game starts again
14. At the end of the game (a time limited game) which team member/s have the most points?

Any Word X Word APP and bilingual dictionary practise

I have recently tried out Alan Peat's Any Word XWord  APPs in French,Spanish and German.It exists in other languages too.

I found that it was  really simple and easy to use and a game that could be played in pairs, tables or individually by all stages of language learner.

What I like, is the immediate freedom and challenge it gives a young primary beginner language learner.The learner has to think for his/herself and for example think of three letter target language words they may know and try to fit them in to their own puzzle.If the learner forgets the accents the game prompts you - as the word isn't accepted until correct.You can play against other children too - to add competition.There is an option to keep a record too.

As always I think we could take it further...... and make it a useful learning tool when exploring  how to use bilingual dictionaries.

Here are my ideas ......

The APP could allow us to investigate bilingual dictionaries.....

1. Game One: Working in pairs ,Partner A says the word he/she wants to write and Partner B has to find the word in the bilingual dictionary (even if the meaning is already known) .Both partners need to check spelling before Partner A is  allowed  to write it down on the APP crossword board.They then  swap roles and move on to find the next word that will fit on the crossword board.
2.  Game Two: Working with a partner- Partner A locates a word in the bilingual dictionary and writes it on a mini whiteboard.Partner B must try to apply sound -spelling knowledge to say the word and try also to remember or work out its possible meaning.The meaning needs to be checked in the dictionary before the work can be added to the puzzle.The children then swap roles.
3. Game Three:Working in pairs , Partner A locates a word in the bilingual dictionary and Partner B must find out something grammatical about this word- is it a verb (is it a reflexive verb?) /noun/ adjectives.Is it masculine/ feminine or neuter? Now Partner B can add the word to the puzzle.
4. Game Four: Two pairs working together, can both pairs complete a simple level one board and then share the board with the other pair.The second pair must look up the words in the bilingual dictionary and write them out on rough paper with grammatical information included e.g noun, masculine , feminine , neuter etc , adjective, noun.The second pair must now try to write complete sentences that contain some of the words.This could be a sequence of sentences or one sentences using several of the words.

Active conjunctions

Thanks to Vicky Bruff on Facebook for sharing with us this picture of an activity from Teaching Ideas
It is a very simple and effective way of explaining visually the use of link words in sentences.

I am currently working with the wonderful Julie Prince on ways to make grammar in primary foreign languages "active and kinaesthetic" plus how we can link the activities to learning objectives from the DFE KS2 POS. 

The picture inspired a really simple "active grammar" learning idea that could be so effective!

In this activity I am concentrating on conjunctions (connectives ) to link two sentences together to  make a more complex primary foreign language sentence.

In doing this we could explore with the children one or more of the following DFE POS KS2 learning objectives:

• speak in sentences,using familiar vocabulary,phrases and basic language structures
• read carefully and show understanding of words,phrases and simple writing 
• broaden their vocabulary and develop their ability to understand new words
• understand basic grammar .....how to build sentences

What's the idea?

Well just as you probably already do,ask the children to draft write simple sentences on mini white boards that are linked to the content you are currently covering .Effective contexts for this activity may be: the market, describing a monster, clothes, the weather ........

e.g. here are some fruit examples.....

les pommes sont rouges

les bananes sont grandes et jaunes

moi j'adore les raisins

moi j'aime les oranges

First activity

1. Ask the children to write a simple sentence using language content you have been practising with them.
2. Ask the children to share their sentence with a partner and take turns to proof read each of the sentences.
3. Ask the children to write the sentence on to a strip of paper or card- large enough for other people to be able to read from a distance.
4. Stand the children in a circle with the sentences on card facing in to the circle.
5. Take it in turns for each child to read out their sentence still holding the card facing toward the other children in the circle.
6. Share with the children your conjunction cards.You can decide which are appropriate conjunctions for this activity- but I suggest that you have at least 5 options.
7. Place the conjunction cards in the middle of the circle .
8. Check with the children that they are confident about the meaning of the conjunctions and how to pronounce the words.I would play a "sounds like game" here.Can they make the word sound like the job the conjunction does in the sentence e.g contradicts/ joins together/offers another option etc....
9. Invite a child to read out his/her sentence and to select a conjunction ,pick it up from the floor and walk over to  a second child and ask him/her to read out his/her  sentence.Now ask the two children to stand in the middle of the circle and say the whole new complex sentence together. 
10. Repeat the activity with two more children and a new selected conjunction.
11. How many sentences can the children write independently when they return to their tables that include a conjunction to connect two sentences together?  

Second Activity

1. Blu-tac the conjunctions to the whiteboard or flip chart so they are visible to all the children .
2. Play the "Sounds like" game" from above.This time though ask the class to say for you a conjunction that "contradicts" or "joins together" etc- do they all select the same conjunction?
3. Divide the children in to groups of four.
4. Can they connect each of their sentences to the other sentences using some of the conjunctions they can see on the board? They can not use the same conjunction twice in a row.
5. Ask the children to write their "long" sentence containing conjunctions out on a mini whiteboard.
6. Ask the children to practise speaking their sentence together.Can they remember how to say their complex sentence without looking at the written word?Ask them to add actions to help them with this.
7. They must create a spoken performance of the class to include actions and a connecting movement  and "sounds like" performance of the conjunctions between clauses so that each of the original sentences flows via a conjunction on to the next sentence.
8. Ask each group to perform their complex sentence for the class

I Spy Nouns!

Tomorrow Emilie and I deliver our first session of intermediate French for teachers keen to know more about nouns, adjectives and verbs .
Here is a game that we are going to play with the teachers ,based on this poster I found on pinterest a while back!
It's a game that I think the teachers can then play back in school with the children they teach who are moving on in their language learning and becoming more independent in their use of bilingual dictionaries to find their own key language such as nouns.The game is simple and could be used in KS2 and then again in Y7 KS3 to ensure that children can and do access bilingual dictionaries appropriately and effectively.

This is the game "I Spy Nouns":

First a little warm up and revisiting activity ......

1. Children to work in pairs.
2. Each pair requires an "I Spy sheet".
3. Children require either a piece of rough paper and pen or a mini-whiteboard between them.
4. Each pair requires access to a bilingual dictionary - best if there is one between two.
5. Ask the children in pairs to look for pictures of nouns they think they may already be able to say and write in the target language e.g cat/ fish, elephant.
6. Ask the pairs to write down up to five of these nouns in the target language on the mini -white board.
7. You could ask more advanced learners to try to remember if they have used the nouns  from step 6 before with "un/le" or une/ la".Ask them to write this next to the noun on the whiteboard
8. Now ask them to find the target language nouns they have written down on their mini-whiteboards in their bilingual dictionary and ask them to check the spelling.If they have thought about the definite/indefinite article and also to verify if they selected the correct choice between either "un/le" or "une/la"
9. Is there anything they need to change in the target language that they have already written on the mini-white board ?

Now they are ready for their I Spy Noun Explorers pair game

To play this game the children will need to create a two column simple chart for French and Spanish to record the nouns they find as masculine /feminine (and for German a three column chart with the additional column for neuter nouns)

1. Ask the children to take it in turns to look at the pictures on the sheet and to take it in turns to find one of the items they can see in the bilingual dictionary.
2. The child looking for the target language  noun must look it up in the English section of the dictionary and then write it out clearly for their partner on their mini-whiteboard.
3. Now the other partner must read what has been written on the mini white board and then find the noun in the target language section of the dictionary.
4. Once the child has found the English meaning and he/she must locate the item on the picture.
5. Ask the two children together to investigate whether the noun is masculine / feminine or as well in German neuter using the clues in the dictionary written next to the noun.
6. Ask the children to then write the noun down on their noun table under the correct category of masculine / feminine or neuter nouns.   
7. The children swap roles and play the game again.
8. Why not give children categories for example on this picture there are nouns to do with meal times, a season, weather, clothes, animals?

Summer celebration messages based upon Bloemenwinkel tradition

Thanks to Carmel @OHaganCarmel !Carmel shared with us this blog post called Traveling with Kids Belgian seaside and a very special Belgian seaside tradition for children.If you have been following some of my recent blog posts you will see that I have been focusing on the beach and the seaside.It's a big part of our Summer SOW. The blog posts so far have been about:

• French poem writing at the seaside,
• creating a sandcastle building rhyme,
• designing fantastical sandcastles,
• seashell sounds and sand treasure hunts
• Pirates ahoy!,
• French,fishy and fun game,songs and rhymes

The tradition I love from the article about Belgian seaside is "Bloemenwinkel "

You can read about the tradition in the article linked to the picture to above  in the blog article I referred to at the top of this blog.I love the fact that children pay for the flowers with shells and also that these are made from tissue paper or crepe paper and are sold on the beach to the children who visit.
I think we can  make a wonderful final lesson for Year 3 and Year 4 just before Summer with this idea. 

We will firstly go shell counting.
Simply using shell shaped card templates with numbers on the reverse side and in lots of different colours we will hunt numbers.
Use eight different card colours and divide the cards into groups of eight (eight different colours and random ordered numbers written on the reverse side)

We need as many shell cards and numbers as there are children in the class and we need to use eight different colours of card each time.
We will play the game in groups of eight cards at a time in a random order or selection.
Can the children guess the shell number and if they can they win the shell and if they can't the shell is put back on the board.The children need to say the colour of the shell that they want the teacher to turn over  and guess the number.

 Bloemenwinkel 
Explain the Belgian seaside tradition to the children and share the pictures from the blog article with the children 
Locate the seaside resorts on the Belgian coast.Did the children realise that there was so much seaside in Belgium?Do they know where Belgium is and what languages are spoken there?
Can the children now help you to create your own Bloemenwinkel (flower corner shop)?

Creating the Bloemen

My "bloemen" will be like fortune cookies.There will be one each for every child with a celebration written message chosen and written by another classmate on the flower head,which is  made of a rolled coloured paper strip.

Each child needs a strip of coloured paper and a straw and some selotape.
Each child selects a strip of coloured card that is wide enough to write on and long enough to roll ,so it will fit on one end of a straw- just like miniature versions of the flowers you can see in the picture.
Provide the children with a range of phrases they can select from to write on their strips of coloured card in the target language.
For example:

Have a great holiday !

See you in September

Enjoy the school holidays

Have a good rest!

Enjoy playing in the park!

Enjoy playing with your friends!

Look forward to seeing you at school in September 

It's the school holidays ! Hurrah!

Summer is here!

No school in August 

Make sure your class can understand the phrases.You could practise them as "celebration sayings" with cheers and happy voices - celebrating the fact it's nearly the holidays 

Here are some Bloemenwinkel made by my colleague Joanne Hornby with her Year 4 class.They went outside and put them in a flower bed and drew lots to pick a flower from the bloemenwinkel.Joanne says that the children loved the whole activity and the fact they had something to take home at the end of the year 

Here are the phrases in French:

Passez de bonnes vacances !

Au mois de septembre!

Profitez bien des grandes vacances!

Reposez vous bien!

Amusez vous bien au parc!

Amusez vous bien avec vos amis!

J'ai hâte d'être en septembre!

C'est les grandes vacances! Youpi!

L'été est là !

Pas d'école au mois d'août!

And in German

Schöne Ferien!

 Bis September                      

Genießt die Sommerferien

Erholt euch gut!

Viel Spaß auf dem Spielplatz!

 Viel Spaß mit eueren Freunden!

Ich freue mich schon, wenn ich euch im September wieder sehe.

Es sind Sommerferien! Hurra!

Der Sommer ist da!

Keine Schule im August

And in Spanish

Que tengáis unas buenas vacaciones

Nos vemos en septiembre

disfruta de las vacaciones

que descanséis

disfruta jugando en el parque

disfruta jugando con tus amigos

nos vemos en el colegio en septiembre

son las vacaciones

 hurra el verano ya llegó

no hay colegio en agosto

Ask the children to select two messages and to write them on one side of the coloured paper strip.They need to write it clearly and carefully in the target language so another child can read the message clearly.

• Now they need to roll the coloured card strips and attach one end to one end of  straw.
• Collect in the flowers and attach one of the shell cards with the number showing to the base of each flower.
• Now hand round a bag which has numbered shell cards inside .
• Each child takes a shell and must say the number and then find the flower with that numbered shell card attached to it .This is his/her flower and s/he can unravel the coloured paper strip and see what his/her celebration saying written message is. 

A celebration fit for a King...first blog post ! Party hats at the ready!

What an opportunity to have a Spanish street party to celebrate both the end of a school year and a year of learning Spanish and the coronation of a new King of Spain!

So how can we celebrate:

Let's first of all make sure we have our party hats ready for the party!

Source and look at pictures of hats  that people have worn on special celebration occasions. Ask about the colour and ask class to say which hat they like the best.

Turn the pictures of hats over and play a team guessing game ”¿De qué color es?”- you will need numbers on the back of the hats so they can say  for example “Dos, es azul”. Ask a team to guess the colour. Ask what colour the hat is that the class can see, when you reveal the hat . team keeps the hat if they got it right. 

Don't forget hats for the royal family! Follow this Spanish You Tube clip and find out how to make hats fit for a princess!You will need to pause the clip to allow the children to discuss what they see and record their English instructions too - if they want to write down the steps.

Don't forget a crown for the King!

You can create your own simple set of Spanish instructions to make the crown so simple from a paper plate from the  website link here

Or again you could watch this You tube Clip with the class and follow the simple instructions.

Or if you prefer the class can follow this You Tube clip with no words .... demonstrating how to make an Origami  paper hat.

And now you are ready for a class Spanish party hat game......!

Mi gorro tiene cuatro puntas

Mi gorro tiene cuatro puntas,

Cuatro puntas tiene mi gorro,

Si no tuviera cuatro puntas,

¡Ya no sería mi gorro!

• Practise the rhyme above with the class – can they link it to a rhyme they might know in English (My hat it has four corners , four corners has my hat
• Add actions for the  children to do every time the word “chapeau” -hat – is said  , for each number and an action to represent a corner.
• Practise the rhyme. Add the actions .
• Now repeat the rhyme and miss a key  action  word  out .The children should only do the action and not say the word .
• Repeat until all key action words have been replaced by just an action.

Create as street bunting for your celebration fit for a King, designer hat pictures with a Spanish twist .... in the style of Gaudi, Picasso or Juan Miro! 

Hang the bunting across your classroom for the duration of your celebrations.

Now what about the food?........

World Cup Catch a Greeting Game KS1 and LKS2

This is my first blog post on the World Cup, which I hope will begin to support network teachers to develop activities to celebrate the World cup and to consider all the languages that will be heard at the global event.

The resources I refer to are all on JLN website.
You can take a look at the world cup resources we have created or sourced.

First let's celebrate the way the players and the fans will greet each other in all the various languages they speak.
Show your children this clip of 30 different ways to say hello from around the World

Now you can play "Catch a greeting!"

1.    Ask the children to recall as many different ways  of greeting each other both in their own home language , school language and in other languages they have seen on the video clip

2.  Practise the greetings they suggest.Practise the sound of the greeting. Ask the  children to think of the shape of the greeting both as a  sound they hear (is it wavy/sharp/spiky etc) and as written word.Ask the children to draw the greetings as sound shapes and then as the written shape in the air.

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3.   Show the children some new greetings they haven't mentioned from the video clip.Look at the greeting word and the language it comes from and then practise the sound of the greeting on the sound slides that accompany each greeting.

4.    

5.   Give out small card versions of greetings from the video clip - one per child. Locate and listen to the greetings if necessary on the video clip

6. Ask the children to practise their specific greeting. Does it help them to draw the sound of the greeting or the shape of the word in the air?

7.  Ask the children to move around the room greeting each other and each time they greet someone they should swap greeting cards and therefore also the greeting word they have to say. Children should have the chance to say all the greetings.

Bring the children back together and each child a blank A4 piece of plain paper. Ask the children to investigate the flag of each of the country of the greeting card they are holding and to create a “Greetings “card to put on a class display.They should make sure that they spell their greeting accurately and make it an integral part of their flag.   

Why not share this song "Hello to all the children around the world " with your class as they create their flags for the display? 

Colour mimes and word association

Colour mimes and word association. 

Revisiting and extending knowledge of spoken and written colours 

Half way through our learning year, it's good to revisit familiar language and extend the language we know.
We have introduced or revisited with the children in year 3  six colours and the question "what colour is it? "
Now we want to extend this knowledge further. 

Select the colours you want to practise with the children and the new colours you want to introduce  .
Think of key objects you associate with the colours e.g  yellow= sun / blue= sea/ green= long grass/ red = fire /black = dark and eyes shut / white = cold snow ball /pink = a flower / lilac = butterfly

1.Create a mime to represent each colour ,share these with the children and say the colour in the target language at the same time 
2. Ask the children with a partner to recall as many of the colours as they can in the target language and to decide what each mime represents . Ask one pair to share their ideas with another pair . Take class feedback
3.Call a colour , can the children respond with the correct mime 
4. Ask a child to call a colour , can the class respond with the correct mime
5. Ask the children to create mimes of their own for three colours and then to challenge a partner.
6.Revisit or introduce the class to the colour words in the target language . Can they help you place pictures of the objects you mimed next to the correct written colour.
7.Mime a colour, can the children write down on a whiteboard the colour they think you associate with the mime 
8. Conceal the written word and perform the mime , can the children recall independently the written word for the colour?
9. Can the children solve your colour symbol slide messages? they must look at the message . Decide which colours are being depicted . Write down the colours as many times as they see the symbol and create their own colour  and action spoken message 

e.g.Here is an example colour message slide and the simple written response expected in the target language would be "blue,blue, yellow"

Now challenge them with symbol slides - no colours just symbols to create their written and spoken responses !

Playground games with our year 3 classes to celebrate what we have already learned !

Playground Games

Between now and Easter with our Year 3 classes we like to look back at what we have already learned on our language learning journey – particularly with the children who started to learn the target language about 6 months ago in September .

We revisit and practise familiar language – it’s all about inclusivity and bringing every child along on the new language learning journey . 

We revisit greetings , numbers  , colours, days of the week and months of the year and personal information questions and answers we have started to develop.

We find “Playground and PE games” an ideal way to add a creative and performance based element to this.

A simple game to practise our names in French

Why not try in French “j’ai un nom , un prénom...” and show the children this clip of young French children performing the game with their class teacher.

Here is a sound clip demonstrating the song 

J'ai un nom sound file

Practising phonics using familar language

We like this simple game   for the playground of the hall, to engage children in listening accurately to the sounds in words . Here’s an example of how to lay the game

Cats and Dogs-

·       Split group into 2 lines, facing away from each other in the middle of the hall. Tell the children to stand in two lines facing away from each other.

·      One line are cats, one line are dogs. We have chosen these two animals in French because they both begin with "ch" but children need to listen  carefully to spot if its the cats or the dogs that need to move ·    

       Teacher will either shout ‘cats’ or ‘dogs’, the line that is called must make it to the wall they are facing without being tagged by the opposite line

·       If tagged, students switch onto the other line

·      The line with the most students, or a full line of student wins (time depending)

·      Change language for call outs e.g. ‘Chien et Chat’

·      Progress this by holding on to the first part of the word e.g. Chhhhhat

·      Play again and change the words

·      On Spanish we are going to play it first time through with pato and gato ...listeing for that initial sound!

 Games to practise core language

We have used the game “Les poissons et les pêcheurs for several years in our KS1 classrooms and we  think  it works  well in Year 3 too! 

The original game is described  below in French but we  play it in all the target  languages  we teach !

We just adapt the rhyme .....Here is the rhyme in French.

We say with the children  “petits poissons , venez, passez.....”

·       Select two children to join hands and make an archway for the other children to walk through in  single file.We often play it to practise numbers 

·       The class needs to chant “petits poissons , venez, passez.... and then the two children in the archway need to count from zero as the fish (the other children)  walk under their archway .

·      The fishermen (  the two children making the arch) have secretly agreed on a number. When the agreed number is met , the archway drops and the fishermen catch their first one or two fish .

·      The children who have been caught  join the fishermen and agree a new number , the game starts again and this time four children lift their arms to make four archways and that also form the net in which they will catch their fish

·      Change the content and agree that it’s colours or days of the week or months of the year and play the game again.The fishermen must decide which colour etc is the signal to drop their net and catch fish!

Communication Skills and PE Games

We want to make sure the children develop their communication skills so here are a couple of games we are using this half term with Y3 to do just that:

Role Tag Game

·        2 players labelled as ‘the person’

·        The ‘the person “’ players have a list of skills cards

·        If a pupil gets tagged by the ‘it’ person they are provided with a  task

·        Tasks could be ask a question , tell me your name , count to 10 ,  greet me ,

·        Pupil move to the side and complete the task

·        Progress= Introduce the rule of the ‘examiner’, who stands at the  side of the hall and approves/ disapproves whether the people  completing the task have completed the task (great for AfL)

·        You are going to need - Task Cards- as prompts for ideas of tasks  etc.

Simple Easter Celebration Rhyme 

Just before Easter have a go at this clapping rhyme in Spanish , based on the word for chocolate in Spanish ...funnily enough it’s “Chocolate “

Watch the two girls in this favourite You Tube clip show the class how it’s done.

Chocolate

Choco-choco-la-la

Choco-choco-te-te

Choco-la

Choco-te

Choco-la-te

These are the hand clapping rules for the game .....!

Choco = palm-to-palm clap with partner,

La = back-of-hand to back-of-hand- clap

Te = end-of-clenched-fist to end-of-clenched-fist clap

This is also a really good game to play with the whole class in a circle, doing the hand actions out to the side as opposed to straight in front of you, so that everyone joins in.

Can you play the game in French...? Well we took the famous drink “café au lait” and applied the same hand clapping rules and rhythm etc and it worked a treat!

Why not ask the children if they can think of some new words they know in the target  language to create their own clapping game !

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Open and reveal four corners puzzles

This is the simplest of games to play with all language learners! 
Everybody likes a guessing game and here we are linking games , fun and grammar!
It could be created on the IWB quite easily too but part of the fun is when the children make their own.

Tomorrow I will share this with Primary PGCE ITTs at Manchester University.

It's a very simple way of revisiting key language the learners already know , recalling and revisiting  families of nouns  and developing a new learning focus from this .In this case we are revisiting animal nouns and listening for indefinite articles.

All it is , is a picture like this of any object . Here I am focusing on animals.....

1. .Now you fold in the corners of the paper that the mouse picture has been printed on . You would have a range of animal pictures that you were using ,all printed out and all folded in on themselves with familiar language recall prompts  written on each corner-one on each folded in corner -  like this .......

to perhaps revisit numbers like this .....:

or perhaps to revisit colours like this ......

or perhaps key sounds and phonemes in the target language animal nouns like this....:

2. One by one you invite children to name a corner of the folded picture - a number / a colour / a sound and if they say this correctly you can unfold the corner ..... how long does it take for the learners to recall and say the correct animal . They can make a guess after each corner is unfolded and a bit of the picture becomes clear .My mouse picture is hidden behind symbols for the question "how are you feeling?" and three simple responses . The children   would have to say what they see before that specific corner can be unfolded  .

3. Now it's time to consider the focus of our learning . In this instance we would be trying to listen in French for the indefinite article and for when we say "C'est un ....." and when we say "C'est une .....". 

Once all the animals are revealed we can add our written indefinite labels which help us to  categorise the animals into masculine and feminine indefinite article animals ! The "un " and the "une " family . 

4.Each child in the class can then make two or three open and reveal corner puzzles of their own- why not encourage the more able to investigate new names of animals by using reference material such as a bi-lingual dictionary . They must in this instance select objects that they can recognise as masculine or feminine in gender and therefore help their friends to explore when we say "un" and when we say "une "! 

5. Made into a working wall - with the open and reveal puzzles made by the class with labels made by the children, we have a point of reference for our work on nouns and the indefinite article .

The aim of the activity is to make the learning fun , to revisit familiar language  and to build on known language and make progress in our understanding of the target language !