Getting ready for carnival,being creative and exploring a story based upon le carnaval des animaux

Every year we love carnival! Last year we celebrated with a theme based upon:

"carnaval des animaux-camille st saens"

The theme linked so well with our Y3 focus on animals and teachers found ways to create masks, perform dances linked to the music and to investigate Art and DT - all based on this theme.Truthfully this was a theme and a focus that whole schools took as an opportunity to use as creative shared learning across Music,Dance.Art,DT and Language Learning

We were able too to look at nouns in the singular and plural , to investigate unfamiliar animal nouns using bi-lingual dictionaries and to generate simple question and answer role-plays about animals and descriptions of animals: "What is it? What colour is it? how many can you see? Do you like.....? "

(Teachers decided upon the most appropriate questions and answers for their learners and the prior knowledge of the learners).

i knew about this book "Au carnaval des animaux" by Marianne Dubuc based upon the music by Saint saens and so as a carnival activity, mask making and fancy dress followed quite easily.The book is available in several languages.

We used the book in French and Spanish:

The blog link here gives you a flavour of the book in French Litterature de jeunesse .Simple repetitive story which allows the children to invent their own animal characters. We used  simple cut out cards such as these below, to create our own fantastical fancy dress animal costumes and the cards where ideal for simple "Guess who I am ?" games- where one child holds a card and the other children /or another child has to guess which animals are on the card the first child is holding.

Leads to the children being able to make up the most amazing animal names - combining all the names of the animals they have know in one fancy dress mixed up animal written or spoken description.

And hot off the press just found this brilliant primary unit of work guide for a whole unit of work based around la danse des animaux- useful if you are a French speaker! 

Brilliant ideas

And don't forget the possibilities of a wonderful dance to this famous song! Le livre de la jungle!

Here are some ways that we have in the past developed very simple beginners language learning based on carnival celebrations and the story of au carnaval des animaux  

Using drama and grammar to go on an Autumn walk through a French poem

L’automne

L’automne au coin du bois,

Joue de l’harmonica.

Quelle joie chez les feuilles !

Elles valsent au bras

Du vent qui les emporte.

On dit qu’elles sont mortes,

Mais personne n’y croit.

L’automne au coin du bois,

Joue de l’harmonica.

Maurice Carême

This beautiful poem I find is lyrical and there is a hidden thread within the words of the music of Autumn.It's a piece of poetry that we can use in target language learning to explore nouns and the imagery of dance and music to create a magical picture of  Autumn.  

Walk through the nouns

1. Share with the children the fact that you are on an Autumn walk and the wind is blowing and the leaves are blowing around.
2. Ask the children to read through the poem and find the nouns in the poem and write them down on a rough piece of paper (just like they were collecting Autumn leaves)
3. Which nouns in the target language have the children found? How did they do this? What helped them to find the nouns (e.g definite articles or words that looked very similar to english nouns)?
4. Are there any hidden nouns that we need to look ? Use the clues of "du" and "au" to find the hidden nouns.(With more advanced learners explain the use of "du" and "au" and how it has been formed and how it conceals the definite article).
5. Engage the children in an imaginary Autumn walk.Explain that you are going to say each of the nouns they have found in the target language and you want the children to close their eyes and listen to the sound of the words and see a visual image of the word and the object or item or scene it describes
6. Now ask them to create a visual image of their own of each noun- they need to stand up find a space and create a movement and a facial expression to portray the nouns as you say them. Ask the children to repeat this and say the nouns with you and give the nouns "life" like the poet does in the poem.

Step into the Poet's World

Read the poem with the children and ask the children to listen for the key nouns and  “step” into the poem through their physical reactions to the nouns.

• Talk with the children about the types of weather they expect in Autumn. Ask them to help you find the sounds in the text where they can hear the  wind as it blows through the wood?
• Focus now on the use of the noun “l’harmonica”. Discuss with the children the sort of the sound a harmonica makes. If possible access the sound of the harmonica. Can they hear the squeal and sound of the wind as it plays? What type of wind do you think is chasing the leaves in the poem? 
• Look at this key sentence in the poem: “Quelle joie chez les feuilles, elles valsent au bras du vent!”  Explore the magic of the image in this line..........

1. Ask the children in pairs or on their tables to investigate the language they can see in the sentence when they read the sentence. 
2. First they must locate the cognates, the nouns and verb.
3. Then they must look up the key language they are not certain about. 
4. Finally can they create a visual translation of the sentence- a picture, a cartoon or a physical performance? Give the children a time limit of 15 minutes to unpack the sentence, understand the sentence and to create their visual translation. Watch or view some of the visual translations and practise the spoken form of the sentence with the children each time volunteers share their work.

Adding music, dance and movement to the poet's world 

Read in French and then explain to the class the meaning of the sentence : On dit qu’elles sont mortes, Mais personne n’y croit”.Ask the children to help you find the magic that brings the leaves to life in the poem. Allow the children time to realise that the wind is music to the leaves.

Can the children explore the rhythm and the beat of the sentence “Quelle joie chez les feuilles, elles valsent au bras du vent!”  and create the "drum beat of the dancing leaves"?

  Share the world of the poet with others!

I selected this poem because of the magic of the wind and the music and dance themes that run through the poem. The poet wants us to understand that the wind is bringing what appear to be dead leaves to life. Can the children help you to create these visual images and bring the music and the dance to the poem? 

• As a class read the poem and look for repeated lines and words
• Read the poem and stress the repeated lines and words
• Look and listen for the rhyme
• Give all the children the music magic and suggest that they all have imaginary musical instruments. They must help you now to read the poem with stress and intonation that brings the music of the poem to life and add the drum beat of the sentence where the leaves come to life and dance “Quelle joie chez les feuilles, elles valsent au bras du vent!” .
• As a class now re-read and stress the repeated lines ,words and rhythm
• Ask for volunteers to perform the poem as a mime whilst the rest of the class create the music of the poem by reading it aloud with the stress, intonation and rhythm you have already explore.  

If a picture paints a thousand words ...

Thinking of ways to explore descriptions of people, their hair, eyes, faces, emotions?
Well why not use this video clip that I was alerted to via Twitter @i100 this morning!
Watch how the portrait of a woman's face has changed over 800 years of painting

How do I think this could be used? Here are just a few simple ways ....

Name the portrait!

• Give children target language name cards- 3 per child. Practise and use the target language names of course and then  play the video and ask the children to raise the name cards when they see a face that they think suits the target language name. 
• Now ask the children to work in groups of four and create 12 faces -using facial expressions for the 12 name cards they hold between them. They must introduce themselves using a full target language sentence.
• Ask the children to find portraits of characters through the ages that they can label with their target language name phrases and then create their own short videos with portraits and names

Look closely and what do you see!

• Practising describing eye and and hair colour?Well then ask the children to write as many eye and hair colours phrases as they can  on a piece of paper. The children cut the phrases into phrase strips and one child goes first on the table or in the group to share their phrases with their classmates. 
• Ask the children to read out the phrase they hold (it could be an eye colour or a hair colour) and tell the group what they think the phrase is in English . Does the person who wrote the phrase agree?
• Now play the video and ask the children to watch for a portrait ,where they can see or identify the eye colour or hair colour phrase strip they are holding.They must raise the strip in the air to acknowledge this . Pause the video every so often and see what phrases the children are holding up. Are they all correct ? Do they match the  portrait?
• Increase the challenge by giving the children pre-prepared phrases which have an eye and a hair colour  - the portrait must match both descriptions for them to hold up their phrase strips.

Anticipation Emotions 

• The clip had the most evocative music and if you watch closely many of the portraits and the music are interlinked, sharing the facial expression and the emotion suggested in the music.
• Ask the children to watch  some of the video with you and when you pause the clip to suggest an emotion that the portrait is relating to its audience.Either asking children to recall key emotions language or using bi-lingual dictionaries create and English /target language checklist of emotions on the flip chart.
• The children can use this checklist as a point of reference for the second part of the activity. This time play part of the clip and conceal the screen from the children and ask them to listen to the music- can they anticipate the possible emotions on the screen when you pause the clip and reveal the portrait , just by listening to the music.What emotion does the music convey? They must tell you this in the target language!

Portrait gallery selfies!

• Using photos of themselves and music that they enjoy , can the children generate a portrait gallery of "selfies" with written and read aloud facial descriptions that can be share with the whole class on the IWB?