Start of the new school year and time to revisit the personal information questions and answers from previous years of language learning.

We have put in to place lots of games and activities over the last couple of years to make the revisiting of core language a challenge, a competition, a way to reflect on what we have learnt.

Here is another way that I think we can use at the start of the year to bring back in to focus the language we learnt last year etc to describe ourselves and ask questions of others.

The idea of the mirror on the wall allows us to practise first and second person singular questions and responses!

Each child needs an oval piece of paper:

Question and Answer Mirrors

On one side of the paper ask the children to write down the key information they think they can say about themselves in the target language.So for example a beginner learner from last year should be able to say a name phrase/ a feeling/ where he/she lives/ his or her age and something he/ she likes (animal or colour or food).This is the "answer mirror"

On the other side of the paper (remember this is a mirror on the wall) ask the children to draw some symbol prompts for the questions: for example a beginner learner's symbols could be : a name tag / a house outline/ a birthday cake with candles/ a smiley face/ a heart shape.This is the "question mirror".

Play a game of spot the question and answer!

Ask the children to have their oval shapes infront of them on the desk with the answer mirror face up.
Call out a question to elicit the information the children have put on their oval shapes.
Ask the children to listen to your question and to point to the response they would give.
Ask a child the specific question and ask them to read out their resonse.
Ask the children to turn over their ovals and this time to listen to the question, identify the symbol they have drawn as the question prompt and whisper to a partner the question that you as the teacher have just said.

Mirror Mirror on the Wall!

Working with a partner, ask the children to take it in turns to ask and answer the questions on their mirror oval shapes.

One child places his /her mirror "question mirror" face up on the table or on the wall with blu-tac.

The other child must look at the question prompt symbols, point to the symbol and ask a question.

Can the first child give the answer that he/she has written on the answer side of the mirror?

Mirrors on the Wall .

Create with the children card versions of mirrors - whichever shape the child wants to use.

Ask the children to draw a sketch of their own faces on the mirrors.They will need to use pastel colours for this

Over the top ask the children to write their favourite five questions and five answers about themselves that they can say on the targetr language.They will need to use a dark crayon or felt tip for this.

On the reverse side of the mirror ask the children to write in English two more details they would like to be able to use in their personal information questions and answers this year in the target language to describe themselves in more detail.

Hang the mirrors on the wall - as a mirror mobile!

Take a look at the image! It's a football player .....but who is the person on the inside ?

These are World Cup activities for our Year 4 ,5 and 6 learners in the target language.

Yesterday thanks to @vallesco I received a link to the Daily Telegraph and the football strips for the World Cup teams.

Here's the link

World Cup football strips

Here is the England team and their football strip ...........

......................................................................but what makes them who they are on the inside?

Select some football strips of the World Cup teams! Give each table or group of six children a football strip and a country.

Can the children investigate the countries and the famous buildings, foods,traditions and customs of the country and create a new football shirt of cultural graffiti for France .......

For Germany .......

For Spain...............

Here's my Spanish cultural graffiti shirt .I am certain our children will make them look far more authentic and creative!

The children can use this information to create an informative English presentation about the country and specific cultural aspects to share with the class with pictures etcetra.The t-shirt can act as their prompt as they hare their information with the class.

Now can they create what's on the inside . Ask child in the group to select a team player from the World Cup team for the specific country and on the reverse side of the cultural graffiti shirt

Can they record on the reverse side of their shirt a target language greeting , a name phrase, maybe the town/city the player comes from and characteristics that describe the player (e.g. strong, quick,powerful,fast,brave etcetra)?

Here's my simple example:

Now the challenge is to create a football team of real people not just players . Each member of the team needs to introduce themselves and say their characteristics using the t-shirt as a prompt if necessary.

The class is almost ready for football team presentations . Each group must now decide upon a chant for their country name.

The final presentation will have three parts:

the country and the culture in English / the players and their characteristics in the target language / a final team line up and of course a team chant of the name of the country!

Thanks to @vallesco for the French power point she has posted on light bulb languages to support teachers if they are investigating some of the participating teams in French and want to create their cultural graffiti t-shirts!

French Who is inside the tshirt? ppt

Mirror mirror on the wall......

World Cup 2 Who is the person on the inside?