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.

The aliens have definitely landed! Year 4 Spring term observations.

We have an alien family in our JLN SOW.We introduce Year 4 to the family in Spring and then the children meet the aliens  to practise language across all four skills and grammar  at points later in Year 4,5 and 6. We love our aliens and they never fail to disappoint! Here is part of the family at carnival later in the school year! I say part of the family as our young learners keep on making us new members of the family.I have met the family several times in the last couple of weeks and what is remarkable is that each teacher adds their own style to the introduction and practise of the language around the aliens! 

Have a look at the difference in approaches between Ana's Spanish Year 4 lesson on the family.Janet W's Year 5 beginners French lesson on our alien family ,Emilie's Bonjour Madame blog post on her alien family lesson and the use of a Voice recording APP and now here below Joanne's Year 4 lesson in Spanish on the "familia alien" - full of drama and performance!

   

As you may know if you have been reading my blog posts on observations, I am currently undertaking a routine series of observations of the language assistants and teachers who work alongside me in our primary schools.They deliver primary language learning on a weekly basis.It is such a rewarding and pleasurable opportunity to see what is really taking place in schools.

This series of blogs is an additional support mechanism for these colleagues,as they can't be in each others classroom and as a team  we meet once per half term for a twilight CPD,So you can hopefully see that these blogs (with a cup of tea and a biscuit back at home) offer them an insight in to each others classrooms and schools. 

Joanne's "Familia alien" lesson

• A warm up greetings song packed with actions and  whole class singing , as they gathered on the carpet for the Spanish 
• Personal information questions and answers - using "the guest" (that was me) as a person to get to know.Praise for children - particularly those who don't always  speak Spanish confidently to new people in the classroom.
• Incidental language all in Spanish and reminders to " sentaos" to a couple of children not quite sat down or "escuchad" and "miradme" and then an instruction to discuss with their talking partners the language they had met for the first time last week "la familia alien" .....
• Looking for links (e.g papa/ mama or hermano and hermana) and praise for correct use of definite articles with reward " a star-cash" for someone who really thought hard before sharing a correct article! 
• Now the whole class was moving around and being the characters with the actions the children had chosen for the characters last week .As many actions as there are syllables in the nouns reminded Joanne. A wagging finger for mama, hands behind the head and a yawn for papa, football kick for hermano and disco dancing for hermana  and  tiny moving fists and feet for bebe! Stereo -typical (as Joanne pointed out) but chosen ,owned  and liked by the children and acted out with gusto!
• Now we started to use the question " Quien es?" and full sentence responses were expected " hola soy el bebe alien" etcetra...always in character , always with actions,accurate pronunciatrion expected and reinforced  and always performed well.
• The children were so engaged that they just listened ,joined in and responded to incidental instructions without even noticing that these were in the target language.
• Today  "abuelo" and "abuela" joined the family! This was a big moment  in this particular school,because when Year 6 were in Year 4 they designed the grandma and grandad to complete the alien family for us.It was their idea! They are precious to the school!
• Joanne introduced "abuelo" and asked the children to look at the slide from the familia alien ppt and work out how to say "abuelo" before she shared correct pronunciation ... and what we heard was excellent!
• Then she asked the children to be language detectives think about what they thought grandma might be in Spanish .... and with their talking partners we could hear them say "Well it's hermano  and hermana so perhaps the word ends in "a" (etc).Back came the response "abuela" and now Joanne could introduce Grandma.
• Of course the class needed actions for the characters and decided on an action that conveyed what one of the children described "Ooh me back" for abuelo and for grandma the class decided on a knitting action.
• "Can we play a dramatic Pedro dice?" asked one child. What a good idea was Joanne's response.Off they went to their standing spaces and how did the children own the game! Performance filled,volunteers as Pedro dice who had to say whole sentences for the rest of the class.One volunteer won a "starcash" reward for excellent pronunciation,intonation,speed of recall, use of complete phrases and correct use of "o" and "a" for our new characters - abuelo and abuela. How proud was that person!
• Time for performance in groups.On their home tables,the children had to create a performance introduction to the familia alien for the rest of the class.Each child had to be a character from the family , keep and enhance the actions and add their own alien voice.Joanne clarified that what she was looking for, was clear confident introductions to the  familia alien.
• As support she offered children the familia alien photo sacks (small card pictures of each character to help with recall of the nouns) but only if the children felt that they needed to use them .
• As additional challenge  the children were encouraged to add their own sentences - names, ages, feelings etc....maybe even questions for other family members.
• And off they went to spend 10 minutes creating their  entertaining Spanish familia alien performances for the rest of the class! 
• Thank you Joanne and Year 4.The aliens have definitely landed!

Elmer Explorers with KS1 and LKS2,listening,speaking and writing

I am busy thinking of ideas for World Book Day and as Elmer is one of the books that children will receive,I decided that this was an ideal focus for our KS1 and also KS2 Year 3.It is also an ideal opportunity to share with students I train how we link across curriculum areas and can take one focus and develop primary language learning games,songs, role-play and our own writing opportunities - if we just think out of the box a little! 

Dressing Elmer with KS1!

With KS1 , we can practise our colours and our colour question"Which colour is it?" with a dice game where we roll the dice and say the question together and then the colour  the die lands on.

Now we can add a patch to our class Elmer( who as you can see is colourless at the moment!)  

Going on a colour hunt with KS1 and Year 3

We can pretend to be jungle explorers and hunt round our classroom for coloured elephants.With KS1 let's play "hot and cold" and hide coloured  card cut outs of elephants.

With KS2 Year 3 let's make it an Elmer treasure hunt and hide our multi coloured elmers around the room and ask two volunteers at a time to follow simple instructions to find the coloured Elmers (left ,right , straight ahead, turn around, stop , hot and cold).The class can hide the elephants and then help you call the directions as the two volunteers look for the elephants.  

Singing an Elmer song

We have found a great Elmer song in French.,

Here are the French words

French

E.L.M.E.R. je m’appelle Elmer.

E.L.M.E.R. et puis j’en suis fier.

De tout le troupeau je suis le plus beau,

l’éléphant le plus elegant.

Je suis bariolé de la tête aux pieds

Tout le  monde me reconnaît

E.L.M.E.R. je m’appelle Elmer.

E.L.M.E.R. et puis j’en suis fier.

Être différent c’est parfois pesant

je voudrais comme mes amis

être un éléphant qui de temps en temps deviendrait simplement tout gris.

E.L.M.E.R. je m’appelle Elmer.

E.L.M.E.R. et puis j’en suis fier.

E.L.M.E.R. je m’appelle Elmer.

E.L.M.E.R. et puis j’en suis fier.

Chaque année pour fêter la fin de l’été

Tout le monde se deguisait,

Bariolés, decorés furent mes amis et moi je me suis peint en gris

E.L.M.E.R. je m’appelle Elmer.

E.L.M.E.R. et puis j’en suis fier.

and here is the clip we found ......

Elmer Explorer Roleplays

Finally what about with KS2 Year 3 or Year 4 some Elmer totem pole prompt sticks for an Elmer role-play?

You can find out more about the totem pole prompt sticks and their general use

here

Here is an example of my Elmer totem pole prompt stick- one between two .It's a coliumn of four picture prompts.

You will also need rolled tubes with a letter box cut in it,so you can feed the totem pole prompt stick through slowly and look at each picture.This is the "Elmer explorer" telescope.

Each partner takes in turns to be the "Elmer explorer" and with their "jungle telescope " as they feed the totem pole prompt stick through the tube , they can ask a specific question of their partner.The partner looks through the binoculars , see the picture and uses this to help them form their response to the question. 

With these Elmer totem pole prompt sticks, the cue pictures invite us to ask:

What are you called?  (I am called Elmer)

Where do you live? (in the jungle)

What colours are you?  (opportunity for lots of colours here)

And one final question is one to be made up by the totem pole prompt stick holder- hence the question mark... (This could be age, personality , likes, dislikes .....)

Elmer mini books and describing things in writing

Now let's bring together all this work in our own mini book.I just followed this 

You Tube Origami mini book clip

 and created the book I needed.

Firstly I used familiar pictures from the totem poles - so the children can write down famiioar phrases and then I added colour clouds so that the children can then write their own colour sentences about Elmer.

The task in itself will be differentiated by outcome - as some children may write short phrases and single words and other children may write sentences , whilst other children may write questions and answers as if it was a story between Elmer and the narrator.

Here are some pictures of my mini book ready to be written in.

Dennis the Menace concertina characters

Simplest of ideas to share target language learning and  Dennis the Menace on World Book day, (which is one of the World Book Day freebies!) with your more advanced orimary target language learners.
Make your own concertina Dennis the Menace characters and practise the new DfE POS learning objective.

Describing people in writing

and 

Broadening vocabulary and developing ability to understand new words!

Here is a simple example in the third person singular- the description sentences make up the red and black stripes of his jumper!

I would suggest you support children with either key sentence prompts : name,personality,pets,likes .....or that for some children you provide writing frames with gapped sentences

And now we are ready for some spoken activities based on the sentences we have written on our concertina characters.

Here they are written in the third person singular - but the challenge could have been less by writing in the first person singular.

Ask the children to swap their characters with a partner- can the partner think of the questions they might need to ask to find out the information on the concertina character? Take the key sentence prompt words : name, pets, likes, personality and ask the children to think of core questions you can ask to find out this information.

Now your class are working on two more DfE POS learning objectives : 

either 

asking and answering questions 

or 

engaging in conversation 

and all the time they are 

describing people orally .

"Rudolph and your nose so bright" guessing game

Just found these Rudolph pictures on the internet! 
Brilliant for a simple warm up game in a December language learning lesson.
The objective of the lesson will be to ask and answer questions based on colour of Rudolph's nose!

Here is the link

1. Just print out a class set and cut out each Rudolph so that you have enough cards - one per child.
2. Make yourself three large versions of any of the Rudolphs for yourself and make them into finger puppets. 
3. Ask the children to greet the first Rudolph you show them and to ask him how he is feeling.Respond as if you are Rudolph. ask the children the colour of Rudolph's nose
4. Can the children guess the colour of the nose of the other two finger puppets you have made?
5. Now set up a simple game for the children ,based on "Knock, knock , who is there?"In French we are going to say:

                                                                       Toc,toc,toc!

                                                           Qui est là?

           Rudolphe avec le nez ……..?

    Le nez .......

Oui/non

(The child who is guessing the other partner's Rudolph and the colour of the nose says the phrases in red.The child with the Rudolph being guessed says the phrases in blue)

In Spanish we are going to say :

¡Pon,pon,pon!

¿Quién es?

Rudolph con la nariz ……

La nariz……

Si/no

Adding extra challenge?

Have you noticed that the Rudolphs on the sheet at the top are also wearing ties? 
Well now this will work brilliantly in French as we can look at the adjective spelling change for some of the colours and the way we therefore pronounce them , when we use a "le " noun or a "la " noun.
Now we can add a DfE POS objective based on understanding basic grammar too and use this activity across all our language learners from KS1 and beginners to moving on learners with differentiated challenge !

And in Spanish? Well we can use la nariz with adjectives that agree and change the tie to a soft neck scarf and use the masculine noun el  pañuelo

Finally in German! We will need to tweak the verse abit for younger learners but can add a differing degrees of challenge with adjectival endings for more advanced learners....

Klopf,klopf,klopf!

Wer bist du?  

Rudolph und meine Nase ist .....

............

Ja/ nein

To be more challenging add the preposition"mit" and practise the positioning of the adjective before the noun with the correct adjectival ending

( Rudolph  mit der ...........Nase) 

Or to add even more challenge introduce the changes in the definite article too by using die Nase and also das Halstuch ( e. mit der .....Nase/ mit dem........Halstuch) 

Let's talk about it .Moving talk on

As a network we work with children in KS2 who have as yet limited spoken language skills but also we work with children who have been learning the target language for 3,4 or 5 years and even more.As a network we need to get our children talking creatively and independently!Our current target with the more advanced learners are that :

We want our children to progress in their independent use of language!

We want the children to be able to say more than just limited responses!

The intention of the first sequence of activities below – which  should be developed over a series of lessons – is   to begin to enable the class to explore pictures  , photographs and stories in more detail. The activities are transferable so that over the course of the next academic year we can revisit the languages, set up the investigations and hold interesting discussion across a range of content and contexts. The intention is that the children become empowered  to extend what they can say and to allow them to access what they want to say.

You need to first take a look at Teacher French or Spanish  Talk Prompts to deliver the activities below.You can download the PDFs below

French Talk Prompts

Spanish Talk Prompts

The activities are based in the first instance around looking at famous picture and using these pictures as a stimulus for group talk.

Here are some famous works of art to explore and the content and contexts for which they could be useful  

 Possible pictures

Famous Art we like to use. Possible focuses for discussion are listed in brackets after the title of the piece of Art and the name of the artist)

·         The Boating Party  , Renoir (people, clothes , food , activities, animals)

·         Surprised : Henri Rousseau (jungle, colours, weather, actions, animals, emotions)

·         The Poet Reclining , Marc Chagall (people, countryside, animals, weather, actions, emotions)

·         The Starry Night, Van Gogh (weather , objects , town at night , colours, emotions)

·         Las Meninas, Velázquez (people, families, clothes, colours, emotions, actions , house and home)

·         La Grande Jatte, Georges Seurat (parties, activities, weather , clothes , emotions, people)

·         La historia de José, Antonio di Biagio (animals, actions , clothes, colours, )

·         July , the Seaside , LS Lowry ( weather, objects , activities, actions, colours, clothes , people, family

Artcyclopedia can help you to locate the pictures you want to use.

Below are the sequence of activities which can support your young learners to practise and explore becoming more creative and independent in their use of the target language.

 A.      Word Warm up activities

To ensure that all the children can contribute to the Talk Prompt activities, start with some Word Warm Ups. Ask the children to:

1. Name / show / find certain categories of words e.g. colours, weather phrases   , animals, clothes
2. Give the children   talking time to complete this with a partner or a group.
3. Take feedback   .

Ask the children to :

1. Check the language they have found by cross referencing this language in bi-lingual dictionaries .
2. Consolidate the knowledge through a game of charades/ an alphabetical challenge (60 seconds to say five of the words in alphabetical order etc)

B.      Class consideration

Either give out the picture to the class or show a large version of the picture on the IWB screen or flipchart.

Ask the children in their pairs or on their tables to :

• Familiarise themselves with the picture.Spot any items from the Word Warm Up activity above.
• Give each table a blank piece of paper and ask the children to  create “word graffiti” art of  the picture.They must write down the key items / emotions/ descriptive phrases  they have identified in the picture and the words or phrases should be positioned in a similar place on the blank piece of paper to where the item/ emotion etc is depicted or found in the picture
• Take feedback from the groups .Which words /phrases have they been able to locate and place in their replica “word graffiti “   pictures? As the children give you their feedback , either write up or invite a child to help you write up the key language that is being suggested by each pair/ table  on a flip chart

• Table experts .Each table becomes an expert table  . This means that each table has a theme e.g. weather phrases, animals, colours, emotions, objects, clothes, food – the categories will depend upon the picture you have chosen to use . The expert tables must firstly decide as a group which of the brainstormed words and phrases written on the flip chart are phrases that fit in their category- sometimes a phrase might match two categories e.g. a colour and an item of clothing. You should call out a phrase or word from the feedback and the expert tables must listen and if they think it’s from their category they should put up their hands. Increase the speed and quantity of language used to make the activity more challenging. Ask for volunteers to take the teacher’s role in the activity.

C.      Talk Prompt Activities, matching questions and answers

• Give out the “Children’s stem responses “(from the Talk Prompt PDF above)  either as separate cards – one card per pair , or as groups of three stem responses to pairs . The children’s stem responses  are located on the “Teacher Talk Prompt Sheet”
• Ask the children to read and apply their knowledge of the language to  decide how to pronounce the stem responses correctly and also the meaning of the stem response.
• Can the children match their stem responses to the possible questions you show them and you say from your “Questions for children” on the “Teacher Talk Prompt  Sheet”
• Swap stem responses between pairs and re-run the activity so that children familiarise themselves with a variety of stem responses and the link questions

D.      Talk time

• Children working in pairs or groups,possibly with the support of a TA or teacher , should now investigate the picture and be encouraged to actually "be in the picture" – even if there are limited characters that they can locate.
• They should use their imaginations to step into the picture .Guide the children into this target language activity with the key phrases from the “Let’s imagine setting up the activity” phrases on the “Teacher Talk Prompt Sheet”
• Hold “Listen ins” and ask children to feedback the language they are developing to describe what they see and what they are doing.
• The children may use notes to prompt them if they have jotted down information.
• Ask one pair to share with another pair their imaginary conversations and creative descriptions that they have generated inside the picture.what they have created- as spoken inside the picture” activity.

E.      Let’s imagine

As a whole class step back into the whole picture and now ask the specific questions   from the “Questions for children” on the “Teacher Talk Prompt  Sheet”. Take responses from several groups for each  question.

Ask the children to listen carefully and to imagine the scene they are creating as a class.

F. Return to the picture

In a following lesson , return to the picture and see if the children can respond appropriately to the simple questions from “Looking at pictures together” section  on  the “Teacher Talk Prompt Sheet” and can they remember their responses to the  “Questions for children” on the “Teacher Talk Prompt  Sheet” from the previous lesson?

You will now be able to use some of these activities to explore pictures , photographs and stories in more detail with the children over the course of the year , to extend what they can say and to allow them to access what they want to say .