Fishing for feelings

We are going to be sharing ideas on "Seaside" at our DFE funded WTSA/JLN local network meeting twilights this next  half term. You would be very welcome to attend if you are near to one of these CPD twilights on the Training Schedule

Here is one of the story resources with accompanying  ideas that we will be sharing and can be used in KS1, KS2 (beginners,moving on or more advanced learners) and potentially KS3 Y7.
The ideas are based on this wonderful story book that I found last October in Germany and that I now have as well as a French story book too!

Inside are the most wonderful chalk drawings on black paper of fish, representing a plethera of feelings and emotions.On each page there is one adjective to follow the title page repeated phrase:  "I am ....." .Each adjective describes an emotion. The fish sketches convey the feeling or emotion through their size,colour ,shape, expressions. Here are two example pages: 

In German:

In French

A simple fishing rhyme with KS1 and Year 3 Beginners

Game One

Let's make our hands do the talking!

How often do we tell rhymes about animals and use our hands as characters in the rhyme.Well here let;s make "hand  fish" in class -using our hands as the different fish!

Well can you make your hand look big,small, courageous,curious, nervous, happy, sad etc?

• Practise this with the children in the target language.
• Call a feeling and ask the children to make their hand portray the action as if they   their hands are swimming fish ( swimming quickly, sadly, slowly, nosily etc to convey the emotion or feeling)
• Make this in to a "Simon Says" game too.

Game Two

Let's make our whole bodies in to the fish! 

Let's take our favourite French and Spanish (thanks Emilie and Ana!) party rhyme and tweak it a little ....

In French : 

Petits poissons, venez, passez, 1,2,3 

In Spanish 

Pequeño pez, ven y pasa

So in German we can say

Kleiner Fisch , komm, schwimm 1,2,3

• And this time let's take out of a pot one of the fish descriptive words.
• On the count of three in the rhyme ,pull out of the pot the fish word and  call out the word to the class- can they be the fish with the characteristic or feeling you have just said? 
• Make it in  to "a last one out" game by then asking the children to freeze frame in the action, as you count on to 10 slowly in the target language(4,5,6,7,8,9,10) Any movement and they are out of the game!
• Start the rhyme again and add a new characteristic or feeling ..... 

Fishing for feelings with Year  3 or 4 beginner and moving on learners

Do you remember the wonderful magnetic fishing games, where you had a magnet on a string and you popped the "fishing rod over the side of a card pool and caught fish with magnetic noses?

(We have used this idea before in language learning- magnets on strings attached to rods and card fish with paper clip noses and we went fishing for sounds...We will be doing this again too!)

If you are lucky enough to have the story book , then read the book first and look at the characteristics.Look up some of the words in your bilingual dictionaries. 

• Give each child a word to draw as a fish (from the adjectives in the book). Get the children to create the magnetic noses with the paper clips. 
• Now pop all the fish in a class pool or pretend pond.
• You need a fishing rod .... go fish feeling fishing with a magnet on the end too.
• Can a child use  the fishing rod to pull out a fish drawn by one of the class?
• Show it the class and then let the class decide which feeling the fish represents.
• Up to  three guesses before the child  who drew the fish shares with the the class the adjective and writes the adjective up on the whiteboard. 
• Collect at least 8 adjectives on the whiteboard that are visible to the class.Check their understanding of the adjectives.
• Give all the children mini whiteboards and ask them to draw fish for a partner to represent feelings.Make the " fish sketching" a timed activity - maximum 60 seconds - can the partner guess which adjective the fish sketch conveys? 
• Can the children help you to create a fishing for feelings art gallery using adjectives and the phrase in the target language "I am....."

Sea Creature Sketches .Year 4 and 5 Moving On Learners

The fish in the sketches in the book are masculine singular nouns  and therefore we can use the adjective exactly as it appears in the dictionary .

Discuss with the class what might change with the adjectives if you were using a feminine singular sea creature noun for example .......replace the fish with for example "a whale" in French or Spanish- feminine singular noun (la baleine/ la ballena).

Investigate the changes to the spelling to match the new sea creature.

Can the children draw for you a nervous or curious whale and write an accurate sentence to describe the whale's feelings?  

The verb "to be" sea creatures and the fishy feelings mobiles !Year 5/Year 6 and Year 7 Advanced Learners.

The book is based on the use of the first person singular form of the verb "to be " e.g in French "aujourd'hui je suis ....."

So let's unpack the verb "to be" with this story and create a whole ocean of sea creatures and feelings

You will need to first of all use the activity above , based on changing the adjectives from masculine singular to feminine singular and you will need to develop this further with plural nouns too.

Now the children can explore with you a sea creature gallery of feelings.

Share with the children pictures of sea creatures and ask them to help you describe the sea creatures feelings and to link appropriate groups of sea creatures to parts of the verb " to be"  .

For example one fish on its own could be "I am" or "you are" or "he is" but it can't be "she is" or any of the plural parts of the verb "to be". discuss with the children ehy this is the case.Why are the parts of the verb called "singular" or "plural" ?What do these words tell us?
As a class check out the plural spelling changes of the nouns you want to use for the sea creatures.
Discuss the ending changes to adjectives that the children may want to use to describe the emotions of the sea creatures. 

Create a whole class fishy sea creature verb " to be " paradigm and spend time discussing why certain parts of the verb can or cannot match with the sea creature pictures.

Can the children create their own "Sea creatures and fishy feeling mobiles"? 

• Give out the paradigm ( pattern of the verb) "to be" in the target language.Print each part of the verb on  separate  strips of card ( blue card would be really good for this).Ask them to put the parts of the verb in to the paradigm order e.g.I am , you are, he is etc). 
• Ask the children to add an adjective to each of the parts of the paradigm and to think carefully about the spelling of these adjectives and to try to match the spelling to the type of nouns they can use with this part of the paradigm.
• Can they now draw their own sea creatures to match the part of the paradigm and to convey the specific emotion or feeling of the adjective. 
• Ask the children to add their drawing to their strip of card too on the reverse of the card strip.
• Now each pair has the parts of their fish mobile ready to be assembled and displayed.Each strip of card will have a part of the verb to be, an adjective to match the part of the verb and a picture of the reverse to convey the emotion or feeling of the adjective.

Take a simple authentic rhyme and explore language learning skills

On Thursday this week I will be looking at how one simple resource can support the introduction, practise and revisiting of many language learning skills . We will consider how progression can be built in to primary language  learning very simply and we will look for links with literacy and/or across the primary curriculum.

For teachers, just setting off on the road to delivering effective primary language learning or supporting staff to do so, the activities will hopefully act as  sign posts to help the school plan sequences of meaningful and purposeful language learning activities.

Schools, where staff have limited target language skills can plan to use authentic texts which have been carefully selected because they are  not too challenging for the non-specialist.We find that such texts should repetitive language,clear sound support files if possible,introduce key language and words and not be too "wordy".

Above is the authentic and familiar rhyme "tengo dos manitas" , sung clearly with the words appearing on the screen in the clip.The clip is repetitive and uses simple language.There are obvious actions to the text. 

Word warm up 

Practise the key language from the text preferably with actions/ movements or a physical routine .

Here we have core body parts' language (manitas/ojos/nariz/boquita)

and two key actions (aplaudir and sonreir)

Add a fun, memorable element immediately.

Ask the children can they smile / clap using the body parts in the rhyme

e.g. Pueden sonreir con los ojos/la nariz/la boquita/las manitas

       Pueden aplaudir con los ojos/la nariz/la boquita/ la manitas

Get to know the rhyme and make it your own!

• Practise the rhyme- as this rhyme has a clip to accompany it , when you feel the class are comfortable , turn down the sound and ask the children to be the sound file to the clip!
• Add actions and focus on rhythm.
• Practise in pairs with the words and the actions
• Practise in fours and make the rhyme "your own". Each group can decide how they want to say and perform the rhyme
• Performance time- one group of four performs for a second group
• As a class perform the rhyme and as this rhyme repeats the verse over and again let one group lead the whole class each time - sharing their own special version and actions etc.

Class warm up song or recall song

Now you have a rhyme to say , sing or perform at the start of a language lesson over the next couple of weeks or to use to recall children and bring them back together after another activity.

Take another look!

Languages are not always about racing on.Learning some language and then moving to the next goal doesn't make confident young language explorers in my opinion.

Let the class enjoy the rhyme and actions and then plan to return to the rhyme and activate memory to use the rhyme to explore languages further.  

Missing words or Volume control games 

Come back to the rhyme or song at a later date and this time ask the children to miss words out or to observe you as you operate a pretend volume control ,so that there are times when the children whisper or don't even say the words but do the actions instead.

Rhythm raps 

Can the children help you to create a new version of the rhyme - a rap - made up of the beats and cadence of the rhyme- no words just the beat and rhythm of the text?

Go sound fishing!

Identify the key sounds in the song or rhyme for example here I would identify:

j/o/qui/re/ir/au/iz

Can the class work in pairs and say the rhyme to each other and spot these key sounds as they say the words?

Can they decide in which order the sounds are heard and how often?

Can they spot the key sounds in the written words displayed by you at the front of the classroom.

Bringing the written word together!

Using their knowledge of the rhyme and their visual knowledge of key words can the children reconstruct the written text ,putting the text back together from word cards.  

Power and dynamics of poetry in a target language

Last term I spent time considering ways to introduce and use poetry in language learning. It's an area that I have always enjoyed with young learners (and as an English and Drama  teacher in a former life) I am always delighted when children realise the power of poetry!

This academic year I am keen to focus on the "power of poetry " to bring words to life! Not just to look for images or to play matching and rhyming games but to engage the young learners with the power and sound scapes behind a poet's words.

Let's look for the dynamics of the poetry!
The  cadence, the pictures created by the sound- scapes ,the beat and rhythm of the syllables and the words chosen and the mysterious world that the poet has encapsulated in a confined use of language.

How do I think we can achieve this during a year of primary language learning...?

Well ...nursery rhymes and songs enable us to encourage young language learners to join in, participate, create actions, move around .... so let's look at poetry in KS2 in a similar way.

Build opportunities to explore poetry across KS2, where you engage the children with:

• listening for the beat, 
• the rhythm, 
• drawing the shape of the sounds they hear in the air or on white boards,
• creating actions that interpret the story of the poem or song,
• creating physical performances of the poems 
• taking an original text and making it up to date and modern e.g. generating a rap
• using APPS to add dynamics such as drumbeats and music to a class recording of thew spoken poem.

Let's consider what opportunities already exist in the work I know is being planned for within the network this Autumn term. 

We will be working with the children on Autumn poems in October  - based on the sounds and the smells and surprises of an Autumn walk.We will create Halloween poems and explore authentic poetry and songs about witches such as la sorciere grabouilla. Here's a You tube clip of the French song...  

In November we work on firework poems both  as reading and writing activities and we explore the shapes, sounds and colours of a firework display. In UKS2 some teachers will be generating wizard's potion poems after exploring a written simple potion to create a wizard. In December we will be getting ready for our Christmas activities and with KS2 children we might be preparing the poem and now song  le bonhomme de neige by Jacques Prévert.

Inspired ?

Well then why not get started in September with one of this back to school theme poem blog for both French and Spanish called Physical Pop Up Poems Daily Routine and Back to School,where you will find that I have suggested activities that will allow you to explore the dynamics of the poems hopefully to enable you to generate memorable learning occasions for the children and yourself!

You may also find some of my blogs on poetry from last year useful too. I have included opportunities for you children to explore the role of the poet and use limited language to great effect in creating their own poetry too! Hope the blogs,the ideas are useful and the possible transfer of activities to poetry in other languages is useful too!  

Spanish  KS1 rhyme based on the bear hunt Bear Hunt Rhyme
French, Spanish, German : The verb to have and a wizard's potion
French : simple Easter movie based on un petit lapin rhyme
All languages : Creating our own simple past tense mood swing poems
All languages : Using video clips  to generate poems Eye in the sky
 French and Spanish writing our own sandcastle poems to perform
French :using an authentic comptine to explore the skills of  listening,speaking,reading,writing , drama and phonics Dame tartine
French sept couleurs magiques
French painting a poem of a Summer's Day
French writing our own poems about the seaside based on authentic poetry
French emotions and doodle sense poems based on authentic poem mon cartable
French Drama and mystery in the cafe dejeuner du matin

Plant pot story actions and song

Plant pot story , actions and song 

Last year as part of a JLN  network project during the Spring term I created a series of simple activities to link to KS1 growing things science focus we developed a these materials and the activities below . 

Thanks to Ana Garcia Lavado who drew the pictures and Emilie Woodruffe @EWoodruffe, Barbara and Flora who  provided the target language phrases and Joanne who created the simplest of plant growing songs based on the familiar refrain of Frère Jacques.

Our Learning Objectives 

To understand how a plant grows and the conditions it requires 

To listen and respond to commands in a target language

To practise performing a simple sequence of actions in the target language

To learn a song in the target language 

(As some of our schools have now developed their own vegetable gardens and plots we found real examples from the target  language countries to share with the children .

Here is a project at a school in Limoges , where you can find a chart explaining what they planted and in which month and pictures of the young gardeners planting their vegetable seeds

Limoges ProjetJardinPotager.pdf

The Simple Lesson Activities

The activities below are based on  five simple pictures made in to a story that describes how we grow a plant from seed .Here's a plant pot pictures downloadable zip file 

Here is the   French plant pot story

.......and here are the PDF power point plant pot stories  in the other target languages : 

 French plant pot story

German plant pot story

Mandarin plant pot story

Spanish plant pot story

1. Discuss with the children the conditions required to grow a seed or a plant .

2. Look at crops from the target language country . We selected sunflowers in France, water melons in spain , Kohlrabi in Germany and rice in China. Share with the children pictures of these crops and compare the pictures of real crops with art work linked to the crops :  

And shared with them art work that depicted crops as paintings .Here is a goauche after Rufino Tamayo 

And don't forget the all time favourite Van Gogh's  Sunflowers

3. Read the story power point slides to the children . 

Here is a sound file of the reading of the story in Mandarin Chinese Mandarin plant pot story

Give out the pictures from the plant pot picture zip file to five children and ask the class  to help you to reorganise the pictures into the order that you saw them on the ppt story .Move the children holding the pictures into the correct order and then retell the story a second time . 

4. Order the plant pot pictures on the flip chart in the correct order . Ask the children to help you tell the  story this time .Can they help you to create actions for each story slide .

5 . We then shared with the children the simple song to the refrain of Frère Jacques in the target language .It's made up of the sentences on the power point.  For example in French we sang : 

Plante les graines

Arrose les graine 

Brille soleil brille 

Brille soleil brille 

Regarde comme elles poussent 

Regarde comme elles poussent 

Voilà vos fleurs 

Voilà vos fleurs 

Here's the sound file of the Mandarin version Mandarin plant pot song

We asked the children to stand up and listen and join in with the correct actions .

Then we encouraged the children to practise the song with us and try to sing along and join in with the actions

Finally the children were able to perform the song on their own!

You could go on to link this work with previous blogposts 

Growing sunflower numbers

Springtime ,story , drama and performance

Spanish KS1 ,Going Bear Hunting Rhyme and Game

Spanish KS1  ,Going Bear Hunting Rhyme and Game

1,2,3

Suish suash, glo glo glorogló

4,5,6

Plochi plochi plop

7,8

Túpiti túpiti tap , suu, uuuu

9,10

Tipi tip tipi tip

İAhhhhhhhh!  İEs un oso!

10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1

        The children are going normally going to listen to the story vamos a cazar un oso when we play this Going on a bear hunt rhyme and game .

But they love it so much that we often play it just for fun!

2.    

      Our children practise their numbers first .

3.       We set up a path of numbers across the classroom and the children step carefully across the path of numbers in a line. The numbers are repeated so we have three paths of numbers of  1-10 .the children sing / chant the numbers as they walk until the teacher calls stop!  The teacher calls out a number and if a child is stood on that number then they are out of the game and caught by the imaginary bear ! The teacher can call put more than one number.

4.       How many bear hunters will we have left after we have played the game three times

5.       Once we feel the children know their numbers well enough, we ask them to put on their bear hunter kit ( imaginary hat , binoculars , wellington boots) and we pretend to go out to see what the terrain is like .

6.        For each of the terrains – as in the book – we have a sound to represent  the terrain

Suish suash glo glo glorogló = river

Plochi plochi plop= mud

Túpiti túpiti tap= forest and owls

Suu, uuuu= snow storm

Tipi tip tipi tip = inside a cave

7.       We need to become good explorers , so we practise the sounds and add actions

8.       We ask the children to close their eyes and come with us on an imaginary journey through the different terrains .The teacher  tells the  story in English of their journey and the children join in  with sounds that “colour” in the terrain that is described . they are the sound effects.

9.       Now they are finally ready to become” Bear explorers “! They need to practise the rhyme , remember their actions and their numbers  too …..but when they get to the end of the rhyme they need to listen out for you to shout out / whisper / say very quickly etc the final line İAhhhhhhhh!  İEs un oso!

10.   When they hear you say the final line, they must freeze frame and stay very still until you have counted backwards very slowly from 10-1. If they move then the bear will catch them!

Linking parts of the body and movements with mime performance, Art and dance

Linking parts of the body and movements with mime performance , Art and dance

I love mime artists and the way they can control their bodies and isolate parts of their bodies to exaggerate movements

This next half term we teach parts of the body to our Year 4 children . 

We have great fun learning rhymes , playing response games , designing  fantastical creatures etc. The other day I was inspired by a poster of a famous work of art from the Tate Henri Matisse Cut Outs  series. It was “Icarus “ by Henri Matisse and this  led me to think about how we could develop some movement activities around parts of the body nouns in target language learning.I think it makes a great creative primary cross curricular learning  experience for the children .Hope some of you may give this a go!

Henri Matisse Icarus.

Stage One 

First teach the parts of the body nouns and explore the nouns in both singular and plural forms. We all love "Heads, shoulders , knees and toes " in target language teaching because it gets the children up , moving listening, responding and joining in.

Below is a link the wonderful Mama Lisa songs and the page that offers you the chance to explore this song in lots of languages!

Mama Lisa and many target language versions of Heads Shoulders Knees and Toes  

Once the children are up and moving why not let them listen to , join in and sing along with one of the two following clips in French or Spanish ...

Here in French is "Jean petit qui danse ..."

And in Spanish here is "Juan Pequeño baila"

Using these clips help you to create active  learning parts of the body and some great class performances for assemblies!

Stage Two 

Inspired by Icarus I decided to put together the simple sequence of learning above with  some activities which will  develop understanding of instructional language to generate a physical response 

You may read this and think well I can achieve part one of this or  I can combine part one and part two or part one and part three ....That’s fine , it’s about pushing boundaries and exploring the link between language learning and communicating a whole creative outcome .

1.  Parts of the body and physical movements

1.       Practise and teach the parts of the body – usual games and activities –listening and responding. Make sure that the children have practised both the singular and plural of the key parts of the body you will need for the activities below.Engage the children in the singing of one of the songs mentioned at the top of the blog or a song that is your favourite for teaching parts of the body  Make sure it is a physical response song.

o

2.       Introduce and practise the key instructional language for “run”, ”jump”, ”touch”, “clap”, “hop”, “move”, ”walk”, ”crawl” ,”slide”, “kick”,”push”,in the target languag .Link the language with an action , create mime performances of the language and the actions. Ask the children to do their actions slowly , quickly , softly etc

3.      

4.       Now call a part of the body and the class should respond with an action representing the command they think best fits with that part of the body e.g.  “hands” – children might respond by clapping or “legs” children might respond by walking or running ....but if you shout  “leg” then maybe they will respond with “hopping”- as it’s on one leg!

5.       Play the game a second time but this time the children should say the command and do the actions.

6.       Can the children work in groups of four to create a flowing movement from one side of the hall to the other which involves them saying a part of the body  , then an action, then a part of the body , then another action using the instructional language you have practised with the class? They should  use at least five movements and five body parts to get from one side of the room to the other!

7.       You can change the focus slightly  and add challenge by asking the children to call a number of the body parts e.g. three legs   – so the children will have to demonstrate three people hopping or two children – one running and one hopping .

8.       If you have IPads then the children can take photos or a video of their sequences and then back in class can add their own written statements or  record themselves saying the sequence of movements and body parts in time with the video clip or photo show .

2. Bring Art to Life .

Creative consolidation of language

Using the picture of Icarus explain that mythical character Icarus wanted to fly but he flew too near to the sun!

Can the children make the painting of Icarus move ?

Ask the children to observe the picture of Icarus and make their own painting of Icarus but they need to paint the body as words , using the key body parts to create the background of the painting.

For example each body part will be made up of the noun printed or written in the target language over and over again.

Over the top of the part of the body the children need to add a piece of instructional language representing a movement.The background of the body will be covered with grafiti style vibrant  instructional commands that are in  explosive word shapes  bringing the specific limb to life  e.g over the hand they could paint "push" and over a leg they could paint " run" etc in the target language. 

Mime artists.

Challenging and creative performance of new language

Give the class a picture of a sportsman or woman in action

In pairs ask the children to create a sequence of three movements that the sports star makes when they move in their specific sport . Can they create a repetitive mime routine and add to it a repetitive target languagespoken sequence made up of parts of the body and actions that fit the sequence of movements ? 

Ask the pairs to demonstrate to the class  through repetitive spoken mime how the sports person moves in their chosen sequence of actions

This will be a repetitive  , rhythmical spoken performance e delivered  to demonstrate the physical  process taking place .

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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Carnival,harlequin and describing hats with extended sentences

Carnival and languages just go together so well !

Last year I was inspired  by Art and all the incredible paintings through the ages of Harlequin , a key component of carnival and any fancy dress party to celebrate carnival . Have a look here at just two pictures ......

Harlequin in the Tate

Cezanne Harlequin

The children and myself in Year 5 had been working during the previous half term on clothes and descriptions of clothing ,placing adjectives in the correct position with nouns in extended sentences and trying to think carefully about how we needed to spell the adjectives to match the nouns and agree with them.

This lesson was a final celebration and we designed hats for harlequin to wear for carnival in all his finery!

We found out facts about Harlequin

I found out information to share with the children from here on wikipedia 

harlequin

We used the picture by Pablo Picasso Seated Harlequin (I selected this one,as he doesn't have a hat!) to design our own hats and add them to the picture . Before we could add our hats though , we had to design them , describe them and  play a game with a song where we missed out parts of the song as we sang it through several times with actions!A fun lesson in the spirit of Carnival with language , memory skills and grammar all included!

  Here is what we did ......

1..Look at pictures of hats  and ask what colour the hats are – show pictures 

2.Now develop extra questions about the hat - colour / size/ pattern . 

3.Turn pictures of individual hats over and blu-tac to the flip chart.Ask children to guess the colour or the size or the pattern of the hat –you will need numbers on the back of the hats so they can say  for example “ number 2 is blue ”.If the child is correct they come to the front and select the hat. If children are in teams , that team wins a point

4. Can the children link the hat to faces -Who does the hat belong to?Can they give the faces personalities , names , ages , where they live , what they like- in either the first person singular or the third person singular .

5. Introduce and practise the rhyme "My hat it has four corners " in the target language . Here is a link to the rhyme in French mon chapeau a quatre bosses and in German , here is a You tube clip of Mein hut der hat drei Ecken

Practise the rhyme with the class  – can they link it to a rhyme they might know in English (My hat it has three corners , three corners has my hat)

5. Add actions for the  children to do every time the word “hat” is said  , for each number and an action to represent a corner.

6 . Practise the rhyme. Add the actions .

7. Now repeat the rhyme and miss a key action word  out .The children should only do the action and not say the word .

8.Repeat until all key action words have been replaced by just an action.

9. Can they say the whole rhyme with actions for a partner?

10. Allow the children time to design the hat that they think is missing fro the "Seated Harlequin's " head . Remind them it's carnival so the hat will be bright , fun and creative! They need to write an extended sentence to describe the hat .

10. Now add the hats around the picture of Harlequin and create a "hat gallery" with written descriptions of the hats - or as we did draw our own faces of Harlequin and add our own hat designs with simple descriptions in full sentences! 

Great fun and a couple of very lively and creative lessons, linking language learning and Art!