Greetings and feelings, activities to encourage all staff to get on board

Getting on board with primary languages can seem really challenging and especially when you want everyone on the staff to grow in confidence. This week Emilie, Ana and I are out and about ,delivering staff CPD to every member of staff within a school,practising language and encouraging staff to try out some transferable activities using simple language.

Remember these are start up activities and they will also become favourite activities that can be played for five minutes when teachers have time outside of the language learning allotted time.

Below are some short activities which can help to build staff confidence and also engage young learners using target language feelings and how to ask how someone is feeling.

How are you feeling?
Here are three songs that can easily be adapted so that the teachers and the children can sing along and practise feelings and the question how are you feeling ?

In French

In Spanish

In German

The songs are catchy and teachers and children will love to sing along.The songs lend themselves to adding actions and missing out an agreed different word or phrase but keeping the action every time a verse is sung.

Teachers can then  

• play charades with feelings and greetings and questions
• build more detailed dialogues by linking this language with greetings and simple name question and answer
• play guessing games ,where chldren have to anticipate the next ppt slide or the next picture on the IWB and which emotion or greeting symbol they may see.
• play pass the message on games ,using different voices or actions
•  have a register week where the teacher asks the children how they are feeling in the target language.

Greetings and simple questions and encouraging all staff to get on board

Getting on board with primary languages can seem really challenging and especially when you want everyone on the staff to grow in confidence. This week Emilie, Ana and I are out and about ,delivering staff CPD to every member of staff within a school,practising language and encouraging staff to try out some transferable activities using simple language.

Remember these are start up activities and they will also become favourite activities that can be played for five minutes when teachers have time outside of the language learning allotted time.

Below are some short activities which can help to build staff confidence and also engage young learners using simple greetings and personal information.

Greetings and introducing yourself 
This simple song which gives the phrases in French and English is a good place for teachers and children to start to build their confidence in being able to ask and respond to a question about themselves.

and here is a very simple German song about asking someone's name. 

In Spanish you could listen to these songs with the children

for greetings ....( select what you feel comfortable with ,but you will be amazed by how much the children can join in with very quickly!)

and for names and asking questions in Spanish

So simple ways of using these clips will be 

• to listen  and practise and discuss what the children hear and see
• to imagine we are in the country and have to say hello/ goodbye / ask what someone's name is
• spot the target language names and any names we share or think might be English
• create a welcome display of greetings and our name phrases and pictures
• join in with the song and use it as our greeting song at the start of everyday i a school week for example

Now your teachers can:

• create dialogues between target language and English children
• make their own greetings songs to a different tune
• play Chinese whispers with the phrases
• set up card swap games ,where the children use target language names cards and ask each other what they are called and then swap cards and move on to a new partner
• become famous people for a moment "instagram" strike a pose, greet  the class and say name of famous person 
• film pairs or individuals introducing themselves and create a class photo story to share via the VLE   

Getting on board with primary language learning! A whole staff learning experience

Getting on board with primary languages can seem really challenging and especially when you want everyone on the staff in individual schools through staff CPD  to practise simple language, know where to find sound files to support and to try out some transferable activities using simple language.


Short Activities to help teachers and children
The short activities which can help to build staff confidence and also engage young learners are based around greetings and feelings , using simple greetings and personal information, colours and colour games, numbers 1-10 and games.

Start up activities that can become the route to favourite 5 minute activities 
Remember these are start up activities and they will also help teachers to develop favourite activities that can be played for five minutes when teachers have time outside of the language learning allotted time. Revisiting core language helps everyone!

We understand that there is so much more that school will want to do with language learning but here is a starting point for all your staff.

Start Up Show and Tell
If your school is starting up language learning altogether then plan for a whole school "Show and Tell" with each class taking responsibility for an element. This will work because the whole school in the first half term will be focusing on similar language content maybe with different age appropriate approaches e.g:

Year 3: a greetings song 
Year 4:colours and a song to a familiar refrain
Year 5: numbers and a game for the whole school
Year 6: simple dialogues  in the target language

Record the individual elements and share these on your VLE and create a display called "Start Up!" where you can share with the wider community what your KS2 and teachers children have just started to learn!

When you are ready then investigate more .....have a look here 

Displaying what we can do Getting started rocket mobiles

Practising commands Five little commands and so much more
Simple songs and listening skills simple songs and activities 
Games with numbers Fantasy football teams
Building dialogues Totem pole sticks as a dialogue tool

Colour and drama and creative games colour mimes and word association
Listening with colours and numbers Listening sticks
Practising nouns with guessing games Open and reveal four corners

Moving on together
So how can you move on together and share good practice? 
Well maybe a SOW may be required that demonstrates progression over time and stages of learning .If you are a network school then you may already be accessing the SOW and if so make sure that all your staff can access the podcasts, sound files and the key word charts to support them with new language.
As a staff set off together and develop a sustainable and supportive learning continuum.Maybe the ideas here will suit your school too Ready Steady Go  

Creating sequences of learning
Be aspirational and look toward making sure all four skills are practised and that the children learn with the staff about the basic grammar or the language.Be creative and keep the primary in the learning. 
Have a look at ideas colleagues have shared on Network News and the ways Emilie takes the simple lessons and makes something  achievable and creative bonjour madame blogspot- easily transferable to German and Spanish or any target language too!
When you are ready as a school then consider sequences such as these here using all four skills and an authentic rhyme .

Getting on board with grammar and learning tools
You may find the blog post about bilingual dictionaries  really useful too. 
You may find the blog post about nouns, definite and indefinite article games  really useful too. 

Numbers and activities to get all staff on board

Getting on board with primary languages can seem really challenging and especially when you want everyone on the staff to grow in confidence. This week Emilie, Ana and I are out and about ,delivering staff CPD to every member of staff within a school,practising language and encouraging staff to try out some transferable activities using simple language.

Remember these are start up activities and they will also become favourite activities that can be played for five minutes when teachers have time outside of the language learning allotted time.

Below are some short activities which can help to build staff confidence and also engage young learners using target language numbers.

Numbers

We love this song and its clip as a way of practising numbers.

It exists in French,Spanish and German. 

• You can sing it in correct order 1-10 and in reverse order 10-1 . 
• You can pause and ask the children the next number
• You can ask children only to sing odd numbers or even numbers 
• You can use the four clips on European Languages Day to look for similarities and differences in the sound of numbers 1-10 in five languages and include English of course!
• You can play a game of Lotto (Bingo) or a version of the circle maths game "elevenses" but if the teacher doesn't know eleven in the target language then why not make it "nineses" and just play to nine. You don't want to have to say the number nine or you are out!

Now the class and the teacher can 

• count items, 
• perform a number song for assembly ,
• link numbers and colours (have a look here at colours and ways to practise simple colours)- where a colour is called and the children have to remember which number they have seen in the colour, 
• play Splat with two teams and numbers. 

Colours and supporting all staff to get on board

Getting on board with primary languages can seem really challenging and especially when you want everyone on the staff to grow in confidence. This week Emilie, Ana and I are out and about ,delivering staff CPD to every member of staff within a school,practising language and encouraging staff to try out some transferable activities using simple language.
Remember these are start up activities and they will also become favourite activities that can be played for five minutes when teachers have time outside of the language learning allotted time.

Below are some short activities which can help to build staff confidence and also engage young learners using target language colours.

Colours
Here is a You tube clip to help teachers who need to boost their own confidence in saying the colours in French

Here are several activities already : repeating what you see/ writing the colours in the air in "real" French cursive handwriting and playing a game of spotting the colours.

Very quickly your teachers and classes can 

• create their own demonstrations of colour with items around the classroom , 
• practise passing written colour messages from one child to another, 
• create a class treasure hunt where the first colour, a  labelled item with its colour  has another written colour card next to it that leads you to find the next item in this colour with a label etc
• a game of "find me! " but with objects on the classroom.
• create a dance mat game where the teacher puts down on the floor up to 9 different coloured cards or mats.One child calls a colour and another child must stand on the coloured mat or card on the floor.Get faster and faster and see how many the children can get right first time 
• play colour corners in the hall as a PE warm up game

And here is a Spanish clip to help your colleagues with Spanish colours. 

And in German .........

and the German words....

Now for numbers (numbers and activities ) and ways to practise that simple language.........click here! 

Dame Tartine

This week at our conference we had the opportunity to consider ways to develop phonics activities in target languages that help children understand the reading code of the new language. We consider the use of song, phonics in a target language,ways to record creatively written work, use of APPS and we briefly considered simple drama activities .
Let's bring these all together and celebrate their use linking this to an authentic text in the target language!
I have chosen for this example the comptine "Dame Tartine" ,as it's nearly the end of the school year and has a feel of a celebration cake!
We will be focusing on one verse only but here are two video clips with subtitles that can help your class to read and practise and sing along with the comptine.

Here is the verse we will focus on....

Il était une dame Tartine,

Dans un beau palais de beurre frais.

La muraille était de praline,

Le parquet était de croquets.

La chambre à coucher

De crème de lait ,

Le lit de biscuits,

Les rideaux d’anis.

It's an amazing palace that's being described made from tasty sweets and cake ingredients.

Step One - let's practise the comptine (listening,reading,joining in and singing)

• Let's listen to the whole comptine.
• Now let's listen to the first verse again with the subtitles visible.
• Now let's join in and try to practise the first verse
• Now let's sing along.
• Play the first verse again and conceal the screen - how well can the children remember song?

Step Two:Phonics and phoneme-grapheme/letter string recognition

• Draw an outline of the bedroom(walls/floor/bed/curtains) described in this verse and give each table an outline.Give out the five ingredients as word cards to each table.Ask the tables to decide where they would put each ingredient from the rhyme. Ask the table to say the rhyme to each other and decide where their ingredients should be stuck with blu-tac on the outline.Share the tables decisions.
• Now take the children phoneme - grapheme/letter string shopping like Julie Prince demonstrated at the conference.Each table needs a bag with a grapheme or letter string of a sound contained in one or more of the ingredients.Take a look at the picture here.

Remember!

This really brings out the competitive element! More than one table may have a sound on their bag this is contained in the ingredient noun. The table that reacts quickest and loudest will win the ingredient!

Step Three:Word recognition/memory and listening-reading

• Can the children match the items in the rhyme to the ingredients.Give out to pairs the words for the items and the words for the ingredients .
• First they must say them and match them
• Then they must say them , match them and order them as they remember them in the comptine
• Play the comptine first verse again ....where they correct? Or do they need to reorder some of the components?

Step Four:Speaking for a creative purpose with drama and the use of Yakit APP   

• Now add a touch of drama and performance.Ask the children to imagine that they are museum curators. Can they take it in turns working with a partner to show visitors around an the very special bedroom of this "palace".Can they not only make it sound delicious but also look delicious too?
• The children could draw the "delicious" bedroom and create a Yakit voice over of the bedroom- just like Emilie showed us at the conference. Take a look here at Emilie's fashion show  Yakit to give you an idea how this could work

Step Five:Making a written record and writing creatively in the target language.

• Let's make a mini book record of the Dame Tartine.A glorious celebration cake shaped mini book with flaps for the door where "la dame Tartine " can be seen and a flap (upon which is written the description of the items from the comptine) .When you open the flap it reveals the bedroom with the floor, the walls, the bed and the curtains all decorated as calligrams with the words for the ingredients.
• Why not let the children create another bedroom in the palace with calligrams of different ingredients - you can decide how many of the ingredients must rhyme with the items depending on how challenging you want this to be.

Find out more about @vallesco's mini books here.

Using the template described in the blog above to create your own sequence of lessons 

One sequence of lessons leads to another and one of the great things about the colleagues mentioned in this blog is that we all inspire each other and challenge each other to try new ideas. Julie Prince has developed a sequence of lessons, inspired by this blog post on one of her favourite action rhymes trois petits chats. I love it! Hope you find it useful too!

Devices to support target language reading and enjoyment of literature

Mirror mimes and silent movie adverbs

I really enjoy this simple sequence of drama based activities to practise action verbs and commands with children and also as a staff CPD activity.

In their simplest form they are activities,which allow you to work through a sequence of language skills with the children:

• to listen and respond, 
• to repeat after you and perform   
• to speak independently and practise with a partner.

The activity add a purposeful twist to the simple language practise.It's all about mirrors.Moving in time with someone , remember the rules of a reflection and focusing on a target language utterance all at the same time is more challenging than you may think!Especially if you ask the children to be as accurate as possible i everything they say and do.

You may want to link the activities below to the ideas in this blog post

five little commands

too.

Listen and respond

:with a partner perform what you hear - but remember one partner takes the lead and the other partner must follow exactly the action of the lead partner but as if s/he is a mirror reflection. 

Repeat and perform

:copy exactly the way the teacher says the commands e.g slowly , quickly,timidly,courageously etc and make the mirror mime activity reflect the sound they hear and then reproduce of the command and the style in which it is uttered.

Speak independently and practise with a partner

:children can select the commands they want to say and perform as a mirror mime or can be prompted by a picture card.

Now let's take this further..................

A command performance!

This involves the children looking with the teacher at the pattern thye can see that is being repeated in the formation of the imperative( commands). For example in French with "er" verbs can they see that we use "ez" when we want everyone to do something. Ask the children to find three new verbs in a bilingual dictionary and to create their own "command performances" ,where they take a second pair through the three stages detailed above with three new verbs and the commands they have constructed using the pattern they have identified.As a teacher you could make sure that the children select verbs with the "er" ending b writing a suggested list of 10 verbs on the white board so that the children are guided to look for correct types of infinitives to which to apply the pattern.    

Silent movie adverbs

Adding adverbs increases the ways you can use the commands to create performances.Once again take the children through the three stages above,introducing adverbs this time too e.g bougez lentement/ move slowly/ grimpez vite /climb quickly etc. 

Now give groups of four children written target language instructions for commands and adverbs that describe the movements in more detail. Can the children in their groups create the silent movie performance of their list of target language instructions.They must perform them as they are described and in the order they are described.

Why not create simple clips of the silent movie adverbs and add sub titles in the target language and a music as a background?

CPD and food for thought on primary language teaching and learning

So what did we learn yesterday at the conference?(JLN2014)
Well ....

• First and foremost the importance of networking and working together and having strategic direction to support us.
• We have networks within networks but they are all held together and moving forward. We are fortunate enough for example to have networks of language learning teachers, networks of subject coordinators, some cluster networks,associate language assistant and teacher networks and schools..... 
• Teachers need to meet , to share ,to listen , to learn . Yesterday demonstrated this so clearly.Emails this morning say how great it was to go away with practical ideas, to have taken a different look at an area that already exists in school or is a new challenge and to have met familiar faces and new friends.
• There is a great deal of good practice and knowledge out there around primary language learning that when it comes together in one place can allow everyone to see the bigger picture.
• The power of social media to share with colleagues who couldn't be at the event but can take a close look at the event and follow the strands of the conference back in school
• Teachers take ideas and make them their own- again this morning the emails say that teachers are thinking of ways to use Clare's mini-books, are already trying out Julie's phonics ideas, want to share with their class Emilie's two selected APPs for speaking and have practised Joanne's warm up greeting song in French, Spanish and tried to put it in German!

The big picture to take away from the conference:

• Song ,games and short burst activities keep all the children engaged and allow us to practise and revisit familiar language and build children's language knowledge.
• Songs are engaging for all ages and stages. It's what,how and why you use them in your lessons that matters.Delivery , joining in and performance bring them to life and make them stay in the memory!   

• Phonics play a huge role in the development of both children and staff's confidence to be able t work with an unfamiliar target language
• Phonics should be a shared learning approach throughout KS2 and also in our schools where we teach languages in KS1
• Phonics is a one of the major keys to unlocking the reading code of a target language and helping to solve the mystery of |"I am no good at languages!"amongst teachers and children
• Physicality in learning and the use of drama and mime allow children to operate in a target language beyond repetition for repetition's sake
• Time to try, talk and share is paramount to disseminating good practice 
• Teachers do focus on reading and writing and should b be encouraged to look for creative ways to read and write and this is not always reading authentic literature or writing the word down
• Creative written outcomes such as mini books lend themselves to whole class activities ,imaginative use of simple target language sentences and a focus by each individual child on basic grammar

• Teachers and children love story books that are engaging with great graphics ,well designed, have purpose,link to the learning content and contexts, lead to creative outcomes and can be read again and again!The raffle prizes had purpose below .. as each book links to a context and content that teachers will plan to teach next year and guess what they can share their teaching and learning at a Spring network meeting!

• APPs can make a difference to children's accuracy in speaking and writing, when they are chosen for a real and specific reason and  the outcome is a quality product that can be shared and revisited. APPs can support teachers to encourage children to maximise potential in  a target language.
• Using clips that are available to us on the internet to bring a city or a place to life for the children such as Emilie's virtual tour of Paris, add interest and purpose and a deepening understanding of the target language country at an age appropriate level.

Food for thought for myself and maybe for others about the future of primary language teaching and learning and the workforce we need to engage to achieve this.

• Yesterday at the conference there were colleagues who speak a foreign language well , are native speakers , have a degree in languages,were trained as specialist primary languages teachers, have an interest in languages,are keen to promote languages in their own schools, are improving their own language,identify their own strengths and weaknesses in a foreign language 
• Each colleague was there because s/he has an identified role in school to deliver effective primary languages. Each of them was engaged, looking for own next steps, found support from colleagues, engaged in healthy debate about best next steps and left the conference with a positive next step in mind.
• Primary languages is about engaging the whole  community of learners no matter what level or experience they have in language learning and allowing individuals to thrive with as much support as they need to do so.
• Networks within networks, support for everyone,clear goals and achievable next steps all come to my mind .... helping everyone to feel that they can be part of and contribute to the agenda and providing them with the building blocks to succeed. 

JLN Conference 2014

What's behind a book title?

Yesterday I explained how I had been sorting a book shelf and found some non- fiction books in French and considered how I could use these to develop reading and writing in the target language with young learners and make links across the curriculum. Here's the blog post non fiction in the target language and it wonderful links across the curriculum

Well I also found  a whole host of fiction books too that my friend had given me - far too detailed in most instances for  young beginner language learners , but again well loved authentic  story books in the target language.
So I decided that there had to be a way to use these books to inspire our young learners and hence I came upon the idea of "What's behind a book title?"

We will trial this with UKS2 language learners who are Stage 3 or Stage 4 learners (so have been learning languages for a least 2 years or a little more). It will give us chance to encourage them to use bi-lingual dictionaries to independently access languages . 

It will give us chance: 

• to reinforce nouns and the use of definite and indefinite articles when they then write their own sentences with the nouns they find. 
• to allow the children the chance to practise and use adjectives after nouns
• to begin to write full sentences in a short text using verbs in the present  tense .

We will be focusing on using the tiles as stimulus to create descriptions of the key characters or objects mentioned in the titles.I have selected from the group of books I found on my bookshelf - three books that we can use to create descriptions in the first or third person plural or singular.The children will be encourage to use the picture on the title page as visual stimulus  for their preparatory work .

These are the books I am going to use:

This story book's title page will fit in well Autumn term Year 5 or Year 6 and writing a description of a character who is frightened by other monsters.What is the baby minster like? What are the monsters like that he is frightened of ? We will ask the children to write the short text for a Year 4 audience as the texts the year five children write,can then be read with Year 4 ,when Year 4 create their own class  monsters or aliens.To take this full circle ,Year 4 can then look forward  to writing their own descriptions of a frightened monster.

This story's title page fits in well when we look at "all about me " in Year 6 . We can use this to look at characteristics and adjectives to describe types of people. We can create the alter-egos of these two children and  create a two verse poem or rhyme about two naughty characters and two well behaved characters.These poems can then be acted out for a younger KS2  audience before the end of the Summer term.We will be able to look at verbs in the third person plural and there is the potential to use negatives with verbs too. 

This story book title will be a stimulus for a description of exactly what it says on the the page "le plus bel oeuf du monde".When can I see us creating this bullet point list or requirements to be "le plus bel"? ....Just before  Easter in Year 5 as a class display of wanted posters for- yes you guessed it..... "le plus bel oeuf du monde" for the King! There is potential here too for a simple performance as a dialogue between the King and a servant looking for "le plus bel oeuf" ,using questions word phrases such as "where is ...?" "what is ...?"  and giving simple responses with nouns and adjectives.

A framework to work with and support the children for all the books above 

How can we support the children to access and achieve the sentences required to create these outcomes . Well it's simple.

• Provide the children in groups of three or four with the picture of the title page.  
• Glue this to the centre of a piece of paper with four thought bubbles around the outside. 
• Give the children time to collect and record the relevant information in the target language either recalling familiar language or looking up required nouns , adjectives and verbs.
• Ask the children to work together to compose their own short texts, poems, posters etc as  required for the creative learning outcome!

Non fiction in the target language and the wonderful links we can make with the primary currciulum

We can focus on creative aspects of writing in the target language and just like me I am sure you really enjoy developing children's imagination and creativity through story and simple poems etc.I think though we have also met many children who actually prefer to read and write about factual information.Indeed I can see how non-fiction books really help us to explore "familiar everyday language" and make comparisons and differences between ourselves and others.

Today I was tidying a language book shelf and came across these books,which  a good friend had given me a few years ago , when her bi-lingual children had grown out of them.
They are factual books which her boys had read and loved.

Truthfully it's less common that I read a factual target language book rather than a story book with children in KS1 and KS2 ,but it set me to thinking, why is this? It also made me think about all the times when young children want to tell you everything they know about ...... trains,dinosaurs,space etc!

Take look here at the books that were on my shelf and how I am going to try to develop some target language work across all four skills of listening , speaking reading and writing with these books as a platform to our learning

Noune 
This story about the daily life of a prehistoric young girl and her family exists in many languages and is based around the cave dwellers of the Pyrnées.
So surely this is a story that we should unpack with target language learners and link to a history focus too!

• We can practise target language phrases for daily routine 
• Create role- plays based on the life of Noune and her family 
• Create our own cave dweller pictures with target language titles etc.
• Shadow puppet theatre would work really well here too - giving the feel of cave dwelling and poor light, with narration in the target language about everyday life.
• We can create our own target language museum table with artefacts that we can draw, make out of papier mache or paint labelled and possibly explained simply in the target language 

Le train

Why not look at the wonderful ways of travelling across Europe ,when we are thinking about  ways to travel and transport. Wonderful books like this tell us all about train travel in a target language country. Authentic text for a reason. 

• Create a poster or information photo shoot of target language country travel facts
• Make a same and different fact file - colours of trains here and abroad, places we can go here and abroad, speed of trains and journey times, train tickets here and abroad
• Investigate places we can travel from and to and look at geographical features we may pass though,distances duration and time changes. 
• Investigate all the far away places you can travel to and from ,when you are at a major train station in Europe.(I think this was one of the most "liberating" moments when I first went to live abroad- that I could get on a train and go to so many countries!)
• Create role plays to take us to far away places we want to travel to  and take a google map tour of the city or country when we "arrive" there.

Les petits malheurs :

Here's an opportunity to 

• compare and investigate doctors and what the surgery looks like and what the signs mean (you could create a target language doctor's surgery in the role play area etc)
• hospitals 
• practise illness role plays
• practise key language to describe illness as a child might describe illness
• create a traveller's hand book of "les petits malheurs"

J'observe

I love this series of books and this one inspired me to think about history ."J'observe la vie sous la ville". It's all about the history under our feet !

I absolutely adore the book as it opens so many opportunities.It's about the layers of life that are under current day streets. It considers what we would find if we began to dig below the surface- 18th Century life , medieval artefacts , Roman roads etc. The book allows us to make links between previous times in our own culture and those of the target language countries.The book  once again offers us the opportunity to 

• explore daily routines,target language role-plays  based on everyday life but in different ages 
• explore and visit museums on line that show us life in medieval times/ romans times in  the target language countries etc
• performance to portray life  
• factual simple present tense first person singular descriptions as if we are visiting in a certain time period.
• create our own fact sheet about the ages below our feet - in the present tense as if we are going back in time to visit these people and their daily lives
• a 3D street that takes us back in time with simple target language sentences as we peel back the years.

I am off now to find all my other non-fiction books and see what else I can create!