Associate Teacher Thank You

It is time to say thank you on behalf of the whole Primary Languages Network to all our associate teachers and tutors. This year 14 associates have helped network schools both within the Associate Teacher Programme and also other PLN network schools to access and  deliver effective , creative and enjoyable primary language learning across three languages - French,Spanish and German, with a touch of Mandarin Chinese too!

One of my colleagues sent me the photo of flowers she was presented with yesterday to share the school's thank you with me too and I felt that we really needed to think about all the "added extra" the associates have contributed to the network and schools this year!

So on behalf of all network member schools and other colleagues who follow us on Twitter and Facebook here we go .....thank you for ....

 

  • Your weekly presence ,passion and commitment to primary language learning in the schools and classrooms where you have worked all academic year
  • Your enthusiasm and creative approaches to language learning teaching and learning
  • Your support for subject coordinators and the implementation of effective language learning in all the schools where you work
  • Your willingness to share ideas with the whole network and beyond
  • Your commitment to regular CPD as part of the Associate Langauge Teacher/Tutor Programme 
  • Your fantatsic welcome and willingness to train and support new associates 
  • Your flexibility and willingness to take part in whole school cross curricular focuses or special calendar days and assemblies
  • All the additional hours you spend preparing lessons and creating resources  for us all or in email contact with each other,with schools and with me
  • Your courage with new challenges this year- maybe teaching a new language, adding new appproaches, setting up tracking and assessment, training ITTs, delivering staff CPD, delivering workshops ,feeding back to governors etcetra 
  • Your support and friendship 

Have a lovely Summer break and see you all again, raring to go in September 2016! 

 

All in a year's net"work"

Firstly thank you to every school and individual who is part of the PLN network! 

Time to review our network year from August 2015 to July 2016. What is the network? Well, Primary Languages Network has evolved from Janet Lloyd Network  at the start of the academic year, in to a 170 plus strong network of primary and several secondary schools. It has been a bright, vibrant and busy year for us all! I thought I would look back at each calendar month and see just what  focuses, challenges and activities stand out in the network year.

Let's start in August 2015 .......

In August last year some of us were busy setting up the new network VLE. 

Our Primary Languages VLE is alive and kicking

and completing the materials for whole school activities for European Day of Languages 2016 based on faces, expressions and emotions. You can read more about these ideas here in Faces in the crowd   and Universal facial expresssions

September is always a hectic month and we welcomed our new associates Kate and later in the month Carol.The 14  associates have worked every week in 47 network schools this year and have had a huge and positive impact not only in the schools but also in the way we have been able to develop, tweak and reorganise materials and resources for the VLE and therefore all 170 network schools.You can find out more about these wonderful colleagues,who altogether teach over 6,500 children per week throughout the year and the skills and experience they bring to the primary language classroom here. "Power of a picture "

In 2015, the month of September was incredibly busy as we were rolling out our second year of DfE funded MFL CPD with WTSA. Our first sequence of local network meetings were taking place in 9 different venues in the local towns around Warrington. Local teachers and associates were developing training skills and all attendees from different schools had access via our demo VLE to  sets of materials from the free local network meetings to use back in school whether they were network members. Take a look at "Teachers becoming trainers" and "Up and running roll out of the second year of the DfE project"

In October we began the year's work with SLT in KS3/4 to look at the obstacles and issues and how we could overcome these barriers to create a smoother transition between KS2 and KS3 and we launched the year's local transition group network meetings. KS2-KS3 strategic conumdrum. 

We also set about looking carefully at what asssessment really looked like in network schools and how we could devise easy and effective ways to track and assess progress in the classes where the associates teach..Of course during the 1 to 1 consultancy that Claire and I delivered this year with subject coordinators in individual schools we looked at indiividual school's requirements too and established next steps for individual schools with the challenge of tracking and assessment .Every half term we have associate teacher twilight CPD and October's CPD was a marvellous meeting of minds, to discuss and share warts and all the assessment taking place in real PFL classrooms .Assessment- Put the flesh on the skeleton

Our aim was to have something tangible and practical to share with all network members at the end of the year .Kate was then able at the end of the year to deliver a really useful and well receieved workshop on assessment at the conference in June 2016

In November as part of the DfE Project we offered CPD for all schools in the North West with  Vicky Cooke,who came across from the North East to the North West to deliver two sessions - an afternoon or a twilight- on reading skills .I found it really heartening to have both network and non-network members together sharing and considering target language reading skill approaches. At the conference in Summer 2016 we saw the impact for ourselves on one school, who wholeheartedly took on the development of reading skills in their school based on this CPD and Emilie was able to share the progress she had been making with effective reading skill development in her workshop too .

As a network we reflected on the tools we already offered on the VLE for reading development  and in December Ana,Emilie and I  began to develop our "Let's Read" tools from Y3 to Y6.So thank you Vicky! You can explore Vicky's ideas and suggestions here in the  Let's Read CPD

In January I set about helping a school where the teacherd wanted simple wayss to link target language learning in to the school's creative curriculum programme. The network allows us to take challenges of one school and devise ideas that can be transferred to other schools and used in the same or different ways.Here is one of the ideas in a blog post , which some schools then used in April to celebrate 400 years of Shakespeare. "Shakespeare Shadows". All the creative curriculum ideas we create, are stored and shared on the VLE in the Cross Curricular folder "Creative Curriculum".  Meantime our second sequence of DfE Local Network Meetings were taking place led by the coordinator teachers based on the theme "Let's Get Physical" and materials and resources to explore nouns, adejctives, verbs and adverbs .

February and early March were a true delight! The observations of the associate teachers took place and it gave me a chance to review and share the good practice I saw in each and every lesson across KS1 and KS2 in three different target languages!

 Emilie only reminded me yesterday how much she personally appreciated the valuable CPD just by being able to read the snapshot blog posts and see lessos she knows well and slightly different apporaches or techniques! You can read a summary of these snapshots here "Associate language teaching and effective progress"

In March the language community received notification from OfSted about their expectations for PFL and KS3 /4 MFL Via the VLe,email, social media we use Facebook ,Twitter and blog posts we were able to share and explore the guidance and information. Here is the report and commentary we shared with all network schools OfSted Guidance,Effective Provision with PLN Support .

April enabled the network to look at how languages are intrinsically linked .We celebrated 400 years of Shakespeare and Cervantes "Cervantes stories with talking tiles" a blog post inspired bya  visit to Spain last October!  Children and their teachers explored descriptive sentence writing about imaginary or true Shakespeare characters and our Facebook page allowed us to share this with the network and the wider primary languages community too!

In early Summer we released our new condensed and easy to use Ready Made French and Spanish for Y3 to Y6 and over Summer the German version will begin to take shape too.

 

It's been a Summer of opportunities to link language learning to special events from the Queen's birthday to the Euros and in June we just had to encourage our network schools to consider a touch of Welsh too!

 

 

June was conference time. 3 key note presenters and 6 workshops .Everyone of the presentations and workshops  offered the 140 delegates the chance to reflect on effective progress and encouraged us all to prepare for a "sharper focus" on primary language learning in 2016-2017.

The snapshot observations in early Spring had informed me of good practice that we could highlight and share- drama with Kate P, talk,write and be creative with Joanne, links abroad with 3 local network schools and teaching and learning in KS1 with Sally.I have already mentioned Emilie and reading skills and Kate K's assessment workshops earlier in this post.

And now we are in July 2016 .Next year we welcome 6 new associate teachers and several of our associates take on new roles within the network .Claire will become your 1 to 1 consultancy coordinator and point of contact,Catherine will oversee and run the Primary Langauges Development Award for network mebers and Emilie will become the Associate Language Teacher Coordinator and first point of contact for associate teacher schools.

Finally this year, two days ago in Lancaster, it was one of those magical primary language learning moments for me! It was moment when I realised the positive impact of our support in a network school ,where non-specialists are taking all that we are sharing on the VLE and in the network CPD or PLN social media and creating their individual,successful and creative approach to primary language learning.Thank you Ryelands- the best way to round off the year for us all!  Of course as a network we need to share the good practice I saw, so here is the post all about that "magical moment in primary language learning" which can be replicated and no doubt built upon in your own schools next year too!  

Thank you to everyone involved in the network and have a really lovely Summer holiday! 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A magical moment in primary language learning!

I walked down the main corridor at Ryelands Primary School yesterday  and was met by the magic of primary language learning .One of newer network member schools is working out for themselves how the school and its staff , all non-specialist teachers of French, can make the learning "real" for their children in KS2. and how they can embed this across the curriculum Take a look at the umbrella photo above! This is where the magical moment began .

The Year 5 teacher is the subject coordinator, a non-specialist ,who loves his art and is passionate about successfully coordinating and rolling out  primary language learning in his school for both the children and all the staff. Within months he has begun to demonstrate how primary teachers can add the magic to the core language learning the PLN SOW offers schools.

You see the umbrellas are part of his class work  and a creative outcome of the language learning from our PLN SOW on the VLE in French Y5 Summer 1, exploring locations and extending knowledge of the weather.  I hadn't thought about linking this to Seurat and Pointillism but the primary language coordinator with his own Y5 class has done this.The work is in the main corridor as an example of the creativity that can be achieved in primary language learning.

The class had explored Paris using our materials , had been virtual tourists abroad in the capital city, had become artists in Paris and had revisited weather,French key phrases, read the weather forecasts  and listened to a song about "les parapluies".The class explored pointillism in Art 

The children were then assigned to umbrella frames and asked to create the panels for their parisien umbrellas.To do this they had to look carefully at pictures of Paris and famous monuments and areas in the city and then create their group umbrellas. Truly fantastic!   

The beauty of our network is that we can now share this with you all and network members I am certain will build on this and develop ideas of their own, using our resources. Now that is the magic of our network and a great point at which to celebrate another year within the network! Thank you Ryelands Primary and Year 5 for the magical moment! 

Our Conference 2016

Above is the overarching theme of our 6th annual primary language learning conference, attended by 140 delegates from a wide range of teaching backgrounds - SLT , class teachers, coordinators,TAs, ITTs ,PPA  teachers etcetra.

 

It was truly a remarkable and encouraging day. Thanks to everyone who presented, participated and attended. Feedback has been tremendous!

We wanted to consider "effective primary language teaching and learning" and all the ways that schools can ensure the "sharper focus on primary languages" that Sir Michael Wilshaw mentioned in his report to HMCI in May 2016. Everyone of us went away with next steps and new or more determined intentions for primary languages teaching and learning. CPD and a sday with like minded colleagues, networking and sharing afforded us all time to consider how we can bring strands , activities and lessons together to create something even more effective in our individual schools next year.

The conference delegates come from across the North West and are engaged in the delivery of primary languages as primary class teachers, subject coordinators, PPA teachers ,TA s and HLTAs, ITTs ,SLT and KS3 language coordinators.Every year we try to offer the conference a range of key note presentations and workshops and this year was a delight! 

From an early morning focus on national and local considerations of "Are we making good progress" and a really thought provoking reflective presentation by Anne Farren which allowed teachers to consider foreign language provision as it is nationally and  approaches in the Lonodn network schools .The discussion and focus upon the statement below from HMCI allowed delegates time to consider how they can achieve this "sharper focus " back in school

Colleagues found the responses by pupils to the question about MFL on the pupils questionnaires during inspections particulary thought provoking.

On to hands on and active whole conference key note workshop with Elaine Minnet and Laure Daly from the University of Chichester , in which we tried out and considered the links between language learning and active learning in dance .Brilliant! Activities that suited both specialist and non-specialist primary language practitioners and that took some teachers out of their comfort zones too . To see 140 delegates perform a pirates' dance in the target language of French was quite a sight to behold! Thanks to Elaine we now host the materials in the conference folders too in French and Spanish .A huge thank you ! The activities are easily replicable, very creative and totally non-threatening for non- specialists so I am certain that "Ahoy my hearties" will feature in schools primary language long term planning next year! 

This conference was about "actively bringing it all together" so the challenge was to deliver workshops for different stages of implementation in schools and  therefore requirements of the teachers. Our virtual learning environment certainly helps teachers feel that they have the materials and resources to fall back upon and we shared some of these materials in the workshops and the associate teachers who each weekl see between them over 6,500 children  delivered a fabulous diet of workshops packed with practical , real and achievable ideas and resources. 

Assessment was incredibly popular and Kate's clear message after a whole year considering and working alongside myself and other colleagues on assessment  was: "one size does not fit all" and how she had learnt that you can take the tools we have created and use these as appropriate in individual schools to link with individual school's assessment criteria was well received and reassuring.

 

Practitioners see the value of assessment but it has to be manageable and meaningful and demonstrate progress and inform next steps. 

Progress in the core skills is always a core focus  and this year we decided that we needed to share how we were looking for and establishing activities and lessons where children could explore sound spelling links leading to confident reading aloud and reading comprehension skills.Emilie has been exploring ways to link this to ICT to allow children active learning opportunities.

Joanne shared our new focus this year on creative talking and writing using our Talk and Write learning resources and shared how she has encourage children this year to become creative and active in their speaking and writing -from hungry giants ,to training dragons and creating a theatre spoken and written performance of the "ser" and pantomime characters.

 

The clips she shared of the children demonstrated the value of the activities , the speaking aloud, being creative, performing ,writing for  purpose  that has taken place and the FUN the children were having in doing this! It was wonderful too to share Our Lady's Year 4 story adaptations of our resource "Walking in the Jungle" and Tricia informs me that she does demonstrate and then encourage/expect the children to use accent tools on the lap top key board in Year 4 and onwards, so that they write words accurately! (Just a quick message to help teachers who asked this question in the workshop)

Teachers from three network schools shared their inspring projects both reaching out to the wider community and also making links abroad.Using languages to broaden children's horizons and  raise aspirations and encourage children to make progress in their language learning.

What never ceases to amaze me about the colleagues I work with ,is their willingness to participate , explore and find new ways or new areas that they can develop to strengthen primary language learning in their schools.The KS1 and the Drama and games workshops were packed! 

And once we all came back together again in the main room for our final key note presentation, the buzz was tangible. The networking and sharing that takes place at the conference every year is in invaluable.The CPD extends across subject areas and the opportunity to explore approaches to primary language teaching and learning often reaches out in to other areas of the curriculum too. The final keynote presentation was no exception.Just how can you present story to young learners, how can you  explore story telling and just what is story telling ?Nigel Pearson asked us all to consider this. 

So now a few days later on relfelction how do I think the conference went? Did we succeed? Well we will have to wait and watch and see how the network moves on next year back in school, when we visit coordinators for their membership entitlement 1 to 1 consultrancy meetings- but the messages have been fabulous since the conference, so it looks very optimistic.A valuable day of CPD - actively bringing it all together! 

 

 

 

 

 

Human kindness

This is not my normal type of blog post, full of ideas to be creative learning languages.It is being written selfishly probably for myself to put a marker in the sand on a day when I am dumbfounded about the referendum result.

Human kindness has always been part of my life.My mum's mantra was "if you are kind to others they will be kind back". Eveybody is a human being and to me the only difference can be that people use different sounds to express in different languages very similar emotions and thoughts.

My first contact with a "european" was an immigrant.A "German" lady we called Mrs Barton, who lived next door to my mum and I in Wigan in 1964.She had arrived after the Second World War from what then became East Germany and worked as an auxilary nurse in a local hospital .She learnt her English as she went along and sometimes it was entertaining for a little girl to hear her say "lug holes" and not "ears" etcetra.She was really hurt when her eldest went to school and called a picture of an "egg" the german word which is  "Ei" (sounds like "eye")  and the class laughed at him. She never spoke German with her 4 boys again! However her acts of human kindness to my mum will never be forgotten.When my dad died in 1964, it was Mrs Barton, who picked my mum up and helped her to step out from being a wife to an independent woman.Many are the times I remember her helping mum out , having me round to her house to wash boys socks or encouraging my mum to give driving lessons or a trip out another try!

It was because my step dad was a member of a local male voice choir that I had the best year of my life in Stuttgart as a young woman.If Herr von Jakobs hadn't gone out of his way to answer a written letter from my step dad to the partner choir in Stuttgart and take time to organise accommodation for me in his daughter's apartment ,then I wouldn't have spent a wonderful year as a surrogate daughter -always included in their family life.

Just recently my mum died of Alzheimers and there were as you can imagine many carers.One wonderful woman stands out in her care home who was Polish. She was organised and efficient but so patient and kind with both my mum and her very upset daughter(me!)

I work with a group of wonderful teachers. Some of whom are Spanish, French or German.They always help me and are generous with their time .Over the last couple of years they have helped to create resources and materials that we use with over 6,500 children a week in local schools.Much of what they do is more than can be expected of them and I see their support for our work as human kindnesss.

I want to say sorry to these people today and I question just what has happened today?   

Physical paper trails

Explore the physical shapes and movements of sporting activities from the world of gymnastics or athletics - so forward rolls, hand stands, head stands, vaults, javelin, shot putt or discus throws , long jumps and high jumps.Set your children linguistic challenges at the stage of their learning- investigating nouns for parts of the body, adding simple conjunctions, adding a command or commands- all to describe the process of the physical movement

Give each child a strip of paper and ask them to  make the strip of paper in to the physical action that takes place when they do a forward roll (see example above) or a headstand ( see example below) or another gymnastic shape or movement.

Now ask the children to add the language to describe the physical process so that their paper trail shape describes the whole movement from start to end.  Below is a headstand built of nouns and a command. Set the other children a challenge to identify the gymnastic movement or athletic field event activity described- just by looking at the shape and the words they can read on the shape.

Add challenge and ask the children to make their sculpture in to a full sentence using conjunctions too . Here is a headstand sentence.

headstand sentence.JPG

Add an additional challenge by giving one child's physical paper trail to another child and asking them to look at what they can see and then anticipate the rest of the sentence- without unravelling the paper trail.They can only unravel the paper trail and compare sentences once the second child has completed its own full sentence. So what comes next in this forward roll......?

And finally create a sporting sculpture gallery of your paper trails for others to puzzle out etc.

Party mood verb music!

It's the time of year to celebrate the learning that has taken place.Here is a simple idea to allow your more advanced learners celebrate and show off their ability to manipulate present tense verbs.In our network children in Year 5 and Year 6 have met to have, to be and looked at how we form a regular present tense verb. Let's focus here on "party mood verb music!".Can your class help you to  create "party mood verb music" and focus on verbs associated with a party e.g to eat, to sing , to dance, to celebrate....."

In stage one ....

  • Ask the children to think about types of instruments street musicians often play e.g guitar, saxophone, flute , violin , drum 
  • Can the children decide which instrument suits the sound of the infinitive of the verbs you are focusing on for "party music"? 
  • Ask the children to organise themselves in groups as a band of street musicians,.Each child needs to select an imaginary instrument that they feel suits or matches the sound and pronunciation  of  one of the infinitives of the verbs you are using.
  • Ask the children to think about how each instrument is played and then to mime the playing of the instrument and make the pronunciation and intonation of their infinitive of the verb sound like the noise the instrument would make,
  • Can the group put together a simple infinitive performance of the instruments and verbs - repeated over and over again to a rhythm or rap that the group decides upon.
  • The group now has the chorus of their party mood verb music!

In stage two 

  • Either in pairs or individually ask the children to explore the paradigm of their specific verbs ,using the imaginary instruments which they are miming "playing" and keeping to the rhythm of the  rap they have created.
  • Alternate the chorus (stage one)  with a paradigm  of a verb verse etcetra
  • Give the children time to practise their music and create a confident performance
  • Now your bands have their party mood verb music - let the class performances begin! .

Sound,syllable and word juggling

Festival time! Make sure primary languages get involved too! Here is a gem to play to practise accurate pronunciation and intonation fo key target language words.

Sound,syllable and word juggling

  • So simple! First of all select your key words - maybe a specific content e.g numbers , days, months, colours  etc.
  • Practise the key language with the challenge. Explore the sound of the words. Expolore the rhythm of the words and look at how many syllables are in the word.
  • Set a challenge for the children.Can they sound juggle with five of the words? To do this they must say each word clearly and with their best pronunciation, opening their right hand as they do this.Now they must throw their imaginary word they are holding in their open right hand up in to the air and toss the word with their voice up and over their heads  whilst they clap out the number of syllables in the word and catch the word in their left hand and say it quietly and squeeze their hand shut.
  • Can they now put together a sequence of five words and create a sequence of sound juggling? Set the bar higher by asking them to do this alphabetical order or reverse numerical value or reverse order or the days of the week etc
  • Add a grammatical twist by focusing on nouns- masculine and feminine singular and/or plural nouns where you  are then able to challenge the children only to juggle for example with masculine plural nouns.
  • Add in the mix nouns and adjectives.Can the children juggle a noun followed by any adjective.
  • Or add more challenge and ask the children to juggle a noun followed by  a corresponding adjective that agrees with the noun!

La foule - the crowd

This year it is the Euros 2016 and the BBC anthem for the competition is la foule by Edith Piaf- the crowd. I found this beautiful painting by Olivier Suire- Verley which for me evokes the feeling of being in a crowd and our individual voices, reactions and emotions melding together and relaying a message.

What a gift for target language teachers be it French,Spanish, German ,Mandarin Chinese etc. We can explore language, sounds, words ,emotions through the use of the odea of the "crowd". This is an opportunity too ,to work on different levels with different stages of language learners. 

Beginner learners - calling the colours of the crowd! 

  • Listen to the song "la foule" .
  • Ask the children to close their eyes and listen.
  • Pause the music and ask them to call out colours that they think of as they listen to the music.
  • Ask them now to put on their target language thinking heads and repeat the activity with a little more or the music but this time call out colours in the target language.
  • Show the children the picture at the top of the blog post. Ask the children to help you to create a class flip chart picture of swirling written target language colours to reflect the colours and the mood of the picture.
  • You can now link this to the Euros 2016 and discuss with the children the team colours and the countries' flags and the colours rhey can see.Can they now create  their own  "colours of the crowd" Euros 2016 flag, using written target language colours on their own word art flags? 

Moving on learners-sound crowds and scape crowds

  • Listen to the song "la foule"
  • Ask the children to either close their eyes and listen carefully or to sit very still and imagine the emotions they can hear in the music that they are listening to.
  • Depending on the level and knowledge of language of the children ask the children to jot down on rough paper or mini whiteboards, adjectives,verbs and  feelings in english (minimum of  5 words )that come to mind as they think about the music they have just listened to.
  • With the support of bilingual dictionaries ask the children to find the key words they have jotted down in the target language.
  • Ask  children to share their target language words with a partner so that the partner can cross reference the words they have found and try to ensure the meaning is correct.
  • Now it is time to be creative - you can either ask the children to practise the target language words and phrases as spoken words adding actions and emotion in the sound of their voices and then bring the whole class together and create a "sound crowd"  where all the children perform and speak at the same time at at different volumes and speeds indicated by you as the conductor of this  "sound crowd"
  • Or you can ask them to create their own crowd scape and draw a crowd of people's silhouettes and add thought bubbles for some of the silhouettes with the key target language in the thought bubbles.
  • To link this more directly to Euros 2016 why not  ask the class to make their sound crowds or crowd scapes in to cheering football crowds?

Add a crwod sound command celebration

  • Just one more creative way to develop this activity.Create a sound and movement peformance of the crowd. Think with the children about how  you would create commands with action verbs (e.g move,dance,jump,run, turn around, go, advance etc).
  • Create a colour command celebration chant e.g in French you could write as a class :

Allez les bleus

Avancez les rouges

Sautez les jaunes......

  • Practise the chant as a class
  • Divide you class into colour groups and ask them to create human ribbons of colour that weave between the other colour ribbons. The ribbon should have an action that depicts the colour.
  • Now perform your colour chant and ask all the children to weave in and outr of eah oher as they speak.
  • When a particular colour is called then ask the children who are part of that human colour ribbon to perform the action as they say their phrase from the chant.
  • Mix up the colours and the commands and add a new challenge - listening and responding to new/ slightly different information.

A French recipe from 70 to 90.

This is a simple and creative activity that we could use to celebrate the Queen's 90th birthday  in French. Primary French language learners love the way the numbers are built up after 60 in French.  

Take a look with the children at the component parts of numbers between 70 and 90- so look at 70, 75, 80 , 85 and 90.

Invite the children to create a recipe of items to help a person keep happy , healthy and loved using the numbers you have investigated.

So for example with children who are at the stage where they are investigating nouns, you could ask the children to recall familiar nouns or look up key nouns they want to use or you could provide the children with the nouns and let them order them as they think fits the numbers best.Practise or discuss how we put the singular nouns into the plural and then ask them to build a number recipe with the plural nouns:

soixante -dix bisous

soixante- quinze arcs en ciel

quatre- vingts  sourires

quatre- vingt -cinq chansons

et 

quatre-vingt- dix cadeaux

With more advanced learners ask them to add adjectives to the nouns and to practise reading aloud their recipes.

Why not record the recipes as spoken birthday cards too ? 

Years,nouns and the Queen's time line.

90 is quite an age! Our primary language learners are fascinated by number patterns in the target language so I found this picture and thought about how the children in primary languages could work with numbers and celebrate the Queen's officlal birthday too .

First let's create a simple number time line. 

  • Give out to the children the nouns associated with roles in a family that Queen has had throughout her lifetime and ask them to order the nouns in an order that shows how during a lifetime someone is born, grows up and then grows older. I would suggest that you give the children the target language nouns and phrases for:  daughter, baby , toddler, sister, teenager, wife, Queen, mother , grandmother, great grandmother,ninety years old .
  • Ask the children first of all to investigate the meaning of the nouns ,using their reading skills - so cognates, semi-cognates, sensible guesses, checking in a bilingual dictionary.
  • Now give out the important dates as years written as target language words ( e.g two thousand and sixteen- written of course in the target languge- would match the phrase ninety years old)  
  • Can the children order the years in a sensible order for a time line and then can they match the nouns and key phrases you gave them in the target language, decribing roles the Queen has had in her family, and can they match these to the important years for the Queen?
  • Ask the children to think of ways to display the milestones they have sorted for the Queen's life.Ask the children to think of creative ways to share this jinformation that would be associated with birthdays - so perhaps a set of flags or bunting with the key years, family roles and a symbol on each flag or a series of candles with the year written along the candle and the key noun in the flame etc.

Pinocchio,puppets and football rap!

I have just been looking for video clips about the different mascots there have been for the European Football Championships since 1980. I am delighted that the first mascot was Pinocchio. A great starting point for primary foreign language learning, puppetry and active learning......

First design your own Pinocchio puppets with movable heads, arms and legs .Simply cut out with the children these different body parts and attach to the torso of the body with paper fasteners/ split pins. Now each child has a Pinocchio puppet. As the puppet was the mascot for the Italian Euros ask the children to design a football strip for the ,mascot in the Italian colours. Okay so now you are ready for the puppet shows!

Teacher as puppeteer with target language commands and body parts

  • Ask the children to follow your commands and move parts of the body as you call out phrases and at the same time model the actions
  • Now just call out the actions without modelling the actual action
  • Now create a Simon says but make it a "Pinocchio says" with the commands and the actions
  • Ask the children to make this a table game ,taking it in turns to call out 3 or 4 commands in a game of "Pinocchio says.."

Pinocchio puppet rap

  • Ask the children to work in groups of four .
  • All the children need to first look up the four verbs they are going to need to explain the actions needed to score a goal ( e.g to  run, to kick, to shoot, to score)
  •  Each member of the group is in charge of one verb , their own puppet and action to demonstrate the verb and creating a command of the verb , which the group will have found as an infinitive.
  • Ask the groups to put together a sequence of spoken commands and puppet actions to demonstrate scoring the goal .
  • You could extend the activity by asking the group top wpork together to add adverbs and nouns so that each utterance consists  for example of "kick the ball with the leg quickly" 
  • Now ask the group to make this spoken sequence in to a repeated sequence with a rhythm or beat so the group begins to create a rap and puppet show .
  • Ask the children to perform their raps to the class