Yoga with French termly summary

How has Yoga gone so far?

Being a qualified PE teacher, when arranging Yoga with French I wanted to ensure that the quality of session was maintained in regards to physical activity. Having now observed Steph several times the balance of Yoga and French works well with the child’s ability in both aspects.

Yoga with French at Dial Park Primary School on a special occasions day at their school

Yoga with French at Dial Park Primary School on a special occasions day at their school

The sessions offer a different slant on physical activity, yoga is a mindful activity and one which requires focus, grit and determination just like many other sports and activity. Observing the sessions, it was good to see children so keen to learn about yoga, and see pupils thrive where perhaps in other environments they might not.

St Barnabus have booked in 3 sessions in which they are really enjoying developing their yoga and French

St Barnabus have booked in 3 sessions in which they are really enjoying developing their yoga and French

It was also great to see boys in the classes take part fully in the sessions, they really enjoyed the challenge aspects as well as the relaxation and breathing parts which is great to see. One of the key aspects of PE teaching is introducing activities that children can take part in for life and Yoga certainly ticks this box

French aspect

Steph adapts the ratio of French/ English well with the children she is teaching. Children use a lot of new and already learnt vocab throughout the sessions and will come away with a more heightened perspective on using languages in a different environment other than in the classroom.  Children are excited to use the French vocab in the class and throughout are challenged to use as little English as possible.

Uploaded by Will Lloyd on 2016-12-12.

In the above video you can see all children (including a child with a physical disability) not only engaging fully in hat is quite a demanding yoga pose, but also applying their knowledge of French by counting to 10!

Meditation aspect

Meditation is a fantastic tool to increase your mindfulness and improve your own daily productivity and happiness. In the sessions, Steph (a big advocate of meditation) goes through short sequences allowing children to experience techniques in regards to practising the art of meditation and breathing.

Children at Moston Lane Primary School practicing deep breathing techniques. Year 5's have been practising for 3 of 6 weeks and are looking to improve their own focus and determination towards their studies!

Children at Moston Lane Primary School practicing deep breathing techniques. Year 5's have been practising for 3 of 6 weeks and are looking to improve their own focus and determination towards their studies!

Teacher Responses

The teachers at the school have really enjoyed having Yoga with French at their school, as you can see from their positive tweets and comments, it seems to be having a positive effect, with schools lined up after Christmas ready to go it seems that active lingo is starting to pick up some momentum!

“‘It’s always beneficial for children to realise that language can be used in a real context and isn’t just some abstract thing that we do in the classroom’”
— Cara Hashim (Moston Lane Primary)

So far Yoga with French has been a fantastic success within primary schools and is something we will continue to offer to schools.

If you are interested in yoga with French at your school, don't hesitate to contact me (William@primarylanguagesnetwork.co.uk) or visit the active lingo homepage by clicking on the logo below! Follow me on twitter @activelingo

Snapshot 2016-17 Santa's Spanish wishlist shopping

Meet Robert! Robert works alongside Joanne at Barrowhall CP  as part of an associate Spanish teacher team ,where Joanne and Robert also support the non-specialist MFL Coordinator to implement effective primary language learning.The Headteacher is immensely supportive and encourages  Spanish language learning to move forward in the school.the school has been part of our PLN network since 2011. A great team!

Today the Head and I observed Robert with a Year 5 class in their third year of learning Spanish. 

It was an early start as Robert has  normally the first sixty minutes of the school day with this class.Today the lesson was shorter,starting a 8.50 and ending at 9.30 ,because it was the KS1 Nativity performance for the whole school.He meets, greets and runs the routine of the class as they arrive in the target language and the children are obviously very comfortable with this and love it .Incidental  use of language  and classroom routine are all expected parts of the Spanish hour. What was apparent was how well the children could cope with the target language and how they were learning to analyse what they heard as "incidental" ,"key information", "instructions" "prompts" etcetra etcetra.The listening skills being explored throughput the lesson were vast and benefit the focus of  pupils in other subject areas too.Evident in this lesson was definitely "Education of the Ear" and learning how to listen. DfE AT : listen attentively to spoken language and show understanding by joining in and responding

The Year 5 are using the Y5 PLN SoW from our VLE.It is all about "around  and about a Spanish town or city"  and today they were working on shopping for a wish list of Christmas presents.As the children walked in to class and settled down there was a slide up on the screen with target language written numbers - to peruse and consider quietly.Which ones were familiar and which ones did they need to look up or talk with a friend about.DfE AT: read carefully and show understanding of words, phrases and simple writing.

The class practised the spoken numbers with a game with Robert and looked for similarities and differences between written numbers. to the right iof the screen you can see the green pieces of paper with numbers on ... the children were revisiting the numbers for a game of The Price is Right later in the lesson.

Remember that the main language of the lesson is Spanish.The class had no problem with instructions to work in pairs , use bilingual dictionaries , jot information on white boards, discuss wth a partner as they explored the written language on a Santa wishlist slide.

Children in pairs looked through the wish list, identifying familiar language, nouns they could anticpate , cognates and then turning to the bilingual dictionary when they weren't quite sure or wanted to find out the meaning of unfamiliar words. DFE AT: read carefully and show understanding of words, phrases and simple writing/ DFE AT:§      broaden their vocabulary and develop their ability to understand new words that are introduced into familiar written material, including through using a dictionary

Robert counted down at the end of the pairwork investigators' activity and took feedback.He spoke in Spanish and the children responded with target language nouns and English explanations.In Spanish they looked at key sound spelling links and Robert asked the children to identify for him singular and plural nouns in the wish list. Each target language written noun was then revealed as an item and placed over one of the green card numbers. DFE AT

The class then practised Robert's "dance " moves" and actions for each of the items, which he put to a specific beat and rhythgm "unas figuras de Pokemon , unas figuras de Pokemon y un CD, unos zapatos , unos zapatops y un.peluche".DFE AT:explore the patterns and sounds of language through songs and rhymes and link the spelling, sound and meaning of word.DFE AT:develop accurate pronunciation and intonation so that others understand when they are reading aloud or using familiar words and phrases

The children had to create their  own "Christmas wish list " dance moves with rhythm and beat to impress their families on Christmas Day. On their tables volunteers had to create their own "Christmas wishlist dance moves and rhyme".The other children on the table worked in pairs to observe and recreate in spoken form the wishlist they were watching.DFE AT:speak in sentences, using familiar vocabulary, phrases and basic language structure

The children moved from word and phrase work to sentence level b y helping Robert identify from the Santa wishlist text the key verb "Quierido..." and adding their wishlist item to play a game of the "Price is Right".Only if the chidren could guess the price of the item could they have their wishlist object. Robert used the question "How much is it?" in the target language as he began to build the language required for the Christmas shopping dialogues at the start of next week's lesson.... DFE AT:engage in conversations; ask and answer questions

As we left the classroom the Head asked two of the children what they thought about their Spanish lessons and especially the fact that the lesson was mainly in Spanish ."Great! It feels like we are in a Spanish lesson"  and " I feel confident because we are listening to so much Spanish that I think I could get by when I am on holiday in Spain".

And then it was time for the KS1 Nativity ........

 

 

  

Snapshot 2016-17- Building snowmen

Primary language teaching is a learning curve for us all and being able to repeat lessons as we often do, gives us the chance to revise and refine our approaches. I welcome this.

Here is Tracy in her first term as a Spanish primary language teacher ,just starting to gather together the "magic tools " of our trade.I observed her today with a class of Year 6 children in their second year of learning Spanish. It was definitely cold outside and the theme was a wintry one - building snowmen with a grammatical purpose.

Tracy is keen to develop her skills as a primary languages classroom practitioner and she spends time creating resources and looking for interesting ways to engage the children and bring the learning up to date .I walked in to hear the children and Tracy in a "rap chant" - "hola,hola, coca cola" she called and the children replied with the same phrase and then came  "hola hola gramola".She mixed up this little warm up rap abit like "See you later aligator, in a while crocodile" so she said one phrase and the children responded with the other phrase. Then there was a song with personal information phrases, again a simple way to recap basic language....  

The class had learnt their colours previously and had already recapped coluors too with Tracy this half term.She explained to me later that the ribbon and the anticipation game as she slowly revealed the colours from the bag was to make sure that it was a new/different activity and engaged all the children.Her flashcards of colours stayed in her bag today with this class. 

Tracy repeated the lesson later in the day with a Y5 and aY5/6 mix and in these classes she tried out pair memory games trying to remember the order of the colours they had seen on the ribbon to reinforce and support their learning.In the afternoon there was air-writing of colours  and a "spot the colour" chart on tables so that the children could use the spelling activity below to anticipate which colour one of their classmates was in the process of writing out on the flipchart. 

The objective of the lesson was to see how colours could be used as adjectives and to look at the change in their spelling after different nouns and to begin to identify the masculine and feminine spelling of certain colours in Spanish. In my opinion learners need to explore and discuss the patterns and although Tracy had a grammar explanation activity for the change in the spelling of some of the colours, she identified that later in the day the children needed to become "adjective explorers" and explore and find out more themselves.

The children had so far been working at word level and now moved to reading comprehension of sentences ,created as description so items worn by the snowman the class built. the items and the parts of the body were new unfamilar words for the children and so the children were broadening their vocabulary by using colour clues to identify the items and complete the sentence each time "Mi muñeco de niev tiene ........

Grammatically there was alot going on here - nouns. masculine, feminine, colours as adjectives.... however the children settled to the task of designing their own snowmen with a support writing frame on a slide on the screen.

Some of the children still needed more time to work through the grammar and please remember I wrote at the start of the blog post these Year 6 learners are really only stage 2 learners. Indeed the learning process for Tracy was to consider hpw she could change the complexity slightly for the afternoon lessons and focus on a reading activity where the children in pairs read and then linked the reading strips because of the colours to an already built snowman on the whiteboard. 

However as I walked around and discussed with the children what they had found out about adjectives in the lesson,I found some of the children were well on the way to understanding the grammar that would help them to design their own snowmen.This video below was just a "snapshot" as the pupil was about to design the snowman's scarf.I asked her to explain to me what she had to do to add a colour  in her written labelling of the item.....   

 

  

Primary languages alive and kicking!

What an amazing couple of weeks in our primary schools in the North West. Primary language learning is on the advance! I am in a very priveleged position, as I see all the pieces of this growing jigsaw puzzle. Please take a look at the collated tweets from end of November back to the start of the half term and enjoy primary languages "as it has happened" - French,Spanish and German. To each and every one of the 200 schools in our network, thank you , as each of you pushes us all just that one small positive step forward . 

  

Snapshot 2016-17 Virtually Visiting Lyon

This is Kate P.Kate works 2 and a half days as a local Warrington Year 6 class teacher and works with us at PLN for half a day a week in another local Warrington primary school. She teaches two year 5 classes  French on a Wednesday afternoon. Today I went with the class on a virtual visit to Lyon and enjoyed this as much as the children!

I observed her with the first Year 5 class this afternoon ,a smaller class , 15 lower achievers, who have 45 minutes of French every week. 

One of Kate's passions is drama and she uses drama calmly ,quietly and effectively throughout her language teaching .Today when I walked in to the room, Year 5 where practising their opinions about school subjects as part of their 5 minute French question and answer warm up. The children were working in pairs and using their special "actors' actions to remember and communicate opinions about school subjects: Swords at the ready- for history , explosive hands- for Science, tiny writing- for English.Best communicators and actors were rewarded with super sparkling stickers for excellent pronuiciation,communication and/or remembering! The children really loved being rewarded and succeeding....so important and motivational.

Kate's simple sign "Lyon"  may look small and insignificant but the lesson expanded from this .I loved the way the children so wanted to know about Lyon , because they remembered from last week that this was a place where Mme. Percival (Kate) had actually lived, as well as living in Warrington! It is hard to explain what a "WOW" factor there was in this insignificant sign on the large whiteboard, but it truly was  the first goosebumps moment of the lesson. When she asked the children why there was a sign on the board , one of the chidren immediately responded "because it is special to you , because you lived there".!

Today, Kate explained ,she was looking forward to actually taking them on a visit from the classroom to Lyon! 

Kate and the children agreed that the actions in their first speaking activity had really helped them and that they felt the actions they had practised last week for places in the city would be very useful trying to think again about the places in a French city they had practised already.

Memory, recall and comprehension are considerable challenges for some of the class , so the children had thought of simple ways to help themselves. For example "la gare" , the children had decided "it looks a bit like garage and you can park your train there , so it's a train station". "Le stade", explained the children to Kate, isn't a cognate but it is a near cognate and it looks like our word "stadium" and  "we know that Warrington Wolves Stadium is very near here". For each noun there was an associated dramatic action and attention was put upon reading words aloud - for example  the four sounds in boulangerie and a focus on the warm bread sound "ou" in "bou" and   ...........

It was very interesting to see that so many of the language skills we are using in primary foreign language learning benefit learners who are strengthening their memory and recall skills and their communication and comprehension skills. Softer social skills were being practised and explored too,so for example the places guessing hide and reveal game and handling disappointment, having another go and using actions to remember, or playing the memory game and being willing to try again.This reinforced for me that we should not negate the important role language learning can play in the primary classroom and whole school curriculum .

The class are getting better at remembering their numbers , so Kate incorporated these in the "guessing the place" game.She wanted to reinforce this and help all the children to be successful.What I found very interesting here was that she had identified that the children were looking for and trying to remember place nouns but it was oin this instance more important that they recalled the numbers than guessed the place on the reverse of the card correctly.

The children and Kate hunted for the number shapes in French and were fascinated that French children might write the numbers slightly different to the way the children in this school in Warrington write their numbers. Number 7 was the class favourite closely followed by 11 and the  1.

I noticed how calmly the children worked in small groups and supported each other to try and guess places on the reverse of the cards.

The class then started to look at directions Just simple directions and played an anticipation game with the places in the town they had revisited.Kate made this a visual and physical activity beacuse as she pointed out ,the class were: 

The reward for all this focused French thinking was a virtual trip to Lyon.Thanks to Google Maps.

I went with the children on this virtual trip and think what you read below in my tweets are some of the best goosebumps moments for a long while in a classroom .

How marvellous for these children was this! Bringing real France "today" in to their classroom. The children actuallu saw and visited where Kate had really lived, after they  zoomedin on Google Maps .They were able to connect a real French building  and the people they saw with her.They then  helped her work out on Google Maps (in English) just how to get from her apartment block to the Place Bellecour because as Kate explained to them, there was a  wonderful surprise waiting for the children there! She zoomed forward in time to 8 December for the Fete de lumieres. For these children the moments were magical as we switched from maps to photos to real "today" pictures and footage to pictures of the festival  with the person who had really lived there, in the classroom with them.

 

 I left Kate explaining why the festival takes place on 8 December, about the plague, candles to celebrate the end of the plague, modern day light  parades  and setting the scene for next week's French Year 5 lessons ......

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Snapshot 2016-17: finding the way

Today I observed Year 3 Spanish in one Warrington school and then Y5 French in another Warrington school.A remarkable day and all part of the associate teacher programme we run in 49 of our 200 network schools. 

This is Beth, and Beth has joined us this year. I observed her teaching a Year 5 French class (just before lunch) who are just starting off in their third year of learning French.  

The hashtag we are using for our Snapshot tweets on @JanetLloydnet is #youcantoo and it strikes me that this is a great way to describe what Beth encourages .The children are not racing through learning but are consolidating and using prior learning, becoming confident to lead or work independently in language learning and definitely understanding that what Beth models "they can  do too". 

The key focus of the lesson was to build upon the previous lesson's focus on the city and to move from familiar Year 4 language content to explore less familar places in the city" language.

As the children are Year 5, Beth used our "messages in a bottle" writing activities  from Year 5 Autumn 1  to invite volunteers to read aloud and  create a listening comprehension puzzle for the class .She immediately asked for volunteers to be "teacher".

The pretend "teacher" had to use classroom commands to get the children's attention and to ask them all to stand up.Then the "teacher" read aloud 3rd person singular French statements about a child from a message written in best by another child.Bit by bit the class sat down when they realised the text wasn't about them e.g. all the girls sat down when the "teacher" said "il habite....." and then more than half the boys sat down when the "teacher" said "il a 10 ans.A game of elimination played several times, until there was one individual left standing.. (DfE ATs listen attentively and respond....../Speak in full sentences ...../understand basic grammar.....).

The children had spent the previous lesson familarising themselves with nouns for places in town.  They had added their own target language places to a blank street plan.Today the children tried to produce a target language dialogue about the town with a partner and navigate their partner around their town plam.Visualisiung and describing directions from a 2D map is an interesting exploration of a skills in itself .Indeed the class teacher and I commented on the fact that this posed a challenge for quite a few of the Year 5. They had to learn how to you look from above on a 2D map and then visualise where places were situated and describe this to a partner.What was important was that Beth , a primary trained teacher, gave the children time to do this both as a target language and 2D visualisation activity.All the children in the class  believed "they could do this too".  

Today they had to explore unfamiliar place nouns and work them out, without dictionaries and using prior knowledge. (Beth reinforced the importance of memory in language learning)

Some of the places were really easy to understand and others involved pair talk and deliberation.

Beth took feedback but didn't give immediate answers, she encouraged the children to explore and resolve meanings e.g " Oh ( remember now , I wrote la piscine -  we went to la piscine in the school descriptions we did , because we said that we go swimming there" .The children also discussed changes in use of definite and indefinite articles 

Beth reinforced with  all the children their understanding of masculine and feminine nouns and practised ways to help the children to "remember" the nouns and whether they were masculine or feminine, with large physical actions to represent masculine and feminine.She asked the children to decide which physical action to use before she showed them her choice.She explained that there are things in languages we have to learn.

Using physical actions and the child as "teacher " volunteer the children practised simple directions with the rest of the class and then with all this information and knowledge they worked in pairs with their street plans to ask questions about the imaginary towns they had created.  

Snapshot 2016-17:Christmas nouns and adjectives

Meet Steph. Today I observed her teaching a Year 3 Spanish class with two years Spanish prior learning in KS1.In KS1 it is very much education of the ear and joining in, however the children have covered a lot of basic language.Steph's challenge is definitely to increase challenge for the learners and keep the core Spanish knowledge alive and kicking at the same time. Steph has just this year taken over from the prevoous teacher so she is using AfL techniques to ascertain depth of understanding and keep all childrern on board and able to participate and progress.  

This was an incredibly dynamic lesson! Engaging from the start! The children began with a familiar greetings song (DfE AT:listen attentively to spoken language and show understanding by joining in and responding ).The children then practised their familiar personal iinformation questions and answers.Steph pushed the chidren to begin to develop dialogues rather thaan just a question followed by an answer, using little asides and replies moving them beyond speaking in sentences to trying to begin to be more conversational. (DFE AT: engage in conversations , ask and answer questions......)

The lesson was packed with incidental Spanish instructions and Steph had built in time at the start of the lesson to sing the instructions song with actions - just tpo make sure children weren't ;eft behind or left out.(DfE AT:listen attentively to spoken language and show understanding by joining in and responding ).

I mentioned that Steph is taking care to establish what the children already know and to incorporate the revisiting of prior learning in to the language lessons of Year 3 children who are not absolute beginners.This game was a fabukous example of how to do this. We were hunting "osito"- the litttle bear.A game of hide and seek with a time challenge. One child hides ther bear , whilst  the other child is out of the classroom .The rest of children are the "time and prsssure " clock really .As the volunteers came back in to the room,they performed a clapping rhythm and chant of the months, that got louder and louder and faster and faster as the  child re-entered the classroom and tried to find the bear. So simple and so  effective! Could be used with any core vocabulary that you want to keep fresh in the children's memories.Year 3 loved it.

Remember these young Year 3 learners have prior learning behind them so the key focus of today's lesson was an introduction to Christmas nouns, an explorative discussion of what the children may already know about masculine and feminine and beginning to look at the placement of adejctives with Spanish nouns.(DfE AT :understanding basic grammar ......)

Firstly the children needed to practice the pronunciation of the spoken nouns. I liked the fact that Steph asked the children first of all to explain to her what "nouns" are in any language. "Sometimes they have capital letters in the middle of sentences" was ine response."They are ;proper nouns   "."They name objects and things" was another response. I think this is so important as we must remmeber that these children are Year 3 and this discussion links through their literacy and underpins what they already know about language structure.The children were ready to explore Christmas nouns , wth different voices , actions, pictures, which noun is missing? game ...

...and then as a class categorising the nouns in to two groups.Physically helping Steph move the noun pictures in to two groups of masculine and  feminine nouns. (DfE AT; understanding basic grammar....)

Differentiation had been planned for and Steph has the good fortune to have TA and teacher in the class with her, learning Spanish alongside the children.In this school,Spanish is very much encouraged as a whole school learning experience and you can tangibly feel this and how important it is, when you are in this Year 3 classroom.This meant that teachers and children could work together.Some children worked with a TA to match written nouns and pictures, some children worked in pairs to match the written and visual nouns, and some children, who quickly completed this task, were give the additional challenge to hunt the nouns in a wordshape activity. Steph asked the children to also look at what the words looked like, and how easy they were to recognise and did the children know that some of these nouns can be called cognates and they look the same as the English?

The class came back together and considered the way the written words looked but now also the way they sound. (DfE AT : explore the patterns and sounds of language ....) So the class looked at "angel" and practised the change in sound from English to Spanish. I liked the fact that some of the children were trying to make bigger leaps in linking languages as one child quietly said to another child who had whispered  "some don't look or sound the same" that :

What was really noticeable in the lesson was that children of all abilities were engaged and challenged and progressing in their knowledge of the language , the four core skills and skills of learning a language. It is definitely something I find particularly pleasing to witness and so valuable in primary language learning.

And finally Steph added the brand new challenge - ready to work on this in more detail next lesson.Just where do you put colours with the nouns in Spanish? Once again, just as with nouns, she asked the children to explain what "type of words" colours are in sentence structure. Adjectives.The class thought of an English  colour phrase to describe Steph's  picture of the present " a green present" and  then the class played a game of "spot the difference"! Two volunteers held up two mini-whiteboards and shared the Spanish words - "un regalo verde " and the class found it fascinating that in Spanish you say it the other way round!  It is always remarkable to see the way the young primary learners love the differences and are fascinated not frightened by them , especially when the teaching of these differences is an exploration and taken step by step. 

 

 

Coordinators' December checklist

Well we are nearly at the end of the first term of this academic year. Thanks you for all your hard work so far this year in promoting, encouraging and supporting your school's progress with primary languages.Here is your December checklist. (You may want to look back at some time too at the September  coordinators' checklist and the October checklist too).

  • Have you booked your free VLE support phone call and /or webinar with our Network Support Coordinaor ,Will ,yet?  Contact him to organise this before Christmas or for early in the New Year on william@primarylanguagesnetwork.co.uk 
  • Have you booked your 1 to 1 consultancy this year yet? Just contact us via our website contact page to organise this. 
  • Time to save the date too ! We have booked the annual conference at which you are entitled to a free place.It is on 29 June 2017 at the Statham Lodge Hotel Lymm.
  • The Tracking and Assessment folder has now been placed in the Teaching Resources area of the VLE .Have you had a look in it yet?
  • Have you seen the updated Puzzle It Out resources in the Tracking and Assessment folder?We have added reading texts for every one of the reading assessments in French and Spanish and transcripts in English to support you or other members of staff ,if necessary?
  • Have you used the native speaker listening sound files for the Puzzle It Outs yet ?The sound files have target language and English transcripts to support you?
  • You may want to clipboard the reading and listening Puzzle It Out resources in to relevant year group folders in your User file area on the VLE.
  • An addition to the assessment spreadsheets will be colour coding of the emerging, meeting ,exceeding blocks as requested by coordinators who attended the CPD last week.This will be added to the spreadsheets in the first week of December.
  • You may want to access and download the My Learning APP if you are using IPads in the classroom as you can then link the VLE to your IPad,You can then access the VLE from your IPhone and IPad    and also instantaneously upload evidence and resources to the userfile area.  
  • If you are interested in having a taster session or  several sessions of Yoga with French in school, then we are now taking bookings and requests for Spring and Summer 2017 .Just contact us via the website contact page  with your request. This is open to both network and non-network members.
  • Our snapshots of teachers delivering "real" language lessons based on the VLE PLN SoW  have started again this year.We have created a snapshots folder in Subject Planning - MFL coordinators tools with all the snapshots from last year and this year. Great to share with colleagues as our theme this year is "You can too". We are sharing realistic and achiveable activities..Here is one example of the snapshots so far this half term .Daily routine Year 6 Spanish ,November 2016
  • The local network twilight meetings for Spring 2017 will be announced at the start of 2017 and the theme will be "Spring in your Step" and will be based around drama, dance, Art and PE. Watch this space for details of a twilight near you. Local network meetings.Non-network members are welcome at these events,so feel free to bring along a friend too. 
  • Schools are now signing up for the Primary Languages Development Award.This is natonally available to both network and non-network members and if you have already applied then Catherine , your PLDA mentor , will be contacting you early in December to start the process.More details about the PLDA are here. First impressions from the  coordinators who have begun the process is that it is manageable and is helping them put language learning firmly on the map in their schools. 
  • We are delighted to announce that Emilie Woodruffe will become our Associate Language Teacher Coordinator from January 2017.Emilie will be out about from January , observing the associates , continuing to share our "snapshots of learning" blog posts, meeting with school coordinators and training the associates on a regular basis.
  • We are delighted to announce that from January ,PLN will be offering a new service "Active Lingo ", where schools can buy in a half day or day's input from expert practitioners in Dance with languages,Drama with languages ,Culture and language learning, PE with languages... to name but a few. Watch the website for further details.
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And finally to help you through December we have out together a folder in Teaching Resources area  -Seasonal Specials -Autumn 2  folder called "Our Christmas 2016 Box"  with ideas and activities from KS1 to Y6 KS2 which you can use in class. These range from Christmas card greetings phrases,Christmas PE lessons with sound files and language support for non-specialist teachers to nativity sketches , to games and reading and writing activities .We hope you find these useful. Once again you can just clipboard relevant resources into year group folders for other staff to use too.  

Remember to take a look in the Seasonal Specials Spring 1 folder as there are activities for Epiphany and New Year for that first (dare I say it) lesson back in 2017 too.

Plus here are a few blog posts with ideas to use now and in your first couple of weeks back at the start of the new academic year.

Festive lights 

Star gazers

Advent calendars with a difference and a reading puzzle activity

Xmas in a GIPHY

Jewels in the 3 Kings crowns and adjectives, writing activity 

Pass the galette or the roscon de reyes - sound spelling game

 

 

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Table top stories

This picture in a tweet from @MrsMabberley caught my eye the other day. I follow a lot of primary school teachers, makes sense really as we are working with primary language learners and familiar activities often make great starting points for target language explorations.  

We can use this approach in KS2,perhaps with stories from thge PLN SoW, or with other familiar stories.The children will be exploring and strengthening the language learning skills  developing memory , recall, pronunciation, sentence and text level spoken work.This can potentially lead to recorded recounts and re-writes of stories.

  1. Take a story the class has read with you and unpicked.
  2. A story with some repetition and objects that you can find as realia or picture cards would be best.
  3. Read and explore the story with the children.
  4. Highlight and practise the key structures in the story.
  5. Show the children key objects and ask them to recall the sentence orally that they read and practised with you.
  6. Give the children a story sentence card sort and ask them in pairs to reconstruct the story and read out loud the story to each other.
  7. Create a story table or a story box for the class and also create story boxes for tables and groups of children.
  8. Invite volunteers to take part in the story retelling challenge.Can they use the objects from the class story box or table to prompt them to recall the sentences and retell the story?
  9. in the following lesson produce the table story boxes and invite the children in groups to retell the story again. You may need to give the children talking time first to recall the storyline.
  10. Leave the story table or tray accessible to the children and allow them the chance when they have finished work over the next couple of weeks to individually or in pairs use the objects to retell the story (either to each other with quiet voices or as non-verbal "inside your head voice" retelling of the story in the target language).
  11. You could offer the children the opportunoty to record themselves at the story table retelling the story and load this up in your "virtual story telling library".Our VLE and the Userfiles for your school would be an ideal place to store this. 

Festive lights

I saw the tweet below of the switching on of the Malaga Christmas lights 2016. 

Hanuka,Diwali,Christmas are all times when we celebrate with lights.  

So why not take a tour of festive lights with the children and make this in to a simple target language spoken festive activity too.

You can find lots of video clips of seasonal lights on Youtube and you can search for and find a plethera of festive light pictures on Google .

  1. Share a maximum of 5 videos or 5  pictures with the children of festive lights.
  2. Number these video clips or pictures.
  3. Share one of the clips or pictures with the children.Ask them waht they like about the picture/video in english
  4. Take them on a festive tour of al the videos or pictures..Let them watch and enjoy and ask them to think as they look about what they can see, the colours, objects, shapes .
  5. Give the children thinking and talking time to come up with in the target language the colours they can see and adjectives that describe what they can see in one of the pictures or videos.They may need to use bilingual dictionaries for this too .
  6. Take feedback. Create a reference flip chart sheet for all the children with this information.
  7. Take a second look at the  2 of the videos or 2 of the pictures. Ask  the chidren to help you to compose a sentence to describe what and why they like or dislike the festive lights they can see. 
  8. Now give the children access to all the festive pictures or screen grabs of each video as a memory prompt.
  9. Ask the children in rough to prepare a sentence about why they like or do not like the lights in each of the 5 videos or pictures you have shared. (I like the  lights because ......./I don't like the lights because .....).
  10. Ask the children to read aloud each of their sentences to a partner.
  11. Divide your class in to five groups .Allocate each group one of the videos or pictures.
  12. Can each member of each group present the sentence he/she has written about the specific picture or video to the class?
  13. You could put each picture or a photo of each video on to a large piece of sugar paper and invite the children to write their opinions of each picture /video on the correct piece of sugar paper .This would work best if you made this a caroussel, timed activity , moving from one picture to the next.  

Star gazers.

December and it's the time of dark night skies with hopefully clear views of stars. Now is an ideal opportunity to use the starry night sky as a way of exploring bilingual dictionaries, nouns and adjectives with the children.This will help them to become more independent in their use of bilingual dictionaries and their understanding of grammar too.

  • First show them a starry night picture and ask them to get out their "imaginary "telescopes and take a closer look at the starry sky.
  • Ask the children to become star gazers with you.Explain that stars can shine brightly as individual stars or as constellations of stars.
  • Ask the children to imagine they can see shapes of objects and items in the night's sky.
  • The first objects,colours and items  they see ,must be words they can say in the target language- so familoar nouns and adjectives.
  • The children should recall nouns and adjectives that are familiar so no suggestions can be incorrect as they are using their imaginations and their memory. 
  • Ask them to compare what they think they saw in ntheir starry night gaze with what their talking  partner saw. Did they see anything the same or similar?  
  • Ask the children to write a list of all the words they have shared with each other on their mini white boards.
  • Ask the children to remind you about the role of a noun and an adjective in a sentence.
  • Can the children identify the nouns and the adjectives in their own written lists? 
  • Ask the children to put an asterisk (to represent a star) next to each noun in their written lists. 
  • Do they need to check the spelling of any of the nouns they have written? 
  • Give out the bilingual dictionaries so that they can check spellings of the nouns. Remind them of our simple "post it" rule .(Place a "post it" in the centre of the bilingual dictionary) .Before the "post it" we are looking up the target language first, and after the "post it" we are looking up the English first).To complete this task it is "before the post it rule",
  • Now make them "space explorers" .Time to use bilingual dictionaries to find nouns ...nouns in space that they think would make wonderful stars. This time it is "after the post it rule"
  • Ask the children to find a minimum of three new nouns e.g. a star in the sky can look like -  a dragon, a space ship ,a  jewel.
  • Give the children star templates.One template per noun.Ask the children to write on one side in the target language one of the nouns they have found and on the other draw the object either as a single shining star or as a constellation of stars that make the shape of the object.
  • Attach string to each star and hang these on a star gazers' mobile in the classroom.

Advent calendar puzzle

Take one simple to make and numbered advent calendar .... and change the numbers to different shapes, colours and familiar objects (animal nouns for example or weather symbols) and then create  a reading puzzle for your young language learners. The tweet below inspired me and I added my own spin on it as you can see.

  1. Create the simple advent calendar at the top of the page.
  2. Add hanging boxes or cards with shapes, colours, objects, symbols instead of numbers.
  3. On the reverse of the cards draw a  large empty star.
  4. Write a sentence about each hanging box or card e.g "Look for an orange star or "Look for a brown big dog".
  5. Pop the sentence strips on a starry covered box.
  6. Invite a child per day tp take out a sentence strip and to show it to the class and try to read it aloud.
  7. Can the class help the child to finsd the correct hanging box or card.
  8. Take it off you advent calendar. Turn it over and invite the child to write in a sparkling pen the day's date in the target language and then hang it back on your advent calendar tree,