Dingbat pancakes

Dingbat pancakes ! (Say what you can see)
A game for all stages of language learners
 

  • Give each child a piece of A4 paper and ask them to fold the paper into four and to draw four circles on the paper.
  • Each circle should be shaded on one side a different colour by the children
  • They need to cut out their four circles.
  • The children now need to turn the circles over so the white empty side is facing them.
  • They must think of a flavour association with the colour (e.g red - tomato/ pink- strawberry yellos- banana... etc)
  • In pencil on the white blank side they need to draw a symbol (a Dingbat) to represent the flavour
  • On the coloured side they need to write the flavour in the target language.
  • Can other children guess and say the flavour accurately in the target language by looking at other children's "Dingbat pancake symbols"? 
  • Can children ask for each pancake politely using a full  sentence target language request?
  • Once the have guessed they can flip the pancake to the coloured side and see if they are correct.

Flavour pancake flipping

Spoken flip the pancake

A challenge for language learners who have practised flavours (of ice creams) and can use the phrase "je voudrais"

  • Remind the children of the flavours of ice creams.If you use PLN soW thens this will work well with Year 5 as we practised  flavours of ice creams in Summer Year 4.
  • Share a picture of a pancake and ice cream and ask them to explore in a game of verbal table tennis the possible flavours of the ice cream in the picture. To be played as a pair game.Who runs out of flavours first? Take feedback of the flavours from the class.
  • Discuss with the Year 5  children other possible flavours made up of the fruits and vegetables that if your are ising the PLN SoW you are  currentltly investigating in our healthy eating module..
  • Share all these ice cream flavours and fruits as a written record on the board.
  • Give the children chance to try to memorise the phrases you have written on the board.
  • Ask the children in pairs now to play flip the pancake (just like verbal table tennis) where they take it in turns to say a flavour "e.g je voudrais une crepe au chocolat".
  • Make this a time challenge.Tney must say a complete and polite request /sentence.
  • How many flavoured pancakes can they flip in 2 minutes?
  • Make it a "head to head" game and invite volunteers out to the front to  play the "Spoken flip the pancake" challenge!

Pancake Pile Challenge.

Practising spelling of familar language and building team piles of pancakes.
A pancake team challenge for beginner language learners who know their numbers, colours and with children who are moving on who also know fruits,vegetables and possibly flavours) 
 

  • Cut out four sets of five coloured circles(each circle represents a crepe).
  • Ask the children to count the pancakes for you and to say the colour of the pancake using target language to complete both tasks.  . 
  • Make four piles of the pancakes - one from each colour in each pile.
  • Each of the piles will ultimately belong to  one of the four teams.The teams have to win the pancakes
  • Divide your class on to four teams.
  • The aim of the game is to win the crepes.Each team nominates a "writing" chef.
  • This chef must come to the front and write what you say. For example you could say colours, number, fruits, flavours (i.e is language linked to the number and colour, imaginary flavour of pancakes and fillings).
  • The aim of the game is for writing chef from each team to win for his/her team one of each of the five coloured pancakes that you have cut out of paper.The chef must write clearly and correctly the spelling in the target language of the word you say.
  • You could play this as a speed challenge with two team's chefs up at the front at the same time.
  • You could change writing chefs after each challenge.
  • Which team will have their coloured pile of pancakes first?

Writing down progress?

Writing fascinates me in primary languages.As I visit a range of local schools on a regular basis and network schools share the real language learning that has taken place in their classrooms I can see that teachers and children are looking for ways to construct and write sentences .In my opinion self efficacy helps learners to want to continue learning and independence and creativity from early stages in KS2 in target language writing is key.

I love this cartoon.....in my opinion we must consider what is writing. Pen,paper , lap top key boards , IPads areall useful devices to recordthe words, phrases, sentences we form in our heads. We are making our thoughts visually available to communicate with others.

As we start working with children, whether this is the start of their language learning career or later as they meet a new content or context area, just how important is it that we try to make writing a successful experience?For example magic air pen writing helps  young language learners practise the spelling of key nouns, adjectives, parts of verbs , whole sentences , opinions, conjunctions, extended sentences? In classrooms I often see how writing in the air, forming the languages but no one else can see, helps all the learners participate and try to internalise the key language

Physical activities help too. Being able to write down but also wipe away spelling helps the children grow in confidence and be more accurate in their writing

Reading aloud what they have written, gives children voice.They are writing to communicate.

Uploaded by Primary Languages Network on 2016-02-11.

 

Moving around the blocks of target language and being able to change what we write is very important to the children.Physical sentence dominoes really helps

 

Using physical sentence building devices help as the learners progress and become more sophisticated target language communicators. Our sandcastle sentence building for example allows children being able to manipulate language and  build extended sentences with confidence as they progress in UKS2.

So this last term how have I seen teachers in class helping young language learners to attempt to manipulate words,phrases and simple sentence to communicate their own messages?  Here are a few examples progressing from word, to phrase, to text . to independent written language .

Moving from nouns to illuminate the classroom...

To adjectives to describe ourselves and celebrate Roald Dahl Day ....

To simple sentences to tell stories, supported by a simple writing frame ......

To descriptive creative and imaginative independent writing...

Ready and able for the challenge  to independently write sequences of interesting sentences at text level and across familiar KS2 primary literacy genres.For example below is the challenge laid down at the start of last term to Y5 Spanish learners, revisiting familiar language in a formal letter of application to Willy Wonka!  

  

Reading detectives' ideas

Read, look and be the first to find ......

  • Be first to spot the longest word
  • Be first to spot the shortest word
  • Be first to spot all the words that start with a vowel
  • Be first to spot the words with two syllables 
  • Be first to spot all the  masculine words / all the feminine words/ all the plural words
  • Be first to spot all the phrases which a part of the same verb

More than just words .....Facts we know about the words we are using .....

  • Reveal a new word or phrase in the target language and ask the children to share in English any fascinating facts they may know about the item - e.g weather (hurricanes/ storms/droughts etc) or animals ( speed of animals/ largest and smallest /habitats etc).Add some fascinating facts of your own- to break up the repetitiveness of practising new words and to add a new dimension to the learning

Exploring nouns, adjectives, conjunctions and prepositions in jumbled languages sensible stories.....

  • Create an English story interspersed appropriately with the new phrases  and words in the target language so that the children create their own jumbled langiuages sensible story and ask children to share their stories with each other. What differences can they spot between each story e.g order of nouns used in the story, where adjectrives have been used, use of conjunctions or prepostions. .

Coordinators' January Checklist

Well we are  at the start of the second term of this academic year. Thanks for all your hard work so far in promoting, encouraging and supporting your school's progress with primary languages. Here is your January checklist. (You may want to look back at or refer to some time too at previous checklists this year: December, November , October, September.

Have you booked your free VLE support phone call and/or webinar with Will, oiur Network Support Coordinator? The phone call can take place at a time that suits you and focus on an aspect of the VLE that you want to explore or require support with.Contact him on william@primarylanguagesnetwork.co.uk .

Why not consider booking a free 20 minute input at a staff meeting with Will,as an introduction for all staff to the VLE and its tools? Contact him on william@primarylanguagesnetwork.co.uk.

Have you booked your free 1 2 1 consultancy yet with one of our associate teacher consultancy team? This meeting can take place in school or by phone and is a really valuable opportunity for you to discuss current school primary language teaching and learning and to set yourself achievable next steps and goals for primary languages in school. Just contact us via the website contact page to organise this.

Emilie Woodroffe has a new role within our organisation as the "Associate Teacher Coordinator. She will be visiting the associate schools both to observe the teaching and learning and to meet with the school MFL coordinators to discuss how we can enhance the associate teaching programme we provide in 49 of our network schools.

This month as coordinator:

  • Here are our New Year's resolutions for our young language learners.Thanks to the associate teachers for this. A New Year's resolution
  • January through to February half term is full of celebrations. Take a look in Seasonal Specials at all the materials and resources we offer you from Epiphany,January Sales and Maths to Pancake Day to St Valentine's Day.You may want to clip-board specific resources in to the year group folders in your school Userfiles for specific years to focus upon and then perhaps to share their work in scholl assemblies or on display boards. This blog post may help you too..."First Week Back Feeling"
  • Why not consider linking personal information language and simple descriptions to "Pantomime" season? Here is the blogpost to help you with this "What a picture!What a photograph!
  • Encourage all staff to use the Userfiles on the VLE as a very easy way to keep all types of evidence of progress in children's primary language work.Just contact Will, if you need him to talk through quickly how to upload evidence- sound files, photos of work, clips etcetra to this secure area. You can now all access the VLE via the MyLearning APP too, which makes uploading evidence incredibly quick and easy to do. 
  • Consider creating a progress in writing whole school display board.Carmelina created this one in the photo below with work in Autumn term from our VLE and also the PLN SOW across Year 3, 4, 5 and 6.Here is the original blogpost "Our shared communication wall" 
  • Take a look at the "Let's Write" addition in the Ready Made SoW  for French and Spanish. We are creating writing worksheets based on each half term's focus that have creative elements within the tasks .The associates love the materials we have shared with them so far. You can access the Year 3, 4, 5 and 6 Spring 1 sheets in Ready Made French or Spanish Spring 1 and also in the Activities folders in the KS2 French or Spanish SoW Plus. (Spring 2 will be ready in next week or so... watch this space!)

 

  • Why not begin to link your language learning across the curriculum? Our Cross Curricular Area (accessible from the Homepage on the VLE) and the thematic folders in the area have been updated and there is now an "At a glance chart" to help you select themes within folders. Plus our Yoga with French is going down really well and will continue this term too .Just contact Will on william@primarylanguagesnetwork.co.uk to discuss this further or to organise an afternoon session. Here is a blog post update on Yoga with French from last term. Yoga with French    

Lancashire schools - have you considered attending or inviting another school to attend the introductory PLN meetings in Heysham on 24 January or Garstang on 31st January? More details here: Upcoming events

Our second Coordinators CPD afternoon is due to take place on Thursday 26 January. The focus will be reading and writing in primary languages and capturing evidence of progress. More details here: Upcoming events 

Watch out for your email invite to the local network meetings in February or March, to be held in Sefton, St Helens, Warrington, Leigh ,Knowsley, Halton, West Cheshire,East Cheshire. Theme is  "Spring in your step" and all staff will be welcome. Our focus will be on simple activities that link PE,Art,Drama and Dance with primary language learning. More details will follow here: Upcoming events

Please save the date! The annual conference is on 29 June 2017 at the Statham Lodge Hotel, Lymm,Warrington.Every network school is entitled to one free delegate place. Our keynote speakers are Therese Comfort and Daniel Alliot and our focus will be on "actively making progress in primary language learning".Watch out for emails inviting you to register for the event. Take a look at this short video of the PLN Conference 2016.

 

 

What a picture! What a photograph!

Great focus for dark January days at school! Why not take a look at Pantomime characters with some of your children? We will be working on pantomime characters linked to a grammar focus with Year 5 in Ready Made French and Spanish, so the sequence activities below would fit well with this focus.

  • Which traditonal pantomime characters  do the children already know?
  • Show the children a range of colour photos of traditional characters.Number each character.
  • Ask the children to listen as you call out adjectives as words, or in phrases and sentences to describe one or more of the characters.Can the children identify which character you are describing?
  • Ask the children to talk on their tables through possible adjectives to describe the characters (colours, emotions, personality)
  • Ask the children to talk on their table  through possible simple descriptions of hair and eye colour and physical features.
  • Individually ask the children to focus on one of the characters and on mini whiteboards to write down either at word or phrase or sentence level a description of the character. (They must keep a note of the number of the photo).
  • Ask the children to walk around the room and share their information with other children.They must work in twos and read aloud their words or phrases or sentences and the other child must try to guess which picture number is being described.The children swap roles and then move on to a new partner.
  • Give the children a piece of paper and ask them to create a folded/ concertina piece of paper with a rounded top and bottom for the face and body. Here is a Dennis the Menace made for World Book Day a couple of years ago as an example for you.
  • Ask the children to create their own new "21st Century Pantomime Character" .
  • They should leave the top and bottom spaces  so that once they have created their characters , they can fold up the written sections and focus on designing the top and botton half drawings of their new Pantomime character. 
  • And now finally you can display your new characters the class have created in class...

 

 

A New Year's resolution?

Just before we stopped for Christmas I asked the PLN associate teachers and tutors to think about what they feel will be a key focus for a specific year or class they teach primary languages, starting January 2017.

Maybe you will find some of these resolutions resonate with your own next steps in language learning in school or help you to find a core school focus.....

Janet Wallbanks's New Year's resolution is "to focus on phonics with my Year 6 classes to help them with their pronunciation"

Kate Percival's New Year's resolution is "to focus on transactional language with Year 5 to help them grow in confidence with their speaking and to see their language learning grow."

Michelle Hindley's  New Year's resolution is "to focus on implementing 'Physical French Phonics' with all year groups, linking sounds to actions to help them pronounce words they read."

Steph Pierre's New Year's resolution is  "to focus on adjectival agreements with Y6 to help them develop a greater awareness of the impact of gender and number on French spelling, and help them give more detail to their descriptive writing"

Jo Gierl's New Years resolution is "to focus on the quality of feedback with Year 4 to help them to reflect on their understanding of tasks and to improve their future learning".

Steph Stewart's New Year's resolution is "to focus on keeping up conversational/ transactional Spanish with all year groups as this can often be curtailed due to time restrictions. Will do this by using songs at start of all lessons increasing variety of songs by year group"

Kate Kennedy's New Year’s resolution is "to focus on taking ideas for a walk with Year 5 and 6 to help them to write extended sentences independently and accurately"

Carol Hickson's New Year's resolution is "to focus on speaking and getting the children to talk about themselves".  She will be trialling games of speed dating and two truths and a lie with UKS2

Jayne Dewsnip's New Year's resolution is "to focus on gender with yr 3/4 to help them to use bilingual dictionaries more accurately and effectively"

Beth McCord's New Year's resolution is "to focus on speaking activities with Year 4 to help them build their confidence when speaking in front of their peers"

Carmelina Preter's  New Year's resolution is "to focus on imperative verbs with Year 6 and to help them gain a better understanding of verbs and 1st, 2nd 3rd person". 

Sally Riley's New Year's resolution is "to focus on giving reasons and opinions in Year 6 to help the children to express themselves in Super Sentences"

Joanne Hornby's New Year's resolution is "to focus on writing with Year 6 for example how to write accurately using the verb to be ".

Primary progress pieces

Since October I have been out and about observing some of the associate PLN teachers and tutors as they deliver primary languages.

Thanks to their support I have been able to create a sequence of snapshot blog reports. These snapshots give us all a window in to the primary language learning classroom and what takes place at one moment in time in schools, where language learning is becoming or is established as an integral part of the weekly timetable.

"Specialists" is a term we keep hearing.The activities you rewad about we believe "you can do too!" whether you are a "specialist linguist and a non- specialist primary teacher" or " a non- specialist primary practitioner and a non-specialist linguist". The associate teachers represent so many of you - primary classroom teachers with language knowledge, primary teachers with a specialism in primary languages, secondary MFL colleagues now becoming primary language teachers or working still in both sectors ,SLT and HoDs working as primary language associates. Everything is accessible on the PLN VLE.   

So what did I observe? 

  • progress across all 4 core skills,
  • progress in pupils'  confident ability to use  language learning skills to recall,explore and use target language,
  • focus and progress in sound-spelling knowledge in the target language
  • focus and progress in the learners abiloty to pronounce language accurately
  • growing confidence in and the accurate use of language learning tools (e.g. bilingual dictionaries),
  • developing accuacy in listening and responding skills and exposure to incidental spoken target language
  • progress in independent creative use of language, focus upon the understanding of basic grammar (nouns,adjectives and some common present tense verbs)
  • very positve enthusiasm and engagement of learners
  • teachers developing their own apporaches to primary language teaching and learning   

As I observed I tweeted too, as I wanted to capture the moment then and there. 

I did see "Fun" ! "Fun" is a word that is important too as I saw "purposeful fun" and engagement and developing self efficacy amongst pupils.

Below is a moment I won't forget, that I captured in a tweet! Here is a quote from a Year 5 boy in Warrington on a virtual tour to Lyon and to see where his French language teacher lived and then explore the city too!

 I have put the blog posts in stage of learners order , not necessarily year group order, to try to give you a feel for the progress being made by primary language learners.(If you read the snapshots you will see that the teachers made explicit reference to phonics (sound spelling links) , bilingual dictinary skills are often practised, whole class,pair and group activities are planned for and the children are making progress in the 12 DfE ATs of the DfE KS2 MFL PoS)

Christmas nouns in Spanish: Year 3 Spanish (children learnt some Spanish in KS1).Categorising gender of nouns, exploring accurate pronunciation, exploring meaning of unfamiliar nouns in the target language using bilingual dictionaries.

Virtually visiting Lyon. Year 5 (low achievers) French. The children practised the sounds and sound spelling links of nouns, revisited numbers, practised using their memory skills and linked their in class learning to a real "authentic" city in Franch and a virtual visit.

Robots and commands:Year 5 (beginners with half term's Spanish language learning) exploring the imperative 2nd person plural. Practising their personal information questions and answers and building banks of responses in a "read aloud" and listening activity.  

Building a snowman :Year 6 Spanish (second year of learning a language) .Practising use of nouns,practising famillar language - colours and using familiar language as clues to read descriptive phrases, understand new nouns and build a class snowman. 

Finding the way and creating simple dialogues Year 5 French.The children here were using familiar language, recall , memory , bilingual dictionaries and map skills to explore  a French town. Children revisited and practised the use of 3rd person singular with their personal information reading game warm up. They then practised using masculine and feminine nouns, building spoken dialogues with familiar questions and answers 

Xmas Raps:Year 5 French (third year of language learning) exploring Christmas language, using language learning skills to understand unfamiliar language, practising pronunciation, building their own indepently written short raps, performing for the class. 

Santa's Spanish wishlist :Year 5 learners.Majority of the lesson was in Spanish both incidental and instructional language.Children were exploring unfamiliar language in text,using bilingual dictionaries, practising pronunciation of key language,revisiting nouns and building spoken and written requests in target language. 

House and home:Year 6 French,practising using their new nouns in written extended sentences  to describe a house,listening to a text level description of a famous person's house, building descriptive sentences - reading and writing .  

Daily Routine:  Year 6 Spanish in fourthe year of learning a language. The majority of the lesson was delivered in Spanish.Children were very much encouraged to  use their own developing language skills to understand target language  in classroom instructions and learning objectives. Practising full sentences in speaking and writing,asking and answering questions, adding times as o'clocks,using daily routine verbs in 1st and 2nd person singular. Writing a dialogue as a group and performing the dialogue from memory for the class 

I started by quoting a child who found the idea of virtaully visitingf France quite amazing and I want to end the blog post with a quote from a child in another primary school down the road in Warrington, where the children learn Spanish.I think thw quote speaks for itself! What a rewarding half term this has been .Thanks to everyone! 

 

 

 

Christmas Carol Verb Singers

The aims of the activity are to practise the parts of the verb "to have" and create a simple carol performance in which children identify the singular and plural forms of the present tense of the verb"to have".

You will need to introduce or revisit the verb "to have" :christmas cracker style! 
 

  • Draw  8 2D Christmas Crackers on festive paper and the same on plain card.
  • Cut out  the shapes.
  • On the plain paper in the centre section , write one part of the present tense of the verb paradigm  "to have" in  the target language.
  • Cut the festive paper crackers in half.
  • Stick the outer edges of one of the festive Christmas cracker on to one of the plain paper crackers - so that the festive cracker can open and shut in the middle.
  • Put the finished festive crackers on the board. 
  • Ask volunteers amongst the children to select a cracker.
  • Open the cracker with the children
  • Look at the phrase written in the middle. Do the children recognise any of the phrases?Can they identify that hes phrases are parts of a verb?
  • Can they help you to organise the crackers in to a paradigm of the verb (singular line of crackers and plural line of crackers) ?
  • (You may need blu tac to keep the festive crackers shut when you want to conceal the phrases written on the plain paper).

A Christmas Carol

  • Practise the verb "to have" in the target language by opening the festive crackers one by one from the top of the singular line through to the bottom of the plural line of crackers.
  • Can the children see any patterns emerging? 
  • Hum with the class the tune of "We wish you a Merry Christmas". Pause occasionally and select a festive cracker.Can the children remember the phrase that is inside the cracker?
  • In pairs ask the children to try to fit the paradigm of the verb "o have" in the target language to the tune of "We wish you a Merry Christmas!"(It will work in French,Spanish and German if you make it a "merry" and sometimes "exagerated" sounding song").
  • Ask volunteers to share their songs.Select a class favourite from the songs.
  • Now practise the song as a class group of carol singers!
  • Make it a Christmas Carol singer performance- ask the children to stand in rows of six making a crescent shape
  •  
  • Sing the chosen version of the "to have" Merry Christmas song and ask the children to shake hands with one person on the left or right on singular parts of the verb and to cross arms and join hands with partners on either side and shake hands ,standing in their rows for the plural parts of the verb

Christmas Crackers!

Christmas Crackers have always entertained my friends from other countries! They love them! I thought we could make a simple UKS2 lesson on similarities and differences in Christmas traditions and add a focus on sentence structure and grammar too.
 

We are going to create a box set of christmas crackers - each containing a full sentence made up of a part of the verb "to have", a noun and an adjective.The noun and the adjective are the surprise content of the cracker and the children are going to be able to determine the content! 

In this activity children will be practising

  • nouns, 
  • adjectives and adjectival agreement 
  • and the verb "to have"

You will need Christmas crackers made as follows for this activity:

  • Plain card tempates - two per cracker.
  • First template is the base, 
  • Second template is cut in to three sections - two ends and a middle.
  • On the left hand end write part of the verb to have

Gather all the right hand templates together and also make a pile of the centre sections you put to one side.

The activity

The children are going to be able to select a noun and an adjective that agrees with the noun to complete the class "Christmas Crackers" .

Each noun should be a festive object and you should aim to have examples of masculine and feminine singular nouns and plural nouns too.

Randomly place the christmas crackers with the parts of the verb on the board 

Can the children help you to create a Christmas box of crackers - so that the crackers on the board are in paradigm order?

Now ask the children to select nouns for each cracker (perhaps even the objects you find as presents in the cracker or characters and objects we associate with Christmas).

Can they now add the correct adjective- remind them that the spelling of the adjective must suit the noun they are describing!

Blu-tac the noun and the adjective to the cracker selected by the children

Can you make a box set of crackers each with the object and its description!

Time for your own crackers! 

Ask the children to design and create their own "Christmas Crackers Selection Box" ,creating their own full sentences and adding a picture of the object on the reverse of the cracker. 
You can support children by allowing them to use the language you have practised or you can stretch children by asking them o think of their own objects , find the noun and describe the noun with their own choice of adjectives.

Snapshot 2016-17- Xmas Rap!

Meet Carmelina ,working with PLN in one of our Warrington Primary schools, delivering Primary French.Today the Year 5 class at Locking Stumps CP and Carmelina were working towards creating and recroding group Christmas raps and remembering some facts about Christmas in France. Year 5 have been learning French for two years and a term in KS2.

I walked in to a greetings rap.A rap that the children are familiar with and have been singing at the start of their lessons since the start of this half term .Today the children took the rhythm,style and beat of the rap and turned in to their own "French Christmas Rap" performances. DFE AT: · listen attentively to spoken language and show understanding by joining in and responding /speak in sentences, using familiar vocabulary, phrases and basic language structure.

Carmelina set clear objectives for the class,which involved ,reading, writing and speaking in pairs and groups- all with a Christmas twist.the chikdren had to read a rap about Noel,explore the key language and then create and write their own raps, which finally they performed as raps. 

Carmelina was supported throughout the lesson by the class teacher, who joined in with and supported children too.

The children worked in pairs to explore the Christmas language they might use to create their raps.Carmelina staged the Christmas word and phrases explorations .First of all the children had to read and see how many of the words and phrases they could recognise and remember from the last two Christmases when they had learnt French.Then the children had to look for words that were similar and only after this could the chidren use bilingual dictionaries to find tricky words and phrases.

Children's observations and shared talk in activities like this are always priceless. "Look the word Noel" is repeated lots of times! It must mean Christmas because it is in joyeux noel and also in ...." Oh the French word for stable is almost the same , it just doesn't start with an S".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 

 

Carmelina cleverly took feedback from the children, which led to the introduction of simple facts about Christmas.For example "That's right the phrase means Christmas meal but lots of French people have their special Christmas meal on Christmas Eve"  and ."Yes it's a yule log and do you know that is the French Christmas cake" .......Oncde they had explored all the language,they read along with Carmel and explored the pronunciation of the key language in the rap. DfE AT: explore the patterns and sounds of language through songs and rhymes and link the spelling, sound and meaning of words

The class spent a moment or two remembering the beat and rhythm of their greetings rap from the start of the lesson and then Carmelina modelled her "Christmas Rap" for the children.Once again they read along with Carmel and explored the pronunciation of the key language in the rap. DfE AT: explore the patterns and sounds of language through songs and rhymes and link the spelling, sound and meaning of word 

Time to work in grouos and put together their draft raps.The previous activities meant that all the children had a rhythm to base their rap upon ,word lists and an example rap to the rhythm on the screen to support them.Different groups needed different amounts of support and I loved the fact that some of the children wanted to move away from the support and produce their own target language Christmas raps. DfE AT describe people, places, things and actions orally* and in writing

Finally it was time to perform the raps and to record the raps for the school userfiles on our PLN VLE and also the school intranet. An opportunity to both colect evidence of performance and spoken language and also to celebrate creative language work with Year 5 French.

Carmelina gave children time to re-practise or check lines where they thought they could improve what they had written as a group, so second recordings of some groups were made. In each rap, Carmelina identified key phrases, written by the children, that she "really liked" . 

Finally there was just time to re-cap on those cultural Christmas facts that had cropped up during the feedback of the Chritsmas words and phrases..... and then it was time for "School Christmas Lunch"! 

 

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