Open door on languages!

EDL 2.png

What a brilliant week in our network! It's been a celebration of "all things" languages and we have thoroughly enjoyed working with KS1 and KS2 children here in  the North West of England and witnessing their sheer delight in exploring languages and so importantly sharing their own knowledge of languages. Who says we are a mono-lingual country or that our children can't learn other languages? Take a look at this snapshot of tweets and pictures ......

 

 

Emojis and feelings

spanish adjectives 1.jpg

How important do the children think that facial expressions are? Can the children look at a range of emojis with you and decide what emotion each emoji expresses. 

Share a range of target language phrases that express these possible emotions in the target language.Ask the children with a partner to link the emoji pictures and the phrases.Take feedback.Does the class agree with individual pairs?

Show a short clip of World Faces- and ask the children to look at the faces and see the expressions .Select faces to pause the video and investigate the emotion in the picture.

Ask the children to draw an emoji and write a target language matching expression for the face when you have pause the video

Can some of the children say their written phrases to the class and create the face and actions that go with the phrase. 

Share a short clip of the Marcel Marceau Mask Maker video and ask the children as they watch to decide which phrases they have been practising may best suit the facial expressions they see in the masks that Marcel Marceau creates with his face.

Ask the children to create a 21st Century version of mask making story – an emoji story. Can the children draw “emojis” for each target language phrase they want to say in the order they want to say these phrases? Can a partner identify and say the phrases represented by the emojis?

 Ask the children to create their own “emoji” charts ( emojis and phrases) in the order they think reflect the change in mood and emotions from very happy to very sad.

Additional activities to use alongside these ideas can be accessed by Primary Languages Network member schools.Find out more details here 

 

 

Autumn approaches

Autumn poem.jpg

Autumn is here! Below are some ways that you may like to approach the practise of core language content and language learning skills iwith your classes,drawing on the inspiration of Autumn.

Autumn markets: Maths and Literacy links

  • What in the World is it? Taste and touch and sensations
  • Venn diagrams
  • Quantity and number of ....
  • Numbers , fruits , vegetables and guesstimations
  • Investigate descrtipton - nouns, adjectives , verbs
  • Market stall museums

Autumn and a walk in the park

  • 3D maps
  • Directions
  • Commands
  • Objects and nouns

Autumn celebrations and a touch of creativity

  • Incredible word harvest of fruit and vegetables
  • Woodland creatures
  • Puppets - owls
  • What does Autumn mean to me?- create a memory and feelings box 

All the information shared in these blog posts helps to create "Enhanced Learning " opportunities for our young language learners in our NEW Ready Made French, Spanish and German SOW for network members.Find out more here : Network Membership

  

Roald Dahl Day and language learning

roald dahl day 2.jpg

Here are some easy to organise and quick ways to incorporate characters and books from the wonderful author Roald Dahl in to your teaching on Roald Dahl Day or during the week after 13th September.

roald dahl day 1.jpg

Celebrating Roald Dahl Day in a foreign language

  • Story title recognition
  • What's our favourite story?
  • Building characters
  • Silhouette characters - sentence structure activity using nouns,  adjectives and verbs

Roald Dahl Reading Mystery Tour

  • Matching objects (pictures and nouns/ just nouns ) to story lines  
  • Matching language to story lines
  • Matching mystery sentences to book titles
  • Building descriptions - simple or complex sentences to create book storyline information

Popcorn whizzbanger birthday cards

  • Playing with adjectives
  • Popcorn adjectives charades

 

All the resources and activities are just a small part of the resources and materials accessible to network members on Primary Languages Network

For membership details see here

 

European Day of Languages

Treasure frm travels 2.png

How can you make European Day of Languages vibrant,fun and have a positive impact on the whole primary school and set the scene for a year of effective primary foreign language learning?

Below are links to activities that have worked for us (the PLN associate teachers, myself and PLN network schools) over the past few years.

Network members can access all the resources and materials for the suggested activities on the VLE in Seasonal Specials Autumn 1 folder  and also in the Cross Curricular area Celebrations folder.

This year our new resources and activities are called "Opening doors "  

 A grand day out

If a picture paints a thousand words .....

Celebrating "International Literacy Day" with links to European Day of Languages

Changing faces and creative PopArt challenge

Celebrating Roald Dahl Day and linking this to European Day of Languages

Bouquets of greetings for European Day of Languages

Klee facial expressions and flap faces

 Open the language door!

Oh and if you are network members then take a look at the work we did on launching aspirations and making and flying kites. The resource pack for whole school activities is called "Let's go fly a kite" 

Monet colour cathedrals

building map of target language country and adding to it as you find out more.jpg

During the holidays I happened to read a book about Monet and was taken by the fact that he painted Rouen cathedral 28 times between 1892 and 1893. He captured the cathedral in different lights and at different times of day. 

Perfect link between Art and language learning here! 

  • Locate the cathedral on Google Maps. Go on a real time tour of the area and the cathedral with Google Maps.Explore pictures and photographs of the actual cathedral. 
  • Take a look at some of the different picture Monet painted of the cathedral. Share these on a screen and give the children limited time to write down colours in either English or the target language that they see in the pictures.
  • Give the children time to compile a written target language list of all the colours and to check or look up colours in bilingual dictionaries.
  • Take verbal feedback of the colours from the children and record these on the flip chart.
  • Give children a blank piece of paper and ask the children to create a colour word cathedral of their own.Ask the children to build their own colour cathedrals using all the colours they noticed in Monet's pictures,from the bottom of the building up to the top, in an order they feel best fits the size and shape of the building.This activity will work best if they can use coloured pencils and pens to match the target language words.
  • Ask the children when they have finished their colour wordbuildings to now add similes for each colour. Let the children look at Monet's paintings again to inspire these simple similies using the key word "comme" e.g. bleu comme le ciel etcetra.
  • The children can then create a list of their similes and create their own similie word sculptures of the cathedral .
  • Colour word cathedrals and simile word sculptures can then be used to create a class display 

Coordinators' Checklists

checklist.jpeg

Month by month "Coordinators' Checklists "!As valid this year as last!

Last year ,month by month ,I wrote a series of "Coordinators' checklist" blog posts to help with the academic year's roll out of effective primary language teaching and learning.The blog posts were written for all coordinators and teachers in charge of language teaching and also offer specific guidance to coordinators able to access our own network resources too.

First week back, coordinators' checklist (Sept)

Coordinators' October Checklist 

Coordinators' November Checklist

Coordinators' December Checklist

Coordinators' January Checklist

Coordinators' February Checklist

Coordinators' March Checklist

Coordinators' April checklist

Coordinators' May Checklist

Box of Wonders

Treasure from travels 1.JPG

Getting ready to meet your new class? Creating your new roleplay areas and setting up your reading corners? Here is a resource that all teachers could create for their classess no matter what level their own foreign language skills. A box of wonders!

Remember how tiny some of your young language learners are. Don't forget that for some of them their worlds are built around their families, their street, their local area ....Others bring a world of experiences to your class.Let's broaden their horizons and share experiences.

Why not begin to make a "box of wonders" for your classroom and your new classes this next year? The box will make a great "talking about" resource too.Remember it's the touchy , feely actually looking at,exploring and investigating for ourselves moments that sometimes stay as clear memories.Nothing therefore is too small or too silly - think out of the box and think about things that the children may be interested in.

A box that the children can independently explore,kept in the role play or reading area.A box for quiet time or an activity for those who finish work  early etcetra. A box that you can occasionally bring out and share as a class activity ,linked to a cross curricular theme e.g foods, cities, buildings, rhymes , stories from around the World etc...... 

Start building your box of wonders from items you may not even realise you already have at home, have access to on the internet and maybe already in your school...

My box of wonders would contain....

  • Birthday cards
  • Maps of cities, countries, continents
  • A globe
  • Old passports
  • Tickets - for travel/ planes/ trains/ buses
  • Food wrappings with  other languages written on them
  • Photos of shops in our own town that have writing in other languages and scripts
  • Magazine and newspaper front pages- I will be putting in my box my Winnie Puuh German magazine, my old Okapi and Astrapi French magazines , my son's Spanish football magazines etcetra
  • Pictures of famous people from other countries- singers, sports stars, people from history
  • Traditional dress pictures and items - may even add my own (quite old) traditional Welsh dress doll
  • Pictures of famous monuments and items- I even have a small Eiffel tower that I would put in my box of wonders and a toy Merzedes car , a beret, an apron with World foods on it, a german Didl , minerals from Mount Vesuvius, dutch clogs,model Lufthansa plane, my Nepalese beads ....etcetra
  • Holiday pictures/ photos of views etc-
  • Pictures of foods
  • Pictures of sports from around the world
  • Postcards from other countries
  • Familiar stories in other languages books
  • Printed off fronts covers f books that are familiar in different languages
  • A CD with sounds of other languages - maybe a familiar song in lots of languages
  • Target language DVD sleeves of familiar films 

And what could the children contribute to the box of wonders too....? A treasure chest that could grow and grow.





Sent from my iPhone

  

Back to school coordinators checklist

checklist (1).jpg

Before you start to organise resources , planning and tracking tools for language learning this next academic year in school please make sure you take a look at our NEW Ready Made French and Spanish SOW on the PLN VLE .I think it will be a much easier way to organise year by year learning.

Network members have access  to the VLE using their unique username and password. We can send you a reminder of this if you email us directly here .Contact us . All staff in school can have access to this username and password.

Just in case you want to check what is on offer on the VLE then here is a previous blog post describing the tools the VLE and the SOW and resources for schools.

The user files on the VLE are your own independent and private sharing area where you can customise and share the academic year's language learning experience   

Here is a brief summary of the resources we think that you should have organised and be ready to stick in to books, put on the school intra-net or share in staff room, in the userfiles or as classroom display at the start pf the academic year.All these documents are accessible in the New Ready Made SOW. Take a look through the bullet point list here:

Go on to the VLE. Select the quick link to the Ready Made SOW we have put in your "favourites" area.

Take a look on the New Ready Made SOW for French and Spanish and on the oveview table you will find a "planning" section at the bottom of each year group's column.

Here you can find and then clipboard to userfiles and year groups' folder or download and print:

  • Pupils' language learning and year group specific exercise book covers
  • French or Spanish marking code sheets (one per child's exercise book)
  • How we learn French /Spanish powerpoint slide - for eiethr you classroom wall, your own intra-net languages' page or  individual prints offs for exercise books
  • AfL clouds - one per term per year group for children's reference and to be completed by the children as they progress through the Ready Made SOW. (The word document means you can enlarge or amend the bubbles and content)
  • SOW content medium term planning sheet for you teacher's folder and/or to share with parents on the intra-net
  • Tracking sheet with content,phonics, grammar , assessments and DfE Attainment Target tracking - one sheet per class and specific sheets for each year group - as teacher record and guide of progress of the class
  • Assessment folder with Puzzle It Outs, listening sound files and transcripts and also reading texts and transcripts. Plus a spreadsheet per class to record progress.

 

Anyone for word tennis?

•       Work in pairs 

•       Create a set of 20 small cards with prompt pictures or words in English on them that you have learned this year in primary languages.

•       Swap sets of cards with another pair.

•       Create a paper tennis court for you both to play word tennis upon .

•       Draw the tennis court lay out- you need   two front boxes and a back box each plus a net in between.

•       Each player numbers their own back box on the court with a number "6" and the front two boxes with any number of your choice between 1 and 5.

•       You will need a dice and a set of prompt cards- made up of colours, days, months, fruits, animals -either prompt pictures or English word prompts.

•       The tennis match lasts 10 minutes. Time this on a watch.

•       Each player rolls the dice and needs a 6 to start. 

•       When the player rolls a "6" then the player can then select two cards from the pile of prompt cards and try to say or write down in the target language the words prompted by the cards.

•       If the player can complete the spoken or written task correctly then the player keeps the cards.

•       Otherwise the cards get passed across the net to the other player and this player can have a go at saying or writing the target language. 

•       Once each player has rolled the first "6" then when it is the player’s turn to roll the dice, if the dice lands on a “6” pick up two cards and try to answer the prompts.

•       If the dice lands on one of the numbers in that players front boxes on the court then the player who rolls it can pick up on card and try to say or write it in the target language.   

Winner is the player with the most cards at the end of the match.

 

What is the Ready Made KS2 SoW?

1.The Ready Made French and Spanish SoW are accessible via our Primary Languages Network VLE. It has been created for both non-specialist and specialist teachers of languages. So what is the VLE ? The VLE is a virtual learning environment that allows everyone using our materials and services to keep in touch and to share and network plus we can update our materials and resources immediately and continue to build upon the good practice a nd resources we share.The video below will explain more about the VLE and it also explains the tools of the Ready Made SOW iwhich is hosted on the VLEand how this works.

Interested? Well we offer three types of membership: teacher membership , online membership  for schools which includes webinar CPD and premium school membership.which includes local contact and face to face meetings.

2. In Ready Made SOW there are lesson plans from Year 3 Autumn 1 through to Year 6 Summer 2.All lesson plans have been tried and tested and checked, revised and added to with the help of our associate PLN language teachers , who teach over 10,000 children per week in KS1 and KS2.Specialists and non-specialists can use these are the back bone of their language teaching and learning or as a platform upon whihc to build their own creative approaches.

3.Every lesson plan has maximum 3 activities. Each activity has the main DfE Attainment Target addressed by the activity and the appropriate age and stage skill level learning objective (linked to KS2 Framework).All lesson plans have direct links to the basic resources required so that teachers can deliver the core three activities on every lesson plan, no matter what level they are in the target language.

 

4.The VLE allows you  to clipboard, download and print from any document including lesson plans and resources from the Ready Made SOW, so you can organise planning as required by school.Your Userfiles on the VLe act as a great storage space for clipbiarded materials and this means that you can share these with all your school if you are an online or premium member.

4.In each  half term section from Y3 Aut 1 to Y6 Sum 2 there will be maxmum seven lessons (approximatley 40-45 minutes per lesson if recommended) with a core theme and a maximum of three sub-sections or themes that fit easily with the age,stage and whole school primary curriculum. 

5. Each sub section has a pick and mix variety of options to enhance the basic lesson planning. In the Activities and Resources section you will find activities folder with age and stage appropriate resources and materials addressing the DfE 12 ATs and progression in skills. grammar focus folder, assessment folder with the half termly Puzzle It Out sheets for the 4 core skillslistening and reading transcripts and the assessment benchmarks (based on the Common European Framework descriptors

7. The Listening and Responding folder contains listening tools to support the development of listening skills for example: “Sounds Like” native speaker key phonics power points and the listening podcasts with user guides and transcripts to encourage the exploration of more challenging listening skills.

8. The native speaker folder is where you will find the C’est Emilie or Es Irene clips. Great for non-specialist and specialist teachers to bring a new native speaker in to the classroom and to observe the children responding to and practising the language.

9. Both the podcasts and the native speaker clips have “How to use “ PDFs with ways to use the materials to practise the core language or to be more creative and develop your own radio re cordings or video performances.

10. The phonics folder suggests a simple tracking activity per half term to check children’s developing understanding of sound spelling links

11. The writing folders contain the writing sheets to allow all children to practise the written form of the language they have spent time practising in a creative way. Plus the Talk and Write folders (3 per year) contain the stage by stage structure to creative and independent writing where children move away from the core language and explore how to manipulate text to tell their own stories. 

12. Our language support for non-specialists is comprehensive and the key phrases and sound files are accessible in this area.There are key phrases and sound files plus we have created power points with sound files , one slide per sound file to allow your teachers to practise specific core language too.These powerpoints can be used with classes fpr listening games and activities too.

13. The enhanced learning section offers you ideas and ways to create outstanding approaches to learning from the blogposts of the themes that Janet has written, to the snapshots of lessons by the associate PLN teachers that we have recorded, to the examples (photos) of work done by the network schools, to possible APPs you can use to develop the language learning and visual display you can download and use in the classroom.

14.We have a grammar focus folder in each section where appropriate and we offer an assessment folder with the half termly Puzzle It Out sheets for the 4 core skills plus listening and reading transcripts and the assessment benchmarks (based on the Common European Framework descriptors) should your school wish to formally assess.

15. Should you want to step away from the core curriculum then our creative alternatives sections allow you the chance to link learning across the curriculum: art, dance, music, history, geography etcetra. So you can for example swap animals to dinosaurs, daily routine to the daily routine of prehistoric man , take a step down memory lane with schools and subjects, explore castles rather than everyday house and home.

16. Each year group has a planning section, specific to the year group. This contains the tools the teacher requires to successfully plan for a year’s learning at the appropriate age and stage.Here you will find the class tracker sheets, the spreadsheets for assessment data, medium term planning , grammar and transitional language overviews , long term planning, teacher guidance and support on grammar and structure, reporting to parent tools etcetra.....

17.The Ready Made SOW continues to grow and we will be adding to the above areas as we explore and find more ways that teachers require support or that can engage children in creative purposeful learning in primary languages.