A bouquet of greetings for European Day of Languages!

Just been out for coffee and have bought this origami flower from the charity box on the coffee shop counter.Brilliant idea for back to school and strating language learning again for the year or also for European Day of Languages.

Take a look at the flower head below and the ideas it made me think about!This is where the activity starts! 

Each child needs a printed small map of the target language country- as this is what the flower head is created from and a green straw or a stick covered in coloured paper.

I have a found a tutorial step by step guide to making the flowers here 

Craftus Paper Flower Bouquet

Below is my ideas for the language classroom,using these origami flowers on European Day of Languages.

Make a class bouquet of flowers for European Day of Languages.

• First take a look at a map of Europe
• Identify countries and languages spoken.
• Practise greetings in different target languages
• Give each  child a square piece of paper map print out of Europe.Ask the children to write five favourite target language greetings in or next to the country where the target language greeting is used.
• Create the folded flowers .
• Now you have a class bouquet of greetings from European countries!
• You could do something very similar with a map of the world or a map of a continent e.g Africa where lots of European languages are spoken.

(I think that we could use this idea just as effectively at the start of the year , as an opportunity with UKS2 to look at a map of the target language country. We could then ask the children to write on the reverse of the map as many words/ or a selection of their favourite words that they can remember from last year's language learning.The children can make their flowers and take them home to give to a parent or carer and to announce that they are learning a language again this year on school!) 

Making a statement to describe jobs and roles in the future with Year 6 leavers

As our KS2 Year 6 get ready to leave primary school, next half term could be a wonderful time to ask them to reflect on what they want to be in the future.

It is also a time to celebrate what they can now do in a foreign language. 

Last week in Spain I found this wonderful book and it gave me an idea about how we can could create similar books with our Y6 language learners in all languages! 

They can demonstrate  how they can now use a bilingual dictionary to access the language they want to use.They can show how they can manipulate simple sentence stucture , nouns and present tense verbs too!

The book is made up of pictures of different types of people.You can see four characters on the front of the book .
As a concept itself it's a brilliant book- just to read and have fun reading and muddling up the sentences with the children on Spanish 

However the concept translates really well in to language work on sentence structure in any language.On each double page spread there is a bright colourful caricature picture of a type of person (pirate/cook/clown etc) and on the left hand page of the double page spread, the page is divided in to three sections and each section can be turned over individually.

The top section is the statement about the character (present tense of the verb to be in first perspn singylar e.g I am / soy / je suis /ich bin ) plus the noun  for the character (e.g. pirate / cowboy etc)

The middle section is the verb in the first person singular present tense associated with the character's actions ( e.g. cowboy - I ride   / cook - I prepare etc) plus the noun that is linked to the action ( e.g cowboy- I ride - my horse  / coook - I prepare - the meal) .

The third section is about where the character's actions take place (e.g. cook- in the kitchen/ in the restaurant etc)

(Turn over one of the three sections and the sentence  is correct grammatically -but the meaning becomes slightly odd or bizarre.That is part of the beauty of the book!)

I think we can use the idea of the double page spread though to create our own entertaining end of our primary school career book .
Each child needs to generate their own three section statement to explain what they want to be when they grow up.It's a description of the job, the role and the objects/people /place involved in the role.

Section one - first person singular of the verb to be and the appropriate nooun for the role or job chosen
Section two - present tense first person singular verb associated with an action involved in the role or the job plus a noun representing an object or person connected to the actipon
Section three - the place the action takes place

e.g"  I am a doctor/ and I help the patients/ in the hospital " 

• All we need to do now is create a large card book with double page spreads for each child in the class. The children draw a caricature on paper of the role or job they have chosen.This is glued on to the right hand side of the double page spread.
• The children then write their messages in the three sections which have been ruled  off on the left hand side of the double page spread.
• Once the book is complete all you need to do is cut to the centre fold the three sections along the ruled lines .

Now we have our own book! 

We can read it as it should be read or see also what types of entertaining sentences we can make by turning individual sections and understanding the new information  we read!

People Pillar Portrait Poem

I am looking for really easy and effective ways to create writing opportunities with young learners who are working out how to use nouns and the relationship between nouns and adjectives in the target language.
For all the ideas you need a picture stimulus and bilingual dictionaries and card strips  to write down their people pillar portrait poems .
i think that this activity would work  really well to for a Father's Day focus, for a Year 6 leavers focus on what describes  a Year 7 "ready to learn" new starter etc .... the potential is almost limitless

Stage One  
Focus on one masculine singular noun and a stimulus picture e.g "un clown"

• Ask the children to look up and cross reference adjectives to describe a clown
• Are there any adjectives that the children need to write in French before the noun- talk about these first!
• Ask the children on rough paper to write the adjective in the correct position next to the noun in a list - therefore you repeat thre noun"clown" and write a different adjective next to the noun each time.

Un clown amusant,

un clown actif,

un grand clown,

un clown .........,

...................

• The children can now make your first "people pillar portrait poem".All they need to do is to write their list written in rough on to the card strip. 
• Create plasticine or blu-tac feet for the card strip and add clown heads to the pillars.

Stage Two 

Focus on a feminine singular noun and a stimulus picture e.g. "une reine" 

Ask the children to look up and cross reference adjectives to describe a queen.

Ask the children to anticipate the familiar changes that they can remember to the spelling of the adjectives if they are being written next to a feminine noun

Explore the spelling of unfamiloar adjectives and find the feminine ending spelling 

Are there any adjectives that the children need to write in French before the noun- talk about these first!

Ask the children on rough paper to write the adjective in the correct position next to the noun in a list - therefore you repeat thre noun " reine"  and write a different adjective next to the noun each time.

Une belle reine, 

une reine magnifique,

une  petite reine,

une reine.....

...............

• The children can now make your second "people pillar portrait poem".All they need to do is to write their list written in rough on to a new card strip. 
• Attach the new card strip to the  plasticine or blu-tac feet  so that the card strips for the clown and the queen are back to back.Add  a queen's clown head to the new card pillar.

Stage Three 

• Ask the children to find their own two nouns -one masculine and one feminine.The nouns should represent people or professions.
• Ask the children to create their own people pillar poems and challenge the children to try to use some of the same adjectives to describe both the masculine and feminine nouns.
• This will allow the children to make comparisopns on spelling of the adjectives when being used with a masculine or feminine singular noun.

Making the activity 3D

Clare Seccombe and I have been busy challengimng each other to take ideas we have generated or found and add a twist.Recently I challenged clare to create a 3D version of the People Pillar Portrait Poem. The challenge was successfu; and here is Clare's blpog post response....

3D People Pillar Portrait Poem

Under the sea fish puppet and triarama performance

A while back,a colleague of mine, Clare Seccombe sent me this triarama picture of "under the sea" and I added it to one of my Pinterest boards  Janet's Language Learning.She was interested to know how I would use this triarama to create a piece of spoken performance and/or drama!Well here we go ....!

It is an ideal " under the sea" triarama for our Seaside project as part of our DFE funded WTSA/ JLN project.Find out more here Language Learning for Everyone and li ks really well with our other Seaside "fishy" ideas.

The triarama you can see in the picture is from a www.crayola.com blog post on colourful sea anenomes. You can find the instructions here in this blog on how to make the physical triarama.

My ideas below link this 3D triarama to the story book and the adjectives used to describe fish in this wonderful book: 

Setting the scene

1. Read the story book to the class in French or German and share the wonderful drawings or create your own drawings and creative your own fishy emotion phrases in Spanish .Have a look at the blog post here to get a feel for the book and the ideas I have already written about.Fishing for feelings
2. First create one large class triarama of an under the sea picture.Here is my class backdrop triarama.

Now let's focus on the adjectives.....

1. Adjectives add colour to nouns and give nouns character.Look at the sea anenome in the centre of the triarama at the top of the blog post, that's so colourful! 
2. On strips of coloured card as the children to write the phrase "I am ....+  an adjective  that describes a specific  emotion - in the target language.Ask them to select a piece of  coloured card strip that they think conveys the meaning e.g red - angry , green- calm, yellow- happy , blue - sad etcetra. 
3. Now ask the children to concertina their card strips with the written phrases on them,to make a sea anenome in the centre of your class "Under the sea " triarama".

Time to practise "performance".

1. Invite children to the front to select a coloured strip from our sea anenome and to mime the emotion that they can read and understand on the coloured strip.Can the class guess the  emotion?  
2. Now we need to add the fish and build a performance.Ask the children to work in pairs and to create four fish characters of their own.Each fish needs a colour, a fantastical fish name and an emotion.Each fish needs a character conveyed by the way the speech bubble information is delivered
3. For example here is a fish I have just made ......how would you convey the colour,emotion and name?

The grand class "under the sea"  performance!

1. Ask the children to work on their tables (project tables would be best here so that we have a fair range of language speaking and writing ability on each table).The children on the table must  display all the fish characters and speech bubbles they have created.Each of the other children now selects a fish character to present in the class "under the sea" performance.
2. They must attach their selected fish and speech bubble to a puppet stick, practise the way the fish sounds and moves and learn their lines!
3. Invite each group with their fish to the front to use the class triarama stage set as their "under the sea" back drop for their "fish" performance!(Remember the fish puppet stick must have the fish and the speech bubble at the bottom of the stick as the child puppeteer will operate the fish from behind and above the triarama stage set) 

"Who are you?" and scarecrow caricatures of "I am....".

A few years ago on holiday in France , we drove in to a small bastide to find a very special festival taking place! A celebration of the local jobs and shops in the village! What a gift to a teacher of foreign languages .
Every shop keeper had created a full size caricature version of him or herself and his/her role in the village! 
These pictures allow us to practise and  consolidate children's knowledge of  the first person and second person singular of the verb "to be".

Scarecrow caricatures 
Take a look here!
Can you spot the baker,hotelier, butcher (!!!),pharmacist and doctor?

Take the pose!

• Share the pictures with your class.Can they decide what jobs they might do in a town or village?
• Do they know the names of the jobs in English? Can they find the names in a bilingual dictionary in the target language.What might they notice about jobs in the target languages - is there a different word for a male or a female person with that job title? What do they think about this? Do they think this is a good idea?
• Ask them to find some new nouns for jobs in the target language using the dictionaries- are there male and female versions here too?
• Write up on the flip-chart all the nouns you have found.Can the children "take the role" and in a voice which reflects the job they do  e.g mixing the dough or slicing the meat ,carrying heavy suitcases or looking carefully at medicine ,can they practise full sentence spoken introductions of each of the people and their jobs. The children will be using the first singular of the verb to do this (I am .....)

Guided scarecrow caricature tour of the town

• Now let's try adding "Who are you?" and begin to conjugate the verb "to be" 
• Ask children to volunteer to be a character  and help create a "scarecrow caricature tour" of the town.
• Each volunteer  must think of an action representing the job you give them (If you can get hold of  the dressing up box from KS1 then they can get in to character with an item of clothing or a prop too). 
• Can they take the pose?
• Can they create the voice - what do the characters sound like? 
• Can they add an action?
• Can they put it altogether and become the scarecrow caricature?
• Can the rest of the class ask as a choral question of each scarecrow  caricature in turn..."Who are you?"

Scarecrow caricatures

• Can the children design their a scarecrow sculpture of one of the people you may find working in a town.Can they add the written question "Who are you? and the full sentence response "I am ....." ?      

Elmer Explorers with KS1 and LKS2,listening,speaking and writing

I am busy thinking of ideas for World Book Day and as Elmer is one of the books that children will receive,I decided that this was an ideal focus for our KS1 and also KS2 Year 3.It is also an ideal opportunity to share with students I train how we link across curriculum areas and can take one focus and develop primary language learning games,songs, role-play and our own writing opportunities - if we just think out of the box a little! 

Dressing Elmer with KS1!

With KS1 , we can practise our colours and our colour question"Which colour is it?" with a dice game where we roll the dice and say the question together and then the colour  the die lands on.

Now we can add a patch to our class Elmer( who as you can see is colourless at the moment!)  

Going on a colour hunt with KS1 and Year 3

We can pretend to be jungle explorers and hunt round our classroom for coloured elephants.With KS1 let's play "hot and cold" and hide coloured  card cut outs of elephants.

With KS2 Year 3 let's make it an Elmer treasure hunt and hide our multi coloured elmers around the room and ask two volunteers at a time to follow simple instructions to find the coloured Elmers (left ,right , straight ahead, turn around, stop , hot and cold).The class can hide the elephants and then help you call the directions as the two volunteers look for the elephants.  

Singing an Elmer song

We have found a great Elmer song in French.,

Here are the French words

French

E.L.M.E.R. je m’appelle Elmer.

E.L.M.E.R. et puis j’en suis fier.

De tout le troupeau je suis le plus beau,

l’éléphant le plus elegant.

Je suis bariolé de la tête aux pieds

Tout le  monde me reconnaît

E.L.M.E.R. je m’appelle Elmer.

E.L.M.E.R. et puis j’en suis fier.

Être différent c’est parfois pesant

je voudrais comme mes amis

être un éléphant qui de temps en temps deviendrait simplement tout gris.

E.L.M.E.R. je m’appelle Elmer.

E.L.M.E.R. et puis j’en suis fier.

E.L.M.E.R. je m’appelle Elmer.

E.L.M.E.R. et puis j’en suis fier.

Chaque année pour fêter la fin de l’été

Tout le monde se deguisait,

Bariolés, decorés furent mes amis et moi je me suis peint en gris

E.L.M.E.R. je m’appelle Elmer.

E.L.M.E.R. et puis j’en suis fier.

and here is the clip we found ......

Elmer Explorer Roleplays

Finally what about with KS2 Year 3 or Year 4 some Elmer totem pole prompt sticks for an Elmer role-play?

You can find out more about the totem pole prompt sticks and their general use

here

Here is an example of my Elmer totem pole prompt stick- one between two .It's a coliumn of four picture prompts.

You will also need rolled tubes with a letter box cut in it,so you can feed the totem pole prompt stick through slowly and look at each picture.This is the "Elmer explorer" telescope.

Each partner takes in turns to be the "Elmer explorer" and with their "jungle telescope " as they feed the totem pole prompt stick through the tube , they can ask a specific question of their partner.The partner looks through the binoculars , see the picture and uses this to help them form their response to the question. 

With these Elmer totem pole prompt sticks, the cue pictures invite us to ask:

What are you called?  (I am called Elmer)

Where do you live? (in the jungle)

What colours are you?  (opportunity for lots of colours here)

And one final question is one to be made up by the totem pole prompt stick holder- hence the question mark... (This could be age, personality , likes, dislikes .....)

Elmer mini books and describing things in writing

Now let's bring together all this work in our own mini book.I just followed this 

You Tube Origami mini book clip

 and created the book I needed.

Firstly I used familiar pictures from the totem poles - so the children can write down famiioar phrases and then I added colour clouds so that the children can then write their own colour sentences about Elmer.

The task in itself will be differentiated by outcome - as some children may write short phrases and single words and other children may write sentences , whilst other children may write questions and answers as if it was a story between Elmer and the narrator.

Here are some pictures of my mini book ready to be written in.

Carnival conversations in speaking and writing with triaramas used as stage sets

I am getting ready for the first of several local network meetings where we will look at some of the new POS learning objectives and put these in to real language teaching and learning contexts.

Our theme is "Celebrating Carnival" and our learning objectives look at how a young learners develops the skills of communication in the target language.We are considering how we move from 

asking and answering questions

to 

engaging in conversations
and

 describing people places and things orally and in writing

The activities described below will allow children who are moving on in their language learning - so in their late second,third or fourth year of learning to practise their use of questions and answers and to move on  to possibly develop conversations accurately.

We are basing these activities on our "Aliens at Carnival"  power point where we will investigated the language required to share some simple facts about a target language carnival -(the sounds , the sights,  the fun , the fancy dress etc).

We are going to create stage sets and put our "aliens on the stage" as puppets/ actors, which the teacher and the children can decide to make "live" ( spoken) performances between alien characters or "freeze frames" (written speech bubble) frozen conversations between two characters.

Here is a step by step guide top how I made my "stage set"

I printed off the stage set ,using a slide from our alien ppt.I think you just need to find a similar background colourful picture if you can't access the ppt

I cut the picture down to a square shape,folded the picture  to make the Triarama and inserted a cut from the bottom right hand corner to the centre of the square

With blu -tac(or with glue ) I crossed over the bottom left and right triangle to create the stage in my triarama.

I now printed off the ppt slide a second time, but this time on card and cut out two alien characters that I wanted to talk to each other on my stage set.I made sure that there was a small strip of empty card below their feet , so that I could fold this over and stand the characters upright on set and secure  the characters to the set with blu-tac.Blu-tac  so that I can change the characters and therefore move from questions and answers to a conversation and maybe introduce other characters too and asides and and additional opinions!

And now I thought of the text I wanted to write on two card speech bubbles.These are secured with blu-tac to the characters om the reverse of their heads so that I can change the questions and answers and again create a sequence of questions and answers that would in turn create a dialogue which could lead to a conversation .

Why do I like this and how might I take this further in KS2 learning?

• Well this strikes me a s a learning device that can be used with children in KS2 who know basic questions and answers based around likes and dislikes.
• It's a physical way of developing role plays that can be dynamic and can be changed and questions and answers altered,adapted  or given to other characters   
• It can also be an opportunity to offer more independent speaking and writing opportunities to children to describe people,places and thing and to add opinions  
• There is the opportunity here to set the scene, so one pair writes the speech bubbles and gives these to a second pair.The second pair reconstructs the dialogue using the  characters they have and creates the dynamic conversation using their characters and their triarama  stage set.

And in to KS3?

This could be an opportunity in Y7 to revisit the carnival and look again at the alien story of the carnival , but this time to write a past tense dialogues, asking what was seen, heard, eaten , likes, dislikes etc or a near future dialogue about what the characters are looking forward to seeing etc! 

Getting ready for carnival,being creative and exploring a story based upon le carnaval des animaux

Every year we love carnival! Last year we celebrated with a theme based upon:

"carnaval des animaux-camille st saens"

The theme linked so well with our Y3 focus on animals and teachers found ways to create masks, perform dances linked to the music and to investigate Art and DT - all based on this theme.Truthfully this was a theme and a focus that whole schools took as an opportunity to use as creative shared learning across Music,Dance.Art,DT and Language Learning

We were able too to look at nouns in the singular and plural , to investigate unfamiliar animal nouns using bi-lingual dictionaries and to generate simple question and answer role-plays about animals and descriptions of animals: "What is it? What colour is it? how many can you see? Do you like.....? "

(Teachers decided upon the most appropriate questions and answers for their learners and the prior knowledge of the learners).

i knew about this book "Au carnaval des animaux" by Marianne Dubuc based upon the music by Saint saens and so as a carnival activity, mask making and fancy dress followed quite easily.The book is available in several languages.

We used the book in French and Spanish:

The blog link here gives you a flavour of the book in French Litterature de jeunesse .Simple repetitive story which allows the children to invent their own animal characters. We used  simple cut out cards such as these below, to create our own fantastical fancy dress animal costumes and the cards where ideal for simple "Guess who I am ?" games- where one child holds a card and the other children /or another child has to guess which animals are on the card the first child is holding.

Leads to the children being able to make up the most amazing animal names - combining all the names of the animals they have know in one fancy dress mixed up animal written or spoken description.

And hot off the press just found this brilliant primary unit of work guide for a whole unit of work based around la danse des animaux- useful if you are a French speaker! 

Brilliant ideas

And don't forget the possibilities of a wonderful dance to this famous song! Le livre de la jungle!

Here are some ways that we have in the past developed very simple beginners language learning based on carnival celebrations and the story of au carnaval des animaux  

Jewels in the Crown .Adjectives and sentence writiing

With all our children across KS2 we are introducing them to and reinforcing their use of adjectives.
Making crowns for Epiphany is a great way to remind the children about adjectives and to ask them to use bi-lingual dictionaries to source new adjectives.

• Show the children a picture of the three Kings and look at the crowns they are wearing
• Give out crown templates to the children.
• Talk about the jewels in a crown and how they make the crown special and give the crown a character all of its own. 
• Ask the children to think about adjectives and how they make objects more interesting or give more detail to an object.
• Give each child a crown template
• Make sure there is access to bilingual dictionaries on the tables
• Ask the children to add "jewels" ( adjectives) to their simple crowns that are befitting of a King's crown - below I have explained how this can be an activity for beginners, moving on learners and advanced learners.

Beginners

We have taught our beginner learners some colours - so let's ask the to recall three colours they like the sound of in the target language and fill three big jewels with the letters of the colour word over and over again - written in the correct colour of course.

Ask the children to find three new colours  that they want to create three new jewels from and to make three new jewels on their crowns.

Can they create a written band of the colours at the bottom of their crowns - with the colours written clearly in the target language?

Moving On

With children who can now write simple sentences - noun  verb adjective, let's ask these children to think of their three favourite  colours and fill three big jewels with the letters of the colour word over and over again - written in the correct colour of course.

Ask the children to find three new colours  that they want to create three new jewels from and to make three new jewels on their crowns.

Can they create a written sentence description as their crown band at the bottom of their crown? 

Encourage the children to think about the spelling of the colour because of the gender of the noun - in French it's la couronne, so the children must write for example:

la couronne est bleue,jaune, verte ...........

Now we can have a crown parade - with the children showing their crowns and saying their own specially written descriptive crown colour sentences -in the voices perhaps of majestic Kings and Queens .

Advanced learners

1. Remind the children that adjectives describe objects and brainstorm with them the types of adjectives we may lie to use to describe a magnificent crown.
2. Ask the children to  list in English on their whiteboards 6 interesting descriptive adjectives they want to use for their own crown .
3. Ask them to look up these words in a bilingual dictionary and to practise reading aloud the adjectives.
4. Bring the class back together and ask children to share their adjectives with the class and their meaning.Write these on the flip chart.
5. Discuss with the children how you would say the words on the flip chart .Use our Look!Think!Link and read! prompt to help them
6. Discuss with the children how the endings of the adjectives will have to change because of the gender of the noun "crown " in the target language.In Spanish for example it's la corona 
7. ask the children to select three adjectives from your list on the whiteboard and become jewel designers
8. Ask the children to create jewels as caligrams in a shape and a colour they think depicts the adjectives they have chosen - on rough paper 
9. Talk about the position of adjectives in sentences using nouns
10. Now can they transfer these to their crown templates and as a band at the bottom of their crowns write a statement that says for example in Spanish or in French:

"Me gusteria una corona blanca,grande y .........."

"Je voudrais une grande couronne blanche et ......."

Now you have the perfect crown jewel display and even a class vote on the best crowns of the day!

 

Autumn and a walk in the park

Over the next couple of weeks in primary school you will be busy getting ready with children to celebrate harvest time and Autumn. We celebrate Autumn in our SOW and it's a great way to practise simple familiar and useful language.

It's also this year going to be one of the ways we practise directions in the target language.With Year 5 we practise directions and finding our way to places just after October half term . On Twitter these sensory gardens caught my eye ,made by 5AWB at William Barcroft Junior School @5AWBJunior   !

Why well in LKS2 we take our children on Autumn walks and practise simple action poems and rhymes. 

In Year 5  these sensory gardens could become Autumn walks and Autumn open spaces 3D maps

We can create our "spooky" autumn walks " with lift the leaf flaps to find our "spooky characters" or our Autumn treasure hunts to find the hidden treasures or woodland characters!

1. Each child creates their own 3D Autumn gardens/parks.walks 
2. Each child hides pictures of woodland characters or spooky characters underneath or inside items on their maps.
3. The children will be practising prepositions and directions as part of their town and city focus so all they will be doing is transferring this knowledge to a new and more creative language learning opportunity! 
4. Each child writes  simple directions for another child to follow to find the hidden characters.

How successful they are will be assessed by the children who read the directions and locate the hidden characters!