Klee facial expression flap phrases and picture gallery

I love Paul Klee and the way he uses building blocks of colour in his Art to convey emotion and meaning.... so what an ideal artist to use to allow the children to create their own "facial expression" art work .

I suggest that you use this picture, Senecio:

This Art and writing lesson follows on from the lesson blog post I posted  

Universal facial expressions ,emotions and different languages

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We will be using the ideas in both these blog posts to celebrate Euroepan Day of Languages 2015.

Additional resources and lessons guides are available on the VLE  for the Janet Lloyd Network

1. Revisit emotions, facial expressions and target language phrases the children can say that add "sound and language" to the emotion.
2. You could hold a "physical face display " here with a card picture frame that the children use, by holiding up and using their face and the emotion and target language phrase to fill the picture frame and become the picture.You will need to model this first.
3. Take a look with the class at Klee's picture "Senecio"
4. Ask the children to follow Klee's model and to draw a picture of  the outline of a face.
5. Give the children coloured card or paper and ask the children to add blocks of colour made from the card on the face .
6. Each block of colour represents an emotion and acts as a flap under which the child draws a symbol or face to represent the emotion and writes the appropriate target language or target languages phrase linked to the emotion.
7. Create a class display of "Klee facial expression flap phrases and pictures"

Aspects of winter in French poems and flights of the imagination

It's getting cold outside and I am certain that when we come back to school after Christmas we will be talking with the children about wintry weather, wrapping up warm and maybe even building snowmen.

Today I found this poem on this web page www.mespetitsbonheurs.com and thought that this would make a great poem to use in UKS2 and Y7. 

Les glaçons

Les glaçons qui pendent du toit

Dis-moi, c'est de la glace à quoi ?

Elle n'a pas de couleur,

Elle n'a pas de goût,

Elle n'a pas d'odeur,

Elle n'a rien du tout !

Alors, c'est de la glace à quoi,

Les glaçons qui pendent du toit ?

Corinne Albaut

• What attracted me to the poem was the idea of icicles hanging from the roof of a house and the questions it caused the poet to ask about what is ice ......
• I like the way the poet makes statements that ask questions but he/she doesn't give answers and suggests that the readers can make up their own answers.
• I like the way we can use the text to look at the negative form of the verb and there is potential to investigate the use of more descriptive verbs to replace "avoir"

Let's focus on colour,scent and taste of the icicles in the poem.
We will focus our imaginations on these three negative verbal sentences in the poem:

Elle n'a pas de couleur,

Elle n'a pas de goût,

Elle n'a pas d'odeur,

1. Read the poem with the children and locate the negative forms of the verb "elle n'a pas".Can they see the cognates and semi cognates used as nouns? (couleurs/odeur)? What do they think "goût" might mean? 
2. Now let's investigate ice.Using ice cubes is the poet correct? If we look closely can see any colour in them?Is there any scent to them? What do the ice cubes taste of? 
3. Now ask them to help you to create a magical Winter Wonderland scene( you can link this to Frozen the film for example, Narnia or the original story of the Snow Queen ).Ask the children to create magical icicles.......
4. Give out paper icicle shapes and ask the children working on their tables to write their ideas on their icicle shapes and create magical winter wonderland icicles

• icicles made up of magical colours,
• icicles containing magical scents  
• icicles with tastes and flavours. 

(You will need to remind children of how we linked scents and taste to work on ice cream flavours for example)

Now the children can recreate the poem and with your help can change the three negative statements which use avoir to positive statements e.g "elle n'a pas de couleur" becomes "elle a de couleur"

They can now add the information about their own magical icicles to make their magical winter wonderland poems following the writing template below:

Les glaçons qui pendent du toit

Dis-moi, c'est de la glace à quoi ?

Elle a de couleur,
.............................................

Elle a de goût,
.............................................
Elle a d'odeur,
................................................

Les glaçons qui pendent du toit ?

You now have your poems and your icicles for a magical Winter wonderland display or story book.

les coquelicots et les bleuets

It's 100 years since the start of the First World War and many of you will be thinking of ways to commemorate the event.
This is a real opportunity to combine target language learning and cultural understanding.Thanks to the language coordinator at St Philips CE in Warrington , Sam Snodgrass and her very simple an effective idea to generate class displays of poppies as word art (there is an example below)

I have taken this idea and created some other simple language learning opportunities.

La valse des coquelicots  is a music and picture clip of fields of poppies- just beautiful to watch and share with your classes and explain the significance of fields of poppies.An opportunity to create a dance performance too.You will be able to use this clip as a creative backdrop to some of the activities below too.......

Les coquelicots et les bleuets

In France ,people remember the 11 November with both poppies (les coquelicots) and also cornflowers (les bleuets).
Why not create both word art poppies and word art cornflowers ( blue petals and yellow centres) for a mixed display- just simple flowers likes Sam's flowers above?

And here is also an opportunity to look at the people behind the flowers and the remembrance too and to create a display that thinks about the people and what happened to the people during the first world War. How?

Well let's create a display of people represented each time by a flower either one of les coquelicots et one of les bleuets

• Talk with your class about the families and the impact on families during the First World War.
• Share with the children pictures of people from the period- children,women,men,soldiers.The pictures in this video below gives children the sense of life for the soldiers and the women and children of Paris during the first World War .You could use the clip and pause the clip on a specific picture from which the children can then take their inspiration and select a person to write about. Each table is responsible to create a family unot of people

• Ask the children to work in pairs and to create the character of the person behind the picture. Can they give the person an age, a role in the family (e.g mum,dad etc), a profession if the person is an adult and can they decide if the person is a soldier.) 
• Give each child a flower to create either a poppy or a cornflower. For each flower ask the children to generate a face of the member of the family,drawn as a free sketch from the photo of the person   from which they have created their character.This is the centre of the flower
• Around the centre they must draw four flower petals and in each petal in the link colour (so poppies read and cornflowers blue pen) ask the children to write a fact about the face - name/ age / profession/ role in the family.  
• Why not take the music from la valse des coquelicots and play this as gentle background music whilst the children share their flowers and the personalities they have created with other members of the class.They simply walk around and quietly share their target language information whilst the music plays in the background.
• And now you have your display- just add the photos of the people as a background and over the top add the flowers your children have created as a mixture of the poppies and the cornflowers in a field of remembrance!

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Beginning with languages blog 2

Across our network we work with schools who are all at different stages of setting up and delivering primary language learning and each year we welcome new schools who want to set off on their own individual school's language learning journey.

This year these specific "Beginning with languages " blogs will try to offer "bite size chunks" of indirect help and support to schools, who are doing exactly that .... just setting off and implementing  a language learning curriculum .In September I wrote Beginning with languages blog 1"

In the first blog there was a checklist for the coordinator or teacher leading out the new primary language teaching as follows:

Sept - Oct (first half term) Checklist

• It's all about establishing a whole school support system for all your staff
• It's about small steps and simple language learning
• It's about children and staff beginning to enjoy language learning

Add a new checklist bullet point!

• So how are you all getting on? How do you know that primary languages are being implemented in all the classes and are the teachers and children having fun in their learning? 

Maybe the suggestions below will help you to see what progress is being made and also encourage the staff to try out creative activities to add a touch of Art , performance, song and fun!

Whole staff engagement and sharing success with parents!

Well it's October now and you will be in to your second month of primary language learning in school and maybe it's time to promote what all of you have been doing in your language learning in a school assembly.Or maybe school has space for a whole school display to celebrate the language learning that has been taking place? 

A whole school sharing and celebration of what you have already achieved !

So why not take the opportunity to link the learning  in the classroom to a common whole school focus before half term?

This half term you have probably been focusing upon greetings, names , feelings and possibly numbers and colours.

Here are some really simple ways that colleagues have created display and activities with their classes with limited language, which you could adopt or adapt! 

A collage map of the target language country by children  in each class for the classroom door- to say we learn about this country and its' language in our class this year!

Hold a "swap the greetings " week. During the week challenge your teachers and their classes to use the correct greeting for the time of day.Maybe the children could greet each other around the school and what about adding a question and answer about how they are feeling to - no matter which child or age group and don't forget the staff too!Put the greetings on display in each classroom and possibly in the corridor too and invite your classes to try to use a different greeting in the morning, in the afternoon and at the end of the day.Here are some French examples

Use puppets to create puppet shows of greetings ,name question and answer and farewell phrases.Great idea for a class or whole school assembly by UKS2 for younger children.

Don't forget some AfL and also an opportunity for the children to reflect what they have already achieved. Maybe there is an opportunity for simple personal reports by older children to take home for parents and carers to share what they have been doing during this first half term of language learning

Linking simple language learning to schools celebrations of Autumn

Try some autumn themed games and activities with the simpler language you have learnt or are practising . Have a read of this Autumn blog about numbers,colours, leaves etc and share some of the ideas with your colleagues.

Set yourselves an end of half term whole school singing challenge!

Why not take up the challenge to have a go at a song in the target language. Listening and practising the words you can hear in the clips we suggest and adding actions and performance too!Learn a whole school song to celebrate Autumn and provide your teachers with an appropriate sound file and clip to help them.

Once you have set a date for a whole school assembly,the classes can practise the song until they can sing along confidently with the clip!

In French........

In Spanish

In German

 Beginning to keep evidence 

Whatever you do don't forget to take some photos and clips so that you can begin to create your own school portfolio of evidence as you go along on this language learning journey, ready to set up a sharing with parents' area on your school VLE etc.

Autumn celebrations and a touch of creativity

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.

Here is my second blog on ways to in corporate Autumn in to your language teaching this half term.My first blog are simple word games and activities that all staff and language learners can take part in from beginners to learners who are moving on.Take a look here.Autumn celebrations blog one


The incredible harvest of fruits and vegetables! 
This is a an activity to get the children practising using adjectives with nouns and also to start thinking out of the box with primary languages.
A few days ago I saw this! White strawberries!

The idea is simple.
Ask the children to design a bush with magical powers that can create fruits in fantastical/ unusual colours. Ask the children to draw and label their fruits and then to share their ideas in a spoken dialogue activity with other children .The children need to practise the question: "What is that?" or "What type of fruit is that? and the children can then share their incredible harvest of fruits or vegetables. the activity will allow you to reinforce with more advanced learners adjectival agreement and position too!..... and of course now I am thinking Art - still life with a twist! Papier mache DT! Fantastical fruit poems if we can also add flavours ( maybe our ice cream flavours from Year 4?) The list could go on!!!

Woodland creatures 
Thanks to le francais et vous I was reacquainted with one of these glorious posters in French.This one is all about woodland animals.Take a look!

A great way to look at masculine and feminine nouns with our Y3 and Y4 classes ,particularly this in stage two (Y4 ) of learning . We can look for cognates and semi cognates.

We can add colours and we can create our own art work and drawings using a French stimulus.

With Stage 3 and 4 learners (probably Y5 and 6 who have been learning a language already for at least two years) so more advanced learners. let them go on a woodland creature hunt, giving each table a poster and descriptions of different animals in the poster.Can they read and understand the descriptions (make sure there are words in the descriptions that they need to look up on a bi-lingual dictionary  to add challenge) and can they add descriptive labels to the creatures?

Add a touch of Yakit for kids (using and APP where the photo talks ) and the children can make this an animated poster with spoken labels or woodland creature descriptions!

Twit twoo!

Looking for woodland creatures I found these two target language pages with instructions on how to make an owl that would be a useful way to develop reading comprehension activities with our more advanced learners:

In German Eulen basteln ( with a very simple template labelled in German that the children will need to read/puzzle out and then construct their own owls! 

and in French Julie Prince @princelanguages alerted me to this page for marionettes de automne from this blog http://nounoulolo88.centerblog.net/

Autumn poems

I think we can all source Autumn poems but yesterday I found this brilliant Spanish poem/list of all the things that are associated with Autumn .You can see it here below!

  Take a look here

Maybe it's a text to read and unpack learners or to use as stimulus to write with more advanced UKS2 learners our own lists of things we associate with autumn using nouns, verbs and adjectives. with younger learners we can make our own written and visual class autumn list perhaps using bilingual dictionaries of the colours, fruits, vegetables, weather, animals etc etc we associate  with Autumn.

What does Autumn and  harvest time mean to you?

Finally this morning I found these making activities on  the French website

http://www.teteamodeler.com

It's a time when we can look at culture and the lives of children in different countries and the crops and harvest time activities that they will be involved in for example la vendange in France is a time of grape picking and village festivals......Here's une boite aux raisins to make ...

in Spain the children will hear and possibly celebrate

 LA CASTAÑERA