Wave sounds,words, reading and writing

We are going to be sharing ideas on "Seaside" at our DFE funded WTSA/JLN local network meeting twilights this next  half term. You would be very welcome to attend if you are near to one of these CPD twilights on the Training Schedule

Here are a few simple ways I think we can create some letter string and sound synthesis and then reading comprehension activities for beginner and moving on learners linked to "waves" in the sea.finally our young language learners can write some target language wave messages for other children to  decipher too!

Wave words 

This is a really simple idea! It involves the way the words sound.

This activity is about enjoying the shape and the sound of the words.with each word suggested ask the children to close their eyes and repeat the word after you and imagine that the sounds are waves coming to shore!

• Ask the children to think of words they know in the target language that sound like a small wave gently moving toward the sea shore or a bigger wave that rolls along toward the shore or a huge wave that crashes to toward the sea shore .
• What we are actually asking the children to do is remember and recall the "sound" of the word and the effect it makes as it is said 

e.g.

 deux - is a small short word and makes a gentle thud

pomme is also a small short warm sound that could be a gentle wave at the sea shore

ananas has louder and more solid sounds and could be a wave that makes more movement as it comes to shore 

brouillard is big and strong and rolls mightily to shore.

Wave word shapes 

You need to consider the words that your children already know in the target language and then add the final sounds from the words to wave shape cards- a small wave, a larger wave , a big wave.

Here is an example of a completed wave word shape card.(I have thought of the words "moi", "lapin" and "grenouille" in French for the three waves here).

You will need 6 different wave word shapes and sufficient cards for one between two- 6 sets of 6 cards will work for most classes.

• Ask the children to look at their card ,working with a partner and to think of three words that fit the waves.The words must end in the correct final sound and be soft gentle words ( for the small wave), bigger more syllable words for the medium wave and large exciting sounding words for the largest wave.
• Once they have three words they can share these with the class .
• Now swap cards and start the activity again , each pair having a new ste of lettre strings on their wave word shapes.

Reading waves

This is an activity that we have used before as snake shapes, where the children have to identify and break up the words so that they can understand the message written down.

This time we will use wave shapes and messages about the seaside .

Take a look here!  It actually says "J'aime la plage car je peux nager et jouer au ballon!
the children need to identify each word to understand and read the message.and they can add their own wave message underneath following the original wave pattern as a writing and prompt frame.

Fishing for letter strings and sounds

A few years ago we trialed this sounds activity with Year 3 and it worked so well that we will be using the activity again during our "Seaside" focus CPD with the DFE funded WTSA/JLN project.
It is so simple .....and great fun too.
First of all you need to create a class magnetic fishing game .

You need a rod with string attached and on the end is a magnet.

You need a pool /pot pot bowl with no water in but with card fishes in it

Each card fish needs a paper clip nose so that when you pop the "fishing rod over the side of the pot,pool etc you can "catch" a fish with  the magnet and its paper clip nose.

Each fish needs a letter string written upon it.

Now go fishing with your class.

• Put the rod in the pool, pull out a fish and then as a class look at the letter string.What does this letter string sound like in the target language?
• How many fish can the class  catch and keep because a member of the class can think of a word with that letter string in it? If the class can't think of a word then the fish goes back in the pot,pond,pool!

Add more challenge.How many fish have you got in the net?

• Add to the challenge, how many fish can they catch as a class .... this means how many words can they say and write that have the specific letter string in the word in the target language and put in their imaginary "letter string word net" ? Count them up? this is how many words the class can catch as fish in that particular net
• Try a new fish from your magnetic pool.Which letter string word net contains most fish at the end of the game? . 

Table games 

• Ask each table to write down on a shared mini whiteboard the target language words they can think of that contain the letter string.
• Allow the table three minutes bilingual dictionary time too.Can they find new useful words with this letter string in the word.(They must be able to say the word and tell the class the meaning of the word too when it comes to sharing time!)
• Each table shares their words with the class and then as a class the table with the most words that are real target language words are counted up and that's the number of fish that class can catch with this particular letter string in the words.

Table against table game 

• Make it a table against table fishing challenge- so the table with the most words , wins the magnetic card fish.This is a memory activity so differentiate the ability of the children on the tables to make this a fair game.Also words can not be looked up in the bilingual dictionaries this time , so this game would follow on well, from the game above.
• Which table has the most fish at the end of the game?

Hunt the Easter egg sounds ! (Beginners)

Nearly time to think about Easter and here is a very simple activity that  encourages children to look for the sound- spelling links in unfamiliar language.
Really simple idea.....

1.In the target language practise a traditional Easter greeting phrase- say the phrase in the style of Easter rabbits, melting chocolate, delicious Easter eggs etc
2.Share with the children the written target language phrase, but blank out a key sound-spelling link in the target language phrase:

In French blank out the "eu" in "joyeuses" and in Spanish blank out the "ce" in "felices".

3.Ask the children to listen to you say the whole key word (i.e "joyeuses" or "felices" ) and anticipate with a talking partner the missing letter string .Encourage the children to use prior target language knowledge of sound spelling links to do this.

e.g joy..ses 

     feli..s

(I would expect the children to make the link in French between the sound "eu" they can hear in the word "joyeuses" and their prior knowlegde of "bleu" or "deux" or to make the link in Spanish with the numbers "once" or "doce")

4.Now you can reveal the whole phrase - have the children anticipated the missing sound spelling link correctly?

5.Now divide the phrase into separate letter strings on coloured Easter egg cards and hide these coloured Easter egg cards around the room.For example here is "joyeuses" as letter string coloured Easter eggs ,ready to be hidden.

6.Ask for volunteers to hunt the Easter egg cards around the room and when he/she finds an Easter egg card to bring it to the front and to help you to reconstruct the key Easter phrase piece by piece (or egg card by egg card).

7.Allow the children 60 seconds to remember the colour and the key sound spelling written on the coloured egg shapes.Now turn over the eggs and muddle the order of the egg cards.Can the children say the colours in the target language of the eggs in the order that they think the Easter phrase should be reconstructed? 

Place the eggs letter side down in the order the children have decided .....

8.Turn over each egg one by one and reveal the letter string,say the sound together and anticipate the next sound. Where the children correct and does the order of the turned over cards create the Easter greeting phrase? 

9.And now the children can create their own Easter card chain greeting - using the letter strings in the eggs they have been hunting to put together the key greetings phrase .You can make this a differentiated activity with the same written outcome either with increased challenge from memory or as an activity where the coloured letter string cards have been muddled up but remain on view or as an activity where the eggs are laid out in order but two eggs and the letter strings are missing.

Adding Drama to Language Learning

Drama and Language Learning and reasons to explore language through performance

The aims of the new DFE POS for languages encourages us in both KS2 and KS3 to develop learners who can :

• Understand and respond to spoken and written languages from a variety of authentic sources
• Speak with increasing confidence, fluency and spontaneity,finding ways to communicate what...want to say
• Write at varying length for different purposes and audiences,using the variety of grammatical structures they have learnt
• Discover and develop an appreciation of a range of writing in the language studied

During this session at Ililc 2015 I intend to look at how we can develop communication skills in language learners from KS1,KS2 and KS3 and provide learners with a vehicle of self expression and creativity adding drama to language learning.I hope also to suggest APPS and use of IT to enhance the drama/language learning process and outcomes along the way too.

Drama and dramatic devices used in language learning promote:

• Better and more confident communication skills
• Inclusive participation
• Team work and appreciation of each others' creativity and performance
• An understanding of why intonation and pronunciation matter and how these can enhance character and covey meaning and emotion.
• Importance of the links between dialogue and actions to convey meaning
• Platforms upon which to develop independent creative writing
• Understanding of the importance of punctuation and accuracy in the choice and use of written language.
• Deeper and more creative understanding of text
• A purposeful reason to explore the skills of memorisation and  tools to support the recall of language

Early language learning

1. Voice Machines - sounds of the language and our voice machines (Audio Boom to capture those sounds!)
2. Sunflower song active learning of simple language- numbers 1-10 linked to Springtime and growing plants. (Story Creator to capture the sunflowers growing taller and taller)
3. Colour mimes and word association .Practising new language and finding ways to remember the sound and feel of new language. (Yakiyt for Kids)
4. Stretchy sound and letter string balloons  (Audio Boom balloons) 

Exploring instructions and simple language. 

1. Parts of the body and puppeteers - listening, responding.
2. Using Educreations APP to generate physical performance
3. Mirror mirror on the wall (Step Five )
4. Creative spoken language
5. Flowing mime machines with rhythm and beat accompaniment and spoken word.

Asking and answering questions,speaking in full sentences and engaging in conversation

1. Paper Puppets
2. Superstar sketches.
3. Puppet Pals APP to bring our conversations to life
4. "Fancy dress" Quiz Quiz Swap (I-FunFace APP)
5. Stage set triaramas  with cultural speaking and writing attitude .Use of I-nigma APP to create spoken speech bubbles for the characters.

Now let's get dramatic!

1. If a picture paints a 1000 words Anticipation Emotions displays (FotoBooth1 to generate our own emotions and feelings)
2. Silent Movies , back stories and a taste of great literature (Capture the performance on Camcorders and IPads)'
3. Going on an Autumn walk with poetry
4. "Six characters in search of an author performance  and  a PicCollage to create Story Boards written outcome.
5. 3D Art (Tiny Tap APP) (stage one, stage two, stage three.)

Stretchy sound and letter string carnival balloons

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 help young learners to move on and become independent users of their developing language skills .Each session we take time to consider an activity  which supports the learners to explore these learning objectives  from the new DfE POS: 

Explore the patterns and sounds of the language

Develop accurate pronunciation and intonation so that others understand when they are reading aloud or using familiar words and phrases.

So here is my carnival theme idea! It's based on "The blue balloon" by Mick Inkpen.

This interactive book encouraged the children to see the balloon as having ,magical qualities - you could stretch , pull, squash , fly with this blue balloon but you couldn't pop it and in the end it becomes a rainbow balloon.

Here is my magical colour stretchy sound and letter string balloon.On one side it has the colours and on the other side it has the letter strings that make up the colours.It starts off as a concertina with just the single picture of balloons and then it stretches to become one very long balloon of either the colour words or on the others slide blocks of colour in the same order as the colour words.

To make a balloon like mine, you will need four A4 documents for six colours.I have shared two my templates here.The templates  have two lines- one of colour filled blocks and a second line which has letter strings from the appropriate colours. These are the letter strings from key familiar colours (or any language content you prefer- although I think colours and balloons fit best together here)

You need to cut out the templates and stick the 4 strips together end to end to make a long continuous  strip.

Fold the balloon template length ways between the solid colours and the letters

Fold the strip in to a concertina using the external thin solid fold line and the internal fold lines.

The children will either be able to see all the coloured blocks or all the letter strings when it is pulled out as a stretchy balloon

Now you are ready to share your magical carnival balloon

1. Remind the children of all the key colours they know in the target language and ask them to think about how some of the key sounds are written in the target language. Write these up on the whiteboard and then remove these letter strings before playing the balloon games
2. Share with the children your very special carnival balloon and explain its magic qualities 
3. Show the children the first picture on the word side of the stretchy balloon- it's some balloons - but what colour do they think your balloon may be?
4. Explain that the balloon is stretchy and long so how many colours might it be made up of and what colours might it be? 
5. Can you ask the children to stretch out the sounds of the colours in the target language , to squeeze the sounds of the colours in the target language , to twist the the sounds of the colours in the target language, to wave the sound of the colour in the target language  etc.... - just like the magical balloon
6. Time to investigate the colours as letter strings.... only reveal one letter string at at time - can the children say what they see, discuss with their talking partner and then anticipate the next letter string and the colour.You may like the children to write down on mini white boards what they anticipate as the next letter string.
7. Can the children remember the colours ? Squash up your balloon again and this time ask the children to whisper the letter string to a partner and then the partner can give the thumbs up if that is the letter string that is revealed.Partners to take it in turns to be the speaker or the listener here.
8. Now fold up your stretchy balloon one more time and ask the children to write down on their whiteboards the order in which they think the colours will be revealed - as you open up the colour block side of your balloon.Ask the children to read aloud their lists to their partner or volunteers to read out loud to the class.

And finally .....

Ask the children to create their own letter string word balloons so that they can play partner and table games with their classmates to anticipate target language familiar colours.

Easter Egg Trail and beyond. (Moving on learners) Adapting an Epiphany idea !

In December ready for Epiphany I wrote the blog post "Pass the galette or the roscon de reyes", It has proved to be very popular and I have really enjoyed looking at people's ideas and ways of adapting the activity to suit their own learners.A delight!

You can read the original blog and ideas here galette or roscon de reyes

All these shared wonderful ideas made me think a bit more about ways to adapt the activity.You see I think it's important to revisit and reuse familiar activities to allow the children to explore the language in more details.

So here are my notes to self!

Easter time 

Let's create an Easter Egg trail with the same type of activities, in the shape of an Easter egg maybe or one of those wonderful "Easter egg" clocks I always wanted as a child.This is a circular clock with each small egg representing one of the numbers on the face of the clock (so twelve eggs in total).

The treasure hunt idea  would work wonderfully in German trying to look for the Osterhase or in French looking for the bells from Rome that fly the eggs in to the gardens!

Handing the activity over to the learners 

I do think it is so important that we remember that the actiivities are purposeful and about encouraging the learners to play the games and do the activities so that they either learn something new or consolidate prior learning. 

To this end I think that this would be a great activity to ask the children in UKS2 to engage in the making process equipped with the principles of the learning activities e.g. recognising and using sounds and letter strings and revisiting familiar language.

The UKS2 children can then make a gift galette/ rosocn de reyes/Easter egg trail etc for their younger LKS2 classes .Cutting, sticking and glueing- yes- but also thinking through links between phonemes and graphemes and remembering previous learned language!

Thanks to everyone who has made me think through the potential  of these ideas a little bit more!

And should you want to use ready made templates then thanks to Sue Cave,she has shared here phonics galette template in smart notebook on this page of Sharing Primary Languages

Pass the galette or the roscon de reyes

We will be celebrating Epiphany and the customs and traditions of the target language countries at the start of the New Year.

Let's play "Pass the galette" or "Pass the roscon de reyes"

We can revisit familiar language and remind children of the sound letter combination links in the target language you are learning in school whilst celebrating the culture.

It's a really easy game that involves the children working in teams and they have loved it when I have played this before.

• You need two circles of card. One circle is made of white card and the second card circle is made up of at least 12 different colours.
• Cut the second card circle into 12 slices (each a different colour)

• On the reverse of five of the pieces of coloured card, glue a picture of one of the three Kings.
• On the other side of each piece of coloured card from your cake,add sound- letter combinations from words that you know you have practised and used during last term in the target language with the chilren(e.g sound- letter combinations from numbers/colours/months/days/shops/subjects etc)

• Blu-tac each of your card pieces in the shape of a circle back on to your white card circle with the Kings hidden on the underside and randomly placed in the circle.
• All the sound - letter combination clues should be visible to the children

And now to play the game 

• Show the children a real picture of a galette or a roscon de reyes or even better share a real cake with them !
• Explain that normally the children take a piece and hope to be the child who finds the special counter to become King for the day.
• Show the children a picture of the three Kings 
• Split the class into teams of six.Explain that they are now King seekers
• The team that wins the most Kings (up to a maximum of three Kings) will be the winning King team for the day.Remind the children the object of the game is to win the pictures of the three Kings hidden on the underside of  the pieces of your card cake  
• Each team must ask politely for a piece of your cake.They must ask for the colour of the piece of cake they want and then the team must look at the sound -letter combination and think of a word they know in the target language that has the letter combination they can see written  on their piece of cake.
• Ask a member of the team to say the word out loud and to try to write it up on the white board
• Does the class agree that this word has the sound- letter combination in it ?
• If they are correct they win that piece of cake and can turn it over .If it has a King on the back then they have won one of their three Kings and can keep the piece of card.
• If it does not have a King pop it back in your cake circle 
• Now it's the turn of another team
• The game ends when one team  has collected three Kings 
• At the end of the game if there is no clear winning team then which team has the most Kings?

You can play this game multiple times and also with children at different stages of language learning with different clue types on your pieces of cake..It's great fun and allows the children to revisit familiar language and make those all important sound- letter links in the target language. 

Look,think,link and read!

As we progress with our language learners and they become more competent in the target language we meet new challenges with the children.

One of these challenges is to revisit and address the need to make those important links between sounds we can identify and know in words.We need to remind our learners that are moving on to apply the strategies we have practised as games in our learning of the  phonics of the language as they reapply this knowledge independently in new word(and truthfully also in familiar words that we may not have seen for a while).In truth the strategy below will be very familiar to primary KS1 class teachers.

As I write this, I am thinking of all our learners not just the children that quickly pick up and understand the language as in my opinion we are trying to help as many young learners as possible learn the "tricks of our trade". In my opinion we need to make the stepping stone strategies explicit and give the children key prompts to be successful. Hence the challenge for the associate teachers after Christmas of holding "Look!Think!Link! "moments  with our young learners in KS2.

We are going to plan for and apply our "Look!Think!Link!" moments from the start of next term. I think this will become a prompt or a pause to say stop and think before you read out loud  for the children.

1. What can you see written down?
2. How many words?  
3. Which words have you seen before?

1. Can you break the words down in to letter groups that you know how to pronounce?
2. Can you think of a word you are confident in saying which contains the letter string you are not certain about? (Say this word silently in your head and listen for the sound pattern you need for the word(s) you can see in front of you)

1. Can you transfer the sound to the new word(s) and rehearse the word as a silent word in your head 
2. Now can you read it out loud clearly and more confidently? 

Seeking sound patterns in French and exploring a poem about days of the week and colours.

The teachers that Emilie and I will be working with tomorrow are teachers who have basic skills in language learning and are looking to enhance their own knowledge of the language and ways to enhance the learning of the children.The activities below are about ...... and  the blog post is intended as notes to the teachers:  

• sound patterns
• looking for matching sound patterns
• encoding text
• reconstructing text
• reading aloud a text

I love this simple days of the week and colours poem that I found on pinterest

Step One 
What is the poem about?
Show the children this blanked out version of the poem:

By concealing any other language can the children identify that the poem is about days and colours? 
What colour do they think that Sunday must be? Take suggestions and reasons why.

Step Two  
Give out to pairs the cut up poem as below:

Can the  children reconstruct the poem in the correct order of the days of the week .Can they decide whether the line........ :

"C'est la joie des enfants" 

goes at the beginning or the end of the poem? 

(Suggest that the poem rhymes so that this will help the children to decide where the line should go).

Which children guessed the correct colour for Sunday?

Step Three

Ask the children to look for sound patterns in the poem:

Send them on an "I" sound hunt and find the words where the words where the identical letter and sound or a matching sound to the "i" sound can be found

Send them on a similar hunt for "ou" and for "an"

Step Four

Ask the children to help you to understand the meaning of the poem and appoint class members as the class dictionary detectives. Give lout five dictionaries to five class detectives and make this a speed game to locate key words and fond the meaning:

My key words in the poem would be : 

tout/clair/se reposer/ vient(venir)/tour/ suit (suivre )/ toujours/ la joie /enfants

Step Five 

Can the class help you to read the poem out building to a happy crescendo on a Sunday because this is "la joie des enfants!"

Ding!Dong! Bell!From phonics to language recall to beginners writing!

The activities in this blog post are additional ways to exploit our simple Christmas greetings song: Feliz Navidad or Joyeux Noel .
You can read about our original activities in listening and speaking ideas here Ring out those bells tonight.

The activities in both blog posts  are transferable to other contexts.
In my opinion the activities below allow us to explore the following DfE POS objectives:

• explore the patterns and sounds of language 
• speak in sentences using familiar language
• write phrases from memory

The object of the activities below is to continue the theme  of bells and ringing bells but to deconstruct the language so that we are looking at letter combinations and listening for key  sounds in the target language.We then reconstruct the Christmas greetings songs line by line from memory.It is helpful therefore if you have practised the greetings song in the blog post mentioned above first.(In French we use the key phrases : joyeux noel / à tous /à vous)

For the Ding Dong Bell activities .....

• Teach the words to our simple Christmas greetings song
• Sing the song in a round and play the game with the phrase cards (see Ring out those bells)

• Create your own bell letter combination cards for the key sounds in the text.You will need a template 

• On each bell write one of the key letter combinations here in Spanish (for example: fe/liz/na/vi/dad/mis/a/mi/gos/mi/fa/mi/lia)

• On the reverse of the bells you need to add a  symbol to represent a recent and familiar piece of language for example with our beginners we have chosen stars  symbols in different colours,numbers,gapped months of the year and smiley or non-smiley faces to suggest feelings.

• Now the language learning fun starts! Give out the bell cards and ask the children to become bell ringers. They ring their bell when they hear their sound.Children without a bell come to the front and they are your carol singer
• At the end of the song ask the children to swap bells and make sure your carol singers get a go at bell ringing too
•  Finally ask the children to help you to either peg the sound bells to a classroom line or blu-tac the bells to the board to reconstruct the complete song 
• Children could then take responsibility for one bell and one sound and create their own classroom Christmas decoration – like a bell paper chain of the Christmas greeting song

Make it a class challenge

• Divide your class in to four teams. give each time a different phrase - say it orally do not give them the written phrase.

feliz navidad

mis amigos

mi familia

feliz navidad

• Blu-tac the bells to the board with the sound/letter combination face up.
• Each team must try to win the bells for – that once they are put back together, make up the line.
• Can each team take it in turns to select a bell ,say the correct sound , suggest in which word it is located in the song
• If they are correct ,turn over the card and can the team give you the Spanish for the number, colour or month clue on the reverse of the bell?
• If they are correct they can keep that bell .Can they collect and create a full line from the song before the other team does? 
• Can the class reconstruct the whole greetings song and sing it one final time?

Sound in the French word for numbers and colours : ladders and scaffold games

These activities are  quick to create and simple to develop and involve key sounds in numbers and colours for teachers just starting to work with French (or any language- but it really works well in French)  with their primary school children.The games  can easily be used as a revisiting activity at any time in a language learner's career.They can lead to puzzles and performance opportunities 

The games in the first instance involve numbers 1-11 and  simple colours (bleu,jaune,orange,vert,noir,blanc )

• As  the teacher think about the numbers and colours you have taught. 
• Practise with the children key sounds in the words 
• Create a chart of key sounds as letter combinations for sounds that are in both colours and numbers or just in the colours or just in the numbers.
• Take a look here: 

Can you see the key sounds and letter combinations in the numbers 1-11 and the colours:  bleu,jaune,orange,vert,marron,noir,blanc?

Take  quick look some of the sounds and letter combinations are in both the colours and the numbers.

Sound in the word ladders and scafffolds

• Ask your class first of all to create a "sound in the word ladder or scaffold " of the words they think that the key sounds come from- they may think of both a number and a colour for some of the boxes in the table
• Can they add performance (mime,actions and volume)  to their sound in the word  ladders and scaffolds. They can decide to work across the table in horizontal lines or run down one column and then the other column of the table. Maybe they want to start from the bottom and work upwards etc .They can decide!
• Can they perform their "sound in the word ladder or scaffold "for another group of children and can thwy trace the path that has been followed on the table of sounds?

Step Two !All shook up!

• Cut up the table in to individual sound cards and put them out on the table.One set per four children works best.

The groups of children  can now play several different games:

• Take it in turns to select a sound and say a number or colour
• Take it in turns and collect number cards only - who has the most when the sounds' cards  the children can use run out?
• Take it in turns to create a run of cards of all the colours or all the numbers 
• Take it in turns to create a run of cards of all the colours but in French alphabetical order/ try this with numbers but in numerical order or in reverse order 

Take a simple authentic rhyme and explore language learning skills

On Thursday this week I will be looking at how one simple resource can support the introduction, practise and revisiting of many language learning skills . We will consider how progression can be built in to primary language  learning very simply and we will look for links with literacy and/or across the primary curriculum.

For teachers, just setting off on the road to delivering effective primary language learning or supporting staff to do so, the activities will hopefully act as  sign posts to help the school plan sequences of meaningful and purposeful language learning activities.

Schools, where staff have limited target language skills can plan to use authentic texts which have been carefully selected because they are  not too challenging for the non-specialist.We find that such texts should repetitive language,clear sound support files if possible,introduce key language and words and not be too "wordy".

Above is the authentic and familiar rhyme "tengo dos manitas" , sung clearly with the words appearing on the screen in the clip.The clip is repetitive and uses simple language.There are obvious actions to the text. 

Word warm up 

Practise the key language from the text preferably with actions/ movements or a physical routine .

Here we have core body parts' language (manitas/ojos/nariz/boquita)

and two key actions (aplaudir and sonreir)

Add a fun, memorable element immediately.

Ask the children can they smile / clap using the body parts in the rhyme

e.g. Pueden sonreir con los ojos/la nariz/la boquita/las manitas

       Pueden aplaudir con los ojos/la nariz/la boquita/ la manitas

Get to know the rhyme and make it your own!

• Practise the rhyme- as this rhyme has a clip to accompany it , when you feel the class are comfortable , turn down the sound and ask the children to be the sound file to the clip!
• Add actions and focus on rhythm.
• Practise in pairs with the words and the actions
• Practise in fours and make the rhyme "your own". Each group can decide how they want to say and perform the rhyme
• Performance time- one group of four performs for a second group
• As a class perform the rhyme and as this rhyme repeats the verse over and again let one group lead the whole class each time - sharing their own special version and actions etc.

Class warm up song or recall song

Now you have a rhyme to say , sing or perform at the start of a language lesson over the next couple of weeks or to use to recall children and bring them back together after another activity.

Take another look!

Languages are not always about racing on.Learning some language and then moving to the next goal doesn't make confident young language explorers in my opinion.

Let the class enjoy the rhyme and actions and then plan to return to the rhyme and activate memory to use the rhyme to explore languages further.  

Missing words or Volume control games 

Come back to the rhyme or song at a later date and this time ask the children to miss words out or to observe you as you operate a pretend volume control ,so that there are times when the children whisper or don't even say the words but do the actions instead.

Rhythm raps 

Can the children help you to create a new version of the rhyme - a rap - made up of the beats and cadence of the rhyme- no words just the beat and rhythm of the text?

Go sound fishing!

Identify the key sounds in the song or rhyme for example here I would identify:

j/o/qui/re/ir/au/iz

Can the class work in pairs and say the rhyme to each other and spot these key sounds as they say the words?

Can they decide in which order the sounds are heard and how often?

Can they spot the key sounds in the written words displayed by you at the front of the classroom.

Bringing the written word together!

Using their knowledge of the rhyme and their visual knowledge of key words can the children reconstruct the written text ,putting the text back together from word cards.