tools for language learning

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? 





The mysterious world of grammar and magnifying glass magic!

Yesterday I introduced a group of colleagues to my magical magnifying glass.It's the simplest of language learning tools but it works so well.It's so easy to make - just a magnifying glass template printed out,with the middle cut out so that you can see through as if the middle was glass, laminated  and cut out into the magnifying glass shape.

Here it is!

Why is it so magical?

Well like so many of us I have always encouraged children to be language detectives ...just like Sherlock  Holmes and what does he carry? Yes a magnifying glass to uhelp your class begin to solve the  great mysteries of grammar and step with excitement in to the world of grammar.

 
magnifying glass.jpg
 

This magnifying glass can allow the children and you as well to step into text and to drill down and find out more magical knowledge about the text you have in front of you!

  • You can ask a child to come to the whiteboard and with the magnifying glass identify and hover overnouns in the text,or hover over adjectives in the text or hover over verbs in the text.Can they identify these structures in the text?
  • A child can challenge a child- so one child has the magnifying glass and finds one adjective , can another child be challenged to find a second adjective etcetra.
  • As a class you can hover over one specific noun and find out more... step deeper in to the magical world of grammar! What might the noun mean? Is it a noun the class already know? Can the children decide from context or similarity to English? Can the class step even deeper in to the noun- what is to the left and right of the noun? Can the children tell you if it is a masculine or feminine noun and what proof can they see to left and right of the noun with the magical magnifying glass to prove this (definite or indefinite article clues/adjectival agreement clues)? Is it singular or plural and what does the evidence to left and right show us? Can the class use bi-lingual dictionaries to explore the noun further and verify their magnifying glass findings?
  • Can you capture the verbs in the text with the magical magnifying glass and again dig deeper over each individual verb used,looking for personal pronouns to the left and the spelling at the end of the verb to the right? Can the children use the evidence they find with their magical magnifying glass to change the meaning of the text and  generate the same person and tense with new regular verbs that replace the verbs in the text? I think that you could make some amazing magical and sometimes nonsense but fun texts this way! 
  • Can the children use the magnifying glass to hunt the footprints of a specific common verb in the text e.g select a text using several present forms of the verb to have  or to be and then ask the children to create their own verb footprints diagram (literally footprints with the verb written inside the footprints that put the verb in to the correct order in a footprint path)

And there you have it...... the beginnings of a magical language learning and investigating tool to help children step in to the exciting World of grammar in a target language! 

Language Learning Tools to Share

This year I have the very exciting opportunity to support local high schools as they work through what primary progress in language learning means to their own MFL departments in KS3.I am going to be helped to achieve this by a wonderful colleague, who has just started to tweet and who will keep a running record of how she is able to use these tools in her own KS3 language learning classroom @JoBeeG73 
(As I am meeting with the teacher on Wednesday I thought I needed to put down in my blog what I mean by  "Language Learning Tools to Share").

I see these as "shared approaches to learning a language ,which can put the learner at ease and allow the learner to scaffold their own progress as they recall and use familiar techniques and possibly language and upon which they can  build and explore new and more challenging language learning.so you may start off with simple word recall and mve to phrase, sentence and text etc or perhaps you have started with simple questions and answers but you want the children to build in conversational asides or to listen as a thrid party and report back in the third person 


Here are some shared learning tools we know are working well.
By this I mean tools/ resources/ prompts/ ways of recording language and revisiting language  that allow children to use familiar approaches and  activities to explore more challenging use of language in listening , speaking , reading and writing.



...and here is a new tool that I think the learners and teachers will enjoy trying out this year