Ways we developed learning based on the book Au carnaval des animaux Marianne Dubuc
So how did we get the animals to the carnival party......?
As this is all about a party , last year I based some simple Year 3 language learning on party games based upon animals.
Listen,imagine and explore the kingdom of the animals.
Well last year before looking at some of story- as it's a long story " au carnaval des animaux "or "el carnaval de los animales" , we listened to some special music by Saint Saens "au carnaval des animaux" to see if we could imagine the animals that might be in the music.We then went on an animal thought walk .
As this is all about a party , last year I based some simple Year 3 language learning on party games based upon animals.
Listen,imagine and explore the kingdom of the animals.
Well last year before looking at some of story- as it's a long story " au carnaval des animaux "or "el carnaval de los animales" , we listened to some special music by Saint Saens "au carnaval des animaux" to see if we could imagine the animals that might be in the music.We then went on an animal thought walk .
- Which animals did we already know in the target language?
- Which animals did we like?
- Which animals might be in the story?
- Which animals might we need to look up in a bi-lingual dictionary because we think they may be in the story?
...and then we made our own freeze frame pictures of the animals we had discussed.I called out an animal in the target language and the children took the pose of the animal .They had to stand very still for a count of ten ...or they were out and had to sit down and be a freeze frame statue judge with me.
We took a vote on our top ten invite animals to the animal party and made a tally chart with the written target language noun at the top of each column.
We wrote out the words for the top seven animals we wanted as a class to invite to the party
We lined our top seven animal words up in alphabetical order - ready for party invitation printing....
....and then as a class we investigated soe of the story.What happened to the animals as they put on their fancy dress?
We took the first five animals and their fancy dress and listened a second time to these pages of the story and drew the animals in the air- as they appeared before the fancy dress and then with the fancy dress.
We looked through the story for the magical fairy tale characters and played Simon says with the names of the animals and the fairy tale characters and actions we agreed upon to represent each character.(I didn't do this but wish i had ... and this was to create posters of the fairy tale characters with their eyes/nose/hair/teeth etc made up by different parts of different animals )
C Our challenge was to get the animals we had chosen to the party!
I gave out animal name cards and asked the children to remind me of the names they knew of animals and what had happened in the story book.
We listened again to some of the music from Saint Saens.Take a look at my original blog post on this theme
I asked the children to pass the names of the animals around a seated circle until I paused the music and then they had to mime the animal on their card for the person sat next to them.Could the person guess the animal? We then carried on with the game.
We then played a memory chain game .We looked at our top seven animals for the party and practised with a partner the names and the actions for the animals.seven volunteers were then lined up at the front and each children had to try to say a different name of an animal .They could phone a friend for help too. Once the children were confident then it became a one against one play off of the game at the front- two children saying animal nouns in turn...who would dry up first?
The sound -spelling of the animals
We played several sound -spelling games:
Animal sounds - walking round the room with a letter string card from the nouns of the animals , quietly saying the sound of the letter string to find other children with the same sound.Once all the children are gathered in to their correct groups- each group shouts out their sound and the class decides which animal picture displayed at the front of the classroom this sound belongs to.
Build the animal
I divided the nouns for the animals into letter strings- preferably two per animal noun.All the children had a card with a letter string written on it from an animal noun on it.They walked around the room and found someone who had the other letter string so that put together it became a complete animal noun.Once they had found the whole word, they had to draw on a mini whiteboard a quick picture of the animal and sit down with their hand up.Who would be first or last to do this?
I used my game "Open and reveal" to anticipate the name of the animals and to link the learning to other familiar language
Making masks and practising the key phrase to explain the disguise
....and then we made our animal masks,ready for our Saint Saens carnival parade.
We practised the key phrase from the book in the target languages "I am disguising myself as...." and used our "animal" voices (voices that sounded like the animals).
If I make them again I think that we should have two animals on each mask....who the children want to be before the fancy dress and on the reverse the animal they want to disguise themselves as.
Ready,steady,go! Setting off together with Primary Language Learning
Making first steps to progress together in primary
languages. A report from the chalk face
It's a case of Ready! Steady !Go!
This morning I have had the great pleasure of helping a
school to set off on their Spanish learning journey.
Here is the picture so far .....
The school has a Year 3
teacher who has a degree in Spanish and has decided to embark on Spanish for
this reason plus the fact that the school feeds to a local High school which
offers Spanish.
The audit of staff skills showed that there were that other
staff had a limited knowledge of Spanish and would need support to deliver a programme of study With support the school is about to set off on an exciting
language learning journey where class teachers will deliver the language learning
and draw support from each other.
We have begun to put some simple tools in place today to
help school to set off on this journey!
Step One:
Getting to understand the new PoS from the DfE
for Primary Languages and unpicking the Purpose of Study section to create a
school vision.(This has already happened and the POS was used as a discussion tool
today to forward plan)
Step Two:
A clear and simple guide by the subject
coordinator during staff CPD time to set the staff and children off on their
learning journey together (after half term)
Step Three:
A shared learning experience
School will hold a celebration of the World Cup using the
games and activities from the JLN World Cup Football Seasonal Specials with a focus on the World
Cup PE games downloadable folders with lessons with support sound files in Spanish for the staff , using limited language in a familiar curriculum area- Sport. What a gift
this year too as the World Cup focus moves to South America!
Step Four:
Follow up discussions
How did the children react to PE in Spanish?
How quickly did the children remember the language?
How easily could the children lead the PE games ?
How did the sound files support the staff?
These discussions will pave the way to a simple understanding
of how teachers can develop- their language lessons in the early stages and how
they can be learners alongside the children, facilitating learning too.
Step Five
Planning for a European Day of Languages Celebration in
September.
We felt one way of stepping off and setting out what be to
look at languages around us as way to
support the children , mainly mono-lingual, to appreciate languages around them.
The coordinator will ask the staff to investigate some of the Commonwealth languages materials (Welsh, Manx, Gaelic and
the Scots reading of Peter Rabbit) plus investigate the target language country
of their chosen language- Spain
Step Six
Establishing tools to help the school progress together.
I love these! The ideas developed from the discussions
between the subject coordinator and myself and are so simple, so primary and so
effective!
Suitcases to pack and unpack
This idea came from our conversation about my blog A journey worth the taking………………
(otherwise known as Miss Hilton’s suitcase.
Creating real suitcases per year group or stored as a virtual class memento suitcase on the school VLE, that can go up with the
children to the next year group and can be unpacked by the next teacher.
So for instance KS1 children learning
songs and rhymes in the target language can share threes with the Y3 teacher at
the start of the year.
Year 3 moving into Year 4 can unpack their Year 3 songs,
games and memories with their new Year 4 teacher.
Effective transition and a
time to reflect and learn with or from the children as they move into a new
year group!
Step Seven
Building knowledge of grammar together.
The new POS asks us to teach all four skills of listening,speaking,reading and writing and to develop the children's understanding of basic grammar.
We discussed how
this could be seen as a big challenge
but how really the grammar that young learners meet in the target language is that of SPAG
(nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions).
The first focus we
identified are NOUNS!
Simple – let’s have treasure boxes for each KS2 class , linked
to my grammar blog about noun collectors.
Each lesson or when appropriate,a
child that has worked well, joined in well, shared etc can be asked to draw a
specific noun they have met in the lesson as picture treasure record and place it in one of two class treasure boxes.The boxes are for either our masculine
or feminine nouns (and of course neuter if you are working in German). In return for the picture the child receives in a card paper
gold coin – for work well done!
It’s important right from the start that the staff and the children understand that masculine and feminine don’t refer to male or female and that these are “tags” to help us to use the nouns in messages in the target language in different ways( el/la in Spanish mean "the" which are referred to as definite articles by you and me!).
Guess what half way through the year in the treasure boxes the coordinator will add “un “ and “una” stickers on the inside lids of the boxes.The challenge from the coordinator will be to ask the teacher and the children in the class to spot when and how these words are used …. Hence they will explore indefinite articles. Later she can change or add two new boxes for plural masculine nouns and plural feminine nouns. everyone moves forward together and the coordinator can support.The year one , stage one grammar target will be to work with the children on their knowledge of target language nouns.
It’s important right from the start that the staff and the children understand that masculine and feminine don’t refer to male or female and that these are “tags” to help us to use the nouns in messages in the target language in different ways( el/la in Spanish mean "the" which are referred to as definite articles by you and me!).
Guess what half way through the year in the treasure boxes the coordinator will add “un “ and “una” stickers on the inside lids of the boxes.The challenge from the coordinator will be to ask the teacher and the children in the class to spot when and how these words are used …. Hence they will explore indefinite articles. Later she can change or add two new boxes for plural masculine nouns and plural feminine nouns. everyone moves forward together and the coordinator can support.The year one , stage one grammar target will be to work with the children on their knowledge of target language nouns.
Step Seven
Ah I hear you ask …. But what about the teachers and the children
when they get stuck in their language explorations! Well the coordinator is going
to put up a Spanish letterbox outside her classroom – indeed she showed me the
spot- and the teachers and children can
post her questions to ask, thoughts the class have had to check , good work
done, creative ideas, facts they find out! Simple, effective and this helps to
be able to access the school coordinator as a point of reference!
Step Eight
QR Codes!
The school wants to celebrate the fact that their
children are developing the WOW factor (liberation from insularity!).This is
a mainly mono-lingual school so the QRs help the mums, dads, carers and wider
community get the WOW factor too – by being able to hear their children speak
on displays that are 2D but become talking walls!
Simple greetings to start with on a picture linked to Spain and Spanish culture in classrooms and in the foyer.
Everyone has to start at the beginning and build on solid foundations.
I look forward to going back to school to help them build
some more !
World Cup Lessons Ready to go !
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| We are getting ready for the World Cup in the Network Celebrate the diversity of languages Link language learning to sport and performance Take a journey to meet children around the World Find out more about target language countries, emblems and the footballers! |
We have sourced online resources that can help you to create a bespoke sequence of lessons and have added links to World Cup resources such as
on Lightbulb resources World Cup , where you will find lots of downloadable activities and resources that could enhance the lesson focuses below.
How are we could we put these ideas and resources together in to a sequence of lessons with language learning at the hear of them?
Well as they say in football term "' 'ere we go, 'ere we go' ere we go!".....
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| Catch a greeting
Let's start by catching a greeting
Take a look at the lesson plan here
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| Create a football chant of our own Take a look at the lesson plan It's called A football chant of our own |
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| Let's meet children from around the footballing world Let's create target language conversations and get to know them Take a look at the lesson plan It's called Meeting children from the target language countries |
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| Hold a flag bearers parade Based on a primary languages and drama lesson Take a look at the lesson plan It's called Countries and flags of the World
Participate in the world Cup Warm Ups! Take a look at our simple World Cup Warm Up Lessons and PPTs Create routines with numbers and actions Create a class warm up song for the Summer term PE lessons |
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| Put your PE lessons into French, Spanish and German! Warm ups, pass and shoot, dribbling, invasion sports activities ! Here are the World Cup Football Games Just find the correct file- French, German or Spanish |
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| Hold a "Football Finale" or a World Cup performance Why not teach the children ...... A Spanish Dragon Football poem The Rock the Capitals South American Countries Rap A Tunisian rhyme and song in French or Spanish J'ai laissé mon ballon Mi pelota And now you have your sequence of World Cup lessons in the net!  |
