World Book Day allows us a language teachers to open the window on languages and share with the children how language is a vehicle through which we can tell stories and encourage imaginative communication.

This year we are focusing on three of the World Book Day 2015 themes:

Elmer :

Elmer Explorers

Pirates :

Pirates ahoy!

Dennis the Menace :

Dennis the Menace concertina characters

In previous years we have explored fairy tales,listened to and performed familiar texts such as the Hungry Caterpillar in different languages and encouraged our local schools to invite people from the wider community in to school to read stories in other languages.

Last year,some of us explored this wonderful book :"Vive les livres",which exists in German and Spanish too!

Here is the blog post from last year:

Long Live Books !

Some other ideas to explore books and stories.........

You may want to explore other themes and stories so I thought I would pop here in the blog post links to blog posts I have written about "story telling and writing" and looking at books - both fiction and non fiction!

We have recently been exploring "describing people in writing" and linking our UKS2 language work with Alice in Wonderland - to great effect!

Alice in Wonderland

We are exploring stretchy word carnival balloons- and this idea was inspired by Mick Inkpen's "Blue Balloon"

stretchy balloon

Great way to link a story in English with language work in another language

We love taking KS1 on a "Bear Hunt" and here is the example of the rhyme and game in Spanish that we adapt and use in French and German too! Everyone loves this one!

Going on a Bear Hunt rhyme and game

Here's an idea to use shadow puppets to retell in a very simple way using familiar stories- in this instance- Goldilocks and the Three Bears .

Goldilocks and the Three Bears shadow puppet show

"Toujours rien"

is a book I love and a great way to talk about Springtime and growing things .Here's my blog post from last year .

Springtime and growing plants

Maybe you have some target language non-fiction books on your shelves - like I do.The Noune" story above is available in lots of languages.Perhaps you could explore these in language learning.

Here are my thoughts about how we can explore non-fiction with UKS2 more advanced language learners

non fiction in the target language and making language learning links

Or maybe finally you want to create your own "target language book shop window".... writing full sentences demonstrating understanding of basic grammar at the same time! Hope this blog post can help you.....

Nouns, adjectives and verbs to create our own book covers and book shop window

This is my first blog post on the World Cup, which I hope will begin to support network teachers to develop activities to celebrate the World cup and to consider all the languages that will be heard at the global event.

The resources I refer to are all on JLN website.
You can take a look at the world cup resources we have created or sourced.

First let's celebrate the way the players and the fans will greet each other in all the various languages they speak.
Show your children this clip of 30 different ways to say hello from around the World

Now you can play "Catch a greeting!"

1. Ask the children to recall as many different ways of greeting each other both in their own home language , school language and in other languages they have seen on the video clip

2. Practise the greetings they suggest.Practise the sound of the greeting. Ask the children to think of the shape of the greeting both as a sound they hear (is it wavy/sharp/spiky etc) and as written word.Ask the children to draw the greetings as sound shapes and then as the written shape in the air.

3. Show the children some new greetings they haven't mentioned from the video clip.Look at the greeting word and the language it comes from and then practise the sound of the greeting on the sound slides that accompany each greeting.

5. Give out small card versions of greetings from the video clip - one per child. Locate and listen to the greetings if necessary on the video clip

6. Ask the children to practise their specific greeting. Does it help them to draw the sound of the greeting or the shape of the word in the air?

7. Ask the children to move around the room greeting each other and each time they greet someone they should swap greeting cards and therefore also the greeting word they have to say. Children should have the chance to say all the greetings.

Bring the children back together and each child a blank A4 piece of plain paper. Ask the children to investigate the flag of each of the country of the greeting card they are holding and to create a “Greetings “card to put on a class display.They should make sure that they spell their greeting accurately and make it an integral part of their flag.

Why not share this song "Hello to all the children around the world " with your class as they create their flags for the display?

World Book Day and a celebration of languages and literacy!

World Cup Catch a Greeting Game KS1 and LKS2