Reading aloud in Spanish: more dabbles with AI

 

I've just completed a brand new resource called Reading aloud in Spanish, which I have designed to support all students, but especially those studying for GCSE, in reading aloud with accurate pronunciation.

Each page of the resource follows the same format:

• A QR code provides a model of the sound ('ll' in this case) 
• In the Prepárate section, students can listen via a second QR code to the pronunciation of six sample words containing the focus sound.  
• The final step - ¡Lee! - is the group of phrases and sentences, all containing the focus sound, the sounds from previous pages, and those sounds which are more or less the same in Spanish and in English (C (/k/), CH, F, L, M, N, P, S, T, X), for students to practise reading aloud.  
• The sounds included are those which make Spanish significantly different to English - a, o, ll, ñ, e, i, u, ce/ci/z, d/-d, qu, b/v, ge/gi/j, r/rr.  These are gradually built up, so that students are only ever reading aloud the focus sound, sounds from previous pages and the ten sounds which are more or less like English.

When I was writing this resource, I use some of the notes and word lists that I had from my Spanish phonics resource, but also incorporated as many words as possible from the Edexcel GCSE prescribed vocabulary list.  I use AI as a way of making the composition of phrases and sentences quicker and easier.

I alternated between ChatGPT and Claude AI (thanks to Jérôme Nogues for the tip!) for the sentence generation, with a little bit of Google Gemini towards the end.  I found Claude AI the most reliable.  ChatGPT tended to go through my alphabetical vocabulary list and use each word in turn to create a sentence, meaning that all the sentences started with A and many did not make sense.  Claude AI generated more varied sentences and it was easier to adjust the prompts.  Generally speaking, I didn't use many of the AI-generated sentences, but rather used them as a starting point for the sentences that I included.  Even so, it was much quicker than writing all the sentences from scratch myself.

In the past when creating resources which include sound, I have recorded the audio myself and have had to edit the sound using Audacity, and insert them into the resource.  This time I used the text-to-speech generator TTSMaker, which I heard about from Jérôme at Language World last month.  I found a couple of the European Spanish voices which gave accurate results, and then linked them to the resource using QR codes - I used QR code Monkey.

The only difficulty I had with audio was getting the AI to say sounds rather than letters of the alphabet, such as /x/ instead of jota, so I used recordings I already had for those sounds.

I first experimented with AI in August 2023, and wasn't very impressed.  I can see that the AI generators have developed and moved on since that time, and now give better results.  I'll try again to use it to develop new resources for the classroom, and also to create more audio for the LiPS Listening Project.

Making a paper puppet - a #LW2025 takeaway

 

At Language World on Saturday I enjoyed the two talks about puppets that I went to.  In particular I'd like to thank Lavinia Dos Remedios, who showed us how to make a puppet out of a piece of A4 paper.  If you are a regular reader of this blog, you'll know that I am very keen on making things with one piece of A4 paper, namely minibooks, so this was right up my street!

Above, you can see a short video of the puppet that I made during the session and quickly decorated to look like a Moomin, in honour of Lisa Stevens and the box of biscuits I just ate, ahem.

Here is the YouTube video that Lavinia referenced with the instructions on how to make the puppets:

Language World 2025 #LW2025

I returned yesterday from the 2025 Language World Conference with a head full of information and ideas, and a notebook full of notes.  Well, full-ish of notes, as there were some sessions (for example the ones I was chairing) that I decided to just listen to.

The title of my talk was A rich tapestry of adaptable lesson ideas!  (The theme of the conference prompted a lot of weaving and stitching analogies as well as AI-generated pictures of the same!)

I had time to talk about 20 different activities:

1. Which one do I not say?
2. Sentence builder bingo
3. Listening Chests
4. Pointing game
5. Trapdoor/Cluedo
6. Sit down when yours is different
7. Working off the grid
8. Guess my sentence
9. Listen read write
10. Rapping
11. Dialogues
12. Messing around with text
13. Describing a poster
14. Odd one out
15. Analysing text
16. Post-It grids
17. Pair writing
18. Pictogram sentences
19. Dice roll activities
20. Kim's game
    

You can read more about these activities and 100 others here.

Here are my notes from some of the other sessions I attended:

Which one did I not say?

 

Recently I've been doing a lot more listening with my classes before we start speaking (here's why)  This activity can be done before you start the speaking, or afterwards as a recap.

I've called it "Which one did I not say?" for want of a better name!  I say all of the words that we are practising (not in any particular order) except for one.  The children look at the grid on the board while listening, and then have to tell me which one I didn't say.  It requires a lot of focussed and careful listening, and I am always impressed that they get the right answer - I'm not convinced I would be able to!

So far I've used it for single words, as in the example above, which is for Year 4 (age 8-9).  However I think it could be used with any age or experience of learner, and could be used with short phrases or even sentences rather than just words.

It is a low-prep idea, but I'd recommend preparing it in advance, so that you know what you've said!  I jot them down on a sticky note or make lists like this:

Nouns, opinions and descriptions with a PSHE/RSE twist

I first got to know the work of Elise Gravel when I came across Monstres en vrac in Montréal ten years ago.  When I was in California last week, I popped into a branch of Barnes & Noble to have a look at their Spanish section.  Considering how bilingual California is, it was a smaller section than I expected.  I purchased one book: El rosa, el azul y tú by Elise Gravel.  It's also available in French as Le rose, le bleu et toi !

The book offers us opportunities to discuss self, relationships and gender stereotypes with children, while also covering areas of language such as nouns and their gender, opinions, and adjectives and adjectival agreement.

For examples, here are some nouns which we could show to children without the images.  They could investigate the phonics and use their dictionaries to find the meanings.  They could also work out the grammatical gender of each noun.  Then, as is suggested at the top of the page, we could ask the children to sort them into "Things for girls", "Things for boys" and "Things for everyone".  The resulting discussions will have strong links to the PSHE/RSE curricula.

Another example is opinions, which can be approached as a true/false activity as suggested on the page.

Elise Gravel also offers some free posters on her website.  Among them there are two useful Spanish ones:

They show examples in practice of adjectival agreement and could be a starting point for discussions about gender stereotypes.

This book and these resources give an interesting twist to commonly taught grammar, and would give Key Stage 3 teachers a way of doing the usual in an unusual way for their new Year 7 students who have different experiences of language learning.

I would recommend speaking to your headteacher and/or PSHE coordinator before using these ideas in your lessons.