What to buy your favourite linguist for Christmas

....a ticket to the best MFL and ICT CPD event in town!  The 3rd ICT and Languages Conference (affectionately known as #ililc3) will take place at the University of Southampton on 9th and 10th February 2013.  Read all about it on the Languages SouthEast website.

Read about the original #ililc and #ililc2.  I am honoured to be speaking again at #ililc3, this time about Numeracy and Tarsia.  There are many other superb speakers on offer as well.

And you mustn't miss the Saturday night Show and Tell!

Come on, you know they're worth it!

Post it!

While looking for something else yesterday, I came across this post on the Number Loving blog.  It's all about Post-its and different ways that you can use them.  I was inspired by the first idea in the post, which I thought could be adapted easily for use in the languages classroom.  I particularly liked it because it promotes pair work and is also good for the repetition of vocabulary and structures.  

The aim of the game is to claim squares on the grid by writing the answer on a Post-it and sticking the Post-it on that square.  Each one in the pair needs to have a different colour or shape of Post-it so that you can see who has claimed which square.  Once the squares are all covered, pairs remove the Post-its and give them and the grid to another pair, who match the post-its to the correct squares.

I've made a French maths version, to go with my numeracy resources, and also a Spanish weather one, which I am planning to use with Year 5.  I'll make three different ones, so that, on tables of six, no pair is doing the same one, and laminate them.

Weather Postit Grid

Number Postit Grid

Off to find some small, cheap Post-its!

UPDATE 12.01.13:

Year 5 have had their first session of writing on the Post-its this week.  I purchased a big pack of 51mm x 38mm Post-its from my local Staples (soon to be closing down - I obviously haven't bought quite enough there).  I made three different versions of the grid so that each pair on the tables of 6 was doing a different one, and you can download all the grids from MFL Sunderland now.  Below are some pictures of the grids in action.  Next week, as a starter, they will be given another pair's grid and Post-its to match up.  If you are trying this yourself, I'd recommend doing a demonstration first.  Some of my class didn't quite understand what they had to do to start with.

UPDATE 2 16.02.13: Read about how @mflgirl has adapted this idea for use with her AS French class to work on speaking.

An idea for Christmas

This is a variation on the theme of concertina books that is just right for Christmas time.  

To make this one I used a sheet of A4 paper cut in half lengthways (to make a strip about 30cm by 10.5cm).  I folded it into a concertina of 8 equal sections.  It's important that your concertina has an even number of sections so that your present will lie flat.

Next I cut a rectangle of red card (other colours are available of course) 13cm by 10.5 cm and decorated it  with Christmassy patterns and a metallic-tape bow.  Then I cut the parcel in half and stuck on half on each end of the concertina.

I haven't put any writing on the concertina yet, but I have some ideas:

• Use dictionaries to find the Spanish words for presents and write these on the concertina.
• As above, plus the children add some adjectives.
• Children write things that they are going to do for their parents as a Christmas present (lots of good ideas here)
• Write a Christmas recipe.
• Write and illustrate Christmas vocabulary.
• Write a Christmas poem.

Many thanks to everyone who has been tweeting me pictures of the mini-books that they have been making at school.  It's lovely to see all the different ways that they can be used.

More Primary Languages news

At the end of September the consultation on the proposal to make languages a compulsory subject in Key Stage 2 ended.  Today the report was published.

There were 318 responses (perhaps because the consultation took place over the summer?) and "the vast majority" (91%) of those who responded agreed with the Government's proposal.  Because of this strong support, the Government has decided to proceed with making the learning of a language statutory in Key Stage 2 from September 2014.

The responses were, gladly, as anticipated.  Younger children are more open and receptive to learning another language, learning in primary lays the foundation for Key Stage 3 and, hopefully, Key Stage 4, it is vital for intercultural learning and plays a fundamental part in cross-curricular learning.  And so on.  

Respondents have also made it clear that if compulsory primary languages is to succeed, there will have to be significant investment of money and time in teacher training and support networks.  Many of the classroom teachers who are currently teaching the language are non-specialist, other schools are not teaching a language at all and will need to start from scratch. 

The second part of the report is dedicated to the language or languages that primary children should learn.  Respondents were asked which language their school would be likely to teach, and, not surprisingly, French comes top of the list followed by Spanish and German.  Community languages, Italian and Mandarin are a lot lower on the list.  A quarter of respondents said that "primary schools should teach the same language as their local secondary or partner schools......(to) ensure that coherent programmes of learning were available to children to continue their study of a specific language across all key stages."  This is where the main difficulty lies.

The CofE primary school where I teach Spanish feeds to the local CofE secondary school, who chose Spanish as their first foreign language when they opened.  Out of last year's 27 Year 6 children, seventeen of them went to this secondary school and are therefore continuing with Spanish.  However, when they got there, they were in the same classes as children from other primary schools who had done French to very varying levels and no Spanish at all.  In addition, the ten children who didn't go to the CofE secondary school went to various other schools in the city, and most of them have ended up doing French and not Spanish.  Now Sunderland is a small city and a small local authority.  The problems that we encounter here are much worse in other parts of the country.  It just isn't as simple as "teaching the same language as your local secondary school".  I have written before about a possible solution to this problem and a couple of years ago worked on a transition project which tried to find some ways of overcoming this significant obstacle to primary languages' success.

The Government is now consulting on a new proposal: "to require primary schools to teach one or more of the following languages at Key Stage 2: French, German, Italian, Mandarin, Spanish or a classical language (Latin or ancient Greek). Schools would, of course, be free to teach other languages in addition to one of these."  The draft of the Order by which languages will be made statutory at Key Stage 2 is also published as part of this new consultation.  They say that they will also "consider the points made about workforce training and support" and that there will be a further consultation in early 2013 on the proposed content for the Programmes of Study.  

The consultation opened yesterday (16th November) and we only have until 16th December to register our views.  Every response counts!

What's that in your pocket?

Pocket books!  They're a bit more tricky to make than some of the other mini-books but well worth it.  The finished book has eight pages with pockets and covers front and back that can be decorated.  There are all sorts of things that can be put in the pockets - my sample above is just one idea.  The yellow cards have descriptions of the people whose pictures are stuck on the pages.  Students could make these merely as a writing exercise, or they could make their own and then exchange with a partner for a reading and matching exercise.

They a bit like an enhanced version of the original mini-book.  If you can make one of those, you'll be able to see how these go together.  In these instructions I've used a piece of paper which is a different colour on each side, to make things clearer.

1. Fold the paper into eight equal
sections, as for the original mini-book.

2. Fold the two longer edges
over.  These will form the
pockets.

3. Cut along the centre fold as far
asthe final two sections.

4. Refold the paper lengthways.

5. Hold the two ends and push
them together.
This will form the pages.

6. The two flaps at the open
end form the covers.

7. Glue together the backs of the pages
as well as the edges of the open pockets.

8. If you have made your pocket book with paper,
you could add a card cover to make it
more sturdy.
Then fill the pockets!

I'm a bit of a fan

Fan books.  I found these while looking for something else.  As usual.

I made six identical shapes using the autoshape function in Publisher and copy-and-paste.  Then I cut them out, put them in a pile and punched a hole in them all.  Finally I fastened them together with a butterfly clip.  Simple.

I mentioned on Twitter the other night that I had thought of using these for House and Home.  Make house shapes, fasten them together and each house shape can house the description of a different room.  I'm sure you can think of lots of other ways of exploiting them.

PS Congrats to Blogger for importing the top photo the wrong way round.

A concertina-ed effort

photo courtesy of cheeky @elvisrunner

A few weeks ago I mentioned on Twitter that I would be taking part in a short presentation at Language Show Live.  One of the cheeky #MFLTwitterati (yes, Prim, I'm talking about you!) asked if it would involve paper folding.  I suppose if you look back on my more recent posts, it does appear that I am particularly keen on the art of papiroflexia.  

And here is another one - the concertina book.  Here's how to make it:

2. Fold it into a concertina.

1. Halve a piece of A4 paper lengthways

3. Write or draw on each section of the concertina
except the very top one and the very bottom one.

4. Stick something at the top and the bottom sections of your concertina.

These mini-books are ideal for anything that requires a sequence, as they provide ready-made 'steps' on which to write.  So you could use them for recipes, and have foodstuffs or utensils at the top and bottom, or even for a more formal piece of writing which requires the use of time sequencing phrases:

Another variation on the theme is the accordion book.  In this example I have stuck together two zig-zag folds and shaped them.

Concertina books and accordion books are small, non-threatening and easy to store and display.  Why not have a go?

UPDATE 2.3.13:

Here is a variation on the concertina book which was invented by Rachel Smith.  The concertina forms the the steps up which the animals climb into the Ark.  My Year 2 class loved this!

UPDATE 14.5.13:

I have been doing Les Planètes with Year 5 this half term, and was after some kind of writing activity to show off our extended sentences.  Enter the concertina book!

En mi pueblo

I was very interested to read Amanda Salt's Bringing Twitter to the Classroom blogpost recently.  Amanda asked her Twitter followers to respond to two questions in Spanish, and then used these responses as reading material for her classes.

I have recently begun to work on verbs in Spanish with Year 6.  We have discovered what infinitives look like in both languages, how to find them in the dictionary and practised using them in me gusta sentences.  We are heading for some se puede + infinitive sentences, which we will use in conjunction with the places in town that we already know.  We will be making the line of paper buildings as a writing task.

Inspired by Amanda's work, I would like to collect some information about different places in different towns via Wallwisher.  I'd be really grateful if the Spanish speakers out there could contribute.  Please tell them where you live, a place that is in your town, and what you can do there using se puede.



By the way, for those who don't know, Washington (Tyne and Wear) is The Original Washington (it says so on the town signs) and Washington Old Hall is where George Washington's ancestors lived.  Some North-East trivia for you.

Language Show Live 2012: Short - Sharp - Repetition

The last seminar that I attended at Language Show Live 2012 was Short - Sharp - Repetition.  What makes an activity good? by Heather Rendall.  I was particularly interested in it following my recent blogpost about choral repetition - I was hoping I was going to find out some new ideas.

I found the seminar fascinating, and not just because there were plenty of  new ideas.  Heather is an expert on MFL, ICT, the brain and memory, and this seminar put a different slant on second language acquisition.

Learning is the "biological organisation of new input", and the organisation of information for successful retrieval later on means that learning has taken place.   We need to make sure that the learning that takes place in the classroom is brain-centred and not child-centred.

This graphic shows how many connections the
brain makes in our early years.

Each neuron in our brain makes a myriad of connections with other neurons.  Many new connections are made from birth onwards, particularly up to the age of two.  During the teenage years "the Great Rewiring" takes place - many links are broken and new links made.

New information goes into the brain and tries to find a connection.  Assuming that it succeeds, if that link is not reactivated within three days then it will dissolve away and the memory will be lost.  "Cells that fire together wire together".  In other words, repetition makes then constantly reinforces these connections.

The brain has a natural tendency to learn what to do and what not to do. Avoidance of error is a driving force.  Babies learn by avoiding what hasn't been successful in the past.

"The driving force behind any learning is satisfaction".  Also our competitive nature and remembering past losses and failure spurs us on to win and achieve.

What makes the average student feel a failure?

• Not being able to understand or follow during a lesson
• Making no visible progress
• Continuing to make errors
• Comparing results and efforts with those of others

Inherited values that make learning successful
Ability to do and understand and make progress
Recipe for success with new input:

• minimise random or inapt connections
• repetition of the input
• receptive recall
• more repetition leading to productive recall

The brain likes repetition, although chanting switches the brain off. 

The brain is good at recognising things that it has seen before, so exploit this at the beginning of a lesson - make connections with prior learning. 

Long-term, permanent change in neurons occurs only after neurons are stimulated four times over the course of an hour (or however long a lesson is).  Therefore we need to deliver the new input in small enough, well-connected chunks that they can be repeated four times over the lesson.  The same vocabulary needs to be presented in a different guise, with a different exercise or activity.  Ideally it should be repeated with all four skills, and other vocabulary should be limited so that the core vocabulary can be absorbed.

To minimise misconceptions or false connections, Heather advises introducing new vocabulary with the spelling, the sound and the meaning, as well as transliterating the new content.  For example, showing je m'appelle early on so as to avoid je mapple or je'mappelle, and explaining that it means "I myself call".  She also recommends emphasising sound-spelling differences by regularly looking at close cognates such as station and table.  Håkan Ringbom wrote about the role of the mother tongue in second language learning. Children will seek the nearest English word to help them to "spell" the target language word unless you tell them otherwise.

For receptive recall students need to have as much sight and sound of the words as possible.  Some ideas are:

• Yes/no cards  Either separate cards or one "flippable" one.  Students have to show the correct one.  Everyone has to take part, and each student as well as the teacher gets instant feedback.
• linear wordsearch or wordsnake  Students need to know the vocabulary to be able to find all the different words. An example is  chevalmoutonlapinchien.  You can add extra letters between each word to increase the challenge. 
• Odd one out 
• Use PowerPoint animation to display the words being studied interspersed with words they don't know. Students call out the words they know but keep quiet for the words they don't know. 
• Again using PowerPoint animation, words appear letter by letter. Students call out the word when they know what it is
• Display each word with gaps or with the vowels missing, and students have to call the word out. 
• Using PowerPoint animation, the words appear and disappear very quickly and students have to call them out. 
• Students pick out the correct spelling from a selection.
• Flashcards with the target language on one side and English on the other. Students hold up the correct one but can check if necessary that they have chosen the right one, thus giving themselves instant feedback. 
• Follow me cards.  Tarsia can be used to make this activity quickly and easily.  You can read more about Follow me activities here.
• Children are growing up surrounded by computer games and so respond well to trying to beat scores and best times. They can see themselves continuing to improve and again this gives them instant feedback. Even a simple card matching activity timed with a stopwatch ticks this box.  Use the Online Stopwatch.
• Match the word to a choice of graphics.
• A short quiz after the initial input is better than a repetition of the input.
• Infinite Scrabble would be a good way of repeating the vocabulary.

When we observe something then do it ourselves afterwards, we use the same neural pathways. It's how babies learn - "monkey see monkey do"!  Live performance therefore has more impact than a recording - another reason why FLAs are so important. Puppets are also useful for this. 

This week I have been putting some of these ideas into practice to gauge their effectiveness.  

With Year 5 I have been working on Big Numbers (thousands, hundreds, tens and units) in Spanish.  I had noticed that they were not as confident with the new numbers as I hoped, particularly the 100s.  Before we tackled the Kilometraje activity  I wanted to do some intensive work on the numbers.  

Here's what we did:

• Choral repetition of the 10s from 20 to 100, with me pointing to the digits and the words.
• Numbers appearing letter by letter on the screen, children called out the number as soon as they recognised it.
• Numbers appeared on the screen interspersed with words they didn't know.  They had to call out the numbers and stay quiet for the rest.
• Choral repetition of the 100s from 100 to 1000, again with me pointing to the digits and the words.
• Card game - the children cut along the lines to make the ten number cards, then wrote the digits on the back.  Then I said the numbers in English and they had to hold up the right number card, checking on the back if they needed to.
• Numbers appeared on the board with the vowels missing, and the children called out the numbers.  All the PowerPoint activities can be found here.  The animations are all there so it would be easy to adapt to other vocabulary.
• The class completed the numbers spiral, finding the tens and the hundreds.  I made the spiral using this generator.

I think that made 4 repetitions of each within the hour!  I asked the class what they had thought of these new activities.  Their favourite was the "only call out the words we know" and their second favourite was the words with the vowels missing.

I also did very similar activities today with Year 4 (I was being observed!) who are learning days, numbers and months leading to dates.  We finished each section with a spiral, one for days and one for months.  When I made these ones I put in lots of extra letters, and the children loved them.

The activities were certainly engaging, and appeared to increase pupil confidence.  I will be interested to use them for a new topic to see if they learn new vocabulary more quickly and retain it better.

You might find these links interesting with regard to brain-centred language learning:

Forget it: the secret of remembering words

Language and your brain - infographic

Brain rules and learning

and I'm thinking that CILT's Classic Pathfinder 6, Patterns and Procedures, by Heather Rendall, will definitely be worth a read.

Language Show Live 2012: Multi-lingual awareness for Primary Schools

Multi-lingual awareness for Primary Schools was a seminar given on Sunday morning by Peter Downes and Joan Dickie.  It was described in the programme as "From popular English stories in a foreign language and interactive video phone conversations to fun ways of investigating languages - top tips to make your pupils love languages!"  

Now I've made it no secret over the past few years that I am uncomfortable with children in Key Stage 2 learning lots of different languages.  In my opinion they will end up knowing little about anything.  I would rather they spent the time on one language and made real, tangible progress.  Obviously this creates significant difficulties for many schools when Year 6 children transfer to Year 7, in particular the huge range of provision in different feeder primary schools.  So it was with interest that I settled down to hear about "Discovering Language - the alternative approach to 'one language for all' at KS2".

The 'Discovering Language' project, funded by the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation and administered by the ASCL, promotes language awareness from Year 3 to Year 6.  It puts spoken and written language into the wider context of communication, and explains the wide range of world languages, how they have developed and why they change.  By listening to 5 or 6 different languages, children develop their listening skills and are encouraged to make careful observations.  Their interest is stimulated and they begin to see the connections between languages.

This approach has a number of advantages:

• It is more approachable for non-specialist teachers who are over-challenged by having to do one language for four years.
• Small children have a huge capacity for learning lots of different languages and for comparing them with each other and in turn comparing them with English.
• This method is not so much teaching as allowing children to make discoveries.
• A good background for new Year 7 students regardless of the language they end up doing.
• A sound foundation for all learners that really helps with their literacy.
• Helps to overcome the problem of mixed-age classes.
• Overcomes transition problems.

The one disadvantage, for me, is that it is intended to be taught by class teachers and not visiting specialists, which means that I would be out of a job.  Again.

Children look at verbal and non-verbal communication, such as sign language, signals and signs.  The BSL 4 Kids website is a good source of information and resources about British Sign Language.  They also examine the historical roots of English, coming from events such as the Norman Conquest.  If teachers of Literacy want to improve children's vocabulary, they can look at the dual Anglo-Saxon/French vocabulary that exists in English, such as Greetings versus Salutations and room versus chamber.  This also explains why in English we have pig/pork, sheep/mutton and cow/beef among others.

Resources:
The Language Investigator from Coventry LA
Early Start - resources are available in French, Spanish and German, and have been commissioned in Russian.


I have to admit that having attended this seminar I have been slightly swayed in my opinion.  I don't want to teach KS2 children lots of bits of language, but would be interested in this kind of comparative etymology and linguistics.  It's something that I do mention a lot in passing to explain to children why, for example, cognates exist between French and English, or why a lot of Spanish has Arabic roots.

Mr Gove has made it clear that KS2 children should learn one language from Year 3 to Year 6, and also that he is not going to make available any additional funding to facilitate training and resourcing.

I would be interested to hear others' views on this subject.  One language at KS2 or Language Awareness?

Language Show Live 2012: Saturday

I stayed at Language Show Live until about 2pm on Saturday.  I called it a day then partly because I knew I was going to be returning on Sunday with my sister and I wanted to have some stands left to visit, and partly because it was going to be the only opportunity I would have to spend some time in my home town, which I don't get to do very often.

I began the day with Blurring the Boundaries...-Languages beyond the classroom, Rachel Hawkes's first talk of the day.  Rachel spoke about initiatives such as Spanglovision, Language Beatz and Language Leaders.  You can read about all of them on Rachel's website.  I won't say any more about them here but recommend instead that you read Sally-Jane Braisby's excellent blogpost about the same seminar.

It was during this seminar that I caught up with a large number of #MFLTwitterati.  Great to see them all in the flesh again!

The next seminar I attended had an intriguing title: GramMAGICal structures, and an even more intriguing description: "Amaze your students with magic and get them to learn, practise and perform tricks while using various grammar structures in a way they will never forget!"  It was given by James Stubbs, about whom I have heard good things on Twitter, and so I thought I would give it a try.  And it was actually about proper magic - James is a member of the Magic Circle and was mentored by the late Ali Bongo.  

I made the mistake of sitting near the back, and soon lots of taller people were sitting in front of me (not difficult to be taller than me) so I couldn't see most of what James was doing.  However I could hear how useful magic tricks are for repeating language and for introducing grammar like the imperative and pronoun objects, which are not the easiest things to teach.  The main thing that I took away from the seminar was the importance of using language for real purposes.  You could show the students a trick, or a 'make', or a piece of writing, or a picture, and then give them the instruction sheet - they then have a reason for reading, to see how to do what you have shown them.  Another idea I got from James was to have students learning how to do something and then demonstrating it to other students.  This has given me an idea for how to approach the next 'make' that I do.

The third and final seminar that I saw on Saturday was Top 10 tips to give a fabulous speech, by Morwenna Rowe from Speak Easily.  I was particularly interested in this one because public speaking is something that I am doing more and more, and I wanted to make sure I was on the right track.  

Morwenna began by talking about the impact that being a non-native speaker of English can have on giving a presentation in English.  She demonstrated the stress patterns of French and Spanish and the tonal nature of some Asian languages and how it can be difficult for speakers of these (and other) languages to give correct emphasis to English.  She then talked about the effects that nerves can have on the body and on the way that you speak.  I have experienced many of the 'symptoms' that she mentioned - tight voice, butterflies and blushing for example, and it was reassuring to find out that these are all a result of stress hormones produced by being nervous.  She stressed that it is important to stand properly - more on your toes than on your heels - and to breathe from deep in your belly not from your upper chest. It is vital to make good eye contact with your audience so as to really connect with them.  Your eyes should be parallel with the eyes of the audience.

The most interesting part for me was the section about PowerPoint.  Morwenna suggests writing your speech or presentation first, then creating the PowerPoint slides after that.  The slides should add visual interest with photos, diagrams or keywords, but never lists of bullet points and large amounts of text.  In that case the audience will switch from listening to you to reading the screen.  My PowerPoint slides now are usually an image and a couple of words.  When I post my presentations to Slideshare I like to slidecast them simply because people looking at the slides after the event won't get much detail from them.

I brought away some excellent handouts from Speak Easily, and also took some for my husband, who does a lot of speaking as well.

*Images by the brilliant Bev Evans

Language Show Live 2012: The Exhibitors

Last night I returned from my first time at Language Show Live.  I attended on all three days and have come back laden with ideas and goodies.  This is the first of what will probably be four separate posts - I think there is too much information just for one - and it is all about my favourite exhibitors.

I was very fortunate to be able to attend Language Show Live at the invitation of Teachit Languages.  I contributed French and Spanish resources for the launch of the site at the beginning of the year, was delighted to be asked to help the team to do a presentation of the site and help out on the stand.  If you don't already know Teachit Languages, it is a resource site to which you can subscribe for a small fee.  This subscription entitles you to download the resources in an editable format as well as use the interactive activity makers, such as the magnet activity maker that I demonstrated on Friday.  You can also become a contributor to the site.  If your resources are used by Teachit, you will receive royalty payments.

I did most of my exhibition visiting on Saturday, having scoped out many of the sites from afar on Friday.  I was very pleased to see the Guatemala Tourist Board stand, and they have very kindly given me some worry dolls, a patterned ball and a map that will really enrich my Year 2 Guatemala project.  I also took some photographs of their display which will be useful too.  Have a look at the Visit Guatemala site.

Instituto Cervantes also had a stand, and win my prize for best bag of the show.  It even has matching stickers!  Instituto Cervantes offer teacher training and courses in Spanish.  

The Consejería de Educación stand was almost next to Instituto Cervantes.  I bought six of their brilliant posters to give Spanish more of a presence at school.  There is also an animated version of their alphabet poster.  The balloons that you can see in the photo (right) have the colours printed on them in Spanish.  Something that will make the balloon plenary more interesting!

I do a fair bit of work with my Key Stage 2 students on the geography and regions of Spain.  We also talk about the different languages that are spoken in the country.  I had an interesting chat with the staff on the Basque Government stand, where they told me some things I didn't know about the history of País Vasco and its language.  I didn't know, for example, that Castellano and Euskara have borrowed from each other so much.  I came away from the stand with a visual dictionary showing words in Euskara, Spanish, French and English, a resource that will interest the children at school.

I travelled on the same train there and back as Nick from Routes into Languages NE and so felt it my duty to go to visit the Routes into Languages stand.  They have some really good resources available including this wall planner, where each month's numbers are in a different language.  I also like this poster pack, especially the food one.  You can see all their resources here.

And finally, anyone who was there on Sunday will know that I was there with my sister, who is a German-specialist subject leader.  We made some purchases at the Idioma stand.  I'm looking forward to seeing the next items to be added to their range.