Two weeks ago I started teaching in a new school. Well, not brand new, but new to me. And I started teaching Spanish there, so now I am teaching Spanish in both my schools and no French anymore. My Year 6s there have already done three years of French, and I have a year in which to get them to substantial progress in Spanish. So I am having to come up with ways to move them on quickly.
The first thing we are doing is a big push on phonics, starting with ñ, silent h, ll and accented vowels. I have started with these sounds because we met them in the first words of the first Spanish lesson - español, hola, me llamo and adiós.
Like me, you may have come across Takeaway Homework. Indeed my Y10 daughter brought home her first one last week, for English. It gave me the idea for this phonics activity, where the words all contain the relevant phonemes, but are graded according to their length and relative difficulty. Therefore the children can choose whichever number of chili peppers they want, whichever one they feel comfortable with, to read aloud to practise the phonemes. Whichever one they choose, they are still practising the sounds. It also means I can use the same resource with Year 3 all the way through to Year 6. Less printing and less laminating, and we can always revisit it.
So we are doing the above one first and will then be using this one once we have learned the numbers 1 to 10:
If you'd like to use them yourself, you can download them from here. They will be equally useful for Key Stage 3 beginners, I'm sure!
Can you think of any other activities that could be made "spicy" in this way?
Good idea. I like giving them choice - although they need guidance often as will pick above or below their ability range. Verbs could be done like this? I and he from easy, we then they then you singular and plural (for asking questions)?
ReplyDeletePhonics focus at start of year seems to be paying off.
I'm using this at my staff meeting this week; they've requested some phonics training and this should be a way of motivating staff to actually be brave enough to try!
ReplyDeleteI'll let you know how we get on!
(Only got 30 minutes to remind them of phonics, set expectations, and cover Global Learning Partnership and ISA stuff!!)
Lisa x