Making a flag

The last unit of my Year 3 scheme of work is one of my favourites - Mi bandera.  The children learn how to describe the colours and shapes on flags, opening the door to other countries that speak Spanish and their cultures.  It usually coincides with a major sporting event and so the children are always interested in it.

After we have finished practising all the speaking with actions (multimodal - it really works!) the children make their own flag and describe it to the rest of the class.

I always use the method of making a wave-able flag that I first saw on Barbara Cheded's blog.  Unfortunately the link for the instructions no longer works, and I can't find them anywhere else, so I've done my own instructions for making the flag here:

1.  Fold a piece of A4 paper into quarters.

2.  Cut off one of the quarters (it doesn't matter which one).

3.  It's important to get the piece of paper the right way round at this stage - children sometimes put the paper in the portrait orientation and end up with the wrong-shaped flag.  At this stage children draw and colour their flag design on the "flag" section.

4.  When the flag design is finished, roll up the flag pole section of the paper and stick it with some sticky tape (we've never had any luck with glue!)  The flag is now ready to be waved.