My Resources Shop

 

I had the idea for Pocket Cards a long time ago, but didn't know how I would go about selling them.  Then I happened upon Sellfy.com as a way of doing that.  My first products were the French and Spanish Challenge Cards in 2014, followed quickly by the Pocket Cards.  I pay a monthly fee to Sellfy, but took on the Pro contract when they were offering a permanent 50% off, so it doesn't cost too much, and I only have to pay Sellfy 2% commission on sales.  The only downside of choosing Sellfy is that the shop isn't as visible as, say, TES or Teachers Pay Teachers, so forgive me if I do some publicising of my products on this here blog and on my social media accounts.

You'll know that literally thousands of my resources are available absolutely free on Light Bulb Languages.  I have chosen to charge for the resources in my Sellfy shop because they took considerably longer to make.

Here's a list of everything that is available in my shop.  Enjoy browsing! 

FRENCH	SPANISH	OTHER
Poésie: 25 poems in French for beginner learners More information here	Poesía: 25 poems in Spanish for beginner learners More information here	Everything you need to know about minibooks More information here
Box of French: les super-héros More information here	Box of Spanish: ¡superheroes! More information here	Everything you need to know about Tarsia More information here
On commence!  French lesson starters	¡comenzamos! Spanish lesson starters More information here	Everything you need to know about calligrams More information here
On commence! French Christmas starters	¡comenzamos!  Spanish Christmas starters	130 Activities for the Languages Classroom More information here
On commence! French number starters	¡comenzamos!  Spanish number starters
ma petite grammaire: part 1 nouns and adjectives More information here	mi gramática: part 1 nouns and adjectives More information here
ma petite grammaire: part 2 verbs, adjectives and conjunctions	mi gramática: part 2 verbs, adjectives and conjunctions
French Grammar Challenge Cards More information here	Spanish Grammar Challenge Cards More information here
French Challenge Cards More information here	Spanish Challenge Cards More information here
French Challenge Cards – Christmas edition	Spanish Challenge Cards – Christmas edition
Box of French: Je suis préhistorique ! More information here	Box of Spanish: ¡Soy prehistórico! More information here
Box of French: J’aime les sports ! More information here	Box of Spanish: ¡Me gustan los deportes! More information here
French Minibooks for Primary Learners	Spanish Minibooks for Primary Learners More information here
French Minipuzzles vol.1	Spanish Minipuzzles vol.1
French Pocket Cards set 1 set 2 set 3 set 4 set 5 set 6 set 7 More information here	Spanish Pocket Cards set 1 set 2 set 3 set 4 set 5 set 6 set 7 More information here
	Sonidos Españoles (phonics) More information here
	Box of Spanish: ¡A comer!

 

Poésie: an anthology of French poems for beginner learners

 

You'll have read a couple of weeks ago that I published a collection of poems in Spanish for beginner learners.

A virtual colleague (someone I know from the Languages in Primary Schools Facebook group!) asked if I was intending to French poems.  I wasn't at the time, as there is a lot more out there for French, with it being more commonly taught and comptines being readily available.  She persuaded me to give it a go, and I published it today!

You can find Poésie here.  You will get a full colour and a more printer-friendly .pdf of each poem, as well as a vocabulary card for each one to help with comprehension.  The introduction gives you some information about using poems in your lessons, and you'll also get a .png image file of each poem to put into your PowerPoints or Smartboard files.  They will best suit learners in Key Stage 2 and Key Stage 3.

A Spanish crowd-sourced resource

Very many thanks to everyone who contributed to my recent crowdsource.  You can download the resource from here.  It took a long time to get everything to fit on one sheet - I had been intending to use speech bubbles and a prettier font!  You may want to copy it onto A3 if you're going to use it.

My Year 6s have just started my Unit 17, which is about where you are from, the languages you speak and so on.  I'm going to use these texts as reading practice for countries and languages, as well as for helping with the conjugations of hablar and ser.  I can then use them for working on nationalities - we know the countries everyone comes from, so what is their nationality?

Social media is often criticised, but there is sometimes nothing better for making teaching resources.  Twitter and Facebook came up trumps with this resource.  Thanks again, everyone.

Crowd-sourcing texts for Spanish

 

I've just started teaching Year 6 one of the new units from my Spanish scheme of work - Así soy yo - which is all about identity, where you are from and the languages you speak.  It leads up to an extended piece of writing which can be used as a transition piece.

I'd like to have some short texts to use for reading activities and as models for writing, and it would be great if you could help with them, along similar lines to the other crowd sourced texts that you have helped with in the past.

I would be very grateful if you could write a couple of sentences about where you are from and the languages you speak.  

For example, mine would be:

Soy de Inglaterra.  Hablo inglés, francés, español, un poco de alemán y un poco de catalán. 

If you don't want to add your real name, a pseudonym or nickname would be fine.

You can add your sentences here in a comment, or email them to me.

¡Gracias!  I will, of course, share any resulting resources.

Video Spanish lessons

 

Since the beginning of this term I have been using pre-recorded videos to provide Spanish learning for my classes.  I chose this format so that families would be able to access the lessons at a time suitable for them without having to worry about logging on for a live lesson.

All of the videos are on my YouTube channel and you're welcome to use them if you want to.

The shorter videos that I made last spring are also still available.

Poesía - an anthology of Spanish poems for beginner learners

 

Over the last couple of weeks I have been writing poems in Spanish to accompany my scheme of work for primary Spanish.  I have already used some of them in my video lessons, and am encouraging the children to make videos of them for the Express Yourself in Lockdown challenge.  Unfortunately I think the snow that we've had here in the north-east for the last week has proved more appealing than Spanish!

The 25 poems that I've written are now available under the title of Poesía.  You'll get a pdf e-book of the poems, with each one available in both full colour and a mainly black and white, more printer-friendly, version.  Each poem is accompanied by a vocabulary card to aid comprehension.  The introduction gives you some information about why you should use poetry in your lessons, and some ideas for doing so.  And as if that wasn't enough, you'll also get .png image files of all the poems so that you can put them easily into your PowerPoints or Smartboard presentations.  The poems were written with Key Stage 2 learners in mind, but would also suit Secondary learners.

While writing the poems, particularly those with strict structures like haiku, I found invaluable the Separar en sílabas website.  You type in your Spanish, and it gives you a breakdown of the syllables from a grammatical point of view and also the number of syllables those words would have as a line of poetry.  For example, did you know that the question ¿cuántas sílabas? has 5 syllables "normally", but as a line of poetry it only has 4?  Because sílabas is "esdrújula" (has the stress on the 3rd to last syllable), the line of poetry counts as having one syllable fewer.  Similarly, quiero comer has 4 syllables grammatically, but 5 as a line of poetry.  If a line ends in a word whose stress is on the final syllable (like comer) then the line counts as having one syllable more.  Writing haiku and cinquains has been a bit like a jigsaw puzzle!  If you're interested in counting syllables in poetry in French, I've been having a play with the Scribblab tool.

No-screen activities

 

Today is another normal lockdown day in our house.  "Normal" consists of my daughters, my husband and I working at home, all on screens for most of the day.  I try to stay away from screens at the weekend (not always very successfully) for a break.  

Understandably, there have been a lot of requests recently for no-screen activities for students.  Here's what I can offer for languages:

• Lumen's Language Challenges: art and craft challenges with a languages focus. These are the ones that I have done, to give you some ideas.
  
  
• Make a minibook!  There are lots of different kinds, and you can read all about them on this blog as well as downloading a free publication containing all the information.
  
  
• Create a calligram: You can read all my blogposts about them here, or download this free publication which tells you all about them.
  
  
• Students could also complete a number of different no-screen activities and put them towards Lumen's French Award, Lumen's Spanish Award or Lumen's German Award.