Skills icons

 

Recently I was shown the excellent work of the history lead of a local primary school.  They had chosen to design an icon for each of the seven history skills (Constructing the past, Sequencing the past, Continuity and change, etc..)  Their plan is to display the relevant icon at the beginning of each lesson, and then to discuss with the children how they will be learning, and to recall when they have used that skill before.

It got me thinking that we could use a similar system in Key Stage 2 Languages, to alert children to the skills that we are using and discuss how we are learning.  I introduced the topic in the Languages in Primary Schools Facebook group, where it turned out that some colleagues have used such icons in other subjects and have also dabbled with them in Languages.  We also discussed the skills that we would want to include.

I have used Canva to create sets of icons for French, German and Spanish.  The skills included are:

• Listening
• Speaking
• Reading
• Writing
• Phonics
• Grammar
• Culture
• Knowledge About Language
• Language Learning Skills

(For Knowledge About Language [KAL] and Language Learning Skills [LLS] see the objectives of the Key Stage 2 Framework for Languages.)

My plan for the icons at the moment is to put them onto the first screen of my lesson PowerPoints, the "Today we are going to..." screen, to explain how we are going to achieve our lesson objectives, and perhaps also on my worksheets.

I displayed them in my lessons today, and it enabled me to say not only what we were going to be doing, but also to tell them which skills we were going to be using.  I suspect that quite a lot of the time, the children aren't aware of the different skills that we use and why.

If you would like a copy of the icons (available as shown in the image above and in a reversed format for displaying on a dark background) then click on these links:

• French https://www.lightbulblanguages.co.uk/resources-fr-dis.htm#misc
• German https://www.lightbulblanguages.co.uk/resources-ge-dis.htm 
• Spanish https://www.lightbulblanguages.co.uk/resources-sp-dis.htm#misc

If you would like to use them (and I'm not saying you have to) I'd love to hear about how you have used them.

UPDATE 08.07.22:

• "Language Learning Skills" changed to "Language Learning Strategies" as per the KS2 Framework.
• Italian icons added (thank you Alberta!) https://www.lightbulblanguages.co.uk/resources-pr-it.htm#dis