Being creative in languages

 

While looking for something else, I just same across my presentation for the Primary Languages Online Conference in November 2025, and realised I hadn't blogged about it.  I think the Curriculum Review got in the way!  Here is the text of that presentation:

"The principal goal of education is to create people who are capable of doing new things, not simply repeating what other generations have done - people who are creative, inventive, discoverers"
Jean Piaget

We all want learners who can do new things and who can discover new learning for themselves, having been given the requisite skills by their teacher to set them on the right path.

But when we say “creative”, what do we actually mean?  What does the word mean in the context of the languages classroom?

Why are we talking about creativity?  There have been a number of recent headlines about "creative subjects being squeezed" (BBC) in the curriculum, and worries that STEM subjects are pushing out anything artistic.  What do the headlines mean by “creativity” and “creative subjects”?  Do they mean artistic creativity such as art, music and drama, or is it something deeper?  Are languages included?

The more I have read about this, the more I am convinced that there is no one simple answer to this question.  I believe that there are four types of creativity at play in the languages classroom:

Creativity in the curriculum

Creativity in education, generally speaking, is about letting children be inventive and be discoverers.  It’s about imaginative thinking and behaving which is purposeful and directed towards achieving an objective.  When children are creative in this sense, they question and challenge, they explore ideas, they make connections and they reflect critically on ideas, actions and outcomes.  This kind of creativity can improve children’s self-esteem, motivation and achievement while developing the talent of the individual and developing skills for their adult lives.  This kind of creativity is perhaps not always possible in language lessons because of time constraints and the necessary amount of teacher input. 

If we are to enable our pupils to ultimately be creative with their language, we need to have in place a curriculum which will facilitate this.  We need to have contexts which will motivate us to teach and the children to learn, while at the same time covering the vocabulary, grammar and phonics, revisiting and recapping prior learning, for that place in the curriculum.  Some contexts are more inherently interesting and motivating to primary children than others.  One that is always bandied about by secondary teachers is “Pencil case”, thought of as banal and boring in KS3, but of great interest to Year 3 children, for whom pencil cases and their contents are of great importance.  We are lucky that in KS2 we are not bound by any word lists or other restrictions, and that due to the vagueness of the national curriculum we have a lot more freedom to decide for ourselves what to include.

Anyone who has put together their own scheme of work will know that it is tricky – ensuring that the language is gradually and systematically built up over the four years, finding appropriate vocabulary, ensuring that prior learning is revisited and built upon, all the while finding these interesting and motivating contexts.

One place to look is the school’s wider curriculum, and the topics that children will be covering in other subjects.  Some of these topics, such as Space, lend themselves very well to language learning, and can occupy a place in our scheme of work, whether or not it remains in the science curriculum – it is an enjoyable topic to teach and many of the children like it and are interested in it.

There are other topics, however, that are harder to fit into languages. It’s nice to cross the curriculum in this way, but it isn’t always possible, and we can’t guarantee that, once we have put time and effort into planning, the history/geography etc. topic will remain in the general curriculum, and we will have to start again.  Thinking rationally, long term and short term planning is time intensive and not something that teachers have the time or desire to repeat each year.

Another place to look for contexts is special dates and events from the countries where the language is spoken.  A unit of work can be built around, for example, Día de los Muertos in Mexico, the Tour de France or the Windhoek Carnival in Namibia for the Germanists.  Learning a language is more than just words and sentences, and anything cultural that we can incorporate will only enrich the teaching and the learning.  If you are using a bought-in scheme, does it provide interesting and motivating contexts for the learning?  Are elements of the cultures of the target language countries included?

Here's an example of how the cultural input might work:

The beginning of Y4 in my primary Spanish scheme of work (Cycle B in my mixed scheme) is an animal park unit.  It’s based on a real animal park called Cabárceno which I visited about 10 years ago, and which is on the north coast of Spain near Santander.  This means we can look at the geography of Spain and where the park is.  There are lots of videos and photos of the animals, who keep having very cute babies, which the children love!   The unit is all about numbers to 39, grammatical gender and the plural form, but it is based on a real life animal park which makes the learning more real and captures the interest of the children.  I have a parallel French unit which is based on Zoo La Palmyre in the west of France.

Creative teaching methods

There is no one-size-fits-all method for language teaching.  Every language teacher is unique.  We often adapt our methodology to the children that we have in front of us, to their likes, dislikes and interests, incorporating things that they like to engage and motivate them, to make the learning more relevant.  We often devise creative and imaginative ways of presenting the language.  These more imaginative approaches are a way of reaching out to the very diverse cognitive and emotional needs of the children in the room.  

The way in which languages are commonly taught now may well be significantly different to the way that you learned at school.  The internet has opened up the world in our language classroom, and we can see authentic videos, stories and songs that were hard to access before.  The increased use of written supports like sentence builders and knowledge organisers means that we can play many different “games with aims” – certainly when I was a secondary language teacher the only game we ever really played was Kim’s Game with the OHP.

Your classes will probably have a small group of games with aims that they really enjoy.  They will play them without most of the time realizing that they are in fact practising the language.  Most of my classes beg to be able to play Trapdoor, which of course obliges them to say a whole sentence in the language, as well as listen carefully to other people when they are having their turn.  They also love “Guess my sentence” and Sue Cave’s “Sit down when yours is different” game.

Which games with aims do your classes like best? 
Do they all like the same ones? 
Are all the games that you play ones that will move the learning on, do they practice the language , or are they just time fillers?  

If you use a bought in scheme of work, does it give you a bank of activities that you can try out with your classes in order to find out what they like?

Creative use of language

What is linguistic creativity?  

"Creativity is 'the generation of novel and useful ideas'" T.M.Amabile 1988

"To create means to produce original and useful ideas by combining elements that have already existed" L.G.Maguire 2017

It’s the creative use of the language by the students.  We spend a lot of our time in class on very structured activities, focusing on the building blocks of the learning, providing what Porter et al. refer to as “highly staged encounters with the language and opportunities for language practice”.  It’s important, though, that learners then take those experiences and then use them to speak or write independently and to create new meaning.

Julia Hofweber and Suzanne Graham in their paper Linguistic creativity in language learning (2017) have two definitions of creativity – the wide and the narrow.  Realistically, the narrow definition is the one that applies best to KS2.  Our learners are creative using the vocabulary, grammar and phonics that we have taught them, which they then rearrange to a large extent to create their new meaning.  They don’t yet have the linguistic experience to be able to use their language to “create an effect” in the same way that they do in their English lessons, though we do often work on giving opinions, which might address the “expressing emotions” part.

However wide or narrow the linguistic creativity is, it is underpinned by focused effort and the use of metacognitive skills.  Cognitively speaking, it is a combination of thinking, imagination and memory.  There are also non-cognitive aspects at play, such as motivation, attitude and the character of the creator.  This then interlinks with the creative curriculum.  If the student is not motivated and has a negative attitude to the task then they are not going to devote their full creative power to it.  Motivation and a positive attitude are also, of course, built by thorough preparation and practice by the teacher of the language that they are going to need to manipulate in order to complete it.

Creativity in languages encourages higher order thinking skills, and can also lead to an increased enjoyment of and greater motivation for language learning.  In fact it is the creative act itself, rather than the end product, that is the important part of the process.  Our learners are taking their pre-learned vocabulary and structures, and adapting them to create something new and original, and often personal.  They are transforming their thoughts into language that we can hear or see.  Our Programme of Study requires children to “write phrases from memory, and adapt these to create new sentences”.  The word “create” suggests something new and original, but it is also a recreation and redefinition.  It is this stage that we strive for our learners to reach.  We want them to use what they know, and adapt it to say what they want to say.  

Art, craft and creativity

There is certainly a place for artistic creativity in the languages classroom.  Designing and making things motivates children and often, if we choose the activity carefully, gives them a window onto the culture of the country or countries whose language they are learning.  It has to be said that many see this kind of creativity as the “bells and whistles” approach, as time-wasting activities which take up time that could be better spent on listening and reading, for example.  We need to strike the right balance of activities.  

Of course in the primary context, creativity of this kind is an ideal opportunity for cross-curricular work.  The Programme of Study for KS2 Art and Design says:
“A high-quality art and design education should engage, inspire and challenge pupils, equipping them with the knowledge and skills to experiment, invent and create their own works of art, craft and design.”
“The national curriculum for art and design aims to ensure that pupils produce creative work, exploring their ideas and recording their experiences."

No part of the Programme of Study says that this creative work has to be produced in a dedicated art and design lesson, or that it can’t incorporate aspects of other subjects.

Artistic creativity will motivate children and will inspire linguistic creativity. Artistic and “crafty” creativity like this breeds linguistic creativity, and motivates children to be more creative all round.  Artistic creativity also allows an audience for the work.  It can be shared with the wider school community and it also makes for great displays, which is an important consideration in primary schools when we want our work to be seen and celebrated.

Art is "a creative activity...resulting in visual representation"  OED

Craft is "an activity involving skill in making things by hand"  OED

Anything that involves making something promotes children’s fine motor skills, resilience and concentration.  In the Languages classroom it also makes the language and its countries more real, more tangible, especially when we can incorporate a cultural element.

Examples of artistic, crafty and creative activities are:

• minibooks
• bookmarks - there are lots of bookmarks for colouring on Light Bulb Languages, but of course pupils can design their own.
• pencil pots - blank for your own design or preprinted to colour in
• modelling with play doh or plasticine
• making greetings cards
• work inspired by artists
• illuminated texts
• calligrams

You might also like to have a look at the Lumen Language Challenges, which include lots of creative and linguistic activities.  Lumen also has awards for French, Spanish and German which encourage children to be creative.

Here's what Notebook LM made of it!

I'm on the Language Lab podcast!

 

In October last year I was the guest on an episode of the Language Lab podcast.  From today you can listen to it!

It's available on the Language Lab website and also on Spotify.

In the podcast I describe my language teaching journey, from secondary to primary, and discuss issues like transition, writing in Key Stage 2 languages and the importance of collaborating and sharing in the language teacher community.

Enjoy!

Primary Spanish Workbooks

In September last year I started using custom-made workbooks in my Key Stage 2 lessons.  Previously (for sixteen years!) each child had an A4 exercise book.  I would arrive at school early to be able to get onto the photocopier to produce lots of separate sheets, which I would then have to trim, give out to the children, and hope that they would stick it into their books.  

Their exercise books turned into glorified scrapbooks, which often looked scruffy, as the sheets were often either not stuck in, or stuck in crooked.  We also ended up doing little writing actually on the exercise book page itself.  There was also the issue of children losing sheets or not having sheets because they had been absent.

I suggested to both my headteachers that I should trial using photocopied workbooks instead, and fortunately they agreed.  Each child would have all the resources they needed all in one place, the workbooks would look neater than the exercise books, and the expense of producing the workbooks would be less than buying class sets of exercise books and funding my photocopying habit.

So far the workbooks have been a great success.  The children have the security of knowing everything that they need for the unit is in one place, knowing how far along in the unit we are and what is coming next.  It certainly makes my life easier too, and saves copying, trimming and sticking time.  The only issue we have with neatness is sometimes we have to re-staple some of the booklets.  I'll definitely be continuing to use them - I don't know why I didn't think of it before!

I teach a Spanish mixed-age curriculum in Key Stage 2 in both my schools, so the workbooks I have made so far are for that, and can be found on the webpage at the top of each unit.  I have also made editable copies of the workbooks available in my Sellfy store.  You can see an example of one of them at the top of this post.

Many thanks to the members of the Languages in Primary Schools Facebook group for their hints, tips and thoughts about using workbooks.

Flippity Randomisers

I have to admit that I use Flippity Randomiser a fair bit in my lessons.  I've been using it for different purposes.  

For example:

With this Randomiser, I generate sentences for the children to translate into English.  They use their sentence builders for support if necessary.  If the children have their own devices, they can have the link to generate sentences to help their partner to practise.

This week my Year 5s and Year 6s (age 9-11, mixed age curriculum) have enjoyed an activity using this Randomiser:

We were just starting to create short sentences using En mi pueblo hay / no hay.  I asked the children to write a sentence using their sentence builder.  There were a possible 16 sentences to choose from.  Then I rolled an English sentence using the Randomiser, and the children had to check to see if it generated the same sentence as theirs but in translation.  If they got the same sentence, I asked them to tell me their original Spanish sentence so that we could all hear the translation.  A very simple activity, but they enjoyed it!

A third way I've used the Randomisers is to check sentences for errors.

I use this one with Year 5 and Year 6 to practise adjectival agreement.  We roll a sentence, and then the children consult their sentence builders.  They check to see if the sentence is correct.  If it isn't, they have to work out the corrections that are needed.  As we work out the corrections, we nudge the rolls around so that the sentence reads correctly.  At this point, I just want the children to practise using their sentence builders, practise reading along one horizontal line to get a correct sentence, and look carefully at the spelling of the adjectives.

How do you use Flippity Randomisers?

Are there any other Flippity tools that you enjoy using?

Primary Languages CPD video series

(created by ChatGPT!)

This week I have started a series of Primary Languages CPD video series on my YouTube channel.  You can find the videos so far on this playlist.

I am endeavouring to keep them short and "bitesize" so that teachers will be able to watch them at a time that is convenient to them.

So far there are three videos, and plenty more are in the pipeline:

Also on my YouTube channel you can access the 12 French songs and 23 Spanish songs that I have made using Suno.com.

Language Learning: debate in the House of Lords

I've mentioned before that I have Google Alerts set up on my account, and they bring a number of language-related stories to my inbox each day.  Last week, on 4th January, I was alerted to a debate about language learning in schools and universities that was going to be taking place in the House of Lords on 8th January (last Thursday).  I posted the news on Bluesky, where the news received 3 likes and nothing more.  I also posted it on LinkedIn, where it got more attention that anything else I have ever posted on that platform:

The debate was moved by Baroness Coussins, a long-time supporter of languages and language teaching and co-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Modern Languages.  It took place to discuss primarily "measures, such as visa waivers, to improve the supply chain of qualified modern foreign language teachers and the sustainability of language learning in schools and universities".

The main themes of the debate were:

• the importance of language learning to the economy
• the importance of the language learning continuum and lifelong learning, including effective transition between phases
• improving the teacher pipeline, including teachers from overseas and the "homegrown pipeline" (but no remarks about how this might improve teaching in primary schools)
• the dangers posed by the recent spate of university language department closures

The text of the debate is available to read on Hansard.  I have compiled here the parts that relate to primary languages teaching, for the benefit of primary languages practitioners.

Baroness Shephard of Northwold, a.k.a. Gillian Shephard, Education Secretary 1994-97, a French and Latin graduate:

Many years ago, in an earlier career, I set up a number of projects to teach French in primary schools, with tight and co-operative links to the appropriate secondary schools. We trained teachers and hired peripatetic staff and French assistants. Our strong in-service training included what became known locally, rather unfortunately, as “French weekends”. In this residential training, French was spoken throughout, French food was served and there were obviously quite a number of wine tastings. The whole scheme brought together primary and secondary teachers with the Alliance Française. It was a true languages pipeline, with stellar O-level and A-level results in languages as a consequence. This was one way of achieving that improvement.

Baroness Garden of Frognal, also a languages graduate:

We need a strategy to boost language learning. Ideally, as the noble Baroness, Lady Shephard, set out, this should start at primary school when young minds are open and young mouths can develop to make the different sounds needed by different languages. If you do not start languages until secondary school, young people are already getting anxious about making new noises and talking with new words. Can the Minister say what is being done to encourage languages in primary schools? Some years back the British Academy ran competitions to find imaginative language learning in primary schools, with some schools focusing on food and some on drama, music or clothing to stimulate ideas, often with great success. What happened to those imaginative programmes?

Baroness Prashar:

The economic security and other personal benefits of learning and speaking a second language have already been articulated in this debate, so I will not repeat them. It is clear, however, that we need urgent, concerted and co-ordinated action—from primary schools through to universities and beyond—to address the inadequate, long-standing and worsening supply of language learning and teaching skills needed to meet our future needs. It is also clear is that we need a joined-up and holistic approach that is coherent across education and skills systems. While the Government have ambitious reforms to address teacher shortages, their immigration policies risk undermining them, particularly in regard to MFL and, as we have heard, in maths and physics.

Baroness Smith of Newnham:

As the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, pointed out, we should be thinking about modern languages as not just things that people study at school but as part of lifelong learning. What thought has the Minister given to people having the opportunity to learn languages at various stages? Yes, primary schools are important, as the noble Baroness, Lady Shephard, said. It is much better to learn a language at nursery or primary school than in your 50s—as I tried to do recently—but the opportunity to learn those languages is important.

Lord Chartres:

In the Government’s response to the conclusions of the report [the Curriculum and Assessment Review], which was very constructive, there is support for a much clearer focus on the provision of languages in primary schools.

My fundamental question, which echoes comments made by the noble Baroness, Lady Shephard, is how precisely are the Government going to substantiate that aspiration for a clearer focus on the provision of languages in primary schools? That is not only European languages, because I take the point made around the House about the vital importance of the very large numbers of non-European languages spoken in our schools, which give us an enhanced view of the world.

I am thinking particularly of a remarkable school in Harrow, Saint Jérôme Church of England Bilingual School. It was quite deliberately named after a translator, because that primary school not only teaches modern languages as a subject; it delivers a large part of the curriculum in French. It is a bilingual school. When the Government are looking at how to create a much clearer focus on the provision of languages in primary schools, I hope that it will be possible to look at that school’s experience of over 10 years.

I had the privilege of opening that school 10 years ago. The founding headmaster, the Reverend Daniel Norris, is just about to retire after enormous achievement. The experience of and results achieved in a school where 80% of the pupils have a mother tongue other than English that they speak at home are a valuable indication of what can be done to lay the foundations of constructive language learning at a primary level.

Baroness Smith of Malvern, the Minster of State, Department for Education and Department for Work and Pensions:

Languages are a vital part of the curriculum. We want to ensure that all pupils have access to a high-quality language education, starting at primary where languages are a compulsory part of the national curriculum at key stages 2 and 3. We are committed to enhancing early language education through to secondary to build that strong foundation for language skills and to increase the languages pipeline.

The noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Chartres, referenced the Curriculum and Assessment Review. It recommended that we update the key stage 2 languages programme of study to include clearly defined minimum core content for French, German and Spanish to standardise expectations about what substantial progress in one language looks like. There is an issue about how you ensure the continuity of learning from the last two years* of primary education through the transition into secondary. Sometimes pupils have to move to a different language, or the secondary school does not recognise the learning that has happened in primary schools. [*I'm sure the Baroness means four years!]

Strengthening the national curriculum—taking up some of the good ideas talked about by the noble Baroness, Lady Shephard, in terms of work between primary and secondary schools—could make an important difference. It is an area in which we can support further work. I know that all noble Lords—there has been mention of it already—are intrigued by the French weekends of the noble Baroness, Lady Shephard, and would be very willing to accept invitations.

We are going much further than the review’s recommendations to tackle a range of issues that impact the languages pipeline. For example, we are exploring the feasibility of developing a flexible new qualification. This would mean that all pupils can have their achievements acknowledged when they are ready rather than at fixed points, enabling a recognition of progress and development in languages. This could also be extended to languages beyond those mainstream modern foreign languages.

We will continue to fund the National Consortium for Languages Education to ensure that all language teachers, regardless of location, have access to high-quality professional development and the skills they need to deliver the curriculum, and are able to develop the sort of networks that noble Lords have talked about.

We are working with the sector to learn from successful approaches to supporting the languages pipeline, including at A-level and degree level, and ways in which we can, for example, support A-level teaching through innovative partnerships with higher education and from approaches such as the one in Hackney, which is improving primary provision and transition.

The noble Baroness, Lady Hooper, raised the issue of education technology; we are also exploring how AI and edtech can support stronger outcomes in language education, including exploring how those tools can help to deliver consistent curriculum content and support more coherent language provision across key stages as well as reduce teacher workload.

[......]

Languages are a vital part of the curriculum, and we want to ensure that all pupils have access to high-quality language education. That is why, starting at primary, we are committed to enhancing early language education, through to secondary, and to building a strong foundation for language skills to ensure a continuation on to A-levels and therefore to provide an appropriate pipeline into higher education. I recognise the concern that many noble Lords have expressed about the reduction in the number of students going into higher education to study modern foreign languages and the threats to some of those modern foreign language courses.

More experiments with AI: choral music

Disclaimer for language teachers:  As you may have gathered from the title, this post isn't about languages, but it does include another language and the skills that I have picked up by using AI in my language work!

I have spent over thirty years being a language teacher, and over fifteen years writing about it on this blog.  During all of that time I have also been a choral singer and director.  I started choral singing in middle school (age about 9), continued at secondary school and the local youth choir, and then at university where I began conducting for the first time.  Since 1996 I have been a member of a local mixed voice choir (it was a condition of my first teaching job, but that's another story!)  I took over as conductor after our leader sadly passed away in 2020.  I'm always looking for new pieces to sing, and over the Christmas holidays undertook an experiment to create a new choral piece.

I decided (Why? asked one of my choir!) that I wanted the words to be in Latin.  Latin A level never leaves you!   I asked ChatGPT to create "a short 4 line poem in Latin about the joys of singing".  Its first attempt was a bit prolix so I asked it to simplify it.  Then it turned out that a four-line poem gets very repetitive in one piece of music, so I asked it to create a second verse.  Here is the whole thing:

Canto laetus sum
Vox mea clara est
Cantare amo
Cor gaudet semper

Canto cum amicis
Ridemus simul
Vox fortis, cor magnum
Gaudium manet

(I sing and I am happy
My voice is clear
I love to sing
My heart always rejoices

I sing with friends
We laugh together
Strong voice, big heart
Joy remains)

I changed the original parva (small) to fortis (strong).  Otherwise the words are exactly as ChatGPT created them.

Next I pasted these lyrics into Suno.com.  (Read more about my work using Suno here and here.)  My first prompt was "a capella, 4 part harmony".  This just gave me results that had clearly been scraped from the work of the vocal group Pentatonix.  I tried some other prompts, adding the adjectives happy and joyful, and then "in the style of a folk song", "in the style of a spiritual" and "in the style of Palestrina" among others.  Finally, after seventy-two iterations (yes - 72!) it finally gave me a song that I thought I could work with.

I downloaded the mp3 from Suno and transcribed the soprano (melody) and bass lines.  I then ran it through a free mp3->pdf transcriber, which didn't do a very good job but was enough to tell me the keys and possible chords quicker than listening and transcribing would.

The final step was to add in the alto and tenor lines.  I edited it a little to prevent it from being quite so repetitive, and added an ending phrase.

I introduced it to the choir last night, and they seem to like it!

So would I do it again?  Probably yes.  I have a new piece created especially for my choir, and it didn't actually take that long to get from the lyrics stage to the full score stage.  I used AI in the initial creation stage, but it still needed real person input to get to the finished piece.  It would doubtless have taken longer to start the piece completely from scratch.  However there is always the ethical and copyright concern of where the AIs have got the content from.