This is the kit that I had with me for my Y3 French lessons this afternoon. My Twitter followers may remember my mentioning Jack the Puppet, purchased from John Lewis in Newcastle on Sunday afternoon. I simply could not resist his French colours! He is now, of course, called Jacques. I also had my four finger puppets from the same range that I have had for some time, who are now "Jacques's babies". We were working on Olympic sports and simple opinions (c'est super, c'est pas mal and c'est nul). Jacques said a sentence such as "La boxe, c'est nul", and the children had to use the Recorder Pen to make the cards say the same sentence. Then they took it in turns to look after one of Jacques's babies and help the baby to say a sentence for one of the others to solve.
All very lower KS2, I know, but hopefully it will give you some ideas. It's possible to create a smartboard activity with embedded sounds that you can use to build up sentences and which would work along similar lines. Students get to demonstrate their understanding and they and the others hear plenty of the target language, building their confidence to use the language themselves.
No, not that sort of strip! It's sporting strips that I'm going to talk about! (Are you one of those people who was disappointed with their first game of strip bingo?!)
My scheme of work with my 3rd-year-of-Spanish pupils for the last term and a half has been sports and weather. I've put an Olympic slant on it all to increase pupil interest, and the resources are all here if you would like to use them. For this new term my topic is clothing, and I knew that I wanted to look at the clothes that the Olympic athletes are going to wear.
First of all I chose two Spanish athletes who have qualified for the Olympics and who we could use as an example. I chose Carolina Rodríguez, a rhythmic gymnast, and David Cal, a canoeist. The children found out more about them by reading in pairs some short texts:
The children weren't familiar with rhythmic gymnastics, and weren't aware of the kind of canoeing that David Cal does. So we watched some short video clips of them in action - this one of Carolina's routine with the hoop, and this one of David's race in Hungary. They were amazed by Carolina's skill with the hoop and cheered David on in his race!
After that we talked about the Opening Ceremony of the Olympics and how one of its main features will be the 203 participating national teams marching into the stadium behind their national flag. We also talked about how the team members will wear a special uniform, and I showed them a third short text which describes what the Spanish team will be wearing:
They used the dictionaries and their prior knowledge to find out what the athletes will be wearing.
Once we had discussed the answers, we remembered the extravaganza that was the launch of the Stella McCartney designed Team GB strip. On Monday it took me several hours of searching to find this, the only photo of the Spanish strip, designed by Russian company Bosco Sport, which was launched in November 2011:
Y6 in particular were unimpressed, and thought that the outfits looked old-fashioned (¡lo siento mucho, España!) They immediately started to call out improvements and changes that they would make.
The final step to our lesson was for them to use the dictionaries to make a list of items of clothing that Carolina and David will need for their two sports, other than those which are pictured here. Watching the video had helped them to see, for example, that David will need a wetsuit and Carolina will need footless tights.
And next week? They get to design and describe in Spanish their own version of the Spanish Olympic strip.
UPDATE 05/06/12: The Spanish team's reaction to the strip, which surfaced in the Spanish press at the beginning of May, is described in this article in the Guardian. It gives some useful background information.
I expect lots of people are going to be looking for Olympics-related ideas for their lessons next year, me included. Today I found out about the Global Children's Challenge. Teachers of Y4, Y5 and Y6 and their classes are invited to apply to take part (applications close on 31st July, so you'll need to act quickly). The idea is that teachers and the children in their classes wear a pedometer every day for the 50 days of the challenge, which runs from 15th September until 3rd November. They work as a team to accumulate and log actual physical steps, which then enable them to take virtual steps around the world via the Challenge website. There is the possibility of visiting 50 different countries. The Challenge is an initiative designed to get children more active, but of course is also an excellent global and intercultural opportunity. Full information is on the Challenge website, and you can download the flyer here.
Admittedly time isn't on most schools' side with both holidays and the application deadline looming, so many schools who want to take part may not be able to. But there's nothing stopping you from adapting the Challenge and putting your own spin on it. Pick a French-speaking or Spanish-speaking country and find out the distance from its capital to ours. Will they be able to walk enough steps to get to London in time for the Olympics? Where will they pass on the way? Give yourself a time limit and see how many countries you can walk to in that time. Can you do a tour of Africa or of South America? There are all sorts of possibilities.
If you reckon on 2000 steps to a mile, you and your class will soon be able to rack up the miles. The cheapest pedometers are available for about £3 from places like Argos and Amazon. You'll be able to watch your class tearing around the playground, getting lots of exercise and enabling you to tell them about lots of fascinating countries and cultures.
*Image by the brilliant @bevevans22
