Lengua de Signos Española (LSE)

https://www.colegiovelazquez.es/lengua-signos-aulas/

I've recently started teaching my final unit with Year 6 - Así soy yo. It starts off with quizzes about languages and then learning how to use the verb hablar to say who is speaking which languages. One of my Year 6s asked me if I knew about Spanish sign language, and I had to admit to her that I didn't know about it, but would find out.

Research revealed Lengua de Signos Española (LSE). There are some good websites and YouTube videos that show some of the different signs. This one is particularly primary-friendly and clear https://www.fundacioncnse.org/educa/bancolse/index.php#gsc.tab=0  Year 6 and I had fun yesterday signing the Spanish alphabet.

This website has a dictionary with the signing for a lot of words: https://fundacioncnse-dilse.org/index.php (I still can't find a sign for español or castellano though).

This YouTube video is one of a good series https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6FWFF4fEsg

You might find the signs useful for your multimodal or multisensory approach, when you need an action or gesture while practising vocabulary. It might be wise to give the sign for sacapuntas a miss though.... 😉

Mes vacances en France

 

Recently I blogged about the booklet I had made for children going on holiday to Spain.  I said at the time that I hadn't intended to make a France one as hardly any of my students go on holiday to France.  However there were quite a few requests, and so I have done it!  It's available here.

We are going to the French Alps this summer, but I'm not sure if my 20 year old and 16 year old will agree to complete it....

Mis vacaciones en España

A lot of my little students go on their holidays to Spain.  They often tell me about it and ask me about things that they can say when they are there.  When my girls were primary age, I used to "encourage" them to keep a holiday diary, where they would write about what we had done and stick in pictures and other souvenirs.

Inspired by these two things, I have made a booklet for children going on holiday to Spain.

It is designed to encourage them to practise a little of the language, to take note of the culture and sights around them, and it provides them with a record and souvenir of their holiday.

Here in the north-east, hardly any of the children go to France on holiday, so I hadn't thought about making a French version.  However, teachers from other areas of the country have said that some of their students go to France, so I will be making a French version.

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