The Frayer Model

The Frayer Model is a graphic organiser of information which was developed by Dorothy Frayer and her colleagues at the University of Wisconsin in 1969.  It is intended to support students as they analyse vocabulary in an engaging way.  This webpage has a good overview of the model.

This visual representation comprises 4 boxes:

• Definition: defining the concept, word or term
• Facts: describing its essential characteristics.  When I was creating my examples, I found it difficult to differentiate between Definition and Facts.  However Facts is sometimes shown as Characteristics, which I think makes the difference clearer.
• Examples: providing examples of the concept or word
• Non-examples: knowing what a concept or word isn't helps to define what it is.  This box is sometimes shown as Common Errors or Misconceptions, which are sometimes more suitable.

I first found out about Frayer Models thanks to a tweet by @i_teach_things:

I shared some examples of using the Frayer Model for Maths last week and was interested in seeing if they might work for English too! I have now created these SPAG versions and think they could work well in class for pupils and display! Happy to share these and format if useful! pic.twitter.com/RGGRsyZtuK

— i teach things... (@i_teach_things) April 24, 2021

Seeing how useful they can be for English, maths and science, I decided to have a go at creating some for Languages.  

The first one I did was for Spanish accents:

Spanish accents are pretty simple compared to French, and I was able to fit them all on one Frayer Model.  However, having done further examples for the French accents (like the cedilla one above) I think it's better to have one single concept per Frayer Model.  Then the text can be bigger and the information clearer.

Languages Frayer Models can be used as display resources or for information for students.  I think there would also be value in students using the format to demonstrate their understanding of key grammatical terminology and core vocabulary, perhaps as part of the revision process.

 

The Diorama

This is one I found online and pinned on my mini-book Pinterest board.  Mini-books with a 3D effect always go down well with the children, particularly the Triaramas.  This is a variation on that theme, and is easy to display on the wall.

I have created my own template which gives the maximum space for drawing and writing.  Please feel free to download it.



All you need to do is to print it out and draw and write on it what you want.  You'll see that I have some space left over as I ran out of things to write!  There really is a lot of space.

Then cut along the solid lines and fold along the dotted lines:

Then just stick the side triangles together to complete the diorama.  I've paper-clipped mine so that I can store it flat in my folder-of-many-mini-books.

 

Paper chains aren't just for Christmas

I've seen a lot of paper chains in the classrooms of my schools recently.  In one school, each classroom has a paper chain made of links decorated with the children's names.  In the other, one of the Year 4 classes has made a chain out of their work about Jacob Marley in A Christmas Carol.

Then today, when I should have been doing something else, I saw an interesting tweet from the TES appear in Tweetdeck and retweeted it together with a little thought about how it might work in MFL:

I had a chat about it on Twitter this afternoon with @kscapp, and after that thought I'd give it a try to see how it would work.

I tried it out with the sentences that my Year 6 Spaniards did recently, about where they go and how they get there.  The sentences have four "chunks" and so to start with I cut strips in four different colours.  Blue for time phrases, green for parts of the verb ir, orange for places in town, pink for transports.

Then I made three paper chains, using one of each colour for each chain.  You can see the results in the photo at the top of this post.

Students could work in pairs to make chains like this from a given selection of "chunks".  They could check each other's and translate them into English.  Putting the colours into the right order reinforces the word order and will increase pupil confidence when it comes to writing their own sentences later.  And of course they are an instant display.  The activity works in a similar way to using different coloured Lego blocks or multilinks, but is a bit longer-lasting.

I've had another idea for how I might plan this into a lesson:

• Give students the strips on white paper with the words in an outline font or with an outline border around them.
• Students sort the strips into the different groups or chunks (Thinking Skills classification exercise)
• Once they are happy that they have sorted the strips into the correct groups, they colour in the letters or borders of each one a different colour.
• They stick the strips together to make chains as before.

Gaudi's Mosaics

In June I blogged about a sequence of lessons called "Mi bandera".  With my KS2 classes I have just finished the next part of this unit dealing with shapes and colours.

Last summer I went on a mini-break to Barcelona, and was struck by all the different examples of "shapes making shapes" in the city.  Lots of square panels making up the front of a building, seven circular panels of glass arranged to make a big circular window, and, of course Gaudi's mosaics.  I took lots of photos and started to formulate an idea.

The difficult thing proved to be fitting it in at such a time that it didn't seem contrived in our sequence of learning.  It did, however, fit perfectly after the flag lessons.

We started off looking at a map of the world to find Spain (and had some useful discussions about how come the countries in South America speak Spanish when they are so far from Spain), and then we looked at a map of Spain to find Barcelona.  This in turn led to some interesting discussions about the regions of Spain, Cataluña in particular, and we compared and contrasted the numbers 1-10 in Catalan, Spanish and French.

We then focussed on Barcelona specifically, and looked at the examples of shapes making shapes.  We talked about Gaudi, his buildings and his mosaics.  We then looked at these mosaics from Parc Güell:

We found out that Gaudi used unusual materials in these mosaics, like glass bottles, dinner plates and china dolls.  We set about creating mosaic suns of our own, using unusual shapes to echo Gaudi's unusual materials.  I made an example to show the children, photographing it at various stages of its creation so show them how to build up their mosaic.

If you would like to see some of the children's finished mosaics, there is a video montage on my school blog.

So why did I do this?

Mainly:

• 
  
  Cross-curricular art
• 
  
  Intercultural understanding (Spanish-speaking world, Spain, Barcelona)

But also:

• 
  
  I wanted them to write about the mosaic afterwards, using the same format as we used to describe the flags.  I wanted them to use the dictionary to find the words for the shapes they had used and to make these nouns plural as necessary, and to agree the colours as necessary.  It was bringing together a lot of the different threads of our work since January.

What would I do differently next time?

• 
  
  Start it earlier in the year - we haven't been able to progress to the writing stage due to it being the end of term!
• 
  
  It's interesting that the best artists aren't necessarily the best mosaic makers.  I'd set up a Smartboard activity or a group cut'n'stick activity to practise jigsaw-ing shapes into another shape, to enable more of the children to produce a more authentic-looking mosaic.
• 
  
  Find stickier gummed paper!  And get more of it, as we ran out of certain colours very quickly.

All in all, I am very happy with the results, particularly with how well Y3 responded to it (it's them you can see working in the photos on the video).  It made my day yesterday to follow one of my Y3s out of school and to watch him excitedly show his dad the mosaic he had made and explain how and why he had made it.  It's given me the courage to find more ways of "thinking outside the box" and to endeavour to teach Spanish in its broader context a lot more.

Food flags, informative flags

I always check my Tweets while I'm having my breakfast in the morning.  This morning there was one in particular which caught my eye:

Last year's Sydney International Food Festival was promoted with these wonderful images of national flags made up of their country's iconic foods.  Here is a copy of the poster, which you can download as an A3 or A4 PDF here. 

You may know by now that I am passionate about international education, in particular about getting people to see past stereotypes and find the "real" people and countries in the world.  These flags seem like an excellent place to start.

Esther Mercier (the genius behind A tantôt) suggests giving the pictures to Food Technology teachers so that they can join in European Day of Languages.  Students can research which flag is portrayed each time, and which foods are used to make them.  They could then have a go at making their own flags for other countries.  This links in nicely with the World Cup as well.  While pupils are finding out about the 31 teams who aren't England, they could research the typical foods of the countries and have a go at representing them pictorially like this.

But why stop at food ?  There are all sort of images and indeed words that could be represented as flags.

Here is a Spanish flag I made using MS Publisher.  Is it the truth or is it stereotype ?

And here is a French flag represented as a Calligram that I made using Imagechef and Publisher.  Students could do the writing themselves.

There are many possibilities.  If you're not averse to a bit of mess in your classroom, get some travel brochures and get the students to make some mosaic flags with images of the chosen country.  Whichever method you choose, they will certainly make for an eye-catching display.

One flag that is missing from the Sydney poster is ours.  What foods would your students put on a pictorial representation of our flag ?  Why ?  What other images would they put on our flag to represent our country.  They are obliged to think about their own country and its identity.  Community cohesion.

Calligrams, part 2

Last week I spent two after-school sessions doing some training at a local primary school. They are just starting out with French, and so I began by teaching them the first lesson of the Sunderland scheme of work, which many will recognise as the "Deux petits oiseaux" lesson. One of my activities to practise bonjour, je m'appelle and au revoir was the dinner party one, where everyone has a character and has to go around greeting each other and introducing themselves until they find their partner. For example, Minnie Mouse has to find Mickey Mouse. I used the set of character cards that I use when doing the same activity with children. The deputy head of the school was sitting next to me while I was explaining the activity, and was having a crafty look at the cards. She whispered "I don't know who Boots is, or Miss Hoolie!" I think I assume that every teacher has to endure the same number of hours of children's television as I do. Dora the Explorer, Peppa Pig and the Disney Princesses are very well known in my house.

Yesterday, children's TV came up trumps. My artistic elder daughter's Saturday lunchtime routine consists of coming back from ballet and having some lunch while watching Art Attack and Fingertips on CITV. Yesterday on Art Attack there was one particularly good item, which gave me another idea for Calligrams.

You need a pencil outline of your picture - Neil Buchanan (Art Attack presenter) used a skier zooming downhill. Then you fill each area of the picture with words pertaining to that picture. For example, he wrote the word "cold" over and over again on the skier's coat. I could immediately see the potential for MFL ! As they say on all the best children's TV programmes, here's one I prepared earlier:

I wasn't brave enough to make my own pencil outline, so I found this character on the Staedtler website. (I thought he was very suitable for the World Cup !) I pasted the picture into PaintShop Pro and adjusted the lines from black to pale grey. Then I printed out the picture and set about filling in each section with words. I am quite pleased with the overall effect. It made me think carefully about the words I was using to fill in each section, and the repetitive writing really drives the spelling home ! When I do another one I'll try shading each section in coloured pencil and then writing the words over the top in felt-tip.

This will be a good idea to use for the World Cup. Once pupils have researched one of the countries playing in South Africa, give them a football player outline and they can fill each section with words pertaining to that country, in relevant colours.

While I'm still on a Calligram tip, I'll share with you another idea. My daughter did this at school and told me about it. You make/buy/get pupils to make a stencil. Then place it over a blank sheet of paper and write your words inside the shape. Remove the stencil and you have a Calligram. I cut out a stencil of a Christmas tree and wrote my words with a white pencil on green card. The final result is rather like a low-tech version of the ImageChef Word Mosaics:



Enjoy!

Update, 10.12.09

I have used the stencil method to create some Christmas calligrams with Y3, Y4 and Y6.

We started the lesson with the Level 1 skill of copying single words accurately, to collect from the board a bank of Christmas words to use in the calligrams. This also enabled us to talk about Christmas in Spain. I got the stencils from here.

We have found that the less blank space you leave in the stencil, the more effective the overall result is, and that colour really brings them alive. Click here to see Y6's Calligrams. I will upload Y3's and Y4's when they are finished - they are looking even better then Y6's.

The lesson was very successful and the pupils obviously really enjoyed it. Their class teachers commented on how focussed they were creating their calligrams.

Calligrams

The other day I was going through the QCA KS2 Scheme of Work for French, cross-referencing lesson plans for a project I'm doing. Unit 17 (Le Retour du Printemps) suggested Calligrams as an activity. I have to admit that I didn't know what a calligram was, and had to look it up. It turns out that there is a calligram on one of the pens from my childhood pen collection - the Spratts dog.

So what is a calligram ? According to Wikipedia, "A calligram is a poem, phrase, or word in which the typeface, calligraphy or handwriting forms an important part of the focus." Other sources just refer to its being a poem, but I like the idea that it can branch out into phrases and words as well, especially when thinking from an MFL point of view.

How can we use calligrams to enhance teaching and learning in MFL ? Pupils are introduced to them in Y3 Literacy and so when they get to upper KS2 or indeed KS3, it's a concept with which they are already familiar. In Y3 they look at examples of calligrams and then have a go at making their own using ICT.

Why not use them as a way of displaying key words, introducing new vocabulary or including a glossary on a worksheet ? Because of the images, English is unnecessary. If you are feeling a bit artistically or ICT-ly challenged, get the pupils to make the calligrams.

I think I see the most potential for them as creative writing activities. Instead of writing a short paragraph about a dry topic like, say, a pet, pupils can write their text as a calligram, which might just motivate them a bit more, and will make for a good display for you. I can also see myself using it to develop an series of lessons which I have done before on Neruda's Oda al Tomate.

So here is something which I shall add to my (albeit quite small at the moment) repertoire for KS2 next year.

Here are some that I've done myself, just to have an experiment. I got a bit frustrated with the ICT angle, and found I could be much more creative with my pen. Suits me, as I'm rarely able to get my classes into an ICT room at the moment !