Advent colouring books

 

The latest additions to the resources in my Sellfy store are Advent colouring books for French and Spanish.

The colouring books are good for you!  They contain no chocolate, and the colouring in will promote mindfulness and lower stress levels.  You will also learn about 24 ways in which the Christmas period is marked and celebrated in France and in Spanish-speaking countries.

Find the French one here and the Spanish one here.

Have a look at my other Sellfy Christmas resources here, and there are lots of free Christmas resources on Light Bulb Languages.

Music and Languages

 

Thanks to my Google news alert, I've come across today this study by the University of Helsinki.  Previous research has shown that having a music-related hobby can boost language skills and can positively affect the processing of speech in the brain.  This new study by the University of Helsinki shows that the reverse is also true: learning another language can positively affect the processing of music in the brain.  

In one of my schools I share the PPA coverage with a specialist music teacher, and we often talk about what we are teaching the classes.  She told me towards the end of last term about the new Model Music Curriculum (MMC) for Key Stages 1-3 (March 2021).

This document is "non-statuory guidance for the national curriculum [in music] in England", "a practical framework through which the statutory requirements of the [music] curriculum can be met".  It's designed for specialist and non-specialist teachers in the primary sector, and specialist teachers in Key Stage 3.  I've been having a look at it today to see if there is anything that we as language teachers can contribute, or indeed if it offers any useful advice for us in the languages classroom.

My first thought when reading the document was "I wish we had a document like this for Key Stage 2 Languages!"  It is in fact one of the recommendations of the White Paper that we should have some non-statutory guidance for core curriculum content.  This is something that came up during the many and varied discussions at the weekend about the DfE's plans for teaching Latin in secondary schools.  Those £4 million would be a huge boost to the primary languages community and to ensuring that all children in Key Stage 2 receive a quality languages education.  But I digress....

Secondly, it was interesting to note the time recommendation for music in primary schools: "pupils should receive a minimum of one hour a week...may be short sessions across the week."  This is the same as the widely accepted recommended time for languages, so we can understand how difficult it can be for primary schools to fit everything into the timetable.

Music, particularly song, features prominently in the Key Stage 2 programme of study for Languages, and I have written before about using songs.  Children should be taught to:

• appreciate stories, songs, poems and rhymes in the language
• explore the patterns and sounds of language through songs and rhymes and link the spelling, sound and meaning of words

Music from the country or countries where the language is spoken is a facet of cultural understanding, and can also contribute to other aspects of the curriculum, such as expressing opinions.

The MMC covers the key areas of singing, listening, composing and performing, and I think it's the areas of singing and listening that are of the most use to us as language teachers in choosing songs and music for our lessons.  Here are the recommendations for the six year groups that I think will help us:

Year 1 (age 5-6)

• simple chants and rhymes
• simple songs with a very small range (mi - so) (3 notes)
• pentatonic songs (songs with a 5 note or 5 tone scale)
• call and response songs

I found this very interesting.  Quite often I find what I think would be a great song for Year 1, only to discover that they find it difficult.  I can see now that that the reason is often that the melody is too complex.  I'm going to look into chants and call-and-response for Year 1 as I think these would work well with them.  (If you know any, it would be great if you could put them in the comments!)

Year 2 (age 6-7)

• songs with the pitch range do-so (5 notes)
• songs with a small pitch range

Year 3 (age 7-8)

• unison songs, do-so range (5 notes)
• perform actions confidently and in time

Year 4 (age 8-9)

• unison songs, do-do range (8 notes, 1 octave)
• rounds and partner songs

Year 5 (age 9-10)

• broad range of songs
• 3 part rounds and partner songs

Year 6 (age 10-11)

• broad range of songs, involving syncopated rhythms
• 3 or 4 part rounds and partner songs

I think that seeing this progression in singing will help us to choose appropriate songs for our lessons, and therefore songs that children will be able to sing easily.

The MMC has a long list of suggestions of music for children to listen to.  Some of it links to the languages that we teach.  As I said before, children can listen to music and express their opinions of it, or you can play the music softly in the background while they are working.  Pieces of music can also be used for timing: "This piece of music lasts 5 minutes, so that's how long you have to complete this task."

Here are some suggestions of composers you could choose, in order to complement the music curriculum:

German

JS Bach

Beethoven

Weber

Schubert

Mozart

Mendelssohn

Strauss

French

Rameau

Chopin

Berlioz

Delibes

Saint-Saëns

Debussy

Fauré

Ravel

Spanish

de Falla

Rodrigo

Piazzolla

The Spanish list is very short compared to the others, so I've made a wider list (here as much for my own reference as anything else!)

Manuel de Falla	1876-1946	El amor brujo Cuatro piezas españolas Noches en los jardines de España
Isaac Albéniz	1860-1909	Suite Española no.1 and no.2 for piano
Enrique Granados	1867-1916	12 danzas españolas
Joaquín Rodrigo	1907-1999	Concierto de Aranjuez
Francisco Tárrega	1852-1909	Recuerdos de la Alhambra
Antón García Abril	1933-2021	film and TV composer
Paco de Lucía	1947-2014	virtuoso guitarist and composer
Tomás Luis de Victoria	c.1548-1611	choral music
Juan del Encina	1468-1529/30	choral music

If we are thinking culturally, then the 20 countries where Spanish is spoken each have their own styles of music:

Argentina	Tango, Chacarera, Chamamé
Bolivia	Kullawada, Morenada, Caporales
Chile	Torada, Cumbia
Colombia	Cumbia, Vallenato, Currulao
Costa Rica	Calypso, Chiqui Chiqui
Cuba	Rumba, Salsa, Mambo, Cha Cha Chá
Ecuador	Yarabi, Pasacalle, Bomba
El Salvador	Cumbia, Hiphop, Xuc
Guatemala	Garifuna, Marimba music
Guinea Ecuatorial	Soukous, Makossa
Honduras	Punta, Reggaetón
México	Mariachi, Cumbia, Danzón
Nicaragua	Soca, Punta, Chicheros
Panamá	Salsa, Calypso, Saloma
Paraguay	Guarania, Paraguayan Polka
Perú	Zamacueca, Festejo, Cueca
Puerto Rico	Guaracha, Bomba
República Dominicana	Merengue, Bachata, Salsa
Uruguay	Tango, Milonga, Candombe
Venezuela	Jarapo, Salsa, Calypso

Music and language learning have been shown to be mutually beneficial, so let's harness those links in the classroom!

Making a flag

The last unit of my Year 3 scheme of work is one of my favourites - Mi bandera.  The children learn how to describe the colours and shapes on flags, opening the door to other countries that speak Spanish and their cultures.  It usually coincides with a major sporting event and so the children are always interested in it.

After we have finished practising all the speaking with actions (multimodal - it really works!) the children make their own flag and describe it to the rest of the class.

I always use the method of making a wave-able flag that I first saw on Barbara Cheded's blog.  Unfortunately the link for the instructions no longer works, and I can't find them anywhere else, so I've done my own instructions for making the flag here:

1.  Fold a piece of A4 paper into quarters.

2.  Cut off one of the quarters (it doesn't matter which one).

3.  It's important to get the piece of paper the right way round at this stage - children sometimes put the paper in the portrait orientation and end up with the wrong-shaped flag.  At this stage children draw and colour their flag design on the "flag" section.

4.  When the flag design is finished, roll up the flag pole section of the paper and stick it with some sticky tape (we've never had any luck with glue!)  The flag is now ready to be waved.

Primary Languages Conference: Pillars of Progression

Primary teachers and specialist teachers of primary languages are always looking for good quality CPD.  The online conference Pillars of Progression is a joint project from the teams behind the successful Northern Primary Languages Show (NPLS) and Southern Primary Languages Show (SPLS), and I am delighted to have been invited to speak about the pillar of vocabulary.

Here is more information about the conference and its sessions:

The conference will take place on Zoom.  If you're a member of the Association for Language Learning (ALL) it will cost you £5, if you aren't a member it's only £25.  

To book your place, go quickly to the online booking form, as places are limited.

See you there!

What can word frequency tell us about culture?

I've mentioned before that I'm in the process of overhauling my Key Stage 2 scheme of work for Spanish.  So far I've filled in my template for units 1-4 and a bit of 5.

In accordance with the TSC MFL Pedagogy Review and the new Ofsted Framework, I am setting out the language to be learned in each unit under the headings of Vocabulary, Grammar and Phonics.  I am colour-coding the vocabulary to see the spread more easily.

I'm also adding the frequency of each word to ensure that I am focussing on high-frequency vocabulary (see the presentation by Rachel Hawkes about this).

I've purchased the Routledge Frequency Dictionary of Spanish, which lists the top 5000 words as well as giving topic-based lists of words like colours, family words, verbs and so on.  The frequency values of some words have proved interesting.  I think that the ranking of certain words tells us something about Hispanic culture.

The box at the top shows the vocabulary and frequency for my unit 4, which is pencil case and gender.  I was interested to see that bolígrafo/boli, which I have always taught for 'pen', wasn't listed, while pluma comes in at number 2605. 

There then followed an interesting discussion on Twitter about boli vs pluma.  Because here in the UK we teach castellano, we teach bolígrafo/boli as that is commonly used in Spain.  In Central and South America, however, there are a variety of different words, as this infographic shows:

https://www.speakinglatino.com/spanish-language-words-for-pen/

While I've been looking up other words (usually while waiting for Zoom meetings to start!) I've some across some other interesting things which I think tell us about Hispanic culture:

• Veinte is #819 and treinta is #829.  Veinticinco is #2643 and veinticuatro is #4059.  None of the other 20s feature in the top 5000.  I can see why veinticinco would be quite frequent, but what makes veinticuatro more common than, say veintiuno?
• Café is much higher than té (#961 vs #2552)
• domingo is much higher on the list that all the other days of the week (lunes #1370; martes #3101; miércoles #1816; jueves #1650; viernes #1259; sábado #1179; domingo #693)
• julio is the highest month on the list (#659, the next month down is agosto at #931)
• Perro (#888) is considerably higher than gato (#1728), perhaps reflecting the preferred pet in Spanish-speaking countries (the dictionary uses data from all of them) or indeed the frequency with which those animals appear in phrases and sayings.
• Hermana (#3409) is much lower than hermano (#333), probably because of the use of hermano(s) to mean sibling(s), but abuela (#783) is much higher than abuelo (#4796).

I'm sure I will unearth some more interesting ones as I complete more units!

Language World 2020: Sketchnotes

Here are my sketchnotes from Language World 2020.  My own presentation "Harnessing the Hive Mind" is here.

What will be in your pencil case?

Good afternoon from the US of A, where I have just been to Super Target to buy groceries.  Because of the time of year, there is also a large Back to School section in said hypermarket, which, of course, I had to have a look round.  There were various local families there with their stationery lists, gathering supplies for the coming school year.

I picked up this school supply shopping list, which, as you can see, is in Spanish.  Our students would find this interesting to look at.  They could use their bilingual dictionaries to find out what the American children have to have for school.  Most of these things are provided for UK students by their schools.  There is also an interesting cultural angle.  Why is a shopping list in the USA printed in Spanish as well as English?

Pesetas

At the moment, with my Year 5 Spaniards, I am doing big numbers and money.  We've been focusing on amounts of Euros, for obvious reasons, but the children are very interested in pesetas.  I've told them how I always remember the difference between cien and ciento by thinking of the 100 peseta coin, which had "cien pesetas" written on it:

I said I would have a look at home to see if I still had any pesetas to show them.  I found four 25 peseta pieces and two 5 peseta pieces (and a whole set of French francs, some Dutch guilders and some South African rand).

The peseta coins that I have turn out to be very useful on a cultural as well as a historical level.  I've scanned them on both sides and magnified them a lot so that the children will be able to examine them next lesson.  Here they are, in case you would like to use them.  Each vertical pair is one coin.  Can you work out the cultural references on each coin?

I don't teach French at the moment and so the French francs are not of use to me, but if you would like to use them, here they are:

Marie Marvingt

Marie Marvingt

It has been said that social media users sometimes feel inadequate when looking at the online exploits of the people that they follow.  I admit to feeling somewhat inadequate when I first read about Marie Marvingt (1875-1963).

She was an aviation pioneer, a high-achieving sportswoman, a writer, artist and member of the Légion d'Honneur.  She tried to enlist in the army in World War One, disguised as a man, but was discovered when she became ill.  She applied to take part in the 1908 Tour de France.  Her application was refused as she was a woman, but she rode the course regardless, behind the men, and finished the course when many of the men did not.

And yet, for all her achievements, little is known about her.  A search on Amazon.fr reveals only three books about her.

I have been preparing some resources about her, and thought this mind map might be of interest.  It will give you a taste of her amazing life.

You will find the resources here.

May's most popular posts

You might have noticed that I've been blogging a lot more this month than usual.  I have set myself the challenge of publishing a post a day for a month.  Previously I had published 244 in 8 years.  That's an average of about 30 a year!  I started the month on 8th May, and am seeing if I can get to 8th June.  Watch this space!

These were the most popular posts in May:

1.  Starting to write in a new language
2.  Sugarcane
3.  Kagan Rally Table
4.  Reading about France and French Culture
5.  Flowcharts

If you'd like to be notified when I publish a new post, please sign up for an email subscription.  Have a look on the right of this post, under the picture of me!

Mundo Primaria

While looking for something else yesterday, I found Mundo Primaria.  It's a website intended for Spanish children, but has plenty to offer us as teachers of Spanish, both in primary and secondary.

Here are my favourite pages:

• Chistes cortos para niños  At Language World, Glennis Pye recommended jokes as good short texts for translation.  This page has a slide show of 25 jokes.
  
  
• Lecturas cortas  These texts too would be good for translation, particularly the non-fiction ones.  El Sol is among the texts that would also be useful for reading in Key Stage 2.
  
• Cuentos infantiles cortos  Lots of short stories of different genres.
  
• Infografías educativas  The first ones are for English, but look further down the list and there are some good word mats for maths and the solar system.  I particularly like this food pyramid one.
  
• Ejercicios de ciencias sociales  Downloadable worksheets for social sciences.  The geography ones are to do with the map of Spain (which is what I was looking for originally!) and even if you don't use the exact resource it will give you some ideas for teaching the geography of Spain.  The Vida en sociedad and Historia worksheets are also useful for cross-curricular learning in Key Stage 2 and even Key Stage 3.
  
• Ejercicios de lengua  Worksheets that provide useful ideas for teaching grammar, especially in Key Stage 2.
  
• Números naturales hasta el millar  These maths worksheets would be useful for any student learning big numbers in Spanish.
  
• El Euro  Some useful adding-up-money sheets  (The rest of the maths sheets can be accessed from here.)

Videos

Here are some videos I thought you might like. Do you have any you'd recommend?

French:

Photo de classe is a thought-provoking set of videos where children talk about their families' countries of origin.

On fait les crêpes from the BBC

Masculine and feminine body parts from BBC Virtually There

Being French - a day in a French Primary School from the BBC

Primary French - Deux Jeux de Mains

Primary French - Playground Games and pocket money

Spanish:

The gender of nouns in Spanish from BBC Virtually There

El Pasado y el Presente - Then and Now

Un recorrido de mi ciudad - In my town

Aquí está mi escuela - a primary school in Mexico

Las cuatro estaciones - seasons and weather

Maps, glorious maps

I've always liked a good map.  And I have always liked showing maps to my students, to put the languages they are learning into some kind of context.

Here are some useful links about maps:

• Mapfight is a way of visually comparing the sizes of two different countries.  It's clear to see from Mapfight that Spain is bigger than the UK, rather than smaller, as it looks on the map above.
  
• Some ideas for using maps in the classroom, from Lisa Stevens
  
• All about time zones, from the BBC
  
• If it were my home compares your own country with another, to see how your life might be different, given the different living conditions in that other country.
  
• This map shows you the locations of lots of different live webcams.  The more you zoom in to a certain country, the more webcams there are to choose from.
  
• National Geographic map jigsaw puzzles
  
• Map puzzles from Your Child Learns
  
• When you choose a place on the History Pin map, it will show you photos of that place in the past.  Ideal for a "Then and Now" topic.
  
• With Show Mapping Worlds, all the countries change size from land mass to a new size, depending on their data on a particular subject, such as number of children in primary school, natural disasters or football.
  
• World Mapper works on a similar basis to Show Mapping Worlds.  Click on the green arrows to see your selected map animated.
  
• List of maps with the words in Spanish
  
• Information, lesson ideas and maps all about the Americas, all from National Geographic.
  
• With Place Spotting you can set up quizzes where students have to find a pictured place or landmark on a map.
  
• Have a go at Lizard Point's geography and map-based quizzes.

Le Tour de France

Yesterday I blogged my list of resources for 14 juillet.  Today, here are some useful links and resources for another important French event which will be taking place at the end of this term: the Tour de France.  Please feel free to add in the comments any links that you think other people would like!  you can find a list of French festivals and celebrations here.

• The Tour de France website
  
• Podcast about the Tour de France, and its transcript
  
• List of useful words, with explanations, from the BBC
  
• Some online activities, including a quiz, from the BBC
  
• BBC Newsround article about the Tour
  
• A labelled diagram of a bike
  
• Bike-related games and puzzles from Momes.net
  
• Lots of resources from Tête à Modeler
  
• "C'est quoi, ce maillot jaune?" Article from 1 jour 1 actu
  
• Interactive game and quiz in French from FranceTV
  
• Lesson ideas from Teach Primary