More Suno songs

 

Since my last post about the songs I have created using Suno, I have added more to my YouTube playlists for French and Spanish.

FRENCH:

SPANISH:

Suno songs

 

A couple of weekends ago I attended the Association for Language Learning Online Conference and was reminded of Suno, the AI app which will create songs for you.

Suno has the potential to be a game changer for language teachers.  We know how well songs can work to fix language in students' memory in a fun way, but it's often hard to find a suitable song that practises the language that we want to practise.

With Suno, all you have to do is to type in your lyrics, decide on the genre of song that you would like it to create, and click on the Create button.  Each time it will create two different songs.  You are given 50 credits each day, and each pair of songs costs 10 credits.

I have tried creating lyrics in ChatGPT, with some success.  It's difficult to get lyrics that are simple enough for primary learners.  In the Spanish planets song, for example, ChatGPT created the lists of planets and their descriptions, but I created the chorus myself.  Also as a chorister/musician myself, I am quite picky about the songs that I eventually choose!

I have downloaded the songs as mp3s, and then converted them to mp4s in Canva, using an image file with the lyrics as the background.  I have uploaded them to my YouTube channel, where they are in the playlists Spanish songs and French songs.

The children at my schools have enjoyed the songs so far.  Year 6, usually too cool to sing in hymn practice, loved the Spanish planets song!

If you'd like to create your own songs, I'd recommend using a small pot of vocabulary and making them repetitive.  Putting question forms in is also a good opportunity to practise those.

You might also be interested in reading about Music and 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!

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!

Measuring with fruit

This term, my Year 1s have been learning about fruits.  We've learned plátanos, manzanas, naranjas, fresas, ciruelas and peras.  These are some of the activities we have done:

• Some simple writing of the fruit words
• "Fruit crush" from Take 10 en español
• Game using number cards, where a fruit is underneath each number 1-6.  One child nominates a number, a second child says which fruit they think is under there, and a third child lifts up the number to see if they are right.
• Read Limón and wrote and recorded our own versions (these are some of last year's)
• Sang La canción de las frutas
• Read Yummy Yucky (there is now a bilingual version of this) and then a Spanish version that I wrote

The week before half term, the class teacher had, by chance, left open by the computer a copy of the children's Inspire Maths workbook.  The next thing that children were going to do in maths was measurement.  This was something I could do in Spanish!

Before half term I took a metre rule into the Y1 classroom to measure things like the chairs and tables, to get an idea of the size of unit the children would need to use for the measuring, given that we couldn't use any numbers bigger than 10.  Consequently I made 3 large A4-size versions of each of the fruits (see picture above!) which my daughter laminated for me.

Here's what we did in the lesson:

• We practised the fruit words again (it had been half term!)
• We practised the numbers 1-6 and then sang this song a few times to introduce the numbers 1-10.
• I showed the children the huge fruits, and demonstrated how to measure things in the classroom using the fruit.  We found out that the whiteboard is 6 oranges high, one of their little chairs is 2 pears high, and one of the girls is 4 strawberries high.
• Using our numbers and fruit words we worked out how to say these measurements - seis naranjas, dos peras, cuatro fresas.
• I gave each pair of children a fruit.  They got a mini-whiteboard between them to record their results.  I said they could write the name of the thing they measured or draw a picture of it to help them to remember, and then write how many of their fruit it was long or high. 
• At the end we fed back and worked out how to say the measurements in Spanish.

The children were very focused and enjoyed the measuring.  I also got measured a few times!  If I was doing this again it would be great to take them outside.  Even though Wednesday was a sunny 16 degrees day, it was also the last session of the day, and I'm not sure I would have got all the children back in again!

This lesson could be adapted for older children, simply by giving them a smaller unit so that they have to use bigger numbers.  It's a great way to reinforce the plural form as well.

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

Are the words important?

Earlier this evening, before I went out to play the Joanna and conduct at a concert, I watched Celebrity Pointless with my family.  The first round was a good one (countries with A as the first vowel in their name) but the second round was truly inspired: misheard song lyrics.  I am well chuffed that I knew all the answers, probably because they were nearly all songs of a certain age.  It reminded me of this book that I've had for a while, which is full of misheard lyrics, malapropisms and "other linguistic gaffes".  Right up a word nerd's street.

Here, for your entertainment and amusement:  From which songs do these misheard lyrics come?

1. Listen to the rhythm of the gentle boxing gopher.
2. Sparing his life for his mum's sausages.
3. No Dukes of Hazzard in the classroom.

This reminded me of something that my elder daughter told me last week.  She said that when she was in Year 6 (last year) one of her jobs as house captain was to operate the hymn words in assembly.  This meant sitting next to the Year 1 children.  One day, as they were all saying the Lord's Prayer, she heard one of the little ones say:

".....And lead us not into temptation,

But deliver us by email...."

Yesterday I spent another day at Manchester University with the primary trainees.  We spent a lot of our session looking at storytelling, now an important part of the new Key Stage 2 programme of study.  We practised and told five stories, among them Le Navet Enorme (lesson 7)  I think songs, poems and stories in the primary languages classroom are great, as they offer learners the opportunity to hear and speak passages of extended language and let them hear the music and rhythm of the language.  If you do the Navet Enorme, you can have children with very little French speaking confidently for a five-minute stretch because of the repetitive nature of the story.  One of the trainees asked if, when teaching stories, poems and songs, we should explain to the children what the words mean and make sure that they say all the words properly.  In other words, should we take steps to avoid our pupils delivering us by email and listening to gentle boxing gophers?

Last week I taught my Year 1 Spanish group a new Adiós song from this book.  They sing all the words, some of which are pretty complex - "Me dio mucho gusto/Estar con vosotros", with gusto, do all the actions enthusiastically, and their articulation of the words is pretty good.  They enjoy the song, but they don't know what most of it means.

Some of the songs, poems and stories that we use in the classroom are designed specifically to convey and practise a specific grammar point or structure, and so it is important that the children say the words correctly and know what they mean, if they are to understand the structures and use them in their own speaking and writing later.  For example, my Year 4 Spanish class need to be able to say accurately and understand those little, repetitive pages in the middle of La oruga muy hambrienta  when we are telling the story together, as they then go on to adapt the story using those little pages as the basis for their writing.  The same children happily belt out Chiquirritín at Christmas time without understanding all the words.

It seems to be a careful balancing act between enjoyment and participation, and ensuring understanding where necessary.  I would be interested to hear your thoughts!

*ANSWERS:

1. Petula Clark, Downtown
2. Queen, Bohemian Rhapsody
3. Pink Floyd, Another Brick in the Wall

#MFLSAT York

Yesterday was the latest MFL Show and Tell in York, affectionately and hashtaggingly known as #MFLSATY.  I have blogged about previous #MFLSATs (Oldham, Nottingham and Cramlington), all of which were excellent and from which I and scores of other language teachers came away buzzing with new ideas enthusiasm.  York did not disappoint.

I have already blogged my presentation about Trash or Treasure, and here are some other golden nuggets from the day. 

Marie O'Sullivan talked to us about using songs in the classroom, and we had a go at telling the time in German to the EastEnders theme tune.  Marie recommended the Lyrics Gap website, which has songs with ready-made gap fill exercises and the opportunity to create your own activities in the Teacher Area.  For German she showed us AlexTV, where familiar songs in English are given the German treatment.

David McDermott spoke about learning mats.  Learning mats are a portable learning device (!) and having them avoids having to change wall displays too often.  David likened a learning mat to the picture on the lid of a jigsaw box, which shows you the completed picture for reference.

One of David's examples that I particularly liked was an A3 laminated sheet where half was blank for writing and the other half contained the objectives and success criteria.

Learning mats can also contain useful words for responding in speaking activities à la Group Talk.  The subject for discussion can then be stuck in the middle of the mat on a Post-It.

Isabelle Jones gave us some ideas for making revision more interesting and effective.  She suggested revisiting core language, false friends, suffixes and prefixes, singing songs which illustrate specific linguistical points and exploring jokes in the target language.  You can see all this and more on Isabelle's blogpost about the event.

Mary Cooch showed us a Google Street View webquest which she has embedded in Moodle and which was inspired by the work of Vincent Everett.  Students look at the Street View of a village in France and have to find people and landmarks in order to collect clues to solve a mystery.

Compiling an activity like this must take a huge amount of work, and we are very lucky that it is available for us to use.  If you have to try the Moodle version it's here, while Vincent's original version is here. 

Amanda Salt recommended the videos El Caso de Lorenzo and El Viaje de María, as well as the app Decide Now, which, sadly, isn't available for Android.

Claire Hampson had us singing songs about French verb endings à la Abba.  Claire likens understanding and using verbs correctly to a packet of seeds.  You can't just put a packet of seeds in the ground and expect them to grow, just as you can't pluck a verb from the dictionary and put it in your sentence and expect it to be OK.  Seeds, like verbs, needs to be unpacked and changed and nurtured before they will grow properly.  Claire showed us a picture of some verb flowers that her students made. Each had 6 petals, one for each person of the verb.  I really like this idea for a display for Primary, and will incorporate it into my Y6 Spanish scheme for next year.

Claire uses Ameritz for backing tracks.  She also records her students singing, uploads it to the school blog and then sticks a QR code into the students' books so that they can listen and share their work at home.

Alicia Hamilton told us how to Make Learning Visible, using a Tarsia discussion wheel as her starting point.

At the beginning of the lesson, students draw an arrow on the desk, with the lesson start time at one end and the finishing time at the other end.  They are given 24 lexical items on a vocab sheet and have to highlight what they already know.  Then they plot this point on their arrow along with how many of the words they know, and set themselves a target for the end.

In groups they put the discussion wheel together.  Then they refer back to their vocab sheet and highlight what they know now.  The groups can then play games together with the discussion wheel cards to practise the new language.  They can play dominoes, follow-me, one student removes a card from the wheel and others have to spot which one it is, teacher calls out an English word and the one who can say the TL word wins that card.  At the end of each activity students refer back to their vocab sheet for more highlighting.

After that the students practise the vocabulary by identifying it in a text, using it in sentences or writing a paragraph using a certain number of the items.  An important part of the lesson is the learning conversation at the end: What did you learn?  How did you learn it?  What helped you?  What would you do next time?  Who taught you this language?  It hands a lot of the learning over to the students.


There wasn't time in the end for the Tarsia genius bar, but everything you need to know is here.


Hope you find something that inspires you amongst this!  I could also mention KidBlog.org, Group Talk Poker, Kirikou et la Sorcière, using Google Forms to make interactive quizzes, poo in Catalonia and more!

#ililc3

When I go to a conference, I want to learn things that I didn't know before, I want to be given a new spin on familiar things, and, principally, I want to be inspired with lots of ideas that I can go away and use the very next day in my lessons.  Since that is what I want from a conference, it's what I always strive to give any delegates who choose to come to one of my sessions when I am fortunate enough to be invited to speak.

I feel immensely privileged to have been asked to speak at this year's - the third - ICT and Languages Conference (#ililc3) in Southampton.  I had already attended (and spoken at!) the previous two and knew that it would be well worth my attending.  I always learn something new at the ICT and Languages Conference.  It's so difficult to choose which workshops to go to, but ultimately you don't lose out as so many people are so willing to share their notes from other workshops.  This year has been no exception.  Take a look at the hashtag #ililc3 on Twitter and you'll see what I mean.

I have already blogged about my two sessions and my Show and Tell contribution, and now that I have finished my planning for this week am starting to go back through my notes and my (copious) tweets to get the New Things that I have learned into some kind of order.

I have already written about how keen I am on sharing resources and ideas (in this blogpost and of course that's what this blog is all about), but one person can only do so much, so it's great to get something back from time to time.


Good quotations:

“Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery - celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: “It’s not where you take things from - it’s where you take them to.”
Jim Jarmusch

Thanks, Joe, for that one.  It may seem like I have a lot of new and revolutionary ideas but I have always borrowed the initial inspiration from someone or somewhere else.

"Be the guide on the side, not the sage on the stage."
John Connor

"Are we core or are we fluff?"
"We are hardcore literacy-delivering machines!"
Too right, Isabelle Jones!

Useful weblinks:

Checkthis for making digital posters

Mathématiques Magiques for French and maths

Chez Merlin for maths, French, histoire-géo and knowledge of the world

Passeport pour la francophonie for teaching French through intercultural understanding

Socrative for an online student response system which I used for the first time at #ililc3

Escalator failure for... well you'll understand when you watch the video!

Fresher Schools Random Name Selector for selecting random names.  Or change the PowerPoint slides and keep the animations and transitions for a plenary selector, verb selector....

Essential Guide to Kagan Structures for ideas to promote speaking

La canción de los animales for an annoyingly catchy song, with links to other catchy songs.



Tips and ideas:

Create a playlist on YouTube to save all those useful videos that you find!

Share resources!

Use Lego or Duplo for making 3D bar graphs (thanks John!)

Instead of labelling, for example, a picture of the human body on a worksheet,  stick Post-its on a real object like a blow-up alien.  The labels can then be re-used.

Use different coloured multilink or Lego for sentence structure.  If you have colourblind students you could use card shapes instead.

Use different coloured card "feet" on the floor to walk students through a sentence.

To practise phonics, identify the phonemes in a given word, then use a dictionary or glossary, or even the vocab list at the back of the book, to find words with the same phonemes.

Try a rhyming dictionary to write a nonsense poem.  I recommend setting "Number of rhyming letters" to 3, or it will look like there are no rhymes for your word.  I knocked up the following in a couple of minutes:
Una vaca y una alpaca,
Un pájaro bárbaro y
Una rata van
A la cabalgata.
A little poem for practising the "a" sound.


Enhancing target language use in the classroom:

Some top ideas and advice from Samantha Lunn

Speaking is something I am trying to improve on and so these ideas are very welcome.

Express objectives in the target language using, for example, nous allons + infinitive, and display with letters missing for students to read out.  Then provide the oui or non so that they know what they will be doing.

Give learners some "Get out of jail free cards" when they are beginners.  Make sure that they are able to ask how to say something in English or to go to the toilet.

Make one student the translator for the lesson.  The translator can, for example, translate what the class has to do for homework.

Make speaking the language fun by having forfeits for those who lapse into English.

When introducing new vocabulary, introduce small chunks at a time which are followed by short pair games to recap and drill the language.  These pair games can include mime and guess, draw in the air and guess, mumble and guess, draw on their back and guess or mime superfast or superslow.  Show a picture first and give three options for how to say it.  A bit of thinking and language learning skills involved here.

Use mime to emphasise repeated language and core structures.  This blogpost by Sam is very useful for mimes.

Above all, the teacher must be strict in their own target language use, so that the students stick with it too!

Language games

Maths Karate was demonstrated by Jo Rhys-Jones.  It's great fun and definitely one that I will be adding to my numeracy repertoire.  Children love to do the French/Spanish Vowel Haka and so this will be right up their streets!


I think that's it!

Other blogs about #ililc3 that I recommend:

Samantha Lunn's Languages Resources blog

My Languages from Isabelle Jones

My sister @elvisrunner's blog

Helena Butterfield's Langwitch Chronicles

Vámonos from Lisa Stevens

I expect I will be able to add more links over the next few days.