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!

Storytelling with children

With many thanks to Sylvie Bartlett Rawlings, who recommended this book.  It is packed with useful tips for using stories in the Languages classroom, as well as examples of stories that can be used, and basic lesson plans to go with them.  Some of these stories are suitable for adapting for the Key Stage 2 setting.

Reading in Spanish

Yesterday I wrote about the French books that I have on my shelves and which I use in the primary languages classroom.  I also have a significant pile of Spanish books, and here they are.

I use ¡Mamá! to practise animals, numbers and plurals.  It only has one word (¡Mamá!) on each page.  A little boy runs from room to room in the house looking for his mother, not noticing that in each room there are a different number of animals.

All children will be familiar with La oruga muy hambrienta, and so it's great for introducing days of the week and finding out food words in Spanish.  The "eating" pages are repetitive and so easy for children to join in with and put actions to.  There is another version called La pequeña oruga glotona.

Another Eric Carle book that I use is De la cabeza a los pies.  Year 2 and I read the English version first (From head to toe) and then the Spanish version. Plenty of actions and joining in!

El bicho de la fruta introduces fruits and parts of the body. It's ideal if you are going to be creating and describing monsters in class.

I found Los colores in Barcelona a few years ago.  It's a very simple book which introduces animals and colours.  On each page a different baby animal says what colour and animal its dad is. The language is repetitive and very accessible, and the formula can easily be adapted for independent writing.  There are five other books in the series which will be worth looking into.

Villancicos y zambomba is a series of Christmas poems and rhymes by Gloria Fuertes.

In Diez semillas, ten seeds are planted but not all of them become flowers.  This book practises the numbers 1 to 10, as well as encouraging children to think about the life cycle and parts of a plant.  I have this book to read with Year 1.

If you're looking for a way of practising colours and also incorporating PSHE, try ¡Hombre de color! An African boy points out that he has always been black, while a white person changes colour depending on the weather and their mood.  Who is really 'coloured'?

Animal noises are a great way of practising phonics, and I use Muu Bee ¡Así fue! to introduce them.  I also have the original English version (Moo Baa La La La) and we read the two side by side, comparing and contrasting the words used and the noises that the animals make.

Pinta ratones is about some little mice who dance in puddles of different coloured paint and mix new colours.  It would lend itself to actions and focussed listening, where children hold up colours as they are mentioned.

¡Fuera de aquí, horrible monstruo verde! is visually a very appealing book, as it builds up the monster's face through a series of overlaid pages.  It's a really good example of describing nouns (parts of the head) with colours, sizes and shapes.  I have this one in French as well.

Children will all be familiar with Michael Rosen's Vamos a cazar un oso, and it's fantastic for getting them out of their seat and doing lots of actions.  Unfortunately it's a hard book to get hold of in this country.  I got mine online from Spain.

I bought Diez Deditos in the USA last year, and am pleased to see that it's also available here.  It is a collection of songs and finger rhymes, ideal for the new programme of study.  I see that there is also a version available with a CD.

I've written before about the Guatemala project that I do with Year 2.  I've recently bought a couple of books that will enhance the project next time round.  Abuela's Weave is the story of Esperanza and her grandmother and the traditional weaving that they do.  There is also a teacher's guide available.

Year 2 always have a lot of questions about Guatemala, quite a few of which I can't answer.  I've bought Guatemala ABCs to help me to learn more!

¿Dónde vive Maisy? is a lift-the-flap book ideal for younger learners.  It's all about where animals live and where Maisy Mouse lives.  The language is simple and repetitive.

There are two parts to the Recopilatorio de canciones infantiles.  It's a gold mine of Spanish songs and rhymes, which are often hard to find.  Ideal for making your scheme of work new-curriculum-compatible.

It's always useful to have something up your sleeve to fill in any unexpected empty moments in the classroom.  The Spanish-speaking cultures colouring book has been a godsend, and a recent purchase, Decorative Tile Designs coloring book, is proving equally so, particularly when you're looking at Moorish Mosaics.

So that's all my Spanish books.  I'd love to hear your recommendations!

Reading in French

The new Programme of Study for KS2 Languages requires children to "appreciate stories, songs, poems and rhymes in the language".  I'm always on the lookout for books in French and Spanish that will enrich the children's learning experience and that will introduce language points and inspire some independent writing.  Plus I am what you might call a book addict.

There are lots of things you can do with stories and books. Here are some of the French books that I have.

La chenille qui fait des trous

The old favourite Hungry Caterpillar is ideal for introducing days of the week and food.  The "eating" pages contain repetitive language that's easy for children to join in with.

In Je m'habille et je te croque a wolf puts on his clothes before coming to eat you.  Children would be able to create their own version with perhaps a different animal and different clothes. 

Maman! by Mario Ramos only has one word (Maman) on each page.  A little boy runs from room to room in the house looking for his maman, not noticing that in each room there are a different number of animals.  This book is great for numbers, animals and plural forms.

The rabbit in Bon appétit! Monsieur Lapin decides that he doesn't like carrots anymore, and goes to ask some other animals what they eat.  The language is nice and repetitive, and introduces you to things like "Pouah!" and "Beurk!"  A good example of how direct speech works in French, and introduces some new food words, which children will be able to work out using their general knowledge.

The parents of the little crocodile in Je mangerais bien un enfant try to tempt him with bananas, sausages and chocolate cake, but all he wants to eat is a child.  The language is more complex than in the previous titles, but it could be simplified.

Toutes les couleurs introduces colours as a little white rabbit gets stained with different colours while playing outside, before being bathed in blue water by his mother.

The little dinosaur in Pop mange de toutes les couleurs takes on the colours of everything he eats until he is a rainbow dinosaur.  The language is a little more complex than in the previous title, but it also introduces similes and colloquialisms.

Petit poisson blanc is looking for his mother and comes across lots of other sea creatures who are different colours in the process.  Children could create their own version of this story, using different animals and a different main character.

The La petite boule blanche series shows how pictures can be built up using a series of shapes, and each of the books has a different language focus.  My favourite is La petite boule blanche au pays des contes, which focuses on nasal sounds.

Mots rimés pour lire sans trébucher has a series of poems and rhymes which focus on specific phonemes.  Excellent for phonics.

And finally for intercultural understanding there is the La Terre vue d'Alban series, produced by the team that brought us Earth from the Air.  Comment vivent les enfants dans le monde? has photos of children in the places where they live, with information about each one and a commentary by Alban the fish.

So these are the French books that I have.  I'd love to hear about yours!

Bear's Magic Pencil

I've blogged before about using Anthony Browne's Silly Billy to introduce Guatemalan worry dolls to Year 2.  Last year I bought Bear's Magic Pencil, also by Anthony Browne.  It's one in a series of four books about Bear, who uses his magic pencil to draw himself out of trouble.  This book is a little different in that all the characters except for Bear were drawn by children as entries for a competition run by The Sun newspaper.

This morning I read the book to Year 3, and I also read to them the preface in which Anthony Browne describes how he works with groups of children in schools to make their own Bear stories.  We used the Spanish dictionaries and our knowledge of gender in Spanish to make our own Bear stories in Spanish.

I gave the children a blank template which had space for the pictures and the time sequencing words already on it.  They had to use the dictionary and their imagination to find the things that Bear drew next, select "un" or "una" as appropriate, write the words in to complete the sentence and then illustrate it.  I have been encouraging them to include the kind of lush backgrounds which are such an integral part of Browne's books.

I'm looking forward to seeing them finished!

Primary Languages Show 2011

On Friday I made the 360 mile round trip from Sunderland to Liverpool for the 2011 Primary Languages Show.  In my post about the 2010 show I said that I would attend both days this year, and indeed that is what I booked for.  Unfortunately the show was reduced from two days to one this year due to LAs' budget cuts and uncertainty about the future of Primary Languages.

Nevertheless, there were still plenty of appealing workshops to attend, in most of the sessions too many to choose from.  The ones that I chose reflected the priorities that we have in the local authority at the moment and also my own personal interests.

Toto et les graines magiques: Strategies for storytelling
Chris Behagg from West Sussex LA gave us plenty of ideas for using a story to its maximum linguistical benefit.

Matisse Magique!
Maria Roberts, also from West Sussex LA, showed us this project, which combines Art and French for upper KS2.  It showed me that there is so much more that I can do with my Gaudi project.

The West Sussex Grid for Learning is packed with resources for MFL.  They don't know if the resources will still be there in September, so download them now!

Story Making in French
I had wanted to attend Jo Cole's session last year, but it was all booked up.  I was not disappointed.  Jo's strategies and rationale for story making in the languages classroom make so much sense and, if you can find the right story, are straightforward to do. 

Les Animaux du Monde
I'd met the human dynamo that is Liz Black before, and enjoyed chatting with her again.  Her web pages on the Stokesley School website are packed with excellent ideas and resources for KS2-KS3 Transition.

A particular highlight of the day for me was the keynote address by Professor David Crystal, which addressed multilingualism and why it's A Good Thing.  He said a lot of very sensible things about languages in general.


Rather than say too much else here, I'll put my notes below and you can read all about it at your leisure.  

Primary Languages Show 2011

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#MFLSAT Oldham

Yesterday I spent a most enjoyable day at The Radclyffe School in Oldham at the third MFL Show and Tell (affectionately and tweetingly known as #MFLSAT).  It was brilliantly organised by Isabelle Jones and brought together about forty MFL teachers from all over the UK (and Germany!).

I gave a short presentation about mini-books, something which I love and which I have used successfully (in my opinion) with my primary classes.  Here is my presentation:

Mini-books

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A lot of people have asked where I got the jigsaw thing in the PowerPoint.  I actually found it quite by chance while I was looking for a suitable template for the presentation.  The instructions are here, and you can access the actual template via the same link.  As far as mini-books are concerned, the most important link is the "how to make a mini-book" one.

As is usual with #MFLSAT, I left totally enthused, my head buzzing with lots of ideas.  In no particular order, here are some of the things I'd like to try:

Selecting pupils at random to answer a question
Marie O'Sullivan showed us The Hat, which you can use to select one pupil at a time.  As far as I can see, once you've selected one particular pupil, they are then safe from selection for the rest of the lesson, unless you start the Hat up again.
Dominic McGladdery gave us lots of examples of ways to select pupils at random, starting with lolly sticks with pupils' names on which are drawn from the "Mug of Misery" (as it has been christened by Dom's pupils!)  I really like this PowerPoint random name selector from Fresherschools.com as well.
I'm particularly interested in this as it is one of the things mentioned at my PM review, and one of the teachers at my school is very keen to get all the pupils alert and not coasting.

Intercultural Understanding
Something I am very interested in (see previous posts) and so I'm always grateful for new links and ideas to help me in my endeavours. 
Marie-France Perkins showed us the website of Collège les Tamarins on the island of Réunion.  A particularly useful part of the website is the "Visite du Collège", which shows photos and plans of the school. 
Suzi Bewell showed us "Ecoles du Monde", a book written in simple French and with beautiful photographs of schoolchildren around the world.  Suzi also guided us to Links into Languages's 10 minute guide to Intercultural Understanding.

Groovy Tech Tools
Kath Holton showed us some of the tools she uses in the classroom and to facilitate home learning.  Spicynodes looks worthy of closer investigation, as does Zondle.
Vanessa Parker from The Radclyffe School showed us some PowerPoint ideas.  I liked her idea for a twist on Kim's Game.  Instead of just making a picture disappear and asking the children which one it is, Vanessa suggests asking them which one they think will disappear and giving them a point if they are right.  I also liked her idea to have a bag or basket of images flash across the screen and pupils have to name all the objects.  Flypast taken one step further.

I can't wait for the next one.  Where's it to be, guys?

Working with partner schools overseas

When I first started working with partner schools overseas, in 1997, communicating with partners and exchanging project work involved faxes, telephones, files, CDs, video tapes, books, pieces of art and craft work.... and many expensive trips to the Post Office to post it all. It took time for it all to reach the partners, and just as long for them to send theirs to us. Everything took a long time. Over the years, however, thanks to all the new technology that is out there, this communication and sharing of work has become much easier, quicker and cheaper. There are many web tools that we can use now to collaborate with our partners.

Two of the tools that have really taken off in the MFL world are Storybird and Storyjumper. Brian Stobie, the international officer for County Durham, discovered Storybird recently and could immediately see its use for partnership work. He asked me to give a presentation about Storybird and Storyjumper at the Atlas (RNIL) conference today. I agreed to speak for 10 minutes, just to give delegates a taster and to whet their appetites to find out more. I decided to present Storybird and Storyjumper as a story. I hope you like it.


Here is a Storybird that I wrote in collaboration with Dominic McGladdery.  I wanted Fiona Joyce, queen of the MFL Storybird Wiki, to be involved as well, but at the moment you can only collaborate with one other person.
What do you like to do ? by d_mcg, CSeccombe on Storybird

Storybird and Storyjumper aren't of course the only programs that can be used in this way.  You could also try Voki, Wallwisher, Voicethread, Xtranormal and GoAnimate, to name but a few.  And you could set up a blog or wiki for the partnership so that you have some shared webspace via which to share your work.  Anything that motivates you and your students to sustain your partnership and make it meaningful can only be a good thing.

One year on......

I published my first blog post here on 28th June 2009. Over the last week or so I've been thinking about the things I have learned over the last year, and I thought I would share them with you here. These are not only things that I have learned about, but also things that I have used either in the classroom or elsewhere in my work this year.

• Storybird and Storyjumper:  First of all, two tools which almost need no introduction, such has been their success amongst the language teachers in my PLN and beyond.  All of the Storybirds that I have created appear on the fantastic MFL Storybird Wiki, the brainchild of Fiona Joyce, and you can see my Storyjumpers on this very blog (look at the tabs at the top).  I have found the programs invaluable for presenting appropriate text-level work to my KS2 pupils, but they haven't been able to try it out for themselves for ICT reasons, if you know what I mean....  
    
• Mini-books:  I discovered mini-books quite by accident while looking for something else.  I knew that it was something that I wanted to try, but determined to find the right occasion.  My KS2 pupils created mini-books containing their own stories based on a mini-book that we read together called "¿Qué veo?"  You can see the results here.  Mini-books are small and so the children know that they don't have to write very much.  They enjoy illustrating their work as well.  And their size also makes them ideal for the children to take home to show to their families.
• Wordle and Tagxedo: I wrote a post in April comparing all the different word cloud generators that are out there at the moment. Of all the ones I mentioned on that occasion, I use Wordle and Tagxedo the most. I find them particularly useful for displaying objectives at the beginning of a presentation (I paste in all my notes from the presentation and fortunately the words that come out biggest are the ones I want!) and also for helping pupils to see which are the important words amongst all the ones we are studying - the high-frequency core words come out biggest. Here is a Wordle of my Delicious tags (see below) and a Tagxedo of my World Cup resources page:


• Podcasting and Audacity: I've been using Audacity for a few years, but, as I discovered after a course with Joe Dale in December, only on a basic level. Joe really opened my eyes to the possibilities offered by Audacity for producing professional-sounding podcasts. I produced some secondary-level podcasts with our language assistants and then started podcasting in earnest when I undertook on behalf of the LA to provide a series of upskilling podcasts for non-specialist primary teachers of French. The technology side of it is straightforward for me now, and it's the scripting that takes the time. While I'm talking about podcasts, I'll recommend JamStudio for creating your own loops, and for making guitar accompaniments for your songs if, like me, you don't play the guitar.
• The RecorderPen: This was my purchase from the Gadget Show Live. I wrote a blog post after I had played with it for the first time and before I had used it in class. This term I have been incorporating Y1's theme of "Seaside" into their Spanish lessons. I wanted to show them how to describe things using colours. I picked four masculine sea creatures, made A5 flashcards of them, added recorded stickers and laminated the whole thing. I also made, recorded and laminated cards for 6 colours. When we were working in our groups of about 10, I said something like "un tiburón amarillo", and the children took it in turns to make the cards say the same thing by using the RecorderPen to make them speak the right words in the right order. They found it fascinating and were very interested to know how it works. Their class teacher was interested to see it and is thinking about buying a set for the class to use elsewhere in their curriculum.
• Wallwisher: Wallwisher has turned out to be very popular with my KS2 pupils. I think they like it particularly because they can see their contribution and other peoples'. It has encouraged them to engage with Spanish in their own time and, therefore, to explore the rest of the blog (see below) while they are there. One of our walls shows our collection of Spanish food nouns, something we haven't studied in class since before May half term, but which they are still adding to regularly. Our latest wall is about flags - please feel free to contribute.

• Calligrams: I've mentioned Calligrams a fair bit this year. Just see for yourself. I think I like them so much because they are a combination of words and doodles. I have also tried them out, and plan to do more in the future. What I am most chuffed about is that they have captured other peoples' imaginations too, and they are trying them with their classes. There is a place for low-tech, or, in this case, no-tech.

• Blogging: Before I started teaching in my current school, I had seen examples of effective school blogs. It was something I was very interested in setting up for the children at my school, especially as I am only there for a day and a half a week. I wanted Spanish to have a presence in the school even when I wasn't there, to publish and celebrate the good work that the children were doing, and give the children activities that they could access at home to help them with their Spanish. Fortunately, the Head agreed, and thus http://www.spanishstpauls.blogspot.com/ was born. The children love it, and are always telling me about what they have accessed on it at home. The school governors are impressed, as are some of the parents to whom I've spoken. It's also proving useful at the moment during this time of Y6-Y7 transition - the secondary teachers can see exactly what the Y6s have been doing without my having to send them loads of bits of paper.
• Google Reader: When I first started to use Twitter I was seeing a lot of links to people's blogposts. And many of them were interesting reads. Problem was that if I didn't follow the tweeted link there and then, I probably missed it. Following tips from Joe Dale and Graham Davies I started to subscribe to the blogs using Google Reader. I have the Google Reader widget displayed alongside the Gmail widget on my iGoogle, ready for my viewing and reading pleasure each morning.
• Delicious: I blogged about Delicious last August when I first discovered its usefulness for storing and tagging all the useful websites that I came across. I now have over 1000 links on my Delicious. I think now that I have it, I bookmark more sites than I used to paste into my Word document, but, more importantly, I actually use them.
• Slideshare: In my new role I do a fair bit of training, and in my continuing role on the international education side I give quite a few presentations. I used to upload some of the presentations to the website or offer to email them to interested parties. But as my presentation style is becoming more and more minimalist - more pictures, less text - the presentations were becoming less and less useful by themselves. I had followed links to other people's Slideshare presentations and was intrigued to see that some had the audio commentary attached and linked into the presentation. This seemed like an ideal way to go, especially as these slidecasts can be embedded in blogs. I've used it to share my presentations, but also to put songs onto my school blog as YouTube embeds and Podbean mp3s don't work at school. You can view all my Slideshare presentations here. Well, almost all - there are 3 that for some reason don't appear on this list but which you can see here.
• SurveyMonkey: In October last year I set about auditing Primary Languages in Sunderland. We only have 85 primary schools, but it was still an onerous task. Headteachers are busy people, and it was unrealistic to expect them all to respond to and post a paper survey. The audit needed to be short and quick and easy to complete. I had completed some surveys for the British Council which used SurveyMonkey and decided that it would be a good way of gathering the information I needed. I emailed all the HTs the link to the seven questions which it would take them about two minutes to complete. And then watched the responses flood in. Well, trickle in actually. But that's another story. SurveyMonkey proved to be easy to use and certainly preferable to having to collate and manipulate dozens of pieces of paper.
  
  My KS2s had whole-heartedly embraced Wallwisher and so I thought I would capitalise on this enthusiasm to carry out a survey via the blog. I set up a SurveyMonkey about likes and dislikes of the foods that we had been learning. There haven't been too many responses though. Partly, I think, because there were too many questions, and partly because they couldn't see their contribution straightaway on the blog. I think it's something to try again at a later date, in class maybe where the results can be seen immediately.
• Pop-ups in Dreamweaver: MFL Sunderland was 6 years old at the end of April. When I started it I was a complete website novice. Everything you see on the website and its sister sites now is something that I have learned along the way. When I was creating the interactive map for the World Cup over the Easter holidays, I knew how I wanted it to look, but didn't know how to do it. I didn't even know what the thing I wanted to do was called! Much googling and researching and experimenting and HTMLing later I achieved the effect I was after - the information for each country popped up as a little separate window which didn't obscure the main continent page. This may be small potatoes to some people, but for me it was a sense of achievement equalled only by the discovery of roll-over buttons several years ago!

And finally..... why the picture at the top ? Well, as language teachers we are all different, with different styles and with different tools at our disposal. But we are all progressing and moving forward together towards a common goal.  These are my tools at the moment.  Doubtless I will have some new ones this time next year!

Reduce Reuse Recycle

Earlier this year I was very honoured to be asked to run a workshop at the north-east's third regional primary languages conference. This year the conference was called "Read all about it Write now!" (see what we did there?) and it focused on reading and writing in Key Stage 2. It was held today, 25th May, at Middlesbrough TLC.

My workshop was called "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle" or "Adapting a model for independent writing". I thought you might like to have a look at my presentation and listen to what I had to say this morning. The slidecast is about 13 minutes long.

Reduce Reuse Recycle

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During the workshop, I got the delegates to have a go at some of the ideas. I gave them little post-its to write on, to reinforce the idea that you don't have to write a lot to be creative and to communicate successfully in another language. Here are some of the results. Most of the teachers who attended my workshop didn't know any Spanish, and so the Spanish examples show how effective writing frames via a dice roll exercise can be.

And finally, I said that I would post the link on how to make a mini-book.  My KS2s' mini-books can be viewed here.

Storyjumper

A Tweet appeared on my Tweetdeck this afternoon telling me about Storyjumper, an online storytelling tool.  Now, as you know, I am very fond of Storybird, and didn't want to be unfaithful, but curiosity got the better of me and I had a look.

The interface is certainly different to Storybird, and it took me a little while to work out how to get the images I wanted onto the page, and how to move and resize them.  After an hour I had produced a book, written in French, called "Mes Animaux", which you can read here. 

So how does it Storyjumper compare to Storybird ?

Good things about Storyjumper:

There are lots of pictures to choose from.
You can pick exact pictures to suit your story.
You can change font style and font size.
You can put the writing anywhere you like on the page.
You can upload your own photos and pictures and use them in the story.
You can make foreign language stories public (it would appear).

Good things about Storybird:

Beautiful images that capture the imagination.
The stories are embeddable (if written in English).
It's easy to do a screen print of the pages and convert to PowerPoint.
You can write comments for other people about their stories.
The team behind Storybird are very helpful and responsive.

So, in my opinion, each one has its pros and its cons, and there is definitely a case for using both.  I will certainly be showing both to my FLAs at our next training session.

UPDATE 27.2.10:

Here are links to my Storyjumpers:

 

Mes Animaux - a boy describes his unusual pets

Sé contar - counting from 1-10 in Spanish

L'oiseau vole - describing what a bird sees as he flies along

Are you sitting comfortably ?

Then I'll begin !

Every so often TES Connect sends me emails with things they want me to look at. I usually give them a cursory glance before deleting them (I've often heard it before on Twitter!) However, one of the links they sent me today was this one, which immediately caught my eye as I had just been having another look at the fantastic MFL Storybird Wiki set up by Fiona Joyce.

So the 30th January-6th February is National Storytelling Week. An ideal opportunity to try out some new ideas and some new stories.

There are Storybird stories to try - there are lots on the Wiki now and I'm just one of many who have already blogged about it. There are also ready-made big books available from places like Little Linguist. Something else worth considering is getting a translation of an English story book and comparing the two. We are big Sandra Boynton fans in my house and I'm eagerly awaiting the delivery of the Spanish version of "Moo, Baa, La La La" ("Muu, Beee, ¡Así fue!") I'd also recommend Elmer the Elephant and Rainbow Fish. The lovely Suzi Bewell recently showed me "Hooray for Fish" by Lucy Cousins, the author of Maisy Mouse, alongside its French translation "Drôles de Poissons", and described some of the activities for which they can be used.

Recently I've been reading up about Storytelling in the MFL classroom. Here are some of my notes. I hope they will be useful to you as well.

What can you do with stories ?
• Opportunities for experiencing rhyme, active methods, physical responses
• Pupils can react to sounds, words, phrases with a physical response
• Act out parts of the story
• Provide sound effects, missing words or phrases, or a refrain
• Stories provide a good model of pronunciation and sustained language. Pupils have to listen and concentrate
• High frequency words and phrases can be learned through stories
• Read story to the class, then pronounce and repeat certain words, reading from word cards
• Read story to pupils, they join in saying some key sentences and words while performing actions and sound effects. Children can gradually take over the storytelling.
• When introducing the story, use word flashcards of the things they’ll have to say and actions they’ll have to perform during the story
• Perform certain action for a certain group of words (e.g. months) or point to something in the room when you hear it
• Offers opportunities to listen, imagine, predict, comment, participate, express opinions, access longer texts without necessarily having to understand every word.
• Introducing a new story – identify key vocab (not just nouns) and limit the vocab to about 6 words or phrases.
• Decide on your objective: identify by listening? Pronounce accurately ? identify by sight ? read aloud ? write the words ?
• Involve children in the story from the start with actions and gestures, choral repetition of language, complete repeated sentences, hold up a card when you hear a certain thing

Follow-up activities:
• Make a model of one of the characters
• Learn a song with movements based on the story
• Write a description of one of the characters
• Pupils write their own stories inspired by the original
• Match words and pictures from the story
• Listen and draw
• Sequencing
• Making sentences from the story using word cards
• Drama
• Mini books

KS2 Framework:
• Y3 Literacy: “As children listen to sounds, words and phrases, they repeat and chorus, learning accurate pronunciation……They enjoy reading a few familiar words and phrases aloud and begin to write letters and familiar words.”
• Y4 Literacy: “Children develop their reading skills and learn to understand familiar written phrases in clear, printed script. They link listening and reading, by reading short familiar stories, songs and poems while listening to them at the same time. They write familiar words and phrases using a model and begin to experiment with building short phrases from memory.”
• Y5 Literacy: “Children….develop their reading skills by re-reading a range of short texts.”
• Y6 Literacy: “Children read a variety of longer texts from different text types. They read aloud with confidence and enjoyment, and also enjoy reading short texts independently.”
• KAL: “As they increase their understanding of the rules of sounds, spellings and grammar, they should begin to apply these rules when creating new language, both spoken and written.”
• LLS: Children plan and prepare themselves for a language activity – “How do you recall vocabulary in order to sing a song/join in a story/create sentences? How do you find key information in a new sentence or text ?
• LLS: Children use knowledge of English or other languages to help learning and understanding – “Listen and look for words that are similar and different in other languages. “
• LLS: Children pick out key words when listening
• LLS: Children learn a short poem, rhyme or story by heart
• Suggested activities: O3.1, O3.2, L3.1, O4.1, O4.2, L4.2, IU4.3, O5.3, O5.4, L5.1, L5.2, O6.1, O6.2, O6.3, L6.1, L6.2, L6.3, L6.4, IU6.3
• Dictionary skills

My favourite thing about stories in the foreign language is that they enable students to hear extended language. They get to immerse themselves in the rhythm, sounds and music of the language without necessarily having to understand every word. Especially important when so much of their work will be at a word or sentence level.

How are you going to celebrate National Storytelling Week ?