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.

Primary Languages Show 2010

Last night at 8.30pm I arrived home after driving back from the Primary Languages Show, which started at the ACC in Liverpool yesterday, 12th March, and continues today, 13th March.  Despite a 3.5 hour journey and White Van Man trying to drive me off the road on the M62, I was still buzzing with the presentations that I had seen and the ideas they had given me.

The day began with an introduction from Therese Comfort from CILT, and a keynote address from Dr Dan Tierney, who spoke about his philosophy for Primary Languages and research that he has been carrying out.

The first workshop I attended was Language Upskilling, led by Carmel O'Hagan from CILT.  I wasn't able to attend the meeting about this in Newcastle last week, and so used this as an opportunity to learn about the new specification for Upskilling for primary teachers.  We have identified Upskilling as a training need in Sunderland, and it was useful to gain an insight into the new specification.

After this workshop, I walked briskly round to the other side of the ACC, hoping to catch Helen Myers, who had been leading a workshop and with whom I have been corresponding virtually for many years.  Despite texting each other with what we were wearing (!) and our locations in the building, we missed each other.  We'll meet one day, Helen !  It was just after this that I bumped into Joe Dale, with whom I enjoyed coffee, and lunch later on.  Speaking of virtual friends who I finally got to meet, I had a long chat with Martin Lapworth of Task Magic fame, Jan Lewandowski, who said some very nice things about MFL Sunderland, and I finally got to meet Lisa Stevens.  I also caught up with fellow north-easterner Steve Mulgrew, who was showing off his new primary French materials.

The second workshop I went to was "Exploring non-fiction: All about animals", presented by Louise Harty, languages adviser for Northumberland.  She took us through the sequence of activities for the latest materials from Northumberland - "Tout à propos des Animaux".  It is a series of thinking skills lessons which enables pupils to discover and manipulate both basic and more complex French.  It's aimed Y6 and Y7 and would make an excellent transition unit.  It would give those Y7s who have done French before a new focus and some new challenges, while enabling those new to the language to find out about gender, adjectival agreement, regular verb paradigms....  I really enjoyed Louise's presentation, and being able to actually do all the activities !

After lunch (a tasty chicken tagine) I went to "Podcasting to upskill primary teachers", presented by Phil Wood from Lancashire LA.  He described the programme of podcasts that they have made to help classroom teachers to become more confident in their use of French and in their MFL teaching methodology.  Primary teachers are able to study in small, 5-minute chunks in their own time and at their own pace.  Sunderland teachers are very keen to have some help with their own skills in French, and I am very interested in looking at this as a way forward.  It would certainly be pretty easy for me to put together using the sound files that we already have on MFL Sunderland and which were recorded by our FLAs.  Anything is easier than trying to get them all in the same room at the same time, and we are a much smaller LA than Lancashire !

I finished my day with "La main dans la bouche - using puppets for teaching French", which was presented by Stephen Novy.  We found out how to make basic rod and sock puppets, and how best to operate them so as to make them the focus of the lesson.  I use a puppet with Reception and Nursery, and I got some good ideas for how to use him and develop his character.

I had a fantastic time at the Primary Languages Show, and am looking forward to trying out all the new things I learnt and saw.  Next year I will have to save up and go for both days !

My favourite websites

I was honoured to be invited to Gosforth High School in Newcastle this afternoon to tell ALL NE (the north-east branch of the Association of Language Learning) about my favourite websites.

I had an hour and a half.  The question was not what to include, but rather what to leave out !  I could have spoken for a lot longer.  As it was I didn't get the chance to show all of the sites.

I hummed and haa-ed a lot beforehand about how best to present the information.  PowerPoint would mean a lot of chopping and changing, opening and closing, stopping and starting.  Eventually I decided on presenting my favourite websites as a website.  You can find it here.

Click on the words on the computer screen to see the categories.  Then click on the thumbnails to link to the sites.  (I hope you can see my computer background on the main page!)

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

It gives me great pleasure to present.......new vocabulary

In a couple of weeks' time I'm going to be giving two workshops at my local authority's annual PMFL conference. One of them is "Joining in a poem", which is based on the poem "Le retour du printemps" from Unit 17 of the KS2 QCDA scheme of work for French. I prepared that workshop some time ago, and the PowerPoint that I have made can be downloaded from the TalkaboutPrimaryMFL wiki. I'm now working on the second - "Presenting new vocabulary" - which is also one of the sections of the same unit of the KS2 QCDA Scheme of Work.

I didn't feel that the suggested activities in the unit would give me the sort of presentation that I was after and that I am accustomed to give. I always try to cram as many ideas as I can into the time that I have so that delegates have something that they can take away with them to use the next day in their lessons. Personally, I think a conference or workshop has been successful if it has given me ideas that I can take away and use straightaway. (I think that's why I like Twitter so much !) Therefore I set to researching ideas for presenting new vocabulary to students.

Straightaway my perception of "presenting new vocabulary" was challenged. I had always thought that you present the new vocabulary and then you practise it. However, it became clear that when we talk about “presentation” we’re actually talking about the introduction and practice of new lexical items.

So what part does this presentation play in a lesson or as part of the bigger picture ? The presentation of single lexical items is the first step of a longer process leading to our students being able to operate confidently at phrase and sentence level. We need to consider what a pupil needs to know about a word in order to use it successfully. They need to know:

• What it means
• Its part of speech
• How it’s pronounced
• How it’s written
• How the word is related to other words

So any presentation activities that we choose to do in our lessons have to enable our students to gather this information, and build their confidence in the oral, aural and written aspects of the vocabulary.

To help me in my quest I tweeted a request for people to tell me their favourite and most successful ways of presenting new vocabulary. Here are some of the replies that I received:

Marie-France Perkins recommends using realia and passing them round while repeating the word. Connected with this is playing pass the parcel, where the student holding the parcel (or bag) when the music stops takes out an object and says the right word. She also suggests using online tools such as Task Magic and Quia to reinforce vocabulary.

Fiona Joyce says that one of her most successful lessons was presenting clothes using toddler clothes. Fiona is also mistress of the MFL Storybird Wiki. Storybird is excellent for creating simple stories which can be used to present vocabulary.

Isabelle Jones uses odd and interesting pictures as a visual stimulus and also sings words to get her students to focus on the pronunciation. (It was Isabelle who suggested I blog this topic !)

Joanna Pickering uses Noughts and Crosses and sorting activities, with a range of activities based on the sorting activities. Jo also favours using songs, either published ones or ones she has made up herself. I also really like Jo's speed reading idea: "I put a text on the board or a list of words, we read it together then the students have to read it aloud, either in pairs or as a whole class. They have to read it against the clock, and if they make a mistake they then have to start again but the stopwatch carries on timing. Each pair of students has a bell and dings the bell if a mistake in pronunciation is made. Great fun, very loud but really effective."

Stephan Rinke, a man after my own heart, like to use the OHP with cut-out pictures to play Kim's game.

Dominic McGladdery commented that "we should only ever introduce 5 items of vocab and then give the kids a dictionary". This reminds me of one of the best pieces of advice that I have ever been given - when introducing new vocabulary, always bear in mind "The magic number 7, plus or minus two". In other words, though it may be tempting to do, for example, all eleven colours in one lesson, the average learner can only retain seven new items at once. The less able or younger learner can retain seven minus two, the more gifted or experienced learner can retain seven plus two.

Here are some more of the ideas that I have found, in no particular order:

Introduction of new vocabulary:

• Choral repetition with flashcards

• Vary the repetition, saying the word in different ways, or different groups, boys, girls….


• Focus on sound-spelling links, and the relationship between phonemes and graphemes.


• Students give a physical response when they hear a certain word or phoneme – they hold up a card, say a number or do a certain action when they hear a certain word. Students are taking an active role in the process early on and are "developing listening acuity".

• Successful presentation involves Oracy and Literacy. Students need a good model of pronunciation. They need to recreate the sounds accurately if they are to use them effectively and confidently later on. Literacy skills are supported by and reinforce the development of Oracy.


• Knowledge about Language (KAL) – awareness of rules and patterns in language, and imitating pronunciation of words.

• Language Learning Strategies (LLS) - Children have opportunities to think about the best way for them to learn a new language and employ a range of strategies to help them to do this.


• LLS – use mental associations to help remember words

• This introduction can be a mixture of whole-class, small group and pair work.

• Visual aids include real objects, puppets, DVDs, IWB, flashcards and gesture.

• Present new words gradually, 4-8 at a time.

• Present the easiest and most useful words or cognates first, or words of the same gender.


• Suggested steps for presenting new vocabulary: Listen and respond physically; respond verbally as a class; respond verbally individually; listen to the word incorporated in a phrase or sentence; introduce the written word.


Practice / Reinforcement

Teacher-led:

• Use flashcards to practise the vocabulary, gradually building up from closed to more open questions: "¿Es un gato?" Students answer Yes or No; ¿Es un gato o un perro? Students give the correct answer; ¿Eso, qué es? Students give the correct answer

• Sing a song containing the words

• Show the pictures on the board, where each picture has a number (a PowerPoint slide is ideal for this). First ask "C'est quel numéro le chat ?" so that students have to recognise the word and identify it by its number. Then move on to "Qu'est-ce que c'est le numéro cinq ?"


• Games: Simon says, Bingo, True-False, Slaps, Pictionary (stop after each stroke drawn to make it more difficult)

• Finger writing in the air

• Mime the words

• Flashpast (there's an example here using colours)

• To practise and embed gender: tap your head for masculine, click your fingers for feminine.

• Clap out the number of syllables or the pattern of the word. Students say the right word.

• Odd one out, using pictures or words.

• "Répétez si c’est vrai". Make it competitive by giving points to yourself when the students get it wrong and to the students if they all get it right.

• Kim’s game

• Use flashcards to play "C'est quelle carte ?" with a twist, students vs teacher. Give them the choice of two cards. If they’re right they get a point. If they're wrong, you do. You can also keep score of the points by playing “Pull the teeth”. Draw two mouths on the board with teeth in. If the students are correct they get to "pull a tooth" from the teacher’s mouth. This could also be played as a team game.

• Guessing games – say a word that begins with a certain letter / that rhymes with.... / that has 3 syllables

• In my basket I have…

• Listening games – tick, touch or show a picture to demonstrate understanding

• Follow-me cards


• Number fans



In groups or pairs:

• Use small cards to play pelmanism

• Put words and pictures in order against the clock

• LLS - practise new language with a friend

• Dominoes

• Battleships

• Hangman


Individual:

• Work through activities on the school blog

• Online flashcards and games, such as StudyStack.com


Introducing the written word:

• Labelling a work sheet

• Calligrams

• Shape puzzles to match up the vocabulary. More information here. These can also be used to find out new vocabulary. In matching up the vocabulary that they already know, students discover more and are able to fill in an information-gap style worksheet.


• Match up cards which have halves of words

• Crosswords

• Give pairs of students a set of pictures and a set of letters. Say the word, and they have to find the picture and spell out the word with the letters.

• Put cards with words on the board. Call out the English word and they have to find and copy the correct TL word. This is good for use with mini-whiteboards.


So those are all the ideas that I have so far. I would be really interested to hear any other ideas that you have.

UPDATE:
Here is the presentation that I have on March 9th to Primary MFL teachers in Sunderland.

March 9 presentation new vocab

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