Foldable Artist Book

 Another recent mini-book find is the Foldable Artist Book, which I found here.  It's similar to the Triarama in that the finished result is 3D.

I have created a template which you can download here:


Cut along the solid lines and fold along the dotted lines:

Then add your words and pictures to the four squares and to the triangles if you wish.  There's no point doing anything with the other two squares as you will be covering them with glue shortly.

Glue the empty squares under the outside two squares.

The book can be folded flat by folding the triangles in half:

To make the book easier to display on the wall, you could stick the middle two squares together.  You could also stick two books together like this.  Many possibilities.

Towers of learning

I mentioned that while at #ililc4 I attended Isabelle Jones's workshop about Pinterest.  Pinterest has proven to be a rich source of mini-book type activities.  And here is one, that I found here.

It's a four-sided tower that could be used in two different ways:

• Use in a similar way to VCOP pyramids to display key words and phrases on the children's tables while they are working.
• Children write four short pieces of text on the vertical sides and illustrate them on the flaps.

I have created a template to make them, which you can download.

Cut along the solid lines and fold along the dotted lines:

 Write or draw what you want on each section.  I had my Year 6 Spaniards in mind when doing this one, as these are the kind of sentences they will be writing in a few weeks' time.

 Glue the tab, fold out the bottom flaps, and your tower is complete.

What a week that was!

This time last week, #ililc4 was into its final afternoon.  The ideas were flying, the tweets were coming thick and fast, and the mutual support was almost tangible.  Then we all returned to our different corners of the country to continue with normal life.

Something was to happen this week that was not "normal life", not normal in the world of primary languages at least.  It started with a post to the CfBT Primary Languages forum on 8th February by Sue Cave, offering some differentiated attainment targets for the four years of Key Stage 2, for the new curriculum.  Replies started to appear, gaining momentum to reach at least 40 by the end of the weekend.  A theme quickly emerged.  How could we support each other in the run up to September 2014 and beyond?  Janet Lloyd, Lisa Stevens and I also discussed it on Twitter.  Gradually we came to the conclusion that the best solution would be a shared wiki and a Flashmeeting to meet "face to face".

To that end, I spent Friday afternoon remembering how Wikispaces.com works and set up the Sharing Primary Languages wiki.  It is a shared area for help and support as we approach September.  Anyone can read it but you have to be a member if you want to add content.

Primary linguists.  Building support.

Des chiffres et des lettres

With Year 4 French I have been working on the numbers up to 31.  We've been playing a simplified version of the numbers round of Countdown, or, rather, of Des chiffres et des lettres.  Here's what we did:

1.  Someone chooses a number between 21 and 31, which is our number to aim for.  It's written on the board.
2.  Someone rolls two dice, adds the two numbers together and says the number in French.  The number is written on the board.  This is repeated to give another number.
3.  Someone rolls one die and says the number in French, and it's written on the board as before.  This is repeated once more.
4.  The children now have a big number that they're aiming for, and four other number numbers to use to make it.  The children use adding, subtracting and multiplying (dividing if you're feeling brave) to use the four numbers to make the target number.
5.  If they can get the answer, they have to explain it in French using the numbers and plus, moins, fois and so on.

Year 4 loved it, though some of their times tables were a bit suspect!

My #ililc4 takeaways

It's all over for another year.  #ililc4 has passed and we look forward to #ililc5.  But the buzz will take a long time to die down.  Both the learning that took place and the teaching that it will inspire will endure.

There have already been many blogposts written by those who delivered workshops and presentations, as well as those who attended them, so I am not going to reproduce my notes here.  I am, though, going to tell you my takeaways - the things that I learned.

Putting the Pedagogy in the Technology - Joe Dale

Crowd source responses to a certain question by providing a link (for example by QR code) to a Google Form.  The responses can then be copied and pasted into Wordle for instant display.  This could work just as well in the classroom as in a conference setting.

Use Storify to collect media from across the web, publish them and embed them anywhere.

Karen Whitehead's blog/website is an excellent source of ideas, in particular for homework and speaking.

Use the Flipboard app to create a digital magazine which you can then share.


To Infinity and Beyond - Tom Hockaday

Give out a "Linguist of the Fortnight" certificate, presented in assembly, "in recognition of outstanding achievement and effort".


Talking Tools - Dominic McGladdery

See Dom's presentation on Slideshare.

Dice game - throw the dice and the students have to say that number of words in the language.

Use hats, masks and disguises to encourage students to speak!

Dom gave us a list of useful apps, both fruit-based and for Android.  Here are the ones I downloaded there and then:

Three of them are not ones that Dominic mentioned, but ones that I found by following a trail from somewhere else, or by looking for an Android equivalent of an i-app.  I had a play with Tellegami and here is the result:


The one I played around with the most was Best Voice Changer.  It's a simple little app which I think my two daughters will enjoy playing with as well.  You record your voice, and then have three ways of digitally altering it.  My favourite part is adding the background noise.  I put myself on the battlefield:


When I was looking for an Android version of the Puppet Pals app, I found Comic Puppets Lite, which is good fun and easy to use.  You can articulate each of the puppet's joints.

To this list I would also add Rory's Story Cubes, which you have to pay for.  It was good to have the time to play with the different apps (we were in competition for a prize!) and I am looking forward to investigating them further over half term as well as putting some of them onto the Vega for the children at school to have a go with.


Flipping the MFL Classroom

Thanks to Sadie McLachlan I found out what the Flipped Classroom is all about.  It's a really interesting concept, preparation-heavy, but then the teacher doesn't have to do as much in the classroom afterwards.

In Sadie's department they make their videos and presentations with Windows Movie Maker, iMovie, Explain Everything, Edynco and eduCreations.


Something old, something new - Lisa Stevens

Lisa referred to the new Programme of Study for Key Stage 2 and showed us some ways of teaching speaking and writing.

I particularly liked the Animal Symphony, which is part of Lisa's Carnival of the Animals unit.  Clap the syllables of the animal names.  Different groups of children have different animals to repeat and repeat to a certain rhythm.

Lisa pointed out that non-fiction books in the target language are just as important as fiction.  Sara Vaughan told us that Usborne do a range of their children's books in French, like this Ancient Egyptians one.

Lisa designed a Habitats lesson, where the children match animal cards to the appropriate habitat, and then used the resulting information to write sentences such as "Un camello vive en el desierto".  This also explained to me why Lisa and I had had a long Twitter conversation about how to say "pond skater" in Spanish!

I really like the idea of the Human Fruit Machine, where a line of children hold one each of one of those big dice with the pockets into which you can put cards with pictures or words.  Each child spins their dice and stops randomly, giving a sentence.  A bit like a writing frame!


Pinterest for the foreign language teacher - Isabelle Jones

I had been looking forward to this presentation, and it did not disappoint!  I have had a Pinterest account for some time, but really had no idea how to use it.  Finding out that there is an app has been the biggest single discovery - makes it very easy to use.  Isabelle gave us lots of tips to help us to use it effectively.  I'm now following people in my PLN rather than some random 133 followers who I picked up I-know-not-how, and can already see lots of good ideas waiting in the wings for me to try out!


Extreme differentiation for little people - Jo Rhys Jones

Jo was talking about mixed-age classes and how to design schemes of work for them.  I don't have any mixed-age classes, but there were still plenty of good ideas on offer.

Read the third section of the KS2 Framework- lots of good ideas for curriculum design.

Give a noun on the board.  Who can extend it into the longest sentence?


Hip hop phonics - Nina Elliott

This was my favourite thing from the Show and Tell - it's always good to have more phonics strategies up your sleeve!

Split the class into three groups, who each chant one line of phonemes to a rhythm.  The second time through, each group stands up on a certain phoneme.  On the third time through, they stand up on the phoneme with a "hip hop move" as well!

Some other blogposts that you can read about #ililc4:
(These are the ones I know about - there will be more!)

Amanda Salt

John Connor

Eleanor Abrahams

Nina Elliott

Dominic McGladdery

Isabelle Jones

Samantha Broom

Rachel Smith

Chris Fuller