¡Mi Madrid!

Today you can hear the first episode in BBC School Radio's new series for Key Stage 2 Spanish - ¡Mi Madrid! 

The 10-episode series was written by Lisa Stevens, who has given a full account of the project on her blog, so please read all about it!

I am honoured to have been asked to be the consultant on the series for the BBC.  I prepared the teacher's notes and have made a translation of each episode to provide as much support as possible for time-poor primary teachers.

Have a listen!  Don't forget that the French series, Radio Labo, is also still available.

What's in the box? pt.2

A few years ago I wrote What's in the box?, a post with some ideas for using empty or not-empty boxes to stimulate language work.  Today I actually tried it out!!

I've been working on gender of nouns (animals in particular) with my new Y6 Spaniards, moving on to description of these singular nouns using adjectives of colour.  I wanted them to have a go at some descriptions on whiteboards before writing anything formally in their books.  I set up these PowerPoint slides, which show an empty cardboard box.  I asked the children to decide which animal was in the box and which colour it was.  They had to write their description on their whiteboard and hold it up for me to see.  Then I clicked the slide to reveal what was in fact in the box. 

Doing five of these meant that I could spot common errors such as putting the adjective in the wrong place, putting the wrong article, not agreeing the adjectives and so on.  All the children became more confident and faster with their writing the more we did.  It also turned out to be immensely motivating, especially for the boys.  They all seemed to enjoy putting daft colours with the animal words.

Small Business Saturday

Today is Small Business Saturday.  Thanks to Little Linguist for bringing my attention to this!  I am a small business owner.  As my accountant likes to point out, my turnover is very small.  The business's income comes from teaching in primary schools, consulting, training and speaking, and resource authoring.  A small amount is the advertising revenue from Light Bulb Languages.

To celebrate Small Business Saturday I am offering you 25% off all my resources until Monday 4th December - all information here.  No code needed!

Northern Primary Languages Show 2

Yesterday, 25th November, was the second Northern Primary Languages Show, which took place at York St John University.  Here is my presentation on resources and activities with a reading focus:

Resources and activities with a reading focus from Clare Seccombe

Teaching Phonics: are we doing it the right way?  Keynote from Julie Prince:

Spirals and Waves (updated)

Nearly four years ago I blogged about Festisite, a very useful site that you can use to make word spirals and waves.  Since then, the settings of the site have changed a little, and more shapes have been added.

The options are now listed down the right hand side, and you can see a preview of the eventual output.

To generate the PDF, you now have to click on the "Printable Document" button.  I still recommend selecting a large-size font (I use 26 or 28) and A3 paper in order to generate a large image that will be good quality when you crop and shrink it.  The Preview button speaks for itself, while the Download button will generate the PDF for you.

You can see an example of a spiral above.  Can you find the Spanish numbers 0-15 in it ?  This particular one can be differentiated for lower ability by taking out the extra letters that are not part of the numbers.  The spirals can be used in other ways as well.  For example: how many of each Spanish number 1 to 6 can you see in this spiral ?

The spiral generator will also make egg-shaped spirals:

I like to use the wave setting to make word snakes, like this one:

as well as to make "wavy paragraphs" in which to find words or phrases.

The Valentine setting puts your words around a heart.  This is useful for anything to do with opinions.  For example: Which fruits does this person like?

So have a go with Festisite and see what you can make!