Survey 2018

In May 2015 I carried out a survey of Key Stage 2 provision of Languages, and I also asked some questions of Key Stage 3 teachers who were involved with Year 7 teaching.

May 2015 was almost the end of the first year of compulsory Languages in KS2.  June 2018 marks the end of the fourth year, so I am embarking on another, virtually identical survey, to see if and how things have changed since 2015.

• If you are a teacher of KS2 Languages in England, I'd be very grateful if you could complete the 11 questions on this survey 
  If you teach Languages in more than one school, please could you complete the survey once for each school.
  
• If you are involved with the teaching of Languages in KS3 in a school in England, I'd be very grateful if you could complete the 9 questions on this survey.

Privacy statement: You will not have to give any personal information and email addresses will not be stored or used.

Very many thanks for contributing!  The surveys will close at 11.45pm on Friday 13th July.

Teach Primary Resource award finalist!

In September 2016 I first published this resource, Box of French: Je suis préhistorique!  It's a series of nine lessons designed for Year 3 children, which teaches greetings, colours, the concept of gender and articles via cave paintings, Stone Age tools and Iron Age jewellery.

I heard today that this resource is a finalist in this year's Teach Primary Resource awards:

Special thanks are due to Nathalie Paris, who suggested I enter some of my resources for the awards.  The winners will be announced in October.  Very exciting!

The Spanish version, Box of Spanish - ¡Soy prehistórico! is also available in my Sellfy shop.

Pointing and Flicking

The Pointing activity is something that students can do individually or in pairs. 

• They have in front of them a copy of the Pointing sheet (for example the colours one above), and the teacher has a copy on the board.  
• As the teacher says each word, the students touch the correct image on the sheet.  
• First of all the teacher says the words in order, then randomly. 
• Finally, the teacher points to the words without speaking and the students say the words.  
• Students will be able to think of other ways that they can use the sheet to help each other to practise, for example giving each other sequences to find.

The physical act of finding and pointing to the right image makes students listen, think and focus.  A variation on the Pointing activity is the Flicking activity:

• Students work in pairs. 
• Each pair will need a coin or counter, a whiteboard marker and a laminated copy of the Flicking card. 
• Students take it in turns to put their coin or counter on the black circle and push or flick it onto one of the images. 
• If they can say the correct word for that image, they can write their initial on the square with the marker. 
• The winner is the first student to mark his initial on all the images.  (Each image can potentially have both students' initials on.) 

A more challenging version has an extra spider and star:

If students land on the spider, they have to erase their initials on one of the squares they have already 'won'.  If they land on the star, they get another turn. 

All these resources are available here http://www.lightbulblanguages.co.uk/resources-gen-pz.htm

French and Spanish Art

It's the time of year when schools are having French days or Spanish days and need things to fill them, or when teachers want an artistic activity to fill in a spare lesson here and there.  Here are the ideas previously mentioned on this blog, that may come in handy for such an occasion:

Klee letters - combining art and writing

Vision On!  - creating art out of words

Magical Miró - ideas for exploiting the images of Joan Miró

Decorative Letters - making illuminated texts

The Shape Game - creating an image out of a shape

Imprinting Verbs - creating characters to inspire writing

Moorish Mosaics - making mosaics and exploring symmetry

Gaudí's Mosaics - making mosaic suns inspired by Gaudí

Guatemala - traditional patterns and textiles

Bend it, shape it, any way you want it - using plasticine and play doh

Food flags, informative flags - creating flags out of food, words, images...

Calligrams - converting text into images

Calligrams part 2 - creating calligrams using outlines and stencils

World Cup calligrams

Letter by Letter - make personal calligrams from your initials

Minibooks!

Mi gramática and Ma petite grammaire

Yesterday saw the publication of my grammar resources for Key Stage 2 French and Spanish.

Each resource is a collection of activity sheets and information sheets to support both beginner learners and non-specialist teachers with the grammar named in the Key Stage 2 national curriculum for Languages.  The resource would also suit lower Key Stage 3.  The mind maps in this post show the grammar which is covered in this part 1 (Nouns and Adjectives) and what will be covered in part 2 (Verbs).

Each activity sheet has an explanation of the grammar point in the form of a conversation between children.  It endeavours to include many of the questions that children ask during their language lessons and to answer them!

Find the resources in my Sellfy shop: https://sellfy.com/ideaseducationltd

French:

Spanish:

UPDATE 07.07.18:

Part 2 of Ma petite grammaire and Mi gramática are now available.

French:

Spanish: