More Spanish books

It seems kind of appropriate that I am writing this during a tropical thunderstorm.  The sky is very dark, thunder is rumbling and torrential rain has just started to fall.

This afternoon I was allowed half an hour in our nearest Barnes and Noble, the US equivalent of Waterstones.  I always head straight for the Libros para Niños, and even on such a short visit I was not disappointed.

I do weather with my Y5s, and so far it's been difficult to find suitable reading material.  This reader is a good level for UKS2, and of an appropriate maturity level too.

One of my Y5 classes read Wonder with their class teacher last year and produced some fantastic English writing about it.  This, by the same author, is beautifully illustrated and told in simple Spanish.  It has the messages of "todos somos únicos" - we are all unique - and "elige ser amable" - choose to be kind.  This book will be great for KS2 children, as they'll be familiar with the novel, and the theme fits in beautifully with the values that we want to instill in the children.

This book, called We're All Wonders in English, is not available in the UK but can be purchased from Amazon Spain.

What will be in your pencil case?

Good afternoon from the US of A, where I have just been to Super Target to buy groceries.  Because of the time of year, there is also a large Back to School section in said hypermarket, which, of course, I had to have a look round.  There were various local families there with their stationery lists, gathering supplies for the coming school year.

I picked up this school supply shopping list, which, as you can see, is in Spanish.  Our students would find this interesting to look at.  They could use their bilingual dictionaries to find out what the American children have to have for school.  Most of these things are provided for UK students by their schools.  There is also an interesting cultural angle.  Why is a shopping list in the USA printed in Spanish as well as English?

Southampton University Primary Languages #SUPL

Yesterday, 19th July, was the last day of the school year for many.  I spent it at Southampton University at the SUPL (Southampton University Primary Languages) conference.  SUPL is part of the RiPL Network.  I was honoured to be asked to speak about writing - you can view a copy of my presentation here.  It was great to catch up with old friends (and my sister!) and to meet new people and hear about what they have been doing in their classrooms.

Here are my sketchnotes from the day.

Engaging children with reading - Mike Dodson

Oral language development through technology and app smashing with Book Creator and Adobe Spark Video - Joe Dale

Scaffolding writing - Sarah Dugdale

Word Cloud by Smart Puffin

Many thanks to @mflbassie on Twitter who alerted me to Smart Puffin's Word Cloud app for Android this morning.

It makes word clouds in the same way as many of the other available apps (I like WordItOut, Word Clouds and Jason Davies Word Cloud Generator) but it has the added bonus of incorporating emojis, which you just enter along with the words in the app.

I made this one earlier on to test the app out.  It's easy to use, although getting the fonts to an even size can be a bit tricky.  

I put in animals for this one as that happened to be what I was thinking about at the time, and it was easy to find the emojis!  Children could count how many times each animal appears or pair up words and emojis.  You could include elements of writing frames as a different sort of guide to independent writing.

Have a play!

Dots and boxes

Last week my Year 7 daughter told me about an activity she'd done in a maths lesson.  It was basically a game of Dots and Boxes, but it had the added bonus of each square containing a positive or negative number.  Each time they won a box, they had to add the number in the square onto their total, largest total winning.  My daughter's friend had got more boxes, so would have won in a traditional game, but my daughter went for all the positive numbers so that she had a much bigger total at the end.

This idea of having something in the box has been taken on by the languages community.  (Thank you Rachel on SecMFLMatters!)  The boxes have in them target language words or English words, or a mixture of the two.  To win a box, you have not only to put on its last side, but you also have to say the correct target language or English word.

At my school it's transition week, where all the children from Reception to Year 5 are meeting their new teachers.  This has left Year 6 at a bit of a loose end.  This afternoon we sat in the Year 1 classroom, at the tiny chairs and tables, and I gave them their exercise books and a blank Dots and Boxes grid.  They chose a word for each square and then some of them played the games.  They particularly enjoyed how it's possible to steal a square from your partner if they don't know the word.

I took this picture of a game between one of the hard-working boys and his very idle friend.  They enjoyed playing it, and it's the most work I've seen the latter do in 6 years!!

They've given me the grids they made and I've said I'll make them into resources for Light Bulb Languages and put their names on, as a little legacy.