Paper Buildings in Town

Over the last few days I've been working on my scheme of work for Y6 for September.  It will be their fourth year of Spanish and so I need to include plenty of new content and activities so as to keep things fresh and motivating.

We will be starting off with "Buildings in Town", followed by transport and directions and heading into "Then and Now".  I've been looking at all my books to help me to complete the "Activites" and "Resources" columns of my plans.

Last week I bought these two books from Amazon:

Each has lots and lots of ideas for mini-book type projects and pop-up books.  I was leafing through the Ages 4-7 one while watching Andy Murray annhiliate Roger Federer in the finals of the Olympic tennis this afternoon, and found one which I think will be very useful for demonstrating knowledge of opinions and regular verbs as well as buildings in town.

It's basically a zig-zag book, converted simply into a row of buildings.  The photograph at the top shows "doors shut" and the second "doors open" to reveal the writing inside.  Here's how to do it:

1. Fold a piece of A4 paper in half lengthways.

2. Fold it in half again, widthways.

3. Fold the top half over.

4. Turn it over and repeat to make a zigzag.

5. With the folded edge uppermost, snip the corners off to make the roof shapes.

6. Open it out and cut the doors in.

7. Fold the two halves back together.  I glued them together before decorating.  You are then ready to start decorating the buildings.

I'm sure there are lots of other ways that you could use this idea.  If you use A3 paper, you get a much bigger space for writing, thus making it more suitable for KS3.  I would recommend, as the book does, using stiff paper to make these with.  I have used normal A4 photocopying paper, but once I had coloured my doors in they started to go a bit curly. 

I am also thinking of having a go at making mini-maps, which are in the Age 7-12 book, and which I have had a go at folding.  You can also find the instructions for the maps here.

Right - off to make more flashcards!

Mini-books

Followers of my Twitter feed will have noticed a rash of mini-book tweets and links over the last couple of days.  You know when you start looking for something and then get completely side-tracked?  That.  

I thought I would put all the links together here.

How to make a mini-book:

Illustrated step-by-step instructions 

Instructions from About.com with photographs

Clear video instructions from Kevin McLaughlin

Watch this YouTube video from about 1 min 30

How to make different types of mini-book:

This PDF from Bookmaking with Kids has lots of ideas

This YouTube video shows you how to make a mini-book with pockets.  As darktigerlily says, just think what you could put in the pockets.

Lots of creative and imaginative templates on this PDF from Practical Pages

More fantastic examples and templates from Practical Pages

Practical Pages' instructions for making different kinds of mini-book with one sheet of paper

Instructions and templates for making small books with lots of pages, from Lost Button Studio

Make mini-books online:

Use the Stapleless Book generator from ReadWriteThink

Fuel the Brain's online mini-book creator

Ideas for using mini-books:

An idea from Devon Primary Languages

My previous blogposts about mini-books

View my mini-books on MFL Sunderland

Playing right into my hands

The first thing on my list of Things To Do With The Girls In The Summer Holidays was to go to the beach for a picnic.  We did that yesterday and it was lovely.  Today we went to the Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art in Sunderland to make sculptural books with artist Ellen Henderson.  We didn't know what to expect, but my arty eldest had found these on the Web and was very excited.  When we got there, it turned out that the sculptural books in question are made out of one sheet of A4 paper, à la mini-books.  Then it was me who was very excited.


To make a sculptural book, you fold a piece of paper into 16 and make 3 cuts.  The cuts are shown by the red lines:

Then starting at one end (bottom left-hand corner, for example) you fold the little resulting pages concertina style.  Next, stick a small piece of card on the top and on the bottom as covers.  Then you can open it out flat again to draw and/or write on one side or both sides:

The reason, I think, that it is called a sculptural book is because you can open it up in lots of different ways to look like different sculptures.  Your words or pictures look different each time.

These remind me of mini-books and also of Aztec Codices.  It would be a nice way to illustrate poems in the foreign language, as that is a form of text that lends itself to a more abstract presentation.  Maybe you could put one word on each of the 16 sections and then see what they say when the sculptural book is arranged in different ways.


Any other ideas?

Reflections

The first weekend of the school summer holidays.  The sun has come out, it's stopped raining.  I have six weeks to spend with my lovely daughters.  I have some bits and bobs of work to do, like typing up my Y5 Spanish scheme of work and planning lectures for Primary Ed students at my alma mater, nothing too strenuous.


All the while I am reflecting on the academic year that has just finished, and thinking about how it has matched up to my expectations from September.  All in all, I can't help but feel that this year has been a real low point career-wise.  My decision to go it alone after my redundancy last August coincided with rarely-cover, The Cuts and the continued uncertainty of languages within the KS2 curriculum.  Consequently I have had not had the opportunities that I hoped for to speak and consult.  I seem to be pigeon-holed now as "just a primary teacher" and my experience across four key stages is overlooked.  Am I not pushy enough?  Should I be networking more for more opportunities?  Hopefully things will get better from next September.  I already have a few things lined up, and languages are finally going to have a definite place in KS2.


Teaching-wise, though, things are good.  I used to quite enjoy teaching KS3 and occasionally KS4, but I never thought to myself that I loved it.  I used to get the sinking feeling every time I drove to work.  I'm not quite sure how I managed it for 14 years.  But I love KS1 and KS2.  They amaze me with how much they can remember from week to week, how they take on board complex notions like gender without questioning them and saying they are rubbish.  I look forward to seeing the children every week and finding new and exciting things for them to do.  Thank you, children.


I think I shall bear in mind these words from David Frost: "Don't aim for success if you want it; just do what you love and believe in, and it will come naturally."

A Spanish fan

http://www.flickr.com/photos/eltallerdepiluka/6812937488/in/photostream/

A little something for the end of term.  Make a Spanish-style fan decorated with words and images that the students have covered this term or this year, and then they can have some fun with the secret language of fans.

I searched for ages this morning to find a craft activity for a fan to make with my KS1 children, but have decided that simpler is better.  To make this one I folded a piece of A4 paper in half lengthways and then cut along the fold.  I stuck the two strips together to make one long strip.  I then decorated my paper strip with words and pictures to show some of the things that Year 1 have learned this year.  Then I folded up the strip concertina-style to make the fan.  I haven't stapled or sellotaped the bottom yet to keep the whole thing together as I need to show the example to the children.