Which language do children learn in Key Stage 2?

Which language do children learn in Key Stage 2? by Clare Seccombe


This short survey follows a discussion in the Languages in Primary School Facebook group about Spanish becoming more popular at the expense of French.  Thank you if you were one of the 436 people who took the time to respond.

The results of the survey show that French has dipped a little over the last couple of years, and that Spanish has gained by more or less the same amount.  The other languages are not showing much change.

Quite a few respondents had ticked more than one language, some of them several languages.  This implies that there are some schools which do more than one language, some of them several languages.  Can anyone shed any light on these findings?

I've used another aspect of Canva - the slideshow - to present the results, which you can see above, alongside the same question from 2018 and 2015 as a point of comparison.

Lumen's Language Challenges

If you' re after something arty or crafty to do during this period of lockdown, look no further than Lumen's Language Challenges - art and craft activities with a language focus.  Great for exploring languages, and creating a sense of wellbeing.

I've been doing them myself, and I'm going to put the results here:

#LumenChallenge1: Make a bookmark which features your favourite word or phrase in another language.

#LumenChallenge2: Find out how to say the numbers 1 to 5 in another language, then add them to the printable which you can then decorate.

#LumenChallenge3: Create a mirrored image of an animal word in another language, and decorate it to look like that animal.

#LumenChallenge4: Have a look at the Light Bulb Languages #LanguageLinks.  Choose one you like and illustrate it in your own way.

#LumenChallenge5: Print out your favourite letter from the printable, and decorate it.
In the white space around the letter, write some words in another language that start with this letter or have the letter in them.

#LumenChallenge6: Make an origami box.  Stick extra pieces onto your box to turn it into something else, for example an animal or something you might use in your home. You could also colour or paint it.  Find some words in another language to describe your modified box. 

#LumenChallenge7: Make a game of pairs (sometimes called memory or pelmanism) in another language and play it with a family member.  (This is me playing it with - and losing to - my 13 year old daughter.  You can download my game here.)

#LumenChallenge8: Make a piece of art inspired by Paul Klee's Once Emerged from the Gray of Night.  Divide your paper into small squares - 2cm squares are a good size - with faint pencil lines.

Find a phrase or saying that you like in another language, and write it in some of the boxes.
Then colour in the boxes and the spaces left by the letters to complete your artwork.

#LumenChallenge9: Make a minibook from a single piece of A4 paper and choose some words, phrases or sentences to put in it. Then illustrate your book!

#LumenChallenge10: Choose a short text, poem or rhyme in another language and create an illuminated text of it

#LumenChallenge11: Use an animation app and some objects in your house to make a short stop-motion animated film. Then provide a voiceover or subtitles in another language.

Learn Spanish at home

During a normal school week I teach Spanish to over 400 children over three different schools.  It's now been 2 weeks since I saw any of them, and I'm kind of missing them!  To give them something to do while they are stuck at home I've started to make some videos to help them to learn some more Spanish and to refresh what they already know.

You'll find the resources here.  A few points to note:

• The videos cover the language in more or less the style that I would present it to the children in the classroom. 
• The videos are embedded in the webpage so that the children don't have to go onto the YouTube website if their parents don't want them to.
• Next to each video there are some suggestions of further activities that children could do to practise the same language.
• I teach Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2, so I'm starting with Year 1 content and working through.  It won't hurt some of the older ones to recap this stuff in any case!

Please feel free to share the link.

Superheroes!

In January I delivered a staff meeting to all the grown ups at school about Spanish, and said that I'd like to link more of the class topics to the Spanish work, especially in Key Stage 1.  So I asked the teachers to tell me if they were doing any topics which they thought would lend themselves well to being covered in Spanish.  So far the only teacher to do so is the Year 2 teacher, whose class is working on the topic "Heroes and Villains" this half term.  A great idea for Spanish for Year 2!

I had an ask around for ideas, and someone suggested colours of superheroes' outfits.  I found these books, which gave me some more ideas:
Superhéroe:  Manual de instrucciones

Cuenta los superhéroes

Count the superheroes

The first gave me ideas about the outfits and how to name a superhero (your favourite animal and favourite colour, if you're interested - I'd be Cobaya Azul).  The Spanish counting book is just that, with the numbers up to 15, while the English one includes things like counting blue superheroes, counting flying superheroes and so on.

I then set about making my own resources, including lots of original images, which I have now made available along with lesson ideas on my Sellfy store.  Children can use the superheroes to practise counting to 12, to practise the colours and to do some simple description of superheroes' outfits.

I'm now working on the French version, which will be available soon.

UPDATE 18.3.20:  French available now! 

By the way, if you want to host your own online shop, I recommend Sellfy to you.  It's easy to use and I've never had any problems.  Follow this link to sign up.

Language World 2020: Sketchnotes

Here are my sketchnotes from Language World 2020.  My own presentation "Harnessing the Hive Mind" is here.