Tuesday 28 October 2014

Primary ALL hub - 2nd meeting

Last Wednesday we had our second ALL primary hub meeting in Burscough. First we introduced ourselves, talked about the challenges of the new PoS and gave ideas to each other. Then we all shared a resource we really liked.

Here are some links and notes:
ALL website:
Literature:
http://all-literature.wikidot.com/- poems and ideas in 3 languages

http://culturetheque.org.uk/read - you need to register first (free), then you can read  children books in French

KS2 Framework for Languages - there will be a new version soon

Twitter: a big staffroom for teachers, Paula has joined:-), more information about using it here, written by Joe Dale. I am @Erzsiculshaw on Twitter if you want to follow me!

 Photos and ideas:


 Clare's 5 a day Sp/Fr songs:



Barbara's favourite CD's/DVD's,


 
and the board game:


Janet: Babelzone and pommes empoisonées
















Deborah's stickers and certificates:



Paula's coloured dot group competition vocab cards:


She also suggested playing "Heads down, thumbs up" with vocabulary cards.


Wendy's Spanish leaders:

This was on my blog before, have a look here: 



Helen:
PACMAN in the classroom

Erzsi:
Mini books to spice up writing, lots of templates on Clare Seccombe's blog.





Laura:
Fly swats for competitions!

Tracey:
Boca Beth videos on Youtube

Sally:
A sceme of work she really likes: Language Angels

I have attached the assessment documents to your emails:-)


See you again next term!

Thursday 23 October 2014

Día de los Muertos/ Day of the Dead activities

Some activities I did with my pupils this week:
 
We made an "ofrenda" (altar) for Scooter, a pupil's snake who passed away last year. We said some sentences about him in Spanish, and wrote a few things on pieces of card which we put on the class display. RIP Scooter!

We decorated Día de los Muertos cookies I had baked the night before. The pupils said the colours and the body parts in Spanish while putting the icing on. (I was walking around in the classroom and I said that if I didn't hear them speak Spanish, I would eat up the cookie straight away!)





We haven't had the time to watch videos this week, but here are two from previous years:

La canción de las calaveras:

 
El baile de los esqueletos (good to practise telling the time)
 
 
 
And I would watch this award winning Día de los Muertos video in class but it makes me cry!!!
 


Testing my cookie cutters with my kids last week.









Tuesday 14 October 2014

Autumn ideas

I have young children and many times my teaching ideas come from playing with them:-)

Leaves from the park:
We like collecting leaves in the park, we put them in big dictionaries for a few days and then we can make monsters with them.


These are my Year 4’s leaf monsters, they are learning body parts at the moment.
 

Y6 are sending the leaf bunting to Spain, it will look really good on our partner school’s classroom display. We have written a few sentences about ourselves under the leaf people.
 

Nuts about numbers:
Before we eat the hazelnuts from my garden, I am taking them to school to play with. We are learning big numbers in Year 5, they have a laminated placemat with the numbers 1-100 in Spanish and they have to challenge each other to say the nut number in Spanish and check if the answer is correct.
 
Bonkers about conkers:

One of my children’s favourite book character is Kippkopp, the conker boy.On rainy Sunday afternoons we do crafty activities at home, last week we made some conker people. I will use some of these to revisit hair/eye colours and today we have made some comic book pages with them in Year 3/4.
 
 I wonder what I will be teaching when my own two kids grow up and won’t play with me any more...

 









Wednesday 8 October 2014

ALL Primary Hub - 2nd meeting

In two weeks I am hosting the ALL West Lancashire Primary Hub again. Our hub focuses on  peer to peer support. Last time we decided that it would be nice to share our favourite resources, so this meeting will be a "Show and Tell"!
 
I am looking forward to seeing you!
 
And because the feedback was good last time, I am expecting a huge crowd:-) See you there!
 
 

 


Sunday 5 October 2014

Día de la Hispanidad/ Columbus Day

We haven't even recovered from the celebrations of the European Day of Languages, and here is the next big day already: el día de la Hispanidad or Columbus Day on the 12th of October.Every pupil knows that they speak Spanish in Spain, but how about the rest of the countries and how did the language get there? 
Next week, in my lessons we will do the following activities:

Watch a short animation of the trip

Here is a very good link to the animated map of Columbus's first trip. Take a look at the other menu options as well, it is a great page that explores his trips and life.

 
 
Watch the "History of the Spanish Language"
 
I found this video on Facebook a year ago, it is a good summary of the history of Spanish. After the video we discuss what they remember and I ask questions for stickers!
 
 
The Europe/America exchange: feely bag
 
Blindfolded volunteers will have to taste/touch/smell  the following items that were brought to Europe from America and viceversa:
 
from America:el tomate, la patata, el chocolate, la piña, el chicle
from Europe: el trigo, el café, el caballo, el cerdo
There are more items on the web page suggested above!
 
 
 
Flags:
 
Make the flags of the Spanish speaking countries! Look at our bunting, we have almost finished our flags  (and got a bit overexcited with the pom poms...).
 
 
Any other ideas? Please feel free to leave a comment!
 
 
A happy chocolate taster:-)