Laying the foundations for future language learning

Laying the foundations for future language learning…… 

OurShow Tell and Share

Yesterday we held our “Show tell and share” network meeting (24April 2014) in Mandy’s language room at Stockton Heath Primary School,Warrington.

40 primary school colleagues attended the event .Eight colleagueshad been invited to share  ideas, or asimple practical sequence of lessons in short 5-10- minute presentations.

It’s important to understand that the colleagues who werebrave enough to show, tell and share are primary language practitioners whodeliver languages in their own schools every week of the year- one Headteacher, three primary classroom teachers, three teaching assistants and avisiting teacher. 

They represent a cross section of  90 schools in the network and differentstages of primary language progress (starting off, moving on and established practice). Most importantly the ideas were practical and replicable andteachers and teaching assistants in the audience  could take ideas for primary language learningback to their  own schools and try themout. 

Illness and monsters

Cathy, from Appleton Thorn CP shared all her creative waysof developing a unit on illness and parts of the body. She stressed theimportance of sounds and recognition of the spoken word before showing childrenthe written word. She explained how she feels that this is necessary  to enable all children to make the linksmoothly between spoken and written language. Her focus on sounds and patternsand investigating the words helps her children to confidently use the words andfind new language they want to say in dictionaries etc. Cathy encouraged us toask children to look for cognates and near cognates and to link games and practicalwork with more creative art and design opportunities. 

In this sequence of activitiesCathy was using work around fantastical creatures – Frankenstein type monsters to engage thechildren in learning parts of the body so that they could then develop roleplays on familiar everyday matters – going to the doctors and explaining simpleillnesses.

E Twinning Projectwith Spain

Ian from Cronton CE, one of our Knowsley schools, shared howthe school had developed an ETwinning project with their new link school inSpain .The school already has an established link with a German school. 

Theproject was for Year 3 in their first year of Spanish and was based around learningsimple weather phrases. Ian’s input was the language element and thecoordination with the Spanish school. 

Every day of each week that the project was happening(Autumn 2013), the class TA worked with a different group of 4 children to record in Spanish the temperature, the weather and dressed in clothes appropriate to the weather to create a photo record . 

At the end of each week the group created the class weather report in Spanish plus photos via Pic Collage  and sent this by email to their Spanish school. 

The mail exchangeof the Pic Collage reports raised all sorts of interesting points for examplewhat were the Spanish  children doing roastingchestnuts in the playground for a chestnut festival instead of an ordinaryschool day! Ian’s project show how we are opening the door on new cultures andlaying foundations and  interest in  purposeful practical future language learning 

The verb être

Sam from St Philips CE got us thinking about how easily wecan integrate work around verbs into our everyday language learning in theprimary classroom. She has just run a focus on the verb être  as part of the Y6 children’s work on “Who amI? We loved the video clip she sourced and used  and the simplified rap song she created withthe children from the French language in this clip

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ml0lNJ-ocxo]

The children created spider grams of the verbs for example using a sunshine and the beams off a sunshine to show the infinitive of the verb to be and its present tense parts

Sam organised the children in groups of 6 so that they could record themselves introduce one another using the verb être and all its present tense parts.She appeared in all the clips so that the children  could  understand why and how to use “vous êtes” accurately .We were impressed how all the children participated and could use the different parts of the verb! Simple effective use of technology which lays the foundations for future grammatical language learning in KS3. 

(Sam will share more from this project soon on network news )

Mr Potato Headtransferable games

Karen from Cinnamon Brow CE talked with us about her workusing Mr Potato Head to reinforce familiar language on parts of the body. Theactivities were obviously transferable and at this point teachers who workalongside visiting teachers were animatedly jotting down ideas they could useto follow up or reinforce language learning. 

For example everyone loved the MrPotato Head photo shoot that Karen had created (and one teacher said to me “Iwill get my children to do this”). 

They liked the use  of the same pictures for simple hide andreveal – not high tech but practical and hands on , using A4 envelopes toslowly reveal Mr Potato Head. Karen suggested that the children can play thisagain afterwards on  their own. Takingthe familiar primary “hide and reveal” technique again , Karen shared how shewould ask the children to anticipate what missing facial parts there may be onMr Potato Head in each new game .Simple, effective and activities we couldtransfer from one  core focus to anotherand that encourage the participation of all children and understanding ways tomake learning fun.

Everyone shares!

Then it was time for us all to share- something that theyuse in their everyday work as primary practitioners of foreign languages!

<img border="0" src="https://plnblogs.files.wordpress.com/2023/07/68889-img.jpg focus in Year 6 was to look at the position of adjectives such asgrand and petit before the noun  and toencourage the children to speak and write accurately using their knowledge ofadjectival agreement.  She used SingingFrench and the monster song to reinforce prior knowledge and to encourage performance.The children looked at the adjectives grand/petit and the position they appearin French sentences and worked out what was different here to adjectives ofcolour. 

Christine read Grand Monstre Vert with the children and theyinvestigated  the position of the adjectivesin the sentences .

They  played humansentence games ordering 

the words in French human sentences.The slide  shows how she used a ppt slideto first ask the children to create verbally sentences in French from anEnglish stimulus and then revealed the sentence written correctly on themonster slide.

At this point Emilie,our native speaker visiting teacher-formerly a secondary teacher tweeted ……….

Really nice to hear primary MFL teachers / assistants mentioning grammar & dictionary skills as part of their teaching #showtell

— Emilie Woodroffe (@EWoodroffe) April 24, 2014

 Town investigationswith young learners

Lisfrom St Ann’s CE and Mandy from Stockton Heath CP talked about the town and howthey created their two sequences of lessons based on shops in the town anddirections.

What was fascinating was how both of them identified key points toconsider – very practical primary points. They considered the experience,maturity and age of their primary learners carefully as they planned theactivities.

Firstly that the children need to be guided to think of names ofshops as they automatically when talking about a town would say H+M,Tescos  etc and not butchers, cake shop ,bakery. 

Lis spent time talking about the town her children know best –Warrington-and then guiding them to talk about the names of the types of shopsthey had mentioned. Mandy shared with them various maps of French towns andpictures of buildings you would find there so she could  then hold a discussion with the children aboutwhich shops they might need to ask for in French. 

Both Lis and Mandy reinforcedthe cultural differences – how in France you still go to the bakers, butchersetc. Simple discussion maybe... but really important in laying the foundations forfuture cultural understanding that bridges the gap between what the childrenhave experienced and what we might want them to learn about. Both Lis and Mandyworked with the children on directions and developed physical activities – Lishad a human street and used follow me cards to create role plays. //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

Mandy had the children moving to visuals around the room andthen she generated with the children a class map and display of a French town.Each child was given a cut out character and had to write a sentence  to give directions to a partner on where toplace the cut out character on the display.

The ideas were simple, effective and   addressedfamiliar matters  and useful questionsand answers laying  the foundations uponwhich to build more detailed role play and transactional conversations.

Activities whichreinforce good practice and language skills

 Last but not least was Jayne @Dewsnip_Jayne, a visitingteacher for JLN. Jayne explained that she was a secondary languages teacher.However over the last three years working as part of the network in 5 primaryschools she had found the freedom of the primary classroom a revelation! Shehas learned so much from her primary colleagues and the children about howchildren learn a primary foreign language. 

She shared with us her bilingualdictionary work based on Arcimboldo with UKS"2 children.

They investigated what the mystery letters afterthe words in the dictionary mean (m/f/pl/nm etc) so that they could createtheir own written and art posters of the Arcimboldo face(link to Jaynesarcimboldo pics) Jayne could see that this would help the children in KS3   language learning. 

Jayne shared her simplegame “guess the combination” where from a table of 9 key words e.g. fruits thechildren guess the combination of three she has secretly written down . Jayneidentified that she focused on accurate pronunciation and perhaps withoutrealising this Jayne is once again encouraging good habits before KS3 .

Herpuzzle game- simple cut up pictures is easy to replicate and use across alllanguage areas. You need a minimum of two pictures from a core focus or a mixedfocus , with a number and colour on the reverse .Children must ask politely fora number and a colour so that  a part  the puzzle can be revealed .Can the children guessand name the item correctly with the definite article or indefinite article?  

The final activity she shared was her work onadjectival agreement when describing a   male or a female and how easily she was ableto reinforce this with her mother’s day flowers.  

Working inprimary and developing creative primary approaches ,Jayne is reinforcing andencouraging good language skills and knowledge so that KS3 can build uponquality foundations laid in primary foreign language learning.

The overwhelming impression from this event is   that weare making  good  “practical primary progress”. It’s not rocketscience and it’s not always all singing and dancing. My colleagues are developinga curriculum in their own schools that is fit for purpose.

In the range ofpresentations we heard about the four skills of listening, speaking, readingand writing and combinations of these skills to move the children on in theirlearning in every lesson and consolidate prior knowledge! We were asked toconsider culture and links abroad and ways to link language learning to othersubject areas in the primary curriculum and colleagues shared how they wereencouraging the children to consider the structure and grammar of the language.