Greetings and simple questions and encouraging all staff to get on board

Getting on board with primary languages can seem really challenging and especially when you want everyone on the staff to grow in confidence. This week Emilie, Ana and I are out and about ,delivering staff CPD to every member of staff within a school,practising language and encouraging staff to try out some transferable activities using simple language.

Remember these are start up activities and they will also become favourite activities that can be played for five minutes when teachers have time outside of the language learning allotted time.

Below are some short activities which can help to build staff confidence and also engage young learners using simple greetings and personal information.

Greetings and introducing yourself 
This simple song which gives the phrases in French and English is a good place for teachers and children to start to build their confidence in being able to ask and respond to a question about themselves.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXkJ88ygPY0]

and here is a very simple German song about asking someone's name. 

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQ1KYgt87tc]

In Spanish you could listen to these songs with the children

for greetings ....( select what you feel comfortable with ,but you will be amazed by how much the children can join in with very quickly!)

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOj4hEk2CtU]

and for names and asking questions in Spanish

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8vSKZl7Nd8]

So simple ways of using these clips will be 

• to listen  and practise and discuss what the children hear and see
• to imagine we are in the country and have to say hello/ goodbye / ask what someone's name is
• spot the target language names and any names we share or think might be English
• create a welcome display of greetings and our name phrases and pictures
• join in with the song and use it as our greeting song at the start of everyday i a school week for example

Now your teachers can:

• create dialogues between target language and English children
• make their own greetings songs to a different tune
• play Chinese whispers with the phrases
• set up card swap games ,where the children use target language names cards and ask each other what they are called and then swap cards and move on to a new partner
• become famous people for a moment "instagram" strike a pose, greet  the class and say name of famous person 
• film pairs or individuals introducing themselves and create a class photo story to share via the VLE