Autumn language learning

Busy getting ready with children to celebrate harvest time and Autumn? Linking language learning to a seasonal calendar focus is a great way to practise familiar and new language.

We celebrate Autumn in the Primary Languages Network BeCreative SOW in Years 3 and 4. We thought we would share some of these ideas with everyone. Hope you find them useful.

• Leaf stepping stones: practise numbers and colours. Write numbers on coloured cut out card leaves . Secure with blu-tac on the floor and create stepping stones. Ask the children to walk around the room standing on the leaves. When you call out a number or a colour if they are stood on or next to a leaf with that number or colour written on it, then they are out! Ask a volunteer to take your role and call out the numbers and colours.

• Leaf sounds: practise sounds in numbers and colours in the target language. On one side of cut-out card leaves write a key sound from target language you have been practising On the reverse write out the full word for the item.Divide class into teams. Stick all the leaves sound side up to the board or flip chart..Take it in turns in teams to guess the object (e.g colour/ number ) on the reverse of the card. Turn the card over and if the team guesses correctly, then the team wins the leaf. The team with the biggest pile of Autumn leaves at the end of the activity has won the "harvest".

• Autumn action games: practise simple actions and commands associated with harvest time e.g picking , smelling, looking for , tasting, eating fruits and vegetables. Create actions and play simple games such as Simon says or last farmer standing - where children freeze-frame in their own chosen action and if you say that action the children in that particular freeze- frame must sit down. Who will be the last farmer standing?

• Leaf Letters and “Harvest the word”: Ask the children in groups to select three favourite target language words. Ask the children to focus on accurate spelling and write out the words in rough. Check the spelling. Transfer the words letter by letter to leaf shapes. Cut out the leaves and muddle the three words’leave letters up. Create one pile of cut up leaves and pass this on to another table. The challenge is to identify the three words and reassemble the letters. Ask the team to pass the pile (all the leaf letters muddled up again) on to another table and the challenge can start again. And finally? Well, create a class display of favourite words as leaf letters on branches of a tree or as Autumn clusters of leaves on the floor underneath a tree.