Subjunctivisor

A couple of years ago I blogged about a fantastic tool called the subjunctivator.

This week I was contacted by its creator Laura K Lawless who informed me that it no longer exists.

Laura's work has now moved from about.com to lawlessfrench.com.

This is where you can find her new, improved Subjunctivisor.

It works in exactly the same way. 

It's great.

What more can I say?

pokankuni

pokankuni is a Tulu word.

I found it in one of my  favourite books: The meaning of Tingo which is a collection of strange words from other languages which have no equivalent in English.

Tulu is a language spoken in India by around 2 million people.

pokankuni means learning from others by just watching them.

I like this idea.

I often learn how not to do something by watching others, but that's another story.

Today, I did a carousel of activities with my year 7 (beginners 12yrs old) class.

One of the activities was to create a tellagami in French using the future tense (Je vais + infinitive).

The instruction I gave them was: open the tellagami app and create an animation in French using today's key vocabulary. I didn't show them how to use it or even explain what it was.

None of them had ever used tellagami before and I was really impressed at how quickly they took to it. They were only allowed 10 minutes for each activity yet they still all managed to produce something.

The more confident ones took to it immediately and the others picked it up in a couple of minutes just by watching.

All students engaged, all learning and all I had to do was wander about and ask questions.

pokankuni in action.

Brilliant.

How to reanimate a corpse - #mflsaty2

This weekend I had the pleasure of attending the second MFL Show And Tell York at Harrogate Grammar School, or, as all the cool kids are calling it #mflsaty2.

The brain child of Suzi Bewell (aided and abetted by Will Strange) this was the second of its kind and even better than the first.

The event was sponsored by the Association for Language Learning and there were around 60 or so attendees (many of whom were newly qualified teachers) and a few corporate people with products to sell.

The amazing Jo Hardy has blogged in detail about the day on her blog here. Thanks, Jo.

I show and tell-ed 5 minutes of the old favourite how to make a powerpoint into an animation but I polished it up, or at least, rolled it in glitter for the day.

Where's Spot? or How to reanimate a corpse.

Where's spot? or How to reanimate a corpse. from Dominic McGladdery

I was also asked to run a 20 minute session in the afternoon.
These are referred to as "Genius bars".
I really don't like this title as it suggests that I'm some kind of expert.
I'm not.
I'm a regular classroom practitioner and sometimes not even a very good one.
It was a low tech affair on how to get students speaking without too much tech.
Again, this was a revised, rehashed and shorter version of "From squawk to talk" from #ililc3 and from ALL Newcastle's twilight session last week.

From squawk to talk #mflsaty2 version from Dominic McGladdery

Feedback was very good and I was surprised that people enjoyed it, but, hey, there's no accounting for taste.

Seriously though, it was a great day, extremely well organised and I picked up some great ideas from some excellent new teachers.

If the people I met on Saturday are a true reflection of the new generation of MFL teachers then we have nothing to be scared of.

Our kids will be in safe hands for the foreseeable future despite what Mr Gove throws at us.

Tour de France 2014 links

It seems that there is not just football related activities going on at the moment.

The 2014 Tour de France starts in Yorkshire (no, you're right Yorkshire isn't in France) on 5th of July.

Here is my list of links to various sites and resources I've found so you don't have to bother:

• The official site in French

• The official site in English

• Sustrans has produced a free pack for teachers in English to promote cycling

• The TES website has some resources here, here, and here.

• Lightbulblanguages has a KS2 podcast on the Tour de France.

• A tour de france 2014 page from Orange with articles and information.

• The BBC's Ma France site has a Tour de France card game and other resources.

• Lancsngfl has a tour de france hot potatoes gapfill exercise.

• Le Figaro has a nice 2014 route map and a history of the tour.

• France TV Sport has a page dedicated to all kinds of Tour information and a game here.

• Some coloriages

• legende-et-conte has a page on the Tour's history.

• Bradford City Council has produced some resources in English here

• Cycle Yorkshire has also produced a number of English resources

If you can find anymore or have made and published some, please let me know and I'll add them to the list.

World Cup 2014 links

It's that time again.

The World Cup is just around the corner and language teachers all over the world will be trying to harness its power to get students (mainly boys) interested in languages.


The first place I'd recommend is the official site for the language you're teaching:

• FIFA's Official World Cup site in English

• FIFA's Official World Cup site in French

• FIFA's Official World Cup site in Spanish

• FIFA's Official World Cup site in German

Here you can find information about the teams, ticketing, hotel information, and information about the cities taking part.

• Next, you can find hundreds of free resources and links at Lightbulblanguages. To be honest this is probably the only place you need to go, but to be fair I'll recommend some more. 

You can also submit your own resources to lightbulblanguages. Be a sharer not a taker!

• Wikipedia's world cup mascots page

Here you can find all information needed about the mascots since 1966. You could get students to describe them or design their own.

• MSN has a page with pictures of all the mascots here.

• TES has a lot of world cup resources in different languages here

• TES also has some Top Trumps templates so you can get pupils to make their own cards.

• Teaching ideas has a lot of World Cup resources, mainly for KS2. These could be adapted for MFL.

• Those nice people at languagenut also have some great free resources on their site in French, English, Spanish, German, Dutch, Gaelic and Maori.  

Posters

• Every official World Cup poster can be found here. 

• There's a lovely French World Cup wallchart here but you'll probably prefer to make your own and get your pupils to complete it and fill it in.

Songs

The World Cup wouldn't be half as much fun without the songs. Here are some for 2014:

The official one...

The England song...



Sadly, there is no official French song this year....

There is a comprehensive list of every World Cup song ever, here.

I can't imagine you won't find something among all these resources.

If you find something else or have made something else I should recommend please leave a comment with a link.