PopXport - Bands, Trends and Events - the Best Music from Germany

If you, or your students, want to find out more about contemporary German music, bands etc., Deutsche Welle has a great music magazine programme (I refuse to say, "show", it's the Brit in me), PopXport.

This programme (see?) would be ideal for those studying the new A level German specification in the UK and is a great place to start for anyone, anywhere with an interest in German music.

PopXport has its own Facebook page and twitter account too, so you can stay up to date with all the programmes without having to trawl the DW website.

The presenters are Markus Schultze and Kate Müser (who has the most amazing hair!).


The programme itself is in English but is a cultural programme not a language learning programme. DW has plenty of language learning resources here and so can be forgiven for this.

If you are interested in popXport you may also be interested in Kate Müser's other projects:

Meet the Germans is a series of videos about all things German, from food to idioms to pronouncing funny German words.

justkate.de is Kate's website with links to her videos, etc..

Kate's youtube channel featuring #germany24, Best ever German words, Learn English, #realgerman

¿Quién es el asesino? A murder mystery for Year 8.

This week I finished teaching the preterite in Spanish to my year 8 class.

I wanted to do a lesson which was fun, but challenging, to consolidate their learning.

So I came up with this (all photos I used have been removed for copyright reasons or to protect the innocent/guilty):

Spanish murder mystery from Dominic McGladdery

Starter: The setting

Students in pairs or groups figure out what has happened.
They explain it to the others in their group.

Task 1: Alibi

Students write an alibi in Spanish saying:
- where there where and the time
- what they were doing and giving an opinion about it
- who they were with

Task 2: Taking statements

Students are now a police officer taking statements.
An opportunity for speaking and listening.
In groups, students give their alibi, the others take notes in English.
They then use the information they have gathered to decide who has given the least plausible alibi.

Task 3: Giving evidence in court

Students now have to prepare a statement to give in court.
This involves writing a paragraph to say what the murderer said they were doing and giving alternative explanations as to what you thought they were really doing.

Plenary

Volunteers give their evidence to a massive photo of Judge Judy.

There are no wrong or right answers to this task.
As long as the students are using their Spanish, then that's fine.

A2 French - Women's rights

The 8th of March is International Women's Day.

By coincidence my A2 class will be studying women's rights this week.

Here are some links to articles, sites and resources in French:

• The official Journée Internationale des Femmes site is here, so that's a good place to start.

• sos.femmes is also a cornucopia of articles, information and links. 

I wrote a post about it a few years ago here.

• Historique du droit des femmes from CNIDFF

• Many resources, articles, cartoons from FIDH. This site is also available in English and Spanish

• The official UN site

• An article form this weekend from Ouest-France: Toutes à moto pour les droits des femmes !

• An article from L'Humanité: à 15h40, nous cessons le travail

• A video clip from RTL news (Belgian) with an article: Droit à l' avortement following funding cuts by Donald Trump.

• An article from Liberation about abortion: Les médecins texans, seront-ils autorisés à mentir aux femmes (this is a subscription site which gives you 7 free visits)

• An article from francetvinfo about the death of Norma McCorvey

• From 1jour1actu a video:

• Also from 1jour1actu: les inégalités vues par des collègiens and plus d'égalité au travail :

• From francetvinfo: Port du voile

• From Liberation: M'interdire le voile, n'est pas une atteinte à ma liberté ?

• and finally, from nouvelobs: Interdire le voile au nom du droit des femmes, c'est une tyrannie

I hope you can find something interesting in all this.

Carnival - links and resources

It's Carnival time!!

Carnival is celebrated in different forms around the world.

In Brazil a 5 day festival takes place with processions and dancing.

In the French speaking world Mardi Gras is celebrated with parties, concerts, and parades.

In Germany and Austria Fasching, or Karneval, takes the form of processions and drinking lots of alcohol. Traditionally, alcohol was banned during Lent, so Germans would drink as much as possible during Fasching.

And in the UK we make pancakes...

Yeah, pancakes.

With lemon and sugar.

Do we know how to party or what?

So here is a list of links to resources in French, German, and Spanish:

French

TES Mardi Gras Resources

A Powerpoint from primary resources

Le Carnaval en France: quelques ressources

Activities from education et numerique

Display and quiz from the grid

A free KS2 resource from brilliant publications

Some resources (in English) from activity village

Pages from 1jour1actu here, here, and here

some activities and links from apfvalblog

Carneval ressources from TV5monde

lepointduflé has lists of videos about mardi gras here including the one below:


German

TES Fasching Resources

History and culture of Karneval and Fasching from the German Way

Was ist Fasching? from kidsweb and creative things to make and do here

Karneval activities from UKGerman Connection

Two audio resources from audio-lingua.net

Karneval resources from Frau Kirschner's Website

Karneval im Deutschunterricht from dw.de



Spanish

TES Carnaval Resources

Carnival resources from Kennedy Spanish

Le racisme - A Level links and resources

I'm just getting around to finishing off this topic with my A2 students so I thought I'd share the free resources and links I've used and planned to use:

The (sadly late) political cartoonist Chimulus had some excellent work published in Nouvel Observateur

• News story of a 24 year old man imprisoned for racism in Arras

• Article "Le racisme est légal en France ?" about the footballer Mario Balotelli and the abuse he has received from "fans" 

• From Huffington Post, Internet est devenu un défouloir pour le racisme...

• A google image search for le racisme

• A nice page about racism from La Case aux Enfants

• From 1jour1actu: lutter contre le racisme quotidien, tous contre le racisme, manifestations contre le racisme, and a video...

I also found this video from singe savant:

• TES resources on le racisme (These are mostly free - I can't believe people are charging money for selling exam boards' stimulus cards!!!)
• There are lots of resources for all A2 topics here from MFL Online

There you go.

That should keep you quiet for a while.

Saint Valentine's Day - links and resources

Loathe it or hate it, if you've left the house recently you will not have been able to escape the hearts, flowers and tacky cards reminding us that it's only 3 weeks until St Valentine's Day.

My students are obsessed with it and I'm sure yours are, too.

So, here is a list of links and resources for you to use to appease the hormonal little monsters:

French:

• For younger students there are some bricolages at teteamodeler.com

• Lots of resources on the TES site (only the free ones)

• Some great links form 1jour1actu here and here   

• A St Valentin minibook from the Primary French Resources page at Lightbulblanguages (still the best free languages site in the world)

• Valentine crossword and wordsearch puzzles from Andrew Starr at mflresources

• Valentine's vocabulary and another wordsearch from brilliantbook

• A scheme of work about Valentine's Day with resources in pdf format from Saskatchewan Teachers' Federation

•  Lots of free printable cards from gratuites-cartes.com and from celestill.net here

Spanish:

Valentine's Day resources from TES

Ideas from Woodward Spanish

A bilingual page with history and facts about Valentine's Day

 Interactive games from Online Free Spanish

Links to resources about El Día de Amor from spanishmama





German:

10 fun facts about Valentinstag in English

German Valentinstag free resources from TES

Links and resources from MrShea.com

Familienleben.ch has a page on celebrating Valentinstag with children with ideas and links to activities

and what about this?

Google translate - you get what you pay for.

As the term has worn on, my students have got more confident.

Sadly, this means that in order to try to impress me, they have fallen into the murky mire that is the online translator.

In particular, Google Translate.

So, how do I explain to a group of keen, well meaning 12 year olds that this is what Alfie Atkins would call a "nopey no"?

I can only take so much "Vivo en Puente de Shotley (I live in Shotley Bridge)" or "My  favourite actress is Angelina Pretty One (a translation from French to English)".

Seriously.

I've blogged before about Google Translate, saying how much I love it, but in the hands of an untrained amateur, it can be a very dangerous weapon.

Last week, I gave them "the lecture" but I tried to use an analogy they'll understand.

It went a lot like this:

Me: Who has a games console? A PS4 or an X-Box or something like that?

(Lots of hands go up.)

Me: And, who has ever downloaded a game for free from the app store or google play?

(Lots of hands go up.)

Me: And which are the best? The free, downloaded ones or the PS4 ones?

(Lots of shouting out of PS4, X-Box etc.)

Me: Why?

(Lots of hands go up.)

Students: They are more challenging and more fun... They don't have adverts all the time...You can play against other people online... The graphics and sound are better....

Me: Why are the games better? Why don't they have adverts?

(Silence. The sound of thinking)

Student: Because they cost a lot of money?

Me: Bingo! Give that child a coconut! (Coconuts are the main form of currency in north east England.)

Me: So why is Google Translate not good for our needs?

Students: Because it's free?

(I think they got it! In your faces, Janet Jackson and Luther Vandross!!!)

Me: Incidentally, a decent online translation service starts at around $800 a month...

Stunned silence.