Déjeuner du matin

Yesterday we had a borough-wide CPD Day. I was lucky enough to be able to choose what I wanted to do, rather than have a day of workshops thrust upon me, so I chose to go to our local CLC for a day of creativity on Apples.

We were given the task of making a film, using iMovie and we had to include a flashback. So, we got into groups of 4 – we were 3 linguists and an ICT teacher (unfortunately for the ICT teacher!). We quickly decided to go all French and arty, planning to use Déjeuner du matin by Jacques Prévert. The final result can be seen below and we were all very pleased with the outcome. We would have liked to have added some piano music in the background for that true arty feel but, unfortunately we ran out of time!

I’m now buzzing with ideas as to how I can use what I learnt with my pupils – just need the time to be able to do it…

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Go Animate and Peer Assessment

I had an impromptu lesson in our ICT suite a couple of weeks ago with my Year 7 class so decided to give Go Animate a go. I’d wanted to use if many times over the last few years but never quite had the opportunity – I think it may even have been blocked for a while – so was keen to get going.
I was very specific about what I expected at the end of the lesson, to avoid too much “playing” and not enough French.
At the end of the lesson they emailed their links to me – my school email addres, of course – and I was please to see what I received.
Once received, I put each one onto my Langwitch blog and then asked the class to go back to the blog and comment on one anothers’ work using the “what went well” and “even better if” format. Some of the comments were really lovely, such as:

“c‘est fantastique“

“that was great use of French, well done!“

“C’est fantashique! It was awesome, but the speach was very fast and you weren’t able to catch all of it. Bien! ”

“bien. I thought one thing you could of improved was to check the speech bubble cause one was english but I thought the rest was really good”.

I find it interesting that they were more critical than I would have been, but find that, generally pupils are more critical of one anothers’ work that I expect and often need to encourage them to find more positives!

I am now definitely a fan of Go Animate and have already used it again with my Year 8 class…they will appear shortly on the blog or wiki.

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Eurovision

Saturday night was one of my favourite nights of the year-The Eurovision Song Contest. I’ve always loved it ever since I was very young, I think even back then I was fascinated to listen to all of the different langauages.

Over the years it has gone in and out of fashion, leaving me feeling sometimes “dead cool” and other times “a bit odd” (no surprises there then!). All of a sudden it seems to be back “in”, I don’t know whether this is because of Lord Lloyd Webber himself wrote this year’s ditty for the UK, whether it is the change of host – although I did find some of Graham Norton’s comments quite similar to the whit of Terry Wogan in previous years!. Whatever the reasons, I sat down last night, with several fellow Twitterers (virtually, of course) feeling not quite so “odd” as in other years, looking forward to a night of cultural diversity and linguistic delight.

The event itself offered up its usual oddities with Gladiators in the Ukrainian set and opera singers from Sweden and, as ever I was able to learn some new languages. I was, however very disappointed in several entries who sang in English. How can we ever encourage our pupils that it’s important to be able to speak different languages if all they see is speakers of foreign languages singing in and speaking in English? It just adds to the arrogant English attitude of  ”everyone speaks English, so why should I learn a new language”. Even at an event which celebrates cultural diversity! Why can’t they celebrate linguistic diversity too?

That said, the competition was won by an English Language song…however, I didn’t like the entry for the song, it has to be said.

I don’t seem to be able to embed the video so you’ll have to follow the link below to see why I like the song!

Alexander Rybak

(I also annoy me husband by getting cross with the news for dubbing over foreigners speaking their own languages, instead of giving subtitles!)

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Das Hokey Kokey

I have a tendancy to watch too many comedy shows on Dave or GOLD or even on the BBC.  Most of the programmes are (kindly) chosen for me by my husband (if I’m REALLY lucky, he even lets me watch the cricket – and not just England losing either…Australia, New Zealand, South Africa) and he, in return, allows me to watch the occasional CSI episode.

Yesterday, as a Mothers’ Day treat he picked out a Bill Bailey live show that he’d so thoughfully Sky+ ed for a special occasion (yes, we “live the dream” in our house) and I discovered a treasure!

Now I’m sure that many people have seen this before but I’m a bit slow on the uptake with these things and found it hilarious. It’s Bill Bailey doing Kraftwerk doing the Hokey Kokey all in German, of course.  I think is ideal for parts of the body (if not a bit basic really) but it’s good to be daft from time to time and have a bit of a laugh.  Logo 2 Unit 3 “Topfit” is where it could fit in for me, how about you?

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Spanish Mike is back

I was really pleased to notice last week that Spanish Mike, of “One Semester of Spanish, Spanish Love Song” fame is back with a new Spanish video.  Called “Second Semester of Spanish, Spanish Love Song” and featuring a special guest, it lives up to the standards of the first song very well.  I’m hoping to nake my Spanish classes laugh with it in the coming week (it will give them something other than my lack of Spanish to laugh at!!!)

Here it is…

ps. Please note the lack of “odd” exclamation marks in this post!!!!!!!!!

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Has my teaching gone viral?

I just had to share this event that happened in the penultimate snowy lesson of last half term.

In a previous post, I wrote about the BBC Learning Zone Broadband Class Clips that are available at Primary and Secondary level for just about every subject.  Back in November time, I used a particularly corny clip where a boy spoke about how he helped at home and then there was a wonderfully awful song and dance, with my top Year 9 German set (who gave the exact reaction that I’d expected!).  Well, one of the girls in my lesson came and asked my where she could find the clip so she could watch it again – and of course, I had to explain that, since educational videos are evil, nasty things, they can’t be viewed by individual pupils just by teachers – but then she told me how after the lesson in November she had found it at home and had sent it to her friends to watch, who all found it hilarious as well!  So that means not only did she watch the GERMAN video again but also many of her friends who weren’t in my German class ALSO watched the GERMAN video too! So there we have GERMAN reaching the pupils in their own time, them enjoying it AND doing it volutarily.  Who would have thought it, pupils doing something relating to MFL in their own time and of their own free will…and proabably without even realising it. 

For me, it’s the way forward, I love the idea that my pupils want to seek out the language that they learn at school and enjoy it just for fun.  After all, isn’t enjoyment the reason we speak different languages?  I refer you once again to the magnificent quote from the last post about Prague!

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