Activities

Comox Valley Core French –
A collection of YouTube videos or links to YouTube videos on the (French) vocabulary related to a number of themes, such as: les couleurs, les jours de la semaine, les nombres, les mois, quel temps fait-il? etc...

Chansons françaises et francophones en cours de FLE / French through Songs and Singing –
This multimedia site features streaming MP3s, annotated lyrics, articles and links.

dotSUB – 
(Music) videos with the lyrics translated in various languages in subtitles.

Shahi is a visual dictionary that combines Wiktionary content with Flickr, Google, and Yahoo images. Type in a word and get images related to it, a definition and some example sentences to show use in context.

Spezify is a search tool presenting results from a large number of websites in different visual ways… We mix all media types and make no difference between blogs, videos, microblogs, and images. Everything communicates and helps building the bigger picture.”

100 Inspiring Ways to Use Social Media In the Classroom | Online Universities – This article presents ways educators are presently using social media in their classrooms.

Just passing on these suggestions made on the ICT-section of the Primary Languages site:

[...] With just some very basic techniques, the interactive whiteboard can be used for a wide range of enjoyable and challenging activities: The children (and I) enjoy moving words, sentences and pictures around the board for labelling pictures or to construct sentences. Such fun! (Cathy O'Brien, Leading Practitioner from Abbotts Primary, Collyhurst Manchester).

Try using the interactive whiteboard to highlight linguistic features in different colours. This simple idea is ideal for use when encouraging children to develop their knowledge about language. 

Invite the children to the interactive whiteboard to 'make' a pizza - this activity also presents good opportunities to talk about weights and quantities with the support of images. Follow these steps:

• Display a range of pictures of different toppings and large pizza base on the whiteboard.
• Following your instructions, children come to the board to move different toppings onto the base to create their own pizza, pronouncing the names of the toppings they have chosen. 
• The children could then ask classmates to come up with a name for their pizza or to suggest other toppings that they would prefer.
• This could lead into a class discussion around which foods the children like and healthy eating. Together you could conduct a survey of opinions to display as a graph or chart on the whiteboard.
• Children could go on to make real pizzas in pairs or small groups, using digital cameras to take photos of the preparation. These images could then be included in a Powerpoint presentation with simple instructions showing how it was made... and eaten!

Making links

ICT has a huge role to play in helping you to forge cross-curricular links. Numeracy, literacy, investigative skills, design technology, art and music can all be combined with languages using ICT. Working across a range of subject areas, children can use equipment such as digital cameras and camcorders, and hone their skills using programmes such as PowerPoint, Excel and Word.

For instance, this video clip of work around the artist Kandinsky on the Training Zone shows a class exploring the links between art, shapes and language. For further examples of opportunities for cross-curricular links, visit primary languages ezine issue 6.

Ask children to research the weather in Mallorca, Hamburg and Nice using the internet - this could lead to a presentation about weather in different parts of Europe, perhaps with weather charts imported into a simple PowerPoint presentation.