Souffler - a breath of fresh air

Perpetuum Jazzile and lessons for the classroom

One of the nice things about writing a blog is that every now and again you can indulge yourself and simply express a personal view. This post has relevance I think to the contemporary culture that our pupils inhabit and to the kind of lessons we might create for them.

Hopefully it might encourage teachers across the curriculum to think about how to include a 'community' song or chant as a normal part of their lessons.

I came across this video of a wonderful choir called Perpetuum Jazzile so first, sit back and enjoy this before reading any further! All language is a communal experience - singing together proves it.

Amazon mp3s of Perpetuum Jazzile

Before I saw this video I had been looking at Eric Whitacre's virtual choir beautifully singing 'Sleep'. I was treated to the obligatory ad which in this case was promoting a new album by the X-Factor runner up 'Cher'.

The juxtaposition of all that X-Factor promotes, sometimes agressive vaunting of the individual vocal star, set against Perpetuum Jazzile's ability to blend a range of voices into a very clever performance was telling.

Whilst like anyone else, I love a good Diva, for singing, solo effort isn't the norm. The name X-Factor should be a clue, it's the unsusual X-ception not the rule. For 99% of the rest of the world, enjoying singing is something that everyone can do as part of a group.

I have an ok singing voice. Actually to be more precise, it's ok if I ask it to perform solo. It's actually much better when I sing with others. Solo, and I have to pretend that it is something it isn't, that it has a wide range which it hasn't.

It's actually very good in the baritone range but pretty rubbish in the tenor range. However the only way I am ever going to understand this and appreciate my particular contribution is to sing with others.

I think we need a cultural counter-balance to the 'Diva' factor for our children. If they grow up thinking that singing is all about 'solo' brilliance and performance then they will never benefit from the amazing satisfaction that can come from singing with others. Understanding that sharing your individual voice in harmony with many others within your particular range is a deeply satisfying experience is a vital lesson we need to pass on to our children.

I believe that singing together is an essential part of living together as communities. It has been one of the glues that have bonded tribes since the dawn of time. Sharing a common song has always been a mark of identity. It is something personally I feel we need to recover far more widely in western society.

In September I'm talking at a Modern Languages Show and Tell at Cramlington Learning Village just north of Newcastle. I decided that I wanted to talk more about the whole concept of building class cohesion and identity through songs and chants.

My own limited experience of trying some of these ideas out have deeply impressed me with the response from the children and the positive atmosphere they help establish in lessons. The title of my talk is "The Singing Tribe - MFL class cohesion" so if you want to know a bit more maybe I will see you there.

The format is a little like a Teachmeet but this is for the whole day so the talks might last from 3 minutes to longer than the Teachmeet 7 minutes. You get to hear fantastic talks from some top people working in modern languages in the UK for FREE!

As an added incentive, the host for the day is Chris Harte and I understand that this will be his swan song as he is about to leave the UK for Australia. If you have never heard Chris speak, this will possibly be a last chance for a while. Get there if you can, I highly recommend it. Click here to find out more.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Holiday Home - Basse Normandie

If there are any people who read this blog who have ever toyed with the idea of buying a holiday home in France, then this post might be of interest.

If any of you don't really know the Basse Normandie, it is a lovely lush area of rolling hills and beautiful beaches, well worth discovering.

The name and concept for this blog was born on a beach near this property during a time of mid-life soul-searching as to the path I wanted to pursue personally and professionally, so it is close to my own heart. Ideally if anyone wants to drop the necessaries in my lap I will buy it! I'm sharing this info on behalf of a friend.

Here are a few outside photos but go to the site to see the potential. Click to enlarge.

The property is set out in a T-shape with this first photo of the Main House being the top bar of the T and the current gites, the vertical stem. It would easily lend itself to re-conversion into a single holiday home for family groups

Main House entrance

 

Current Gites

 
 House and Gites

 
Conservatory

 

There is just enough land with it to make it interesting without becoming cumbersome.

Vinery

 
Fields with a Barn and a separate mobile home

 
 
 
 
and vegetable plot ...

 

 The Gite is an 8 minute drive from the town of Brecey and Avranches (22 minutes) and Mont St Michel (45 minutes) are within easy reach.

 

The airport of Dinard is an hour away and is served by Ryanair out of East Midlands and Stansted airports, by Flybe out of Birmingham, Luton, Newcastle, Belfast, Aberdeen and Inverness, BMI out of Birmingham and BA out of Glasgow. There are also all of the Ferry Routes of course.

Here is the direct site link with further photos: 

Here is the direct link to some video shootage of the outside space

And if anyone buys it, I'll happily come and help christen it with the first fruits of that vinery!

 

Lingualicious and links to MFL blogs

I really believe that setting up and promoting your own teaching blog is great way for any teacher to clarify their own thoughts, connect to their peers and raise their profile. In that spirit I'm very happy to pass on links to other colleagues' blogs.

One thing that constantly amazes me when I attend Teachmeets is the infinite variety of creative ideas that colleagues come up with to help motivate their learners.

Blogging is a great way of building up your personal bank of ideas and resources. Talking about the things that inspire you helps you to define and refine those areas that you particularly are brilliant at. So here is a link to Sean Terry's blog.

If you would like me to mention your own blog, especially people launching into the blogosphere for the first time, send me a link in the comment section below and will try and lend any profile I might have to get you going.

"Lingualicious is a collection of  resources that have worked best in the classroom along with a few other ideas & links. Hopefully all Spanish & MFL teachers can find something useful here;  some are specific to my School (often my long-suffering yr 11s in silly cartoons) but please comment on & download anything you find here. I'll be updating as much as possible but go back to the older resources too as they are some of the ones I've found most effective. If you have problems with any of the presentations because of your version of Office, let me know and i'll put a 2003 version on here. Save the zip files first and then open them.  Anyway hope you enjoy some of my stuff. Oh ..and join Joe Dale's MFL twitterati - really good group for sharing new ideas and advice on everything MFL."

via lingualiciousblog.typepad.com

Successful International link projects - your help please!

I would be grateful if any colleagues from any country could send me links to any international link projects in Primary / Elementary schools that they have been involved with or know of that had a significant impact on their curriculum.

I'm looking in particular for projects where a foreign language was involved but where the outcomes had a significance across the curriculum.

Please send me a brief outline of the scope and impact of the project in the comments below together with any links to websites with information. Please also indicate what instruments (Skype, Wikis etc.) were used to run it successfully.

If it's of interest for anyone I have written a brief rationale for promoting such programmes in schools here. Click on the image to go to the document.

The Death of the Competitive Curriculum

(Music: Artist - 'Drowning Pool" - "Let the Bodies hit the Floor")

The drama of the music attached to the video clip of fish thrashing for their lives in a shrinking pool perfectly illustrates a process that is coming to a head in school curricula.

For drying water, substitute shrinking curriculum time allocated to ever-expanding content and each traditional subject discipline, from the sciences through to the arts, tends to thrash around trying to justify why it, as opposed to all of the others, deserves its special protected room to breath in a restricted pool of time.

As a language teacher we have always had an issue with the need for curriculum space, especially in the secondary phase. As the one subject on the secondary curriculum that, prior to the primary MFL initiative, only began being taught in yr 7, we have had to build a fast-track to exam success in 5 years where other subjects had 9 or 10.

We have always argued that children need a daily dose of the language to make up for this lost time. In the schools I used to teach in, these pressures were recognised and time allocation for yr 7 was generous with even more overall time devoted to language learning accorded in yrs 8 and 9 with the introduction of a second language.

The picture is changing however. From everything I read on various MFL fora, school leaders have been re-modelling timetables in all kinds of fanciful ways that allow them more flexibility but with the effect that they can 'squeeze' subjects perceived to be of less value to their overall performance outcomes. This is a process that threatens many other subjects too.

Then we have various governments', often clumsy attempts, to intervene that throw plans further into confusion. Withdrawing MFL as a statutory GCSE subject, giving the subject more time in the primary curriculum to compensate, now possibly doing a complete about turn, suspending the Primary initiative (we simply don't know) and returning to MFL's inclusion in the Ebac at GCSE level, and you can forgive all of us for not knowing whether we are coming or going.

Wagging the dog is the exam tail, with a system currently at GCSE which sucks vast amounts of time out of actually teaching the subject in order to prepare for and manage the tests.

Add to all of this the perception of many MFL colleagues that successive governments, many school leadership teams, many parents, indeed an awful lot of children simply don't 'get' the need for studying languages, and I can understand why so many colleagues feel under immense pressure.

Out of this arises a sense that we have to unite around a common front to 'sell' the subject with one voice, to have a common understanding of why we deserve our breathing space in the pool as opposed to any other subject.

Whilst understandable, this worries me....greatly.

The fact that I can even write this blog post and that it can be seen and read by many people I will never know or meet, underlines the real context we are in.

I am a language teacher who isn't in a shrinking pool.

My pool of contacts, colleagues and collaborators expands every day.

Every day, somebody new gets to know me and the ideas and resources I have to share, even if I never realise that they do.

I am connected to colleagues from all over the world. My connections are expanding way beyond my traditional subject boundaries in a way I have never and could never have experienced before.

The pupils I teach live in wall-less classrooms that have the power to connect across the globe. Their learning isn't restricted to the hours between 9 and 4 and it doesn't all depend upon me.

So I am worried by any call that suggests a re-trenchment into traditional subject boundaries in order to preserve our status. The essence of the new connected curriculum that I believe is emerging is one based on a fundemental societal shift, that highly prizes collaboration and eschews competition.

Pressure, panic, worry, fear, concern, can all be good things. Because we naturally find it easier to conceive of and settle for what we already know rather than what is new, we sometimes need these negative feelings to jolt us into action and re-think.

Out of all of this pressure, I would love to see a curriculum where many of the traditional subject boundaries disappeared. I have taught in but have never understood a system that forces a child to wear a 'languages' hat for 1 hour, take it off, forget about it for the rest of the day and wear a 'PE' hat, then a 'Science' hat etc.

Why can't we have a curriculum where connections are being made to many subjects throughout a child's day, where in PE I'm reminded of what I was taught in Science or French? Why should cross-curriculum models still be seen as the prerogative of the quirky and brave instead of the norm?

Children love these connections and teachers love to make them. If you want more curriculum time for your subject, there it is, partner up with other subjects! Don't retreat into the temptation to laud the values of your own subject in an attempt to win curriculum space at the expense of other colleagues in other disciplines. That way lies disaster, division, dislocation, lots of DIs! And it flies in the face of every other social trend that is gaining momentum.

Finally, as a linguist who believes passionately that there is an intimate and incredibly powerful link between music and language acquisition, can I start by pleading with leaders in Music Education and leaders in Language Education to talk.

Can Heads of Music in Schools begin to talk to Heads of Languages and look at joint projects and units of study? I know it happens in some places. When it does, it is truly inspirational. If we want our children to be buzzing with excitement at learning a language the surest and only way to do it is to make these connections the norm.

Let's hope that they will hasten the death of the competitive curriculum.

Update

As I have just found this, here is a link to Dr Jonathan Savage's blog writing about music and cross-curricula initiatives

Defrag your linguistic memory with music, rhythm and song

I find talks from the TED site fascinating. I picked up the this video via Laura Doggett's blog, http://lauradoggett.com/, a really useful site for anyone interested in all things techie and MFL. Anyone who gets companies to give them expensive kit to review has my respect!

So this video is from Patricia Kuhl and is entitled "The Linguistic Genius of Babies".

What strikes me here is that there is an emotional context to language learning that helps the baby filter out extraneous sound and home in on the sound patterns that bring a reward in terms of making human connections.

In my work with music and language learning, my theory is that music and song are excellent vehicles for connecting emotion to language acquisition, and it was interesting to see the role of human and emotional connection highlighted here.

What is also fascinating to see is that as we get older we 'retreat' and become 'enclosed' within our own cultural and linguistic systems. It becomes increasingly harder to break out of them simply because I think we have a memory bank that is filling up, even clogging up with stored responses to inputs. It's a hard-drive in need of a de-frag to free up space.

I suppose I see music, song and rhythm as kind of de-frag software for language learning. They 'slide' new language into children's brains, flying under the radar of their stored responses. They help penetrate into parts of their consciousness where  new information can be retained without having to pass through all of the border controls of stored cultural and linguistic filtering.

So, the younger the child, the more uncluttered the memory bank, the more receptive to new input. The older we get, the slower we are to assimilate new sounds and structures that do not match those already in our memory bank.

In the push to promote Primary Languages in the UK, one of the strains on the initiative is that though children can very easily pick up new language, the teachers who have to be re-trained to teach them find it much harder to re-learn.

The real difficulty lies less in acquiring the lexical and grammatical syntax of the language but in being able to 'tune' into the different sounds and mimic them. Prounuciation is a key issue. Fear of sounding inauthentic is a serious inhibtor in Primary MFL teachers.

Here again I believe, but can't prove, that on teacher language re-training programmes, re-learning a language with a significant input from music, rhythm and song might help. Someone somewhere ought to research an initiative to examine whether this is true. Could a program be devised where this is an integral rather than a peripheral part of it?

 

Great Language Teaching Songs 4

Here is a short post in a continuing series on what makes a great foreign language song that engages kids.

Having blown the trumpet for quite a few other MFL songsters, on this one I'm puffing on my own! Shameless I know but there we go …

My first example isn't actually my own composition - it is perhaps one of the most widely used songs for Early Language Learners, 'Heads,Shoulders,Knees and Toes'

The point I want to make though in this post is that even very familiar songs can be given an added twist of your own that make them even more memorable.

Children love a bit of fun in a song, a chance to look and sound ridiculous. You can inject this element into songs that you already use with a bit of imagination.

First example then is this French version of 'Tête, Epaules, Genous et Pieds'.  I'm grateful to the early learning website Speakaboos.com for permission to use the tune. I think it is a cracking version of it and like the hip-slapping country feel that I think perfectly compliments the fact children are pounding parts of the body as they sing!

I have overdubbed a French version of the lyrics using  Mixcraft software and added an idea that I use a lot when warming children's voices up for singing. When you get them to repeat 'oreilles' pull yourself up onto the tip of your toes as you say the word and slide your voice from low to high up the scale as you say the word. Children LOVE it. Here's the tune and the French Lyrics I use.

Lyrics:

Backing Track

Backing Track + Main Vocals

Backing Track + Harmony Vocals

Backing Track + 2 part Vocals

Download a zip file with all of the musical tracks and a powerpoint file of the song.

Download TETE EPAULES.7z (9007.7K)

My second example is one of my own tracks which you are welcome to download and use for yourself. If you like it please leave a comment. It is a simple French numbers 1 - 20 song but with 2 elements in it that I know add a funny twist and add a linguistic context.

Download Souffler French numbers 1 - 20 song.pdf (34.0K)

Here is the whole resource in a zip file. This includes a Samrtboard Notebook file of the lyrics. You can import it into Active Inspire whiteboard software if necessary. It also contains the song sung at different speeds, another favourite trick to keep children interested and willing to repeat an activity.

Download Souffler French numbers 1 - 20.zip (9284.3K)

The lyrics at the end of the song have some inbuilt self-deprecation. As they finally get to 20 they are invited to lingusitically puff and pant their way to the top of the song: "Ca y est, c'est fini, c'est fini ENFIN!" The thing is that though you invite them to say "At last! We've got to the end of this song" they seem very happy to go back and repeat it all over again!

As for the humourous hook, for some reason, after the first 1-10, when the children sing 'la la la la' that is the bit that gets the loudest vocal and engages even the most distracted. Perhaps you can explain it to me. Ok, it's not French, they can sing at least this but why does that appeal?

One theory I have is that any excuse you can give to children learning a language to ham something up, exaggerate, lose their reserve and inhibition, is a great facilitator. Any good language learner has to overcome inhibition, reserve and be prepared to sound stupid. My theory is that both of these song examples are successful because of these in-built opportunities to sound ridiculous.

Perhaps you have examples of other songs that you have adapted to do this. Please share them here!

As Miranda's Mum would say, "Such fun!" (Follow the link if you don't understand the reference - my current favourite comedy show on BBC - the art of the ridiculous perfectly crafted)

York Language Colleges MFL Resource Blog

This blog has been created by the Language College Partnership (LCP) of All Saints RC School and Millthorpe School for teachers of modern foreign languages. It pools resources created by the LCP to share with our partner schools across the city of York, and beyond. We hope you find the resources useful! Please feel free to contact [email protected] with your comments and/or suggestions.

via languagesatmillthorpe.typepad.co.uk

Came across this site via James Gardner (@langnut) Twitter and thought it would be useful for anyone needing some extra resources.

Making the Case for Languages - but to whom?

This is a copy of a post I put up on the 'Speak to the Future' group on Linkedin. If you are a language teaching professional at whatever level, and you haven't yet done so can I encourage you to join.

A week ago I attended a conference organised by Musical Futures. In the plenary presentations I heard the same concerns expressed by Music teachers as I read on MFL forums, that their subject was under threat, that music's exclusion from the E-bac is already encouraging schools to re-prioritise resources at the expense of the Arts, that Music teacher trainee numbers are in sharp decline. The same question was asked: 'How can we make our case to the Government more clearly, more cogently?

The same economic rationale I read on this forum was being posited, that the UK Music industry is one of the biggest income earners for the UK. Fail to support Music education and our economy will go down the pan. Of course their arguments and ours may well be true. It doesn't follow however that in PR terms, they will have an impact. Governments tend to be resistant to metaphorical guns held to the head by individual interest groups.

I wonder how many other subject associations are holding their annual conferences and rehearsing the the same arguments? To any Government hearing this message repeatedly from many subject bodies, our howls of protest are in danger of becoming just so much 'noise' however cogently argued.

One inescapable fact of all successful PR campaigns is that you have to stand out from the 'noise' and you don't do that by shouting the same 'noise' as everyone else, only a little bit louder. You have to be different.

Personally I think that running a PR campaign for the government to listen to us more clearly is targeting the wrong audience. The people we desperately need to sell languages to are our pupils, NOT the government, that is the PR campaign we haven't been very successful at winning. If the government was faced with a generation of pupils buzzing with excitement about their experience of learning a language they would back the curriculum to the hilt.

To create such a buzz, you do not need to pile up ever more utilitarian arguments that point to how much wider job opportunities will present themselves were they to pursue a language or how much easier it would be to order an ice-cream when on holiday! I have never yet come across a pupil truly inspired by these. I think they are as bored listening to them as I have felt when I thought I ought to say them.

To start with, for the pupils who are of an age to understand these arguments, those in KS4, they will have long made up their minds about the subject before such thoughts enter their heads. It is already too late. You need to 'sell' what we do to children in KS2/KS3.

To do this we need a national event that will fire the imaginations of our pupils, that will engage them creatively in language learning, that will prompt them to seek out and forge links with co-collaborators in other countries. This needs to be an event that engages as many as possible at a regional level but that culminates in something spectacular at a national level.

If there was one message that heartened me from this weekend's ALL conference it was that right across the KS2/3 curriculum there is a wind of creative change blowing.  Talented teachers are freeing their programs from the shackles of narrow topics and are building courses around activities and concepts that fire their own and their pupils' imaginations. We need a national event to celebrate this.

So, somewhat timidly because I'm in danger of sounding like a one-beat drum, could I suggest as I did at Saturday's Language World Speak to the Future presentation, that we consider a National MFL Singing Event to celebrate language learning?

I truly believe that correctly organised, engaging schools throughout the country and marketed cleverly through the media to follow the transformational impact on the children taking part, we would have a winning formula. It would be an event those taking part in at every stage would remember for the rest of their lives. It might even be fun!

Great site for Spanish Songs

I came across this site via Twitter and thought I would pass it on to teachers of Spanish. The music and videos look really good and would be suitable for KS3 and 4. The site link is http://www.senorwooly.com/ He is currently offering free access to see everything, very bold of him but I would plead for anyone who actually uses this in their teaching to pay him something for his troubles. I can see that there has been a huge amount of time, creativity and effort poured into this work. A great site!