17 new resources today

I have uploaded this morning 17 new resources, including new Christmas minibooks for French and Spanish, a new grammar game for KS4 French (thanks Terri!), some more resources for gender and dictionary work for KS2 French and some Spanish colours resources suitable for Year 1.

A few new things for you

I have uploaded a new Spanish pets Tarsia (thanks Dom!), some Spanish worksheets to practise making plurals and some things for practising alphabetical order and dictionary skills in French.

Interactive activities for French

I have uploaded this morning some new interactive activities for French on numbers to 20 and school equipment.

There are also interactive activities for Spanish and German.

16 new resources today

For your downloading pleasure there are 16 new resources today:

• French phonics: the 'i' sound and more on the 'ou' sound
• Gender in French - some of the resources have a "how to use" explanation with them.  If you'd like more detail on how I teach gender, please say.  It's an integral part of the new KS2 curriculum now.
• More French school equipment
• Some differentiated French weather sheets
• Some Spanish number activities - thanks Marie!

French phonics

For several reasons, the children in the school where I teach French have not done any explicit learning of phonics or any in-depth grammar.  Therefore I am going to begin with Year 5 this week with some nouns work and some phonics.

I am using 10 school equipment words as the basis for this:

1. un crayon
2. un stylo
3. une règle
4. un taille-crayon
5. une gomme
6. une trousse
7. un papier
8. un cahier
9. un livre
10. un feutre

These will the words that I use to explain what a noun is and what gender is, and that will lead us into dictionary work.  They also offer opportunities for working on specific phonemes.  We are going to start off with the 'ou' sound like in trousse.

If you would like to use the resources, I have just uploaded them, and you will find the phonics 'ou' sound ones here (I've included an .mp3 to help the non-specialists) and the school equipment ones here.

First resources for the new school year

I have uploaded today 6 new Primary Spanish resources:

• Town/se puede Trapdoor speaking activity
• Food and opinions Trapdoor speaking activity
• Pets and plurals Trapdoor speaking activity
• Dictionary use PowerPoint
• Latin family words
• Latin weather words

KS2 Spanish scheme of work

I have just uploaded an updated version of my KS2 Spanish scheme of work.  If you are familiar with the previous incarnation, you will notice the following changes and additions:

• more speaking activities
• more stories, poems, rhymes and songs, in line with the new Programme of Study
• addition of "I can" statements for each unit (I use these to assess the children)
• change in order of the Year 5 units

I have also mapped each unit to the requirements of the new Programme of Study.  There are some objectives which I have not included, as they will vary according to the school.  I have not included the mentions of authentic sources, as different schools will use different sources, and may or may not have a partner school who can help them with this, for example.  I have also missed out the mentions of "a range of audiences", as this will also vary according to the school.

I have a list of additional resources to make to support some of the new activities that I have added, and when I have recovered from a day and a half of Spanish scheme of work, I will have a look at the French one.

Have a brilliant and restful summer holiday, everyone.

A little word about Copyright

The resources on Light Bulb Languages and its predecessor, MFL Sunderland, have always been free.  They are, however, still subject to copyright.  The copyright statement that appears on nearly every resource show the name of the site and the name or initials of the person who created it.  Where anyone other than myself has created a resource, the copyright is shared by them and the site.  Everyone who contributes a resource has their name added to the Thanks list.

In the past and recently I have found resources from the website uploaded to other sites, often with only a few or no changes made, no credit given to Light Bulb Languages, and often with the site's copyright statement removed from the resource.

Today I have rewritten the site's copyright policy, a copy of which you can find on our "About" page.  In short, you have the freedom to download and use in the classroom any of the resources that you want, but if you are using them for CPD purposes, please give the website a namecheck.  If you edit or translate any of the resources, please acknowledge the resource's source by sharing it via Light Bulb Languages rather than by uploading them to a third party's site.

41 new resources today

I have uploaded today a number of resources for KS4 French grammar and listening and reading, and KS4 Spanish grammar.  Many of these resources are also Tarsias, and so I have added them to the Tarsia page.

I have also added some custom-made alphabets for French and Spanish to help with displays, and a German alphabet to match the French and Spanish ones - thanks Nick!

Finally, will this kind of translation activity be useful?

18 new resources today

There are 18 new resources for you today:

• 10 new World Cup resources for French, German and Spanish - thanks Eleanor and Lisa!
• new Primary French resources
• a new Primary Spanish resource

I have also uploaded the new Programme of Study for KS2 and the various bits of the KS2 Framework, as I know these aren't always easy to find.  They are on the primary page.

Month no.3

Here are the stats for June:

• 29743 unique visits (15575 in May)
• 991 visits per day on average (502 in May)
• 91501 page loads (56463 in May)
• 27 new resources (125 in May)
• 124 new Twitter followers (141 in May, new total of 671)
• 902 visitors to the blog (708 in May)

Thanks once again to all our users for their support.

13 new resources today

I've just uploaded 13 new resources for you today:

• 5 new World Cup resources, 4 Spanish and 1 French.  Thanks Aurelie!
• 6 new Primary Spanish resources, including the first two volumes of our monlingual dictionary
• 2 new KS3 Spanish reading activities

Our second month

May is over so here are the stats:

• 15575 unique visits (9673 in April)
• 502 visits per day on average (322 in April)
• 56463 page loads (26086 in April)
• 125 new resources (145 in April)
• 141 new Twitter followers (496 in April, new total of 637)
• 708 visitors to the blog (811 in April)

Thanks once again to all our users for their support.

19 new World Cup resources

New for you today: 19 new World Cup resources in English, French, Spanish, Italian and German.

10 new resources

10 new resources for you today:

• 7 World Cup resources - Try the Vocabulary matrices for English, French and Spanish.  There is also a sheet of data about the Spanish-speaking countries that are taking part in the tournament.
• Primary Spanish - La fruta.  Thanks Jo!

86 new resources

Today I have uploaded 86 new resources:

• 21 new World Cup 2014 resources, including the first Italian ones.  Thanks to Saira and Rosemary for their translating!
• 9 KS3 French Daily Routine resources, with many thanks to Martin Lapworth of Task Magic
• 2 KS3 Italian resources for comparing a town, again from Task Magic
• The rest are Spanish, including KS3 Daily Routine and KS3 Food

I have started to make and upload some reading activities, which also involve elements of (agh!) translation.  You can see some of these on the World Cup page, and there are others on the Spanish texts page and French texts pages (KS3 / KS4).

Our first month

Here we are on 1st May, and Light Bulb Languages has come to the end of its first month.  Not its first complete month, admittedly, but the hit counter and various other things report at the end of each calendar month.

So here are some first month stats:

• 9,673 unique visits 
• an average of 322 unique visits per day
• 26,086 page loads
• 145 new resources
• 496 Twitter followers
• 811 visitors to this blog

Thank you so much to everyone who has helped to spread the word, mostly during their Easter holidays, about the move from MFL Sunderland to Light Bulb Languages.  I appreciate that it's going to take some time to reach the heady heights of MFL Sunderland's 60,000+ visitors per month.  

Onwards and upwards!

45 new resources for French and Spanish

New for today, another 45 new resources.  At last my "Resources for website" file is empty, and that includes the 235 resources that were very kindly donated as part of the MFL Sunderland 70 day challenge last year.  But fear not - there will be more!

So today there are new resources for Primary French, KS3 French, KS3 Spanish, French display, KS4 French, French Starters and Plenaries and Tarsia puzzles.  You'll know which ones they are as they will have "added 28.4.14" under the resource name.

17 new resources

I've just uploaded 17 more resources for French, German and Spanish.  You'll find them on the pages shown below, where they'll be the ones with today's date on.

KS3 French PowerPoints
KS3 French worksheets
KS4 French grammar
French display

KS3 German PowerPoints and worksheets
KS4 German worksheets
German display

KS3 Spanish worksheets

Mon drapeau, Mi bandera and the World Cup

This series of lessons have been part of my KS2 Spanish scheme of work for Year 3 since I designed them for the 2010 World Cup.  They now form part of my "Shapes" unit which begins with flags and finishes with Gaudí mosaics.  I didn't teach Primary French at that point, but I do now, and so have rejigged the resources.  I have had very successful lessons with Year 2 and Year 4 this week, so much so that I have uploaded the resources to Light Bulb Languages (French and Spanish) so that everyone can use them.  They promote sustained, structured speaking and lead to individual reading, writing and creativity.

Here's how it works:

1. Learn / revise the 6 colours red, yellow, blue, greem, white and black.
2. Starting with the plain red flag (not a World Cup flag, but a starting point) do écoutez répétez / escuchad repetid of the parts of the sentence using the actions - Mon drapeau / est / rouge.  Practise until the children are happy to say the whole sentence and perform the actions with you.  Talk about what the sentence means, and why you are doing those particular actions, to help the words to stick.
3. Work through the other colour combinations in the same way.  You'll probably need to run through the colours slides 3 times for the children to be confident.  Talk about why "et" changes its place in the sentence (the children get to explain to you what they know about writing lists in English).  It may be worth having to hand a copy of all the flags, as they will want to know which flag is for which country.  We also used the flags to do some basic maths - how many countries altogether?  8 groups of 4, therefore 32.  Three countries have red and white flags, eight have red, white and blue flags.  How many is that altogether?  How many more flags are we going to see?
4. Repeat the process for the shapes, and practise in the same way.
5. Show the children some flags they have never seen before and ask them to work out its description in pairs.  Then ask for a volunteer pair to share their description with the rest of the class.  There is always a really good hum of speaking and lots of actions when they do this.  They also like to go into lots and lots of detail! 
6. Children draw and colour their own flag.  Beforehand we talk about the meanings of the colours used in flags, and which colours are not used.  This link is useful.  They then show their flag to the rest of the class and describe it.  I usually hold the picture so that they can do all the actions.  It's worth reminding the class that whatever they draw, they will have to speak about!
7. Children can use the writing frame to write the description of their flag.  Great display potential.
8. Children can work on the two reading sheets where they identify the World Cup flags based on their descriptions.

Easily 4 lesson / hours of work there.  And I'm sure lower KS3 would like it too.

Enjoy!

14 new World Cup resources

I've uploaded this morning 14 new World Cup resources.  Also have a look at our Twitter feed (@LightBulbLangs) for some good World Cup links.

UPDATE 28.4.14:  We now have German World Cup resources, thanks to the lovely Rosemary Hicks.  Follow the link above.

World Cup 2014 resources

New on Light Bulb Languages today are the first World Cup 2014 resources.  So far there are 10, for French and Spanish, and there are some general ones too.

If someone could tell me how to say "Find the 32 countries of the World Cup" in German and/or Italian, I'll be able to do some puzzles for German and Italian too.

If you want some more World Cup inspiration for the new term, you could always look at our 2006 and 2010 resources which are in our archive.

45 new resources

I have just finished uploading a grand total of 45 new resources: 28 for KS3 French, KS4 French and French Starters and Plenaries, 8 for KS3 Spanish, KS4 Spanish and A level Spanish, 5 for Primary French, 3 for Primary Spanish and 1 for German.

You'll be able to tell which are the new resources, as they have "added on 15.4.14" underneath the resource name.

There are still more to come!

First new resources for Light Bulb Languages

I have just uploaded 38 new Spanish resources.  There is something for each Key Stage - KS2, KS3, KS4 and A level.  You'll be able to tell which are the new ones as I have put "added 9.4.14" under each resource's information.

Lots more to come.

Don't forget to tell your friends about us!

Blog book

Have a read through the MFL Sunderland blog book.  There are plenty of good ideas and links.  Click on the image below to be taken to an interactive, page-turning book.

Welcome!

Welcome to the blog for Light Bulb Languages, the website where you'll find all you favourite north-east-based language resources, just in a new location.  You can also follow us on Twitter @LightBulbLangs for all the latest news and links.

A bientôt!