200 new resources today!

 

I've just finished uploading 200 new resources (a nice round number!) for Key Stage 2 French.  They complement the scheme of work, which is now complete.

The new resources are the ones with today's date: 25.09.26.

If you like these resources, please consider buying me a coffee.  All donations are welcome.

Light Bulb Languages resources moving forward

Over the last couple of weeks I have had a couple of surveys open to find out what kind of resources language teachers would like to see on Light Bulb Languages.  I had one survey for primary and another for secondary.  Today I have been collating the results so that I can see what I need to focus on from now on.  I'm sharing the findings here and signposting some resources that are already on the website.

Primary teachers would like:

• resources linked to traditional songs
• resources for daily routine
• resources about school
• resources for telling the time:  There are French time resources here and Spanish here.
• dictionary lessons
• listening resources:  Have a look at the LiPS Listening Project
• short stories with activities
• reading comprehensions, fiction and non-fiction
• retrieval resources
• sentence builders:  The majority of the units in the French scheme of work and all the unit in the Spanish schemes of work have sentence builders to accompany them.
• cover lessons that fit in with the commonly taught topics
• resources for younger learners in nursery and reception

I also asked if there were any special days or festivals that they would like resources for:

• European Day of Languages: I have recently published a pack of 40 activities for European Day of Languages.
• Christmas:  There are Christmas activities for French, Spanish and German already on the website.
• Journée internationale de la Francophonie
• Easter: There are already some French Easter resources here and Spanish here.
• Mother's Day
• 14 juillet (Bastille Day): I have blogged about this but as yet have not created any resources
• Sporting events throughout the year
• Chandeleur
• Fête des Rois
• Día de los Muertos: There are some resources here already, but not many.  I didn't teach it as both my schools were Church of England.
• International Mother Tongue Day
• Cultural events in Germany, Austria and Switzerland
• resources for Karneval
• resources for fiestas in Spanish America

In the "anything else" section, one teacher asked if I could arrange the resources in each unit in the French scheme of work in the same way as in the Spanish.  Of course I will do that.  By the way, all the scheme of work documents for the French scheme are now complete.

Now moving on to secondary.

As far as text books are concerned, there was a wide range of books being used, with some schools not using a text book:

• AQA GCSE
• Zoom
• Allez
• Studio  
• Viva 
• Mira
• Edexcel GCSE
• Stimmt
• Echt
• Kerboodle
• Dynamo
• Sentence Builders Trilogy
• Amici

Secondary teachers would like:

• Games
• Sentence builders: For Studio 1 there are resources here and sentence builders here. 
  There are also Studio 2 Rouge resources here, Studio 2 Rouge sentence builders here, Studio 3 Rouge sentence builders here and some Studio 3 Vert sentence builders here. 
  There are Viva 1 sentence builders here and resources for Mira 1 here.
• GCSE exam support
• Listening resources
• Catchy but not childish songs: There are a number of songs in French and Spanish on the Light Bulb Languages YouTube channel.
• KS3/KS4 cover lessons with marking key
• News stories about the UK as reported in other countries where the languages are spoken
• speaking games
• cultural grammar activities
• GCSE German writing practice
• Phonics and phonics games
• puzzles suitable for KS3
• authentic resources for higher students to push them to grades 7/8/9
• reading comprehension activities

They would also like resources for these special days and festivals:

• non-European festivals such as Eid in Morocco
• St Martin's Day
• Poisson d'avril
• Tour de France: I have blogged about the Tour but haven't created any resources yet.
• European Day of Languages: I have recently published a pack of 40 activities for European Day of Languages.
• Christmas: There are Christmas activities for French, Spanish and German already on the website.
• Fête des Rois
• Día de los Muertos: There are some resources here already, but not many.  I didn't teach it as both my schools were Church of England.
• Cinco de Mayo
• La Tomatina
• Feria de abril
• Journée internationale de la Francophonie
• sporting events
• Reyes: There are a number of Reyes resources in the Spanish Christmas resources.
• El Colacho
• fiestas from Spanish-speaking America

In the "anything else" section, one teachers asked for a list of different activities to use in the classroom.  Have a look at Adaptable Activities for your Language Lessons.

Thank you very much to everyone who took the time to respond to the survey.  Your responses have given me plenty to go on.  There are some things that I already have on my list but some which I hadn't thought of.  

Something else that I have planned is a major redesign of the website, which will take some time.  A dilemma that I have currently is whether or not to keep the website free.  I've now retired from the classroom, so my main source of income is no more.  The website makes very little money, as all its income is from Google Ads.  I'm also aware that some of the resources on the site are not mine.  Any constructive comments about this or about resources are welcome.

Here's wishing you all the best of luck for the forthcoming academic year.  I will try to support you as best I can.

Christmas resources

 

December is almost here, and along with it, the run-up to the end of term.

What Christmas resources can Light Bulb Languages offer you for this time of year?

French Christmas resources: lots of different activities for lots of different levels

Spanish Christmas activities: lots of different activities for lots of different levels

German Christmas activities

The Elf Advent calendar: Photos that can be used for any language to stimulate writing or speaking work.

Concertina Christmas card

Rotating Christmas cards

Christmas tree and Christmas bell cards (scroll down to the bottom of the post)

Christmas Balls: craft activity

Paper chains with a twist

Advent colouring books for French and Spanish

Christmas lesson starters for French and Spanish

Christmas Challenge Cards for French and Spanish

If you like Light Bulb Languages, please consider buying me a coffee.  All donations are welcome, to keep the website free.  

32 new resources today

 I've just finished uploading 32 new resources to the website.

7 of them are for primary French - use today's date 22.11.24 to find the new ones.

The rest are for primary Spanish, mostly for Cycle B of the mixed-aged scheme, which I am teaching in KS1 and KS2 this year.  As some of the units are duplicated from the original scheme, some of the resources appear there too.  Again, use today's date 22.11.24 to find the new resources.

A lot of the primary resources, especially those for UKS2, will also suit lower KS3.

If you like Light Bulb Languages, please consider buying me a coffee.  All donations are welcome, to keep the website free.  

53 new resources today

 You may have seen on the Light Bulb Languages Twitter and Facebook pages that over the summer holidays I set myself the challenge of making 47 resources for my 47 days of holiday.  Well yesterday I made the 48th, and that's not including the new scheme of work for primary French, which I published a couple of weeks ago.

You'll find new resources for:

• Primary French, especially units 2 and 7
• Primary Spanish
• The LiPS Listening project, French and Spanish
• Studio 3 Rouge - more sentence builders

All the new resources will have "added 01.09.22" underneath them.  If you're on your computer you can use CTRL+F and type in that date to find the new resources.  You can also "Find in page" on your Android device. (Sorry I am not fruit-based - there may be a similar facility there.)

If you like these resources, please consider buying me a coffee. 
I won't be using the KS3 ones myself - they are just for you.

Why not have a look at my Etsy store, which has plenty of French, Spanish, German and multilingual goodies? 

70 new resources today!

 At the beginning of the holidays I set myself the target of making 52 new resources, one for each day of my holiday.  Well I've surpassed that, and here are 70 new resources!  You'll see all the ones we've featured on social media recently and more.

• 46 resources for KS2 French:
  - Animals and pets
  - Colours
  - Family
  - Food
  - Gender
  - In town
  - Miscellaneous
  - Months, days and dates
  - Numbers
  - Personal description
  - Planets
  - Sports and pastimes
  - Verbs
  - Weather
  
  
• 11 resources for KS2 Spanish:
  - Pets
  - Animal Park
  - Food and opinions
  - Weather
  - In town
  - Roadmap of the scheme of work
  
  
• 7 resources for KS3 Spanish:
  - Grammar
  - School subjects
  - Free time
  - Pets
  - Viva 1 sentence builders
  
  
• and 6 resources for KS3 French:
  - Grammar
  - Free time and sports
  - Family and pets
  - Holidays

As always, if there is anything in particular that you would like, you only have to ask.

If you like these resources, consider buying me a coffee.  

27 new resources today

 I've just uploaded 27 new resources, including:

• MP4 timers for French, Spanish and German - they're in the "Miscellaneous" section of the relevant display pages
• Various new resources for Primary Spanish, including Unit 17 - Así soy yo - which I'm really enjoying teaching
• Some minimal pairs listening activities, including this one for articles

If you like these resources, consider buying me a coffee.  

26 new resources today

 I've just uploaded 26  new resources:

• Primary Spanish: for food and opinions, family, and saying you speak other languages
• Primary French: for food and opinions, family, and saying you speak other languages

Secondary teachers - you might also find something useful here.

If you like these resources, consider buying me a coffee.  

54 new resources today

 I've just finished uploading 54 new resources, all of them for primary Spanish.  They have been generated by my video lessons over the last 10 weeks or so.  There are doubtless some that will be of use to KS3 colleagues as well.

They are mainly for:

• Key Stage 1
• Family (Year 3)
• ¿Tienes hambre? and opinions of food (Year 4)
• Así soy yo (Year 6)

My life has been taken over recently by my work for Oak National Academy (primary languages), my poetry books and, most of all, creating pre-recorded video lessons for my 16 classes.  If you too have been making video lessons, you'll know how time-consuming it is, and how unlike planning and preparing normal lessons.  Now those things are finished and we are going back to school I should have some time to do more work on things like the Key Stage 3 sentence builders.

63 new resources on the website today

I've just uploaded 63 new resources to the website, the vast majority for Primary Spanish.  If you didn't already know, I've been making video lessons for my classes since the beginning of term (all available here) and this has involved changing considerably the PowerPoints and other resources that I usually use.

You'll also find:

• A few more sentence builders for Viva 1 (It's hard finding time to make these at the moment)
  
• Original Spanish poems for KS2, but also suitable for KS3 (under Worksheets in each section):
  El monstruo
  ¿Adónde vas?
  Muchos colores
  ¿Qué tiempo hace?
  ¿Tienes hambre?
  ¿masculino o femenino?

All of these resources are available to you absolutely free of charge.  I have not been and will not be paid for making them.  Please consider making a donation to the future of the website. 

68 new resources today!

I've just finished uploading 68 new resources to the website:

• 19 minibooks for primary French - all can be found on this page  The easiest way to find them will be (on a computer) to do CTRL+F and type into the box either "3.7.20" (date of upload) or "minibook".  On a smartphone or tablet tap the 3 dots in the top right corner and say select "Find in page", and type in the same information.
• 19 minibooks for primary Spanish, at least one for each unit of the scheme of work.  Looked at in a sequence, these show well the progression of the scheme.
• "I can" cards for the 18 units of the new KS2 Spanish scheme of work, underneath the scheme of work documents
• Various new sentence builders and odd one out activities for KS2 Spanish, many of them for the new unit 17, and also some for units 8, 9, 10, 13 and 16.

DON'T FORGET:  Lumen's Language Challenges - arts and crafts with a language theme, ideal for the end of term

DON'T FORGET: Learn Spanish at home - 58 videos and accompanying activities for home study, good for non-specialists who want to upskill, as well as children!

DON'T FORGET: Display resources for French, Spanish and German, just right for your new classroom!

All of these resources are available to you absolutely free of charge.  I have not been and will not be paid for making them.  Please consider making a donation to the future of the website. 

11 new resources today

I've just uploaded 11 new resources and the latest #LanguageLinks:

• Resources for primary Spanish unit 9 (worksheets)
• Resources for primary Spanish unit 13 (worksheets)
• and a few other bits and pieces for Unit 14, Unit 16 and Unit 17.

All resources added today will say "added 23.6.20".  On your computer you can do CTRL+F and type the date in to find all the new resources on that page.

All of these resources are available to you absolutely free of charge.  I have not been and will not be paid for making them.  Please consider making a donation to the future of the website.

35 new resources today

This week I've been working through my Trello list of new resources that I need to make, and have just uploaded 35 new resources, mainly for KS2 Spanish, to accompany the new scheme of work.

• KS2 French - adjectival agreement (Les citrons ne sont pas rouges) and Matisse

• KS2 Spanish:
  - family
  - pets
  - Unit 7 (En el parque de animales)
  - Months and days
  - Unit 9 (¿Tienes hambre?)
  - Weather (Unit 10)
  - Big numbers (Unit 11)
  - Unit 13 (descriptions)
  - Unit 16 (En mi pueblo)
  - Unit 17 (Así soy yo)

All resources added today will say "added 18.6.20".  On your computer you can do CTRL+F and type the date in to find all the new resources on that page.

All of these resources are available to you absolutely free of charge.  I have not been and will not be paid for making them.  Please consider making a donation to the future of the website.

New scheme of work for Key Stage 2 Spanish

If you are a regular visitor to the Primary Spanish pages of the website, you'll notice that there have been some big changes.

I have completed my new scheme of work (read its story here), and have uploaded it to the site - click on Scheme of Work for all the documents.  The previous scheme is still there, in a zipped file called Legacy Scheme.

The new units and changed units have required a big change around of the resources.  The resources are now in the order of the new scheme, but I haven't deleted any, so you'll still find all your favourites, just maybe in a different place.

I have a big long list of new resources to make to accompany the new scheme.  You can subscribe to this blog by filling in the "Follow by email" box on the right hand side under the labels.  That way you won't miss any news about new resources.

I made the images in Canva, by the way.  Did you know that if you can prove to Canva that you're a teacher, you can get a free Pro account?

All of these resources are available to you absolutely free of charge.  I have not been and will not be paid for making them.  Please consider making a donation to the future of the website.

40 new resources today

I've just uploaded 40 new resources to the site.

The following French resources are designed for KS2, but if you teach KS3 you may also find them useful:

• Key verb posters
• Number builders (like sentence builders!)
• Saying your age and birthday sentence builders
• Talking about siblings and friends sentence builder
• Sports, and sports with opinions sentence builders.  More to come of these.
• Describing the planets sentence builder
• Describing a monster sentence builder
• Cross-curricular Art and French activity about French artists (you may have seen this on Twitter or Facebook)
• For pets, a minibook, plurals sheet and sentence builder
• 5 different sentence builders for telling the time, in different levels of complexity
• A food and opinions sentence builder

These Spanish resources are designed for KS2 but secondary colleagues might find them useful:

• Cross-curricular Art and Spanish activity, about Spanish artists (you may have seen this on Twitter or Facebook)
• Saying your birthday sentence builder
• For pets, a plurals PowerPoint, plurals counting sheet and a minibook
• 5 different sports sentence builders, with different levels of complexity
• 4 sentence builders for telling the time, with different levels of complexity

Enjoy!

You can now purchase #LanguageLinks and phrase of the day merchandise!  Just have a look in our Zazzle store and see if there's anything that takes your fancy.

All of these resources are available to you absolutely free of charge.  I have not been and will not be paid for making them.  It takes a day to make three videos.  Please consider making a donation to the future of the website.

Lots of new resources

I've just finished uploading a number of new resources:

• The latest French, Spanish and German #LanguageLinks.  There are 325 now.
• The last videos for Learn Spanish at Home (Spanish for Key Stages 1 and 2).  I have now completed all 58 videos I had planned and you'll find them on this page with their accompanying materials.
• Spanish key verb posters for ser, tener and ir
• A number of flowchart sentence builders (read more about them here and here)
  - Colours and ser (Spanish)
  - Food and opinions (Spanish)
  - Describing your flag (2 different ones) (Spanish)
  - Physical description / adjectival agreement (Spanish)
  - Describing strange animals (Spanish)
  - Talking about siblings and friends (Spanish)
  - Talking about pets (Spanish)
  - Building numbers in the 1000s (Spanish)
  - Describing the planets (Spanish)
  - Describing your flag (2 different ones) (French)
• You will also find some other flowchart sentence builders in the accompanying activities for videos 39 onwards in Learn Spanish at Home.
  
  

Another exciting development is that you can now purchase #LanguageLinks and phrase of the day merchandise!  Just have a look in our Zazzle store and see if there's anything that takes your fancy.

All of these resources are available to you absolutely free of charge.  I have not been and will not be paid for making them.  It takes a day to make three videos.  Please consider making a donation to the future of the website.

How can Light Bulb Languages help with home learning?

*UPDATED 23.03.20*
*UPDATED 03.04.20*

Hello Light Bulb Languages users,

You may well be in the position of having to put together some kind of work pack for your students to complete while they are in isolation at home.

There are plenty of things on the website that will help you to do this.  For example:

• Interactive activities for French 
• Interactive activities for Spanish 
• Write Away! magazine - for Key Stage 2, but could be useful as reading material for older students.  Also, each issue has a languages-based puzzle which you might like to use.  The next issue will be out early April.
• Lumen's Spanish Award - a culture-based award with lots of different activities that children can do at home
• Lumen's French Award  
• Lumen's German Award
• 2 worksheets for every double-page spread of Studio 1
• Worksheets for the first part of Studio 2 Rouge
• 2 worksheets for every double-page spread of Mira 1
• Some worksheets for Stimmt 1
• Our YouTube channel with explanatory videos for Spanish and French
• Lumen's Language Challenges - language-based art and craft challenges for children and grown-ups alike
• Learn Spanish at home - a series of videos for children to learn Spanish and do some extra activities as well.  

I have chosen to stay at home for the forseeable future due to being in the at risk group.  This means that I can create and add to the site any resources that would be useful for you in supporting your classes or your own children.  I am intending to add to the interactives first.  Please let me know if there is any particular resource that you need, as a comment here or on the Facebook page or on Twitter. 

Take care and stay safe.

The first 23 new resources for 2020

I've just uploaded the first new resources of 2020:

Primary French: some resources for describing hair and eyes

Primary Spanish:  lots of resources for describing hair and eyes and some other bits and pieces about weather, town, and dates.

My Y4s do description of parts of the body and always find it tricky, so this year I've broken it right down into 4 very small steps:
Step 1: Hair + colour
Step 2: One eye + colour (still singular, but changing el to un)
Step 3: Eyes + colour (plural)
Step 4: Hair and eyes
Step 5 will be the different words for hair colours, for which there are already resources on the site.
You may notice in these resources all the faces with different coloured hair and eyes that I've had to make!


With reference to the Primary Spanish resources, there are so many (well over 800) that the page was becoming very unwieldy and slow to update.  I've split it up into 5 separate pages (Y3, Y4, Y5, Y6 and everything else!) but you'll see the same index at the top of each page so you shouldn't notice a big difference in your browsing experience.  However, if you have schemes of work or a school website etc with links to the page, you may have to edit your links.

25 new resources today

I've just uploaded 25 new resources, most of them to support Mira 1 for Spanish.  There are now two resources for each double-page spread.

25 new resources today

I've just uploaded 25 new resources:

• Some Primary Spanish sport and sport kit resources and some other bits and pieces for numbers, gender and plurals
• Some Primary French things for plurals and adjectival agreement
• Some random PowerPoint selectors for French, Spanish and German, and a random opinion selector which can be used for any language - you can also add your own images to make sentences

Don't forget our photo Advent calendar.  Days 1-10 can already be viewed on this blog, and the rest will be appearing a day at a time until 24th December.  Like our Facebook page and follow us on Twitter to find out about everything that's new!