Do your children use a small range of the words they’ve been taught? This could be because they go with what they feel confident about, don’t want to challenge themselves or simply because they want to tell the truth rather than use their imagination eg saying ‘I’ve got a cat’ when they’d really love to be able to say ‘I’ve got 2 snakes, 5 spiders and a horse.’ To get around this the teacher could use a Powerpoint, Smart file or dice apps for whole class work and then sets of picture/word cards and paper dice for pair/group work. Another tool I’m beginning to work with is the old-fashioned paper spinner. I found a template on the internet, copied it into Word and then added images and colours. After cutting, spinners can be made in 2 ways: pierce the middle with a pencil and spin the whole spinner or put a paperclip in the middle, put the pencil tip inside it and spin the paperclip as shown here.
I’m going to use them to get my Year 6s to practise the agreement of adjectives – in our case clothes and colours. So 2 spinners per pair – one showing colours, the other with pictures of clothes. Each person spins one, and they take it in turns to say the resulting phrase. At a basic level the response would be ‘un pantalon noir’ extending to full sentence as in ‘Je porte/il porte un pantalon noir.’ Differentiation could be provided by access or not to a help-sheet.
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Partner needs to focus on position of adjective as well as any sound changes that might occur, rewarding one point for each correct item. If the spinners are spun again, answers could be further extended by repeating first sentence then adding a conjunction and the new phrase eg 'je porte une jupe rouge mais elle porte un pull blanc.'
The spinners could also be used to practise writing. Spin as above, count in unison up to 3 and then both write down the phrase on mini whiteboards. Start off by awarding points as above for correct spellings and then go on to a first-to-finish-correctly round.
A simple, low-tech, hands-on way to practise a variety of language at different levels.
NB By coincidence I read on Twitter that Clare Seccombe (@valleseco) talked about spinners as part of her presentation at Ililc5 today.
Update: works well with 2 'spinners' printed side by side on same page ie no need to waste time cutting! Picture below to show you how.
Update: works well with 2 'spinners' printed side by side on same page ie no need to waste time cutting! Picture below to show you how.
