Sorry I haven't updated the blog in a little while, everything tends to get a little crazy coming into the new term. I thought I would give you some ideas that I have been taught in a MFL twilight session this week. Both the instructors are teachers themselves and have used the following ideas within their classrooms, to great success.
The first piece of advice they gave for teaching new vocabulary was to teach it aurally first, using pictures for the children to associate the words with, and then to use games to reinforce this vocabulary. They recommended that you leave introducing the written vocabulary until the children can remembers the words just by looking at the pictures. This ensures that children don't get confused by the spelling of the word. This is important in langauges like Spanish where there are different phonic sounds. It also means that the children can make the aural/spelling link once they know the word.
When you do decide to introduce the written vocabulary, it is important to use different colours to represent different genders, especially in langauges like French and German. A popular way of doing this is to use blue for masculine, pink for feminine and green for plural. Children will then associat the colours it's the words which will help them to remember le, la, les or der, die, das.
During this twilight session we were taught lots of different games, many of which you will probably be familiar with as they are so simple to implement but children love them. The first game is one of my favourites- Splat the Board. Displaying the pictures on the board, you have two volunteers from the class who try to 'splat' the correct picture (I use cheap flyswatters for this) when you call out the vocabulary. This is great way to get children to listen carefully to the vocabulary and introduces a small competitive element. You can also choose children from the class to call out the correct vocabulary so they can practise their pronunciation.
Another game is Beat the Teacher. I tried this myself with Year 5 and they absolutely loved it. Using the same pictures, the teachers points to a picture and calls out the vocabulary. If the teacher gets it correct, the class has to repeat. If the teacher gets it wrong, the class has to stay silent. If they stay silent, the class gets a point, if they repeat then the teacher gets a point. Again, this can get very competitive and the children love trying to beat the teacher. They really have to think for this one I nstead of just repeating so it is a good way to find out who is/isn't concentrating, but also who may be finding it tricky to remember the vocabulary.
The next game is a team game and you may need to change this around depending on space available and the amount of children in your class. It is based on Chinese whispers. In their teams, the children need to sit in a line facing the board. The first person in each line gets a word whispered to them by the teacher. This word then gets whispered from one person to another, all the way to the back to the line. The last person in the line must then run up to the board and touch the correct picture. The first team to do so wins a point. Very simple, but effective for checking pronunciation and listening skills.
Another favourite of mine is lotto or bingo. The children can each write down 4-6 words on a whiteboard or scrap paper. The teacher calls out the words. First child to cross off every word on their list and shout lotto/bingo wins. I like to use this as a quick starter at the beginning of lessons to check how much vocabulary the class remembers from the previous week. It is also a way to start getting the children to write down the vocabulary and think about the spellings.
The final game is also a team game and you will need some form of buzzer or bell for each team to use. I like to use the Barnyard Animal Buzzers that are available here:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Learning-Resources-LER3775-Farmyard-Buzzers/dp/B0073U6WZC
For this game, the children will need to have looked at the written spellings of the vocabulary, so this game is useful a few lessons after the vocabulary has initially been introduced. The teacher will point to a picture on the board. As a team the children need to decide what the word is and write down the correct spelling. The whole team needs to agree on the spelling of the word. The first team to write it down and hit their buzzer wins.
This is only a quick overview of some games to help make your langauges lessons fun and reinforce vocabulary. Another useful blog to look at for more ideas, or information of how to assess languages, is Claire Seccombe's 'Changing Phase' blog.
http://changing-phase.blogspot.co.uk
Thanks for reading
S
