Sanako UK Primary Languages Transition Project
Hopefully these pictures bring back happy memories for you! Sanako Connect is being used to facilitate an exciting Primary Cluster fairy-tale languages project in South Wales, in conjunction with Jill Snook, Head of International Languages at Monmouth Comprehensive School. Languages are now compulsory in Primary Schools in Wales as part of the Curriculum for Wales. There are no fixed levels of attainment however the expected outcome is a measure of progression for individuals. The key message is immersion so students can see patterns, connections, structures in language. The four ‘what matters statements’ are:
- Languages connects us
- Understanding languages is key to understanding the world
- Expressing ourselves is key to communication
- Literature fires imagination
Jill Snook and the Primary Languages Hub at Monmouth Comprehensive School
In this fairy-tale project, children will enjoy a series of lessons that use some of the iLanguages Primary Scheme of work materials (www.ilanguages.co.uk). Schools involved in the project will chose to study either Cinderella in German (Aschenputtel), written originally in German by the Brothers Grimm.
Alternatively, Little Red Riding Hood in French (Le Petit Chaperon Rouge) written originally in French by Charles Perrault. The text studied, written in a very simplified form by co-authors of the iLanguages Scheme, Wendy Adeniji and Juliet Park. It is told in the form of a fun, interactive story told with attractive illustrations and with a native speaker voiceovers. You can watch a video of the two stories here (Aschenputtel) and (Le Petit Chaperon Rouge).
The children will learn the story through Pie Corbett’s well-known Talk4Writing style activities, they will sing songs relating to it, such as Jacques a dit to the tune of Match of the day.
They will learn the meaning of key vocabulary from the story and see patterns and connections with English (words in French such as décider, arriver, grand-mère and dangereux are examples of the 40% of cognates or words that are identical or very similar to English) and in German, words such as Glas-shuhe, Mitternacht, Prinz and waschen.
Children will also learn about the history of the story, to develop their cultural capital. Teachers are supported to deliver it, as there are translations of all activities, native speaker voiceovers for all the PowerPoints, including vocabulary, grammar and phonics teaching, songs, stories and games, as well as comprehensive lesson plans.
A focus on phonics to support accurate pronunciation
An important part of the project is that children will eventually act out the stories, and take the parts of key characters. Accurate pronunciation is therefore vital, and children learn some key phonemes using the Planètes Phoniques (or Phonetikplaneten in German) methodology from SpeakEasi www.speakeasi.net
Using this approach, children do some micro-listening activities focusing listening out for the focus phoneme (such as ie and ei in German and ch and r in French), they learn a tongue twister which includes lots of examples of the focus phoneme and listen to some new words and apply the rules of phonics to them and have a go at pronouncing them. You can see an example below
primary languages project planete phonique r.pdf
The brilliant Sanako Connect software actually has a ‘Pronounce’ feature, which gives learners feedback on a five-star rating on the quality of their pronunciation and even underlines any words they’ve mispronounced, so they can have another go.
As well as whole class teacher presentation and practice, children can practise these using activities created in Sanako Connect. Children can practise them either at school or at home on any device (phone, tablet, computer) as they are all web-based and totally GDPR compliant, children just need a URL or QR code to join the lesson, and don’t need to login in with a username and password. In this way they will be able to improve their pronunciation independently.
If you would like to learn more about this exciting Primary Language Project please just contact us. Alternatively, due to the unique and advanced way Sanako Connect operates, and you would like to try it as a student or support your child's language journey at home, please just get in touch.