Week ending 19th December
To the parents:
We’ve had another interesting week, recovering from the year 11 mocks – both pupils and teachers and we’re all looking forward to the Christmas break!! We’ve continued to add to the blog, and pupils are slowly sending through their comments about other pupils work, and the various categories, so please keep them coming! We’ve added some more Spanish songs, and a new film category. We have a selection of foreign language DVD’s, and there is never enough time to show them in the lessons. Year 7 usually see the marvellous Belleville Rendezvous animation, but some year groups, miss out, as there aren’t enough hours in the day!!! So interested pupils, can borrow a film over the weekend; they are then invited to write a short review/or send in a comment about the film they have chosen.
Unfortunately, the organisers of the Leeds Conference have cancelled this event, due to a general lack of take-up by schools. This is a real blow for Branksome pupils who were really looking forward to it, and we even had a waiting list!! Our apologies to the disappointed pupils. On a brighter note, the school is registered with Global Gateway, and we have been approached by a French school,with a view to setting up pen pal and email links with pupils in years 7 & 8, which should be quite an exciting development. More on this in the New Year ……….
Mrs Roe’s classes
Year 11
The class went over the mock papers and made a valiant attempt at last years Higher Reading paper. We have one piece of coursework left to do which the pupils will start in January. This week we did activities based on household chores. There are now a couple of related games Games part of the blog, so let me know if they’re of any use. Homework is to complete the Voila Assessment booklet – module 1 and work hard to build up your vocabulary using your Voila booklet and linguascope.
Year 10
We did some more work on the past tense including reflexive verbs, and …. oh …. Hayley and Jake did their homework! On Wednesday we studied ‘Déjeuner du matin’ by Jacques Prévert, and saw an excellent rendition of the poem by an Italian company, and then the pupils acted out the poem themselves. Homework is to look at the clip again (on the category Year 10 speaking), practice saying the poem in French and post a comment.
9.2 French
The class spent another session in the IT room and more of their power points are on the blog. Homework is to view at least one power point and to post a comment.
9.4 French
We started some work in the Métro Vert book on films, film genres and opinions, and then in the last lesson watched an episode of The Simpsons – in French!
8.1 French
We were also in the IT room and many of their poems are now also on the blog. Homework is to view one of the poems and to make a comment – ‘a star and a wish’ – something you like about the poem and something that you feel could be improved.
9.2/8.1 Spanish
These lessons took place on the penultimate day of the term so the pupils did some Spanish Christmas activities from Linguascope, and a Spanish Christmas Sudoku while listening/watching the Spanish songs on the blog
¡Feliz Navidad! ¡Feliz Año Nuevo!
8.4
The first lesson of the week was spent completing the work on weather and activities which should have been completed last week. The class worked well, so in the last lesson they saw a Christmas Simpsons episode – in French!
Mount Pleasant and
We saw a power point about Christmas in France Download _Christmas_in_France_information[1] Then the pupils did a Christmas worksheet and coloured in a French Christmas card, while viewing our Pigloo DVD. You can see some of the Pigloo songs on the blog. Joyeux Noël! Bonne Année!
As far as the “European Day of Languages” is concerned, can I put in a word for Esperanto?
Five schools in Britain have introduced this neutral international language, in order to test its propaedeutic values. The pilot project is being monitored by the University of Manchester, and the initial results are very encouraging. These can be seen at http://www.springboard2languages.org/Summary%20of%20evaluation,%20S2L%20Phase%201.pdf
An interesting video can also be seen at http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8837438938991452670 or at http://www.lernu.net
Posted by: Brian Barker | December 18, 2008 at 04:42 PM