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ELP and the young learner p 2English World Worksheets p 4Kids’ Corner p 6

English World Worksheets p 10Let’s play with pronunciation! p 12

Animals in Australia p 14Five minute fillers p 15

May 2002Issue Ten

LANG EdizioniPBM Editori Spacorso Trapani, 16 - 10139 TorinoFax 011 75021510per informazioni: uffici di Milano, Tel 02 74823207E-mail: info@langedizioni.comhttp://www.langedizioni.com

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of LANG Primary the school yearwill be coming to an end.Teachers will have chosen thecourse books for the next schoolyear and will be organising end-of-year assessment for the children. The summer holidays will comeand go and before you know it,the new school year will start!But before closing the classroomdoor behind you for the last timeand heading for warm and sunnyplaces, don’t forget to give the children work to do during the holidays. Encouraging the children to continue practisingthe English language during the holiday break is an importantstep in helping them consolidatethe language that they havelearned. The children can beasked to buy a reader with anaudio cassette and read and dothe exercises. Give them projects to prepare or ask them to purchase one of the specialsummer exercise books that are available. We have just published HOLIDAYFUN for the children who havecompleted the third year in thePrimary school. This new summerbook with accompanying audiocassette follows a family visitingLondon. Therefore, not onlylanguage is practised but thechildren also learn about differentaspects of the capital city. LANGhas also published SUMMER FUNand HELLO SUMMER for children in the Primary school who wantto do work during the summer.

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T hose teachers who have attended the variousConventions for English language teachersaround Italy recently (TESOL – LEND – British

Council Florence), will have found in theprogrammes numerous workshops andpresentations with titles or abstracts that includethe magic word of the moment – Portfolio.

The recent prominence given to the Portfolio is duein part to the culmination of work by groups inTurin and Chieti, amongst others, on thedevelopment of a Portfolio for young learners andthe international launch of the EAQUALS/ALTE(European Association for Quality LanguageServices/Association of Language Testers),European Language Portfolio for learners in thescuola Superiore and adult students.

Building on the original work of the Council ofEurope and carefully following their guidelines, theinnovative research and development studiescarried out by EAQUALS/ALTE have culminated ina Council of Europe approved ELP designed forresponsible mature language learners who, withminimum guidance from teachers, will developand personalise the ELP based on individualprogress while learning foreign languages.

The European Language Portfolio (ELP) and the young learnerTim Priesack

C onceptually, the ELP is essentially aninstrument for the language learner and thisgenerates various differences in the design

of ELPs for the younger learner. The youngerlearner, and here I refer to the Primary aged child,cannot be expected to have acquired the maturityto autonomously keep records of their learningprogress or, in many cases, to be aware of languageattainment and proficiency.

It is very important that ELPs for the young learnerare written in child-friendly language and arestudent-friendly in layout and design. They must befun to use and flexible so that the child can easilymake changes as their knowledge of the languageexpands and as their contacts with the languagemultiply.

A positive start to the introduction of the conceptof the ELP to young learners is to encourage thechildren to create Dossiers of their best workwhich can be proudly shown off to family andfriends. A Dossier of this type needs to includepages where the children can register and list thecontents so that the materials collected can beeasily found. It also needs pages where the childcan express the language that has been learned.The long and complex, (for the very younglearner), lists of ‘can do’ statements included in anadult ELP should be simplified and beunderstandable to the child so that progress inlanguage learning can be checked and examplesgiven.

O n the following page there are someexamples taken from the Dossier given tochildren who are using SUNNY DAYS

which illustrate how the collection of materials in aDossier form can beboth stimulating andchallenging.

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Body & ClothesR E V I S I O N W O R K S H E E T

Write the parts of the body.

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Students supported by AMREF involved in the Watermill Project.‘Asante Sana’ is Swahili for ‘Many thanks’.

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1. I wear these to bed.2. I put these on my feet before my shoes.3. I wear this on my body when it’s cold.4. I put my books in this and wear it on my shoulder.5. I wear this round my neck in the winter.6. I wear these on my ears to look pretty.7. I wear this outside in winter.8. I wear this on my head in the cold.9. I wear these on my hands in the winter.10. I wear this to go swimming.11. I wear these on my eyes to see.12. I wear these on my legs.13. I wear these on my feet when it rains.

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Read the sentences and complete the puzzle

with words for clothes. Findthe secret message!

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SummerSummertime in the Classrtime in the ClassroomoomIt will soon be summer and time for holidays in the sun. The school year and English classes will soon bedrawing to a close. This is an ideal time to review and revise with our young learners some of the lexicalareas vocabulary and topics looked at over the course of the year and also introduce and explore someideas, and activities linked to the summer.In this edition of KIDS’ CORNER, we are offering some fun ideas and activities to revise the lexical areasof weather and clothes. These topics can then in turn be integrated in some fun games and activities thatconcentrate specifically on the theme of summer.

What’What’s the weather like?s the weather like?Activity 1

Kids’CornerJoanna Carter

1. Make flashcards of thesymbols shown here. 2. Hold up the picture of thesnowman and ask the childrenwhat it is and what it’s made of.Ask them when it is possible tomake a snowman and in whichseason. 3. Now hold up the sun and asksimilar questions: When it’ssunny, is it hot or cold? Whichseason do we see more sun inItaly?4. Introduce the other flashcardsand the words, rain, wind, cloud,lightning, rainbow. Stick thesymbols on the board and askthe children to point to thecorrect symbol as you say theword.5. Now draw two big overlappingcircles on the board, one red andone blue. The red one representssummer and the blue one winter.Where they overlap representsboth seasons. Ask the children toput the weather symbols with theright season circle. If they thinkthe symbol belongs to both theyput it in the overlap.

Objective: to revise or introducewords to describe the weatherand seasons.See pictures of weather.

WIND

CLOUD

RAINBOW

SUN

RAIN

LIGHTNING

SNOWMAN

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Activity 2: Teach the children these action rhymes

Put the pictures of the snowman, rain, sun and lightening on the board.Point to the snowman and say ‘It’s snowing’. Wrap your arms aroundyourself and shiver. Say ‘I’m cold’. Get the children to repeat. Repeat theprocess with the other pictures. Say the complete rhyme doing the actions.Repeat two or three more times encouraging the children to join in.

Kids’Corneris a special section dedicated

to very young learners.

Here’s another action rhyme about the weather and a spider.

Activity 3Make copies of the weather symbols for all the children onto white card.Get the children to colour them in and cut them out. Make a small holein the top of each symbol and attach a piece of cotton. Now hang thesymbols on coat hangers or sticks crossed at right angles.

It’s snowing, it’s snowing.I’m cold, I’m cold!It’s raining, it’s raining.I’m wet, I’m wet!It’s sunny, it’s sunny.I’m hot, I’m hot!It’s lightning, it’s lightning.How frightening, how frightening!

(move your hands downwards wiggling your fingers)(wrap your arms round your body)(tap your fingers on your head)

(spread out your fingers and make a big are over your head)(wipe your forehead)

(put your hands to your mouth and make a frightened face)

Incy Wincy spider climbed upthe spout.

Down came the rain andwashed poor Incy out.Out came the sun and dried upall the rain.

Incy Wincy spider climbed upthe spout again.

(spread your hands out like spiders and make them climb upwards)

(move your hands down, wiggling your fingers to represent rain)

(spread out your hands in an arc over your head to represent thesun, then wiggle fingers up to ‘dry’ the rain)

(as first action)

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What arWhat are we wearing today?e we wearing today?

Activity 4

1. Bring to the classroom or, if possible, ask thechildren to bring to the classroom different clothesfor all seasons, such as hat, scarf, shorts, sandalsetc. Try to have as much variety as possible. 2. Hold up the items for the children to see one byone and say or elicit the names. Ask the children ifthey wear the item in the sun, in the snow, in therain, in the cold etc.3. Get the children to form a circle and put all theclothes in the middle. Ask individual children tofetch the item you say. For example, ‘Luca, go andfind a T-shirt.

Activity 5

When the children have practised the vocabulary afew times, tell them they are going to play gamewhere they have to choose the right clothesaccording to the weather. You say for example, ‘Sara,it’s snowing’. The child must go and find somethingsuitable for a snowy day. If it’s suitable the child putsit on, if not he/she takes it back. You can make thisinto a competition – the child with most clothes onwins. If you can’t get hold of real clothes then useflashcards and peg them with real pegs on a washingline (some string strung across the classroom). Thechildren can collect the clothes pictures.

Activity 6

With the real clothes or flashcards, discuss with the children whichare more suitable for summer – swimming costume, shorts, T-shirt,sandals etc.Next make copies of the figure of a child shown here and give themout to the children. Ask them to imagine it’s hot sunny weather andthey are on holiday. Tell them to draw themselves and what they arewearing on their figure and then cut it out. When they have finishedask them to name the clothes the figure is wearing and tell you thecolours. Put the children’s names on the back of the figures and savethem for the holiday activities.

Let’Let’s go on holiday!s go on holiday!These activities can follow on from the previous games and ideas.Clothes and weather vocabulary is recycled but also the theme ofholidays is explored.

Activity 7

This is a colour dictation which is a great way to practise followinginstructions and vocabulary recognition.Make an enlarged copy of the picture postcard you can find on thenext page. Look at the picture as a class and teach the names of theobjects in the picture, e.g. sun, cloud, shorts, T-shirt, ice cream,bucket, spade, beach, shell etc. Say the word and ask the children torepeat. To be sure the children have learnt or recognise the words,say a word and get individuals to point at it in the picture.

Objective: to revise andpractise vocabulary forclothes. These activitiescan follow on from theones before.

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Make copies of the postcard for all the children. Tell them they are going to send thepostcard but first they must make it look pretty. Help them to write the name of a friendin class they want to send the postcard to and then write their own name. Fold it overand stick it together. Tell them you are going to say the colours to put on the postcard.Give them simple instructions, e.g. ‘Where’s the ice cream? Can you see the ice cream?Colour it pink.’ Demonstrate the first two instructions yourself. Point to the object andthen pick up the correct colour pen. When they have finished they ‘send’ the postcard.

Activity 8

Each sentence should be accompanied by an action, e.g. for the first phrasemime walking to the beach.

This activity involves total physical responsefrom the children. They associate actions andmime with simple phrases to retell a story.Get the children to stand in a circle around you.Tell them they are going to act out a story about aday on the beach. Begin to tell the story slowlyand encourage the children to join in with theactions. Then tell the children to join in with thewords. Repeat each phrase several timesrhythmically until the children can follow.Eventually the children should be able to do all theactions and say the story without your help.

Let’s go to the beach!The sun is shining.It’s very hot.I put on my swimming costume.I go to the sea.Brrrrr! It’s cold!I play with my ball.I’m hungry!I eat an ice cream.Mmmmmm, yum, yum!Oh no! It’s raining!Let’s go home.

Activity 9

Make a summer beach collage. Put long strips of coloured backing paper on the wall.Put light blue at the top, dark blue in the middle and yellow at the bottom to representthe sky, sea and sand. Bring into the class old holiday brochures. Get the children tothink about the sort of things you can see and find in the sky (clouds, sun, birds), in thesea (boats, fish, people swimming) and on the beach (umbrellas, shells, buckets andspades). Divide the class into three groups to work on the different areas of the collage.Ask them to find pictures from the brochures suitable for their area of the collage thatthey can cut out and stick on. If they can’t find a picture of what they want, then drawthe outline of this object on the backing paper. Tell the children to tear small pieces fromthe magazines in the appropriate colour for the object and fill in the outline. Tell thechildren they can use the figures of themselves dressed for holidays that they made inone of the previous exercises.

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Let’s Play Furniture Bingo!

R E V I S I O N W O R K S H E E T

Note to the teacher: Make copies of the Bingo board. Get the children to colour the furniture andblank squares red, blue, yellow or green as they wish. Tell them to cut up 16 small pieces of paper. Tellthem they are going to play Bingo like Tombola. Call out colour and furniture or simply the colour, e.g.‘A red chair’, ‘a blue table’, ‘the colour yellow’ etc. If the children have the furniture plus the correctcolour they cover it with a piece of paper. The first to cover a row horizontally or vertically shouts ‘Bingo!’and wins.This game can be played many times.

Cut out the words and stick them on the grid.

armchair

bedtable

toilet

bathtubfridge

cooker

wardrobechair

sofa

bookcaselamp

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1. There’s a black and white ______________. It’s ______________.

2. There’s a grey ______________. It’s ______________.

3. There’s a blue and red ______________. It’s ______________.

4. There’s a brown ______________. It’s ______________.

5. There’s a red and yellow ______________. It’s ______________.

6. There’s a green ______________. It’s ______________.

7. There’s a yellow and brown______________.It’s ______________.

8. There’s a black and orange ______________. It’s ______________.

What’s happening at the Zoo?

R E V I S I O N W O R K S H E E T

Actionsdrinking

flyingrunning

swimmingcrawlingjumpingeating

sleeping

Animalsparrot

crocodiletiger

elephantkangaroo

snakegiraffezebra

Choose an animal and an action to complete the sentences. Then colour the picture.

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Let’s play with pronunciation!

Roberta Calboli, Paola Pasini

Why should we teach children good pronunciation at Primary School?

How can we teach children good pronunciation at Primary School?

Most Italian children who start learning English atPrimary School think they can correctlypronounce numbers from one to ten, even if theyhave not studied English before. In fact English isused so widely in Italian magazines, in computerand media terminology that it seems easy torepeat every English word correctly.Unfortunately, this is not true. For example,number three often becomes tree or free andchildren often confuse thirteen with thirty,fourteen with forty and so on.

How many times have your children had problemswith spelling and pronunciation? Also how manytimes have your children tried to write their ownphonetic translations?Cheese, please! is a new three-book course forPrimary School children. These innovative materialshelp pupils understand and use the simple rules ofEnglish pronunciation. Cheese, please! is also a useful aid for teachers whowish to introduce and practise phonetic symbolsfollowing the International Phonetic Alphabet.

Cheese, please! is a typical English expressioncommonly used when you take photographs ofpeople to make them smile. The aim of the booksis to encourage children to play and have fun withpronunciation. Funny stories, rhymes, songs,colourful pictures, photos and various exercises areused in an innovative way to engage children withpronunciation. When you play, you create a

motivational experience. If you create amotivational experience, you will remember it andyou will learn it forever! Even a very difficultsubject can be made easier if you know how topresent it. A good way of doing this is to involvechildren in English rhythm, sounds and wordsthrough music. Drama is also a valid aid to involvechildren in learning English pronunciation.

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How can we planan interesting pronunciation lesson?

Start by choosing or creating a short story or arhyme that contains many words with the samephonetic sound, for example / a /. Then readaloud the text to the children trying to emphasisethe flashcards words with the / a / sound. Read itagain using flashcards of the key words and let thechildren mime the actions. Before giving thewritten text of the short story or rhyme to thechildren, ask them to guess the “mysterious”sound. Following this step encourage them tounderline with a coloured felt pen the words thatcontain the / a / sound. Help them and check it alltogether.

Now let’s start doing some exercises about sounds and pronunciation.

Listening skill Listening skill Listen and tick.First of all, let your children look at the pictures,then read one by one the ten words below thatcorrespond to the pictures:

■■ dinosaur ■■ fish■■ five ■■ grey■■ baby ■■ tiger■■ eye ■■ pencil-case■■ spider ■■ idea

When children recognise a word with the / a /sound they tick (Y) the right square.

Reading skill Reading skill Read and circle. (The odd-one-out).Read aloud the first group of words:

mice lionhippo fly

then let your children “guess” the word thatdoesn’t have / a / sound (hippo), and circle theodd-one-out.

After that children continue the exercise bythemselves, working in pairs.

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Animals in Australia

Come Along to Australia, a workbook including many worksheetsabout Australia, has just been published. This workbook is given freeto all children who are using COME ALONG Student’s Book 5.

Here is an extract from Come Along to Australia with an exerciseabout animals which can be photocopied and distributed in class.

14A//EPS page 20/21

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Storytelling is taking on a very important role inPrimary teaching as it gives the teacher theopportunity to present a piece of real English.I have just completed a two hour seminar onStorytelling with forty-five teachers in a little townin Tuscany. It was encouraging to learn that someteachers are already using storytelling in theirteaching. One of these teachers told me that shefound the experience highly motivating for thechildren and she herself got great satisfaction out ofit as a teacher, but that on the other hand lots of

time and effort is required to look for the necessarymaterials. She was therefore delighted to discoverthat LANG now offer text books with theopportunity for storytelling and drama in theclassroom. For five minute fillers one and two I have chosen touse Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs which I tookfrom Sunny Days 3 and for idea three I have usedsome titles of stories found in Sunny Days 4 and 5,Sunshine 1 and 2 as well as Mini Club. You can ofcourse choose your own.

11 Aim: verb to be,adjectives, listeningcomprehension, enjoyinga quiz game in English

Materials required: prepare a bigpiece of cardboard with GUESSWHO? written on it or just writeGUESS WHO? on the blackboard.Decide on a story e.g. Snow Whiteand the Seven Dwarfs. The teacher then says thefollowing sentences describing acharacter and points to thequestion/card. The children mustshout out who it is.

She is young.She is beautiful.She is a princess.She is good.She is bad.She is beautiful.She is a stepmother.He is Snow White’s father.He is good.He is married.

The teacher can also say negativesentences.

She isn’t ugly.She isn’t bad.She isn’t the queen. etc.

22 Aim: revising andconsolidating vocabularyalready taught during storytelling

Materials required: none Select a story which:a. the children have already

worked on in classb. is being recounted at the

present timec. the children only know in

Italian (this will make theactivity a little morecomplicated as the childrenmay not know the vocabularyin English)

d. the children are asked to chooseAsk the children in turn to say aword which is connected to thestory. The children are eliminated ifthey repeat a word whichencourages them to listen carefullyand remember. The winner is thechild who says the last word.

33 Aim: encouragingintuition, enriching vocabulary

Materials required: titles of storieson pieces of paper. A small box.

CINDERELLASNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN

DWARFSTHREE LITTLE PIGS

THE GINGERBREAD MANTHE WIZARD OF OZ

GOLDILOCKS AND THE THREE BEARSCHICKEN LITTLE

THE SLEEPING BEAUTYBEAUTY AND THE BEAST

TOM THUMBLITTLE RED RIDING HOODALICE IN WONDERLAND

Divide the class into four or fivegroups depending on the classnumber. Put the titles into the box.Pick out a title, say it, give it to thefirst group. Continue until eachgroup has a title. Then ask eachgroup to tell you the title in Italian.This can be done several times.Alternatively, especially in the 5th

class, ask the children to makenotes about the story they havebeen given and get them to recountit to the rest of the class.

Sarah P. Murdoch

Five minute fillersHere are some ideas for lessons when the children finish the exercises given to them a

little early and the teacher needs to ‘fill’ the time until the end-of-lesson bell rings.

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Contributors to this issue:Roberta CalboliJoanna CarterSarah P. MurdochPaola PasiniTim PriesackPeter Wilson

EditorTim Priesack

Assistant editorBarbara Bacchelli

Layout and GraphicsStudio Aqaba, Milano

IllustrationsSimonetta Baldini

Quality ControllerLuca Federico

Photographic sourcesArchivio Paravia Bruno Mondadori Editori

Printed Grafiche Mek, Milano

Stop Press, latest news from LANG!

School name and address

city CAP

Topics I would like to read about

Course book usedThis is the first issue of LANG Primary I have read Yes ❏ No ❏I would like a LANG agent to visit me at school Yes ❏ No ❏

Name _________________________________________________________________________

home address __________________________________________________________________

city CAP

08645X

Ai sensi della Legge 675/96, con la presente vi autorizzo esplicitamente al trattamento dei miei datipersonali unicamente ai fini amministrativi per l’invio di materiali di Lang Edizioni al mio indirizzo.

Post or fax to: PBM spa - LANG Primary – Corso Trapani 16 – 10139 Torino – Fax 011 75021 510

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Sunny Days

The video cassettes for those teachers who are usingSUNNY DAYS will be distributed by local agents inSeptember, well in time for the start of the school year.Contact your local LANG agent for your free copies.

LANG school year diary 2002-2003

We are preparing a new school year diary for 2002 –2003 and would appreciate any comments andsuggestions from those teachers who used the LANGdiary this year. The diary will be distributed by our agents as from thebeginning of September.

Reward stickers

In the March issue of LANG Primary we included asheet of Reward or Encouragement stickers. These haveproved to be very popular with teachers. CHILDREN IN ACTION, the new resource book forteachers, includes a black and white version of thestickers that can be photocopied and given to thechildren to colour.

If you would like to register to receive future editions ofLANG Primary, please use the form below. If you have already sent in your details, only use thisform when you need to change/amend your address.

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