Ideas for the classroom

Getting started with ICT

Bringing ICT into Primary Languages doesn't have to be a daunting prospect. It can help to bring our language classes alive, make them visually interesting and stimulating. Teachers already successfully using new advances in technology in other curriculum areas, but who lack confidence in their linguistic abilities, find ICT can provide a stress-free way to get into primary languages teaching.

Information on the internet
The internet provides useful, colourful and real resources. When teaching the theme of 'shopping', the internet provides immediate access to resources in the target language allowing children to discover the names of some of their favourite foods in other languages. Another theme which can be easily incorporated into the daily routine of the primary classroom using the internet is 'weather'. Record the daily weather reports for different countries and use it as a basis for comparisons, and to reinforce datahandling work.

Intercultural Understanding is a core strand in the Key Stage 2 Framework for Languages and the internet provides a wonderful resource for helping to develop children's knowledge of different cultures. Why not let the Web (via www.paris.org) take your class on a virtual trip to Paris. Once there, visit all the main tourist sites and stop for a coffee at a café site before heading for the Musée d'Orsay to have a look at some of its wonderful collection. Children can even send a virtual postcard. From there it is a short hop to Berlin (www.btm.de), Italy (www.enit.it) or Madrid (www.munimadrid.es) where you can do the ‘Madridvirtual’ tour or perhaps go into the Prado Museum (http://museoprado.mcu.es). Having looked at the works of Goya and Velazquéz, maybe you can visit the home of Real Madrid (www.realmadrid.es).

You could treat this as an ongoing project, first planning the trip using a travel site, checking the weather (www.bbc.co.uk/weather/world) and currency rates (www.xe.com), planning the sightseeing and, of course, doing some shopping. In doing so, not only are you developing skills in research and collaborative working, but also in ICT and cultural awareness.

Communication
The internet offers a range of communication technologies for pupils to communicate with peers both at home and abroad, such as text messaging, text chat, notice boards and audio- or video-conferencing.

Simple e-mails, which the children could create by following a model of familiar phrases and sentences, can be exchanged within the class or with other classes. This could progress to e-mail exchanges with children in other countries through the BBC site www.bbc.co.uk/worldclass, for example.

Your class will enjoy being able to read text written by other children who speak the languages they are studying. The texts could be used as a template for their writing or could be downloaded with words deleted to create a writing task.

Ask the children to use the examples above to write their own little message, replacing some of the highlighted words with words of their own. Try www.momes.net for some useful examples.

Technology
Used effectively, interactive whiteboards and other tools can really enhance language sessions in the primary school. The interactive whiteboard can be used for wholeclass teaching and act as a springboard for group, pair or independent work. It helps teachers to build up, save and share instantly accessible banks of exciting, motivating and easily differentiated activities and is especially useful for teachers who visit different classes.

You can choose the images you want from the resources provided with interactive whiteboard software or download pictures from the Web. To help focus the children’s attention, use the floating tools such as the pen and highlighter. The erasing tools will instantly clear annotations, giving you and your class the opportunity to repeat activities as many times as necessary.

Remember that children don't always need to answer orally to show they understand. Invite them to come to the board and draw an arrow to, or a circle around, a particular item. As well as practising language specific to a current topic, this activity reinforces other language, such as instructions.

PowerPoint is also a useful tool for language learning as language learning as you can exploit the use of colour, sounds and animation to help maintain the pace of the lesson. It can be particularly valuable in crosscurricular work and some crosscurricular ICT lesson plans developed by Becta are available from http://forum.ngfl.gov.uk/direct2u.

Featured in Issue 20 of the NACELL bulletin, Spring 2007