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Mark Purves's Blog (52)

Bastille Day July 14 Team quiz with a Newsticker Scrolling Text

I knicked the powerpoint for this from the MFL resources forum but have no idea who the original contributor was so if it was you, THANKS!

Here is the link to the zip file http://www.4shared.com/file/_aQbbah2/BASTILLE_DAY.html

Contains full backing track of the Marseillaise and also a clip of just the first 2 lines

I did this yesterday with a yr 3…

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Added by Mark Purves on July 15, 2011 at 7:56 — No Comments

PGCE Primary Teacher with MFL specialism looking for a job

Hi good people

I'm posting this on the forum on behalf of a colleague on Twitter, Vicky Pollitt. She has re-trained as a Primary teacher with an MfL specialism having come from an impressive project management background in some top UK companies.

I know it's late in the day and posts have largely been filled but if you know of any posts going or can simply save this email for future reference, I would be very grateful.

Contact me via souffler.uk(at)gmail.com and… Continue

Added by Mark Purves on July 15, 2011 at 4:59 — No Comments

Many pupils, one voice - using singing leading techniques to empower your lessons

Copied from my Souffler blog site

I'm writing this post as a follow up to the previous post about Eric Whitacre's virtual choir. In that, I said that I have borrowed the concept behind all collective singing and am learning to apply it to language learning, that successful blending of many voices into one sound is incredibly powerful and emotionally rich.

This is my first…

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Added by Mark Purves on May 17, 2011 at 7:52 — 3 Comments

April 2nd 2011 - Day 1 in my Mission to rescue Language teachers and Pupils from RUBBISH songs!

Originally posted on my Souffler blog. What do you think about the songs that come with certain teaching packs? Where are the goodies? (In spite of my rant, there are some really good ones) What are the stinkers!

Right, that's it! I'm today announcing…

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Added by Mark Purves on April 2, 2011 at 19:05 — 1 Comment

Message from the heart for anyone who woke up today sans job

Hi everyone

If you know someone who might need a bit of encouragement today faute d'emploi please pass on

http://souffler.typepad.com/home/2011/04/a-pointer-to-the-future-of-languages-in-the-uk.html

Mark

http://souffler.typepad.com

Added by Mark Purves on April 1, 2011 at 19:13 — 1 Comment

Birmingham Primary Languages Teachmeet

Just thought I would mention this upcoming event for anyone in this area.

Tuesday 5th April 2011 Robin Hood Primary School, Birmingham 4.30 pm - 6.30 pm

Teachmeets, in case you are unaware, are…

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Added by Mark Purves on March 24, 2011 at 9:00 — 6 Comments

The future of Primary Languages & Sunderland Primary MFL Conference

I went to speak at the Sunderland Primary Languages conference yesterday and I put up a blog post here about yesterday's event with links to the section of the Sunderland website with the training…

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Added by Mark Purves on March 18, 2011 at 11:23 — No Comments

Song and game idea to teach Sports and likes/dislikes in any language

Here is a simple idea to teach sports and likes dislikes to the backing track of Manu Chao's Me gustas tu. I've knicked a spanish song shamelessly for French! You could use it though for any language and even for a different topic.

http://souffler.typepad.com/home/2011/02/song-for-sports-and-opinons-a-game-idea.html

Good luck everyone as you get back to work!

Mark

Added by Mark Purves on February 27, 2011 at 20:51 — No Comments

How to write your own songs for language teaching

Hi

I posted a new article on this here. It was the fruit of a 4 week Sing Up funded project to assess the impact of singing on language learning. It was only a short time so hard conclusions can't be drawn but I thought the feedback from the pupils at the end of this article was very telling, especially as their comments were completely unprompted and they had no warning they were going to be interviewed.…

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Added by Mark Purves on February 26, 2011 at 11:44 — No Comments

Using FL songs to help improve pronunciation

Hi Everyone.

I don't get back to this wonderful site as often as I should but as I started out here when blogging et al was a very novel thing to do, so kind of feel it's a bit like home!

Anyway, just thought I would share a couple of posts from my own blog that have been drawing a lot of traffic and want to share in particular with primary MFL teachers.

If you know anything about my pet topic on the souffler blog site, I am passionate about using music to help…

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Added by Mark Purves on February 23, 2011 at 14:30 — No Comments

French Christmas Carol

Hi

I was asked to help out with my school choir singing an African lullaby that came into school via the sing Up magazine, Soualle.

I thought the simple harmonies could lend themselves very well to a a simple French carol, and so wrote my own lyrics.

You can follow the link to my blog to hear all the sound files but i will also try and add a copy to this blog…

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Added by Mark Purves on November 21, 2010 at 11:23 — 1 Comment

Nov 5th Powerpoint secret messages

As we approach the time of year where we celebrate conspiracy and plots, thought it would be fun to invent some secret messages of my own using powerpoints motion paths.

This blog post provides you with an example ppt to download and a video explanation of how to create your own messages.

They take a bit of time to set up, but are really good fun to use…

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Added by Mark Purves on October 20, 2010 at 6:18 — 2 Comments

Powerpoint Word Tennis

This is a Powerpoint file to play the game of Word Tennis. You can use it practise any vocab in any language. You can use it to practise questions on any topic in any subject.

Download it from here

Hope its useful, Mark

It contains 15 second timers and tennis rackets hitting balls…

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Added by Mark Purves on October 17, 2010 at 20:59 — 3 Comments

Backing Tracks to introduce or practise language

I put a post up on my blog site about this that you can find here http://bit.ly/bS9zC5

Added by Mark Purves on October 1, 2010 at 23:25 — 1 Comment

Create your own Mfl stories

I know a lot of colleagues at conferences, teachmeets etc. have profiled Storybird but I have only just got around to trying it out.

As a newby grand-dad, this is going to give me MASSIVE grand-dad credibility! My first French Story written for my grand-daughter Pippa who is, of course, the most gorgeous creature on God's earth.

Mark

Added by Mark Purves on June 26, 2010 at 6:52 — 3 Comments

Using song clips as a backing track for language work

Hi

I have put a post about this here

and there are links to enable you to download the files for free.

I used it today with a yr 6 class who picked it up very quickly.

I would just like to add my own congrats to all those on the CILT primary Mfl conference team. As someone working with SingUp and Mfl I was thrilled to see the emphasis on language… Continue

Added by Mark Purves on March 17, 2010 at 0:06 — No Comments

I love this song! It's very simples ...

Hi everyone

I put a post here about cross-curricular links with Music departments more related to Secondary but the song is great and wanted to share it with you. The link the Canadian Site mentioned might be new to you as well and contains a lot of great resources.

amusez-vous…

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Added by Mark Purves on March 2, 2010 at 7:51 — 1 Comment

Singing training and MfL

Hi everyone. Just posting something which I have found to be really useful. I have attended quite a few training sessions recently, all provided for free and by top class singing trainers from Sing Up. For anyone who doesn't know they have been working widely with all LEAs in Primary Ed to promote singing.

Their website has a lot of free materials at http://www.singup.org/ some of which are FL songs with full music to download, teaching tips etc.… Continue

Added by Mark Purves on February 11, 2010 at 17:32 — 9 Comments

French Christmas Cultural info quiz

I was trying to put together something on this and courtesy of the Sunderland MFL Christmas resources site put together this Smartboard Notebook file. It includes a Connect4 game to play with the pupils in teams as they try and memorise what they have learnt as they read the info on the screens.

You can borrow some of the ideas used here and adapt them for a lot of other… Continue

Added by Mark Purves on December 4, 2009 at 7:00 — 2 Comments

Creating puzzles and jigsaws

Hi

I have put up a post to a free site called Jigsawplanet that enables you to create some free puzzles on any image file, bit picture or text, you have. Here are two examples, one of an image, the other of a simple text. You can make the puzzles easier than this. The site allows you to choose the level of difficulty.

Go here…