Saint Valentine in the language classroom

[Jo Rhys-Jones]

Just found some Valentine links for anyone looking for a topical theme this week. I'll start with the animation here which I got from the French site jedessine.com - there are several free to use images there which are always useful for grabbing children's attention!

Ever wondered how to declare your love in Chinese? or Danish? You can find out how at www.fete-enfants.com along with German, Spanish & French. Why not brainstorm your class and challenge them to come up with more for homework?

Monsieur Gorse made a wonderful little animation last year with his class - the Gorseville Valentine's disco which you can download from YouTube to use in class.

Looking for something really sweet and sickly - listen to this 'Je t'aime comptine' from the coin des petits website, with your class and see if you can follow the words. Get them to put their hands to their ears when they hear the word 'oreille' and to their lips when she sings 'secret'. Reckon you could do better eh? Well 'Brigitte's' class did too and here they show the extra verses they made to follow on...

Looking for a literacy link? Well be inspired by this abecedaire from pythounet and maybe your class can do some dictionary work to create one themselves? And if you do write anything - have a go at copying French script by using this sheet from Kidaweb.com.

Only done numbers so far with your class - never mind, here are some heart enclosed numbers to order with younger children. Actually maths activites always lend themselves to language lessons as opportunities for reinforcement and can be easily taught in any language with minimal vocabulary. Numbers always need to be practised so take your pick from some of these valentine worksheets from www.kidzone.ws and teach them in the language of your choice!

Rose-tinted glasses? Maybe your confidence in your own command of your target language is enough for you to hand the class photocopies of these valentine themed specs and get them to follow your instructions to cut them out and make them?

Not so confident - then try this make and do from teteamodeler.com with all the instructions already done for you in French. Or be mean - why not slice up the images and the instructions and get groups to put them back together in order again before they can follow them? Don't like the deisign - there are plenty of others - click here.

Here are some online ideas:

There is an online quiz at http://www.fete-enfants.com/saint-valentin-enfants/saint-valentin-q... which has plenty of cognates so you might be able to tackle as a whole class together or get deep and meaningful - try translating some of the valentine quotations.

Momes.net has also made an online quiz, perhaps groups might want to tackle this one and compete against each other?

Over on Quia, Claudeline Magni has been asking 'De quel genre est l'amour?' - well do you know?

So maybe your class know some colours? Well if nothing else pop this online colouring activity from envolerie.com on the IWB and allow children who can volunteer a colour in the target language to come up & click on it to colour the image on the board...or perhaps you've been practising 'directions' such as left/right, in which case pop this from kutchuk.com onto the IWB and get the class to steer cupid to the centre of the labyrinth.

And finally - a little lesson in French for those who are still struggling with what to say to their sweetheart on February 14th this year from french.about.com you might want to leave it in the staffroom...

[Jayne Jackson]

Great post Jo... and I just love Stuart Gorse's animated videos! Haven't come across the 'Je t'aime' comptine before but now I can't get the tune and lyrics out of my head!

There's an abundance of pictures to colour on the hugo l'escargot site. I often adapt this type of activity to a colour by number format so pupils are required to read colour words and number vocabulary. These can be easily differentiated by using any or all four of the key mathematical operations in conjunction with higher numbers.

In the past I have read the familiar story of 'Guess how much I love you?' to the children and this tied in well with previous learning on The Human Body.

I'm no Spanish expert myself but there's a nice looking, simple worksheet on the TES site. Hope it's useful for someone out there!