World Book Day - Thursday 5th March 2009

[Jo Rhys-Jones]

Why not celebrate world book day by reading a story to your French/German/Spanish class this week?Over on our wikispace there are three links to suggested storybooks for French, German and Spanish where everyone is invited to add details of a book they would like to recommend.

You might want to dip in and out of them (a bit like the Catherine Cheater does) or exploit the texts of the stories further, just as an English (or Literacy) teacher would, possibly using the book as the basis for a half term's scheme of work. Alternatively why not use a text to introduce vocabulary or linguistic structures?

Here are some examples & links to start poeple off and any ideas that anyone can add would be really appreciated!

Camille fait trop peur - Jacques Duquennoy - This is a very simple Hallowe'en theme, but good for introducing the structure 'Je suis...' . To make it easier for my class I scanned the book into the pc and put it in a powerpoint so the whole class can view it.

If you are using the Catherine Cheater sow & have purchased the entire set of books for any particular year group, it might be worth contacting your LA as several have now got licences to reproduce the books on powerpoint with embedded soundfiles of someone reading the books aloud page by page - a huge help for nervous classteachers. The proviso is that the ppts can not be shared outside the institution which has purchased the entire bookpack.

La chenille qui fait des trous - Eric carle - as well as practising / introducing Days of the Week, Numbers to 5, Food (notice the divide between masculine and feminine nouns on the centre pages) you also get 'il a mangé' and the rudiments of the Life cycle of a caterpillar - nice little cross-curricular link. It is really very KS1 / early Yr 3 in feel though.

For more ideas to exploit storybooks try:
Va t'en grand monstre vert (or the Spanish version) suggested by http://foreignlanguagefun.com

Ecole Herrin has lots of ideas on how to exploit books for a half term of work, with worksheets and printouts all done for you. Books include Roule Galette, Bon Appetit M. Lapin, Patou la mele tout, Toutes les couleurs, La chenille qui fait des trous, Margot l'escargot, L'Afirique de Zigomar and lots more..(regularly updated)

Here on Talkabout, Alison has shared her popular lessons for using Rainbow fish & Handa's surprise with KS1.

Websites with online stories include:
http://www.racontine.com/
Continette French Little Red Riding Hood story with simple animations to dress her, pack her basket etc..

Northumberland Grid for Learning has some lovely online animated tales in several languages.

For Spanish try www.storyplace.org

and for German www.bayswaterps