National Day of Spain

On Thursday 12th October, the whole school celebrated the National Day of Spain (Fiesta Nacional de España).

This is an annual public holiday in Spain which is celebrated on October 12th. It remembers Christopher Columbus who first set foot in the Americas in 1492.

On this day. Spanish people will have the day off, schools and most businesses are closed. In order to celebrate the day, the King and Prime Minister lead a military parade. This parade includes representatives from Spain’s military units and various vehicles that they use. Usually, the people of Spain will use this day to spend time at home or in the company of friends and family.

Because we all learn Spanish at Christopher Pickering, we decided to celebrate this day with a range of exciting activities. We had a non-uniform day and all came to school wearing the colours of the Spanish flag. We started the day with an assembly with Mrs Porteous and Miss Dale where we learned all about the special holiday and even learned a Spanish song to sing together.

In our classes, we learned different Spanish songs and nursery rhymes and also played some classic classroom games speaking only in Spanish. Some particular favourites were cabezas abajo pulgares arriba (heads down, thumbs up), lotto (bingo), Simon dice (Simon says), salchichas (sausages) and caliente/frio (hot/cold).

We all had lots of fun learning Spanish and can’t wait for our next lesson!

YEAR 3 LA FRUTA!

This term the children in Year 3 have been enjoying learning the Spanish vocabulary for a range of delicious fruits:

Una manzana – an apple
Una fresa – a strawberry
Una pera – a pear
Un albaricoque – an apricot
Una ciruela – a plum

We drew upon our Spanish phonic knowledge recognising that some letters are pronunced differently in the Spanish language:

Una manzana is pronounced as una man’th’ana
Una ciruela is pronounced as una ‘th’iruela
Una naranja is pronunced as una naran’h’a 

We then practiced writing the names of fruits and illustrating our favourites…

We have also  been building upon our Spanish language skills and are now able to recognise whether a noun is masculine or feminine from its article,  including whether the noun is in the singular or plural form!

un=masculine (singular); los=masculine(plural)
una=feminine (singular); las=feminine (plural)

Muy bien Year 3!

 

 

La Ropa (clothes)

In our Spanish lesson this week, year 5 learned how to say what they wear in Spanish. We learned the first eleven words for items of clothing. The children created a dictionary of their new words in Spanish; they then used this dictionary to complete a word search.

The children had amazing resilience!!

Max was the winner as he completed his cross word the fastest. Well done Max!

YEAR 3 MANDARIN WITH LULU AND LING

Today our talented Year 3 children came together to rehearse and perform all of the songs they have learnt with Lulu and Ling during our weekly Mandarin Music lessons.  Over this last term, the children have learnt 6 songs in the wonderful Mandarin Chinese language of which 3 of these we will be performing in our upcoming ‘Chinese Whispers’ concert at the University of Hull’s Middleton Hall next term.

Below are just a few snippets of our wonderful singing and performing talents.

A familiar tune…Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes!

 

We have learnt to sing a song about one of the Chinese Written Characters to describe the strokes it is made up from to the melody of ‘Do-Re-Mi’ from the ‘Sound of Music’…

 

We have also learnt a song about ‘Springtime’ accompanied by actions…

 

We are all super proud of ourselves, and of each other, and cannot wait to perform for our audience at the ‘Chinese Whispers’ concert!  Learning a new language through music has enabled us to absorb and retain a skill which we will be able to draw upon and share with others. Thank-you Lulu and Ling for this wonderful opportunity that you have provided us with!

Spanish – Weather presenters

Over this half term in year 5 we have been building our Spanish vocabulary to be able to become weather presents in Spain and explain to others what the country is like in different places in Spain looking both at regions (North, South, East, West and Central) and actual Spanish places. The children loved becoming presenters and did a fantastic job!

Mandarin singing

This week, for our new music unit, Year 3 have been learning to sing in Mandarin.

We begun by harmonising with notes being played on the keyboard.

Once we had harmonised we learnt some words in Mandarin.

Once we knew these words we put them to the harmonies and added actions.

In our music lesson we also discovered lots of information about the Chinese culture. We were all very excited to find out lots about Chinese New Year. This year is the year of the rabbit. Lulu told us about how her and her family would be celebrating and the types of food they would be eating. We found out that lots of Chinese families eat dumplings as these are made together as a family.

We can’t wait for our next music lesson. 

COMO ESTAS?

Year 4M are thoroughly enjoying learning about Spain and the wonderful Spanish language this term.  We have been practising the alphabet, drawing upon our phonic knowledge when pronouncing some of our newly learnt vocabulary and become masters of greeting each other with a Buenas dias! or an Ola! upon meeting and an Adios! or Hasta Luego! upon leaving.

Today, we have explored the question Como estas? to ask each other how we feel.

Como estas? – How are you?
Estoy bien! – I am good!
Estoy mal! – I am not feeling too good!
Mas o menos! – I am ok!

We then worked with a partner and performed a little role play to demonstrate how proud we are of our linguistic skills.

 

Muy bien chicos!

 

 

Spanish

Year 3 have been learning to say ‘How are you?’ in Spanish.

We got to practise together as a class before we practised with our partners.                    

Speaking in Spanish takes careful listening to the pronunciation before trying to say it clearly to each other.

We had a conversations in pairs and had the chance to ask each other ‘How are you?’ before answering. We can answer with:

Estoy bienI am good

Estoy malI am bad

Más o menosI am okay

We tried really hard to speak clearly when answering questions.

Learning our numbers

In Miss Mead’s class today, we learnt how to say 1-10 in Spanish. We had so much fun using Language Angels to expand our modern foreign language knowledge!

We even performed our Spanish to the rest of the class.