The pdf files below are based on the 'Sacs en plastique' story, which is one of the 20 French stories available with a trial log-in on the Grow Story Grow website - http://www.growstorygrow.com
Grow Story Grow is an online language-learning library. There are over a 100 French animated stories in total (with animation and audio), each with interactive games, worksheets etc. The site also has stories in German, Spanish, English, Italian, Polish and Mandarin.
The pdf files below are based on the 'Île des animaux' story, which is one of the 20 French stories available with a trial log-in on the Grow Story Grow website - http://www.growstorygrow.com
Grow Story Grow is an online language-learning library. There are over a 100 French animated stories in total (with animation and audio), each with interactive games, worksheets etc. The site also has stories in German, Spanish, English, Italian, Polish and Mandarin.
I think there is a growing sense that MFL teachers spend too much time introducing new vocabulary. It's the kind of thing MFL teachers have been doing for years: present vocab / choral repetition / individual repetition / selective repetion such as repeat if it's true / what number is it? / is it A or B? / what's missing? / playing simple games in front of the class with the vocab, etc, etc. I'm sure all MFL teachers are familiar with this sort of thing. Lots of singing and dancing at the front of the class & lots of noisy repetition from students.
Vocab mats etc are used by some to avoid the need to spend so much class time presenting new vocab: give them
Loads of pdf worksheets below, all based on one simple Spanish dialogue - ordering an ice-cream.
These were created in the following way.
1. I typed a dialogue into the Dialogues editor in TaskMagic3.
Lots of pdf worksheets below based on a simple Spanish text about food and drink in a cafeteria.
The pdfs can be accessed and printed by anyone.
If you don't want to print them, you can use them in full screen mode with your projector / IWB (if you have one). (You can also copy the text and paste it into Word, for example, if you want to resize components and put more than one exercise on one page.)
There are 9 pdfs based on the text itself:
I recently came across an activity on the mflresources forum (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mflresources/) suggested by Vincent Everett (http://languagesatnorthgate.wordpress.com/), and it got me thinking about exploiting images for language practice using TaskMagic3.
Vincent introduced his activity as "a bit of reading, dictionary work, colouring in and culture". The activity was aimed at getting students involved in a bit of independent learning. As Vincent says:
In the most recent TaskMagic3 update, 5 new exercise formats have been added to the Mix & Gap component of TaskMagic, which now has a total of 23
Text Match is probably the most used component of TaskMagic and can be used in so many different ways...
This series of blog posts - "Text Match exercises - what to match?" - explores some ideas for the kinds of things that teachers can use as the basis for their text matching exercises. Each blog post contains screenshots of - and links to - interactive exercises as well as worksheets which can be viewed online, downloaded, printed etc. (SCROLL DOWN FOR THE WORKSHEETS)
At the bottom of this post you will find a link to download a free standalone TaskMagic program containing a unit of work in Spanish on ordering food and drink in a cafeteria. The level is ideal for older primary school children, but it will also work well with older children working at a fairly low level or in need of revision. There is a fairly wide range of difficulty within the various exercises in the unit.
The download contains 16 TaskMagic3 files, which are accessed via a simple menu screen.
Text Match is probably the most used component of TaskMagic and can be used in so many different ways...
This series of blog posts - "Text Match exercises - what to match?" - explores some ideas for the kinds of things that teachers can use as the basis for their text matching exercises. Each blog post contains screenshots of - and links to - interactive exercises as well as worksheets which can be viewed online, downloaded, printed etc. (SCROLL DOWN FOR THE WORKSHEETS)