Today I have added 7 PowerPoints for Primary French, one of which is for Le Navet Enorme, and 24 new resources for Primary Spanish, most of which are for family, pets and sports.

There are still more resources to come!

If you have any resources that you would like to share with MFL Sunderland, please email them to mflsunderland@gmail.com  I can't pay you or offer lavish prizes, but the MFL teaching community would be very grateful. 

Thank you all for the 56,398 hits in January.  That is a significant improvement on the 52,062 in January 2011.

19th March (a Monday this year) is Día de San José in Spain - St Joseph's Day.  And as Joseph was such an important father, it's also Father's Day - el Día del Padre.

If you fancy marking the day with your students, here are some useful links:

Crafts and colourings for San José

Colourings and cards

More colourings

The history of Día del Padre

Ideas for crafts

Text with ideas of how you could celebrate the day (for more advanced students)

21st February - next Tuesday - is also International Mother Language Day.  Find out more about the day here.  An opportunity to explore languages in their wider context and an excuse to make the case for languages and linguistic and cultural diversity.  

Next Tuesday, 21st February, is Pancake Day here in the UK.  In France it'll be Mardi Gras.  If you'd like some links and activities for Mardi Gras and Carnaval, please have a look at page 4 of this newsletter.  The dates have changed but the information is the same.

You may also be interested in our Chandeleur, Carnaval and Mardi Gras podcast, details of which can be found here.

The next batch of new resources is now live on the website.

First of all, for Primary French, some resources to practise numbers 60 to 100 and also a new song and accompanying resources for saying your age.

Thanks to treasured regular contributor Mary Colwell for the GCSE vocabulary tests 

With very many thanks to the queen of the dominoes Marie Connelly (aka @zaragozalass), the site has some more dominoes and other shape puzzles for Spanish as well as someBlockbusters activities. 

You will find other new resources here (KS3 French) and here (KS3 Spanish).

14th February is well known for being Valentine's Day, but did you know that in much of South America it is also Friendship Day, or el Día de la Amistad?

Last year my KS2 Spanish students found out about Día de la Amistad and we had a go at singing the song "Hay un amigo en mí" (You've got a friend in me) by the Gipsy Kings from Toy Story 3.  Then they made Valentine's and Friendship cards.

This year, our Spanish link primary school in Madrid has asked us to make them something for 14th February which they will be able to display in their school.  The children will be thrilled to see a photo of their work being displayed in another school in another country, so this week they will be making friendship bracelets for their penfriends and attaching them to a small card on which they will write a saying or proverb to do with friends and friendship.

If you'd like to have a go at making the friendship bracelets, you'll find available to download here the instructions, the friendship sayings and a PowerPoint to introduce the day to your class.

Some other links you may find useful:

Valentine's Day around the world

San Valentín para niños - with some good craft ideas

Colouring and crafts - from Primera Escuela

Click here to download:

friends.doc (26 KB)

(download)

Click here to download:

friends.doc (26 KB)

Click here to download:

amor-amistad.ppt (462 KB)

(download)

Click here to download:

amor-amistad.ppt (462 KB)

Click here to download:

pulsera-amistad.pdf (925 KB)

(download)

Click here to download:

pulsera-amistad.pdf (925 KB)

This afternoon I have added the first in a long queue of new resources to the website.

There are some new number worksheets on the Primary French resources page, along with some PowerPoints for numbers and other topics too.

I have also started to add the first of this year's Primary Spanish resources, starting with Family, Pets and Sports, including the first Olympic resources.

Some of these resources will also come in handy for KS3 beginners or SEN.

I will, of course, let you know as soon as I upload more resources.

Clare

If you look at MFL Sunderland today, you will notice that the navigation has changed.  Each language now appears on the button bar at the side of all the pages for easier access to the resources that you want.  The "Resources" page, the one with all four languages and the general resource headings listed, no longer exists.  I hope that once you are used to the changes you will find the site easy to use.

Please email any feedback to mflsunderland@gmail.com or leave a comment on this blog.

Clare

Regular users of MFL Sunderland may have noticed that the site has not been updated since the end of August 2011.  The necessary steps have now been taken to enable the site to be updated regularly and new resources to be added.

The site will shortly have a new(ish) look with slightly different and, I hope, improved navigation.  Be warned that some of your bookmarked and favourite pages may no longer exist after this update.

In the past, updates to the site have been logged on the "What's new?" page of the site.  This page will now be placed in the Archive and this blog will take over its job.  If you add the blog to your Google Reader you will always find out when new resources have been added.

MFL Sunderland relies on donations of resources from users.  I upload all of my own resources, but be aware that I teach KS2 French and Spanish now.  New resources for KS3 and KS4, and anything German or Italian, will have to be donated by other users.  Do you have a resource that you would like to donate to MFL Sunderland?  Just email it to mflsunderland@gmail.com.  All resources will be very gratefully received.

More news soon!

Clare