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>Animals in many languages

Animals in many languages

Summary

The idea is to share any resource from your own classroom which might help a teacher in another country to teach your language in their classroom. This project is about animals and could involve display, stories, songs, plays, or children's work. I have been asked for resources in English to support teaching about animals and have taken some photos of display in our classroom. We would welcome other contributions on the subject of animals in English, but equally would love to learn as many other languages as possible. In England primary school children often learn European Languages, French, German, Spanish and Italian, but also may learn a language from any other part of the world as well. Please join our project and share with us the names of animals in your language and any work that you may be doing about animals.

Age range
4 - 14
Language
English
Owner
Judy Skelton
Project stage
In progress
Last update
13 years ago
Rating
5 stars
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THE  IMPORTANCE OF BILINGUAL EDUCATION

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Animal resources in Croatian

Shared resources for language learning

A PROJECT IDEA: NAMES OF THE SOUNDS PRODUCED BY ANIMALS IN DIFFERENT LANGUAGES

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Animal Resources in English

Any resources to help teach about animals in English welcome.

Resources created in school

Resources created for the project using the children's work and things from our classrooms.

Old MacDonald is a popular song in England. It contains both animal names and animal noises. We recorded this song as part of a Joint Curriculum Project, where we chose songs to help our partner school learn English and they chose songs to help us to learn French.

In the folder, there is a recording, the words in a word document and the words on a powerpoint presentation.

 

Children in class 1 are 4,5 and 6 years old. This is work that they have been doing about pets which I have photographed and used in a powerpoint.

Our youngest children also made little books about animals and did some work about animals and their young.  I have photographed this work as a photo gallery.

Remember you can either look at all the pictures in a gallery or you can change the view and see individual pictures much bigger.

Cultural Links to do with animals

animals in books, songs, traditions etc

Some of the most famous animal characters in children's literature in English are those of Beatrix Potter.  An interesting way to meet animals in English might be through these characters.  The books are quite difficult text wise although written for young children but the illustrations are lovely.  You could look for the characters on the internet : Peter Rabbit, Benjamin Bunny, Jemima Puddleduck, Jeremy Fisher, Mrs Tiggywinkle...

There is a film of the life of Beatrix Potter : Miss Potter which teachers might enjoy and also lots of animations and readings of the stories on youtube.

Looking at the pictures from India and the animal names reminded me of the stories of Rudyard Kipling who was born in India and whose  stories have been very influential in English children's literature. 

The Jungle Book is undoubtedly the best known because of the Walt Disney film.  The names are also borrowed to be used by group leaders in the Cub Scout movement in England. 

The Just So Stories are also popular and enduring.

As Kipling's work is out of copyright, his text and illustrations can be downloaded.  There are also audio books available as free downloads.

I will add some weblinks.

Life and works : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudyard_Kipling

 

Jungle Book - derivation of all names : http://www.kipling.org.uk/rg_junglebook_names.htm

 

Pictures from The Jungle Book film to colour : http://www.coloring-book.info/coloring/coloring_page.php?id=34

 

Just So stories : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_So_Stories

Text of stories : http://www.boop.org/jan/justso/

Download audiohttp://www.gutenberg.org/etext/2781. http://www.freeclassicaudiobooks.com/audiobooks/JustSo/mp3/

(when stories opened individually also original illustrations)

 

Resource suggestions from the web etc.

As teachers we can easily suggest links which will be of use to teachers in other countries.

These links offer resources to use alongside the popular stories Brown Bear, Brown Bear what do you see and Polar Bear, Polar Bear what do you hear.

The same website offers lovely ideas for paper bag puppets.

A  traditional song in English about animals is 'There was an old woman who swallowed a fly'.  The words and music to this song can be found on the following website.

This is a good youtube version of the same song with good sound and clear pictures.  If you can't watch youtube in school, then a useful site for downloading videos is www.keepvid.com.

A traditional story which is cumulative and repetitive and which includes animals is, This is the House that Jack built.  This youtube version is based on a story book.

This site gives the text and origins of traditional rhymes in English.  This is the page for 'The house that Jack built'.

I came across this ebook which might also be useful for teaching animal names, this time with an  American accent.

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Ressources pour enseigner les animaux en français

Est-ce que vous avez des conseils à nous donner pour nous aider avec nos cours de français? Pouvez-vous nous faire part du travail de vos élèves, nous montrer ce que vous lisez comme poèmes ou histoires, et nous parler des animaux qui font partie du patrimoine culturel français? Can you give us some help and advice to help us teaching French? We would like you to share with us the work that you are doing with your pupils, to show us which poems, stories and songs you use, and to share with us the animals which are part of French culture.

Ecrire des histoires d'animaux en français Writing animal stories in any language.

Les élèves écrivent des histoires d'animaux en français en s'inspirant de l'album d'Eric Carle Brown bear, brown bear, what do you see ? que les enfants ont étudié en Anglais. Les histoires produites par deux, seront illustrées. L'idéal serait d'y ajouter une bande son. Des histoires semblables peuvent voir le jour dans d'autres langues. Children are writing stories in French, inspired by Eric Carle's book, Brown bear, brown bear what do you see ? They're working in pairs and they'll illustrate their stories. Ideally, we can add a recording. This could be done in any language and use in a class as a resource for teaching.

Constance and Souheyla from the École Saint Paul in class CE1 have described the animals you might find on a farm in French for us.

Constance et Souheyla from CE1 École Saint Paul have described the animals you might find on a farm in French.

Pascale Noailly from Saint Etienne made this lovely resource. Her pupils chose the pictures and recorded the sounds.

 

As part of the same project, children have illustrated and recorded the words of some traditional songs about animals.

A lovely story book in French from Saint-Etienne : Le beau chien dodu.

A French website where you can hear the animals and learn the names of the noises they make.
On the following website, uou can find many rhymes and songs about animals.

Ayant lu avec plaisir les fables d'Aesop, j'ai cherché les fables de La Fontaine online, et j'espère que ce lien vous plaira.

Having enjoyed reading Aesops fables in English, I thought it would be good to find a link to the Fables of LaFontaine as well.

Encore un lien pour les fables de La Fontaine.  Cette fois à des films muets fait par misterallenpoe.

Link to powerpoints of the fables of La Fontaine, made by misterallenpoe.

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German resources

Animals are drawn and labelled in English and German by the 9 year old students of the German Club of Birla High School, Junior Section, Kolkata. In this project the students across the world will know what the animals are called in German.

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Spanish Resources

We would love to learn about animals in Spanish. Can you help us?

I've done some work on animals with my eTwinning partner in Spain.  We (the teachers) made a questionaire about animals using the "forms" menu in Microsoft Word, with multiple choice answers  We had an English version and a Spanish version, but they were both identical apart from the language used.  Each child in our 2 schools completed a questionaire in their own language about their own pet, and sent it to their partner in the other country.  Although they probably couldn't read all the words in the partner's language, because they had a version of the blank form in their own language, they could work out what their partner had said.  The idea was that they used the information in the questionaire to try to guess what their partner's pet was.  They sent their guess back to their partner, and if they were correct, their partner sent them a photo of their pet.  If they were wrong their partner sent another clue and they guessed again. 

I originally used this idea about 4 years ago when my class had just started learning Spanish and it worked really well.  Now my children are much better Spanish speakers, but I'm planning to use a similar format within the class for them to describe any animal they like to other members of the class.  This time I've changed some of the questions to use more of the vocabulary they already know, like "Where does it live?" By keeping the questionaire, and having it available in 2 languages, I'm hoping this will support them when they try to talk about animals in Spanish.

I've attached the 2 versions of the questionaire, both in English and Spanish.  If you want to use them, the easiest thing to do is to save 1 master copy of each and then for each child to save a copy under their own name when they've filled it in.

If you want to alter the questions, that's easy to do, too.  Just right click on the menu bar section of an open word document, open the forms menu, and then play about with adding questions and answers.

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Italian Resources

Please share with us any songs, stories, activities or websites which we could use to teach children about animals in Italian.

Joel Josephson has a lovely Italian nursery rhyme 'Stella Stellina' on his project Languages from the Cradle (The Lullabies of Europe).  All the animals and their young are going to sleep in the stable.

http://www.elanguages.org/view_pagecontent.php?resourceid=43909;id=r43909

 

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Resources from India

Thank you to Namita for offering to contribute pictures and stories from India.

folder iconResources to introduce animals' names in our language Hindi JNV Bhiwani

objects: 3
Resources about animals
Windows media video Duck & Kangaroo poem JNV Bhiwani.wmv 2.3 MB
Microsoft Word file Animals' Chart JNV Bhiwani.docx 631.9 kB
Windows media video Introduction of different animals in our language. JNV Bhiwani.wmv 3.6 MB

This book can actually be read onscreen.  I have been enjoying the fables.  What a good idea.  Click the link below to read about Aesop and then for the text of his famous fables.

Aesop's Fables


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Digital Publishing with YUDU

Please add your language as a new project stage

We would like to be able to teach as many languages as possible

Hi Judy,

Your project is really going popular on eLanguages. I am adding contents from my project "Create a Sanskrit- English- French Dictionary" which has the categories as follows: Animals,Time, Picture description and word dictionary. 

Children are very enthusiastic about doing this project. They are coming up with their ideas. One of such ideas was compiling similar stories, as that of "The ant and the Cricket"in English and "La cigale et La Fourmi" by Jean de la Fontaine in French, different proverbs, such as "Loin des yeux Loin du coeur" in French and "Out of sight out of mind" in English. Not only this , they were also pointing out some words in English and French with just an alphabet difference, such as Mariage and marriage, Lettre and letter.

Pratima Chawla

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messages: 3 | pending: 0

Discussion and comments about the various resources

If you have used a resource or have advice or comments to share, then please do use this discussion area.

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animal questionnaires
15 years ago

I have just downloaded these and think they look really useful.  They have standard questions with a clever drop down menu to select the relevant description for the animal chosen.

Could Jane tell us how she created these?

Would anyone be able to make templates in other languages?

A big thank you to Jane.

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picture galleries
15 years ago

I have just revisited the lovely pictures from India in 2 languages.  I love this idea.  I played it as a slide show and thought what a lovely way it is of introducing or revising vocabulary in a completely new context by viewing the drawings of children from other countries and at the same time being able to appreciate the cultural differences in choices of animals and how they are perceived from one country to the next.

Would other teachers be interested in making picture galleries in 2 languages with their students?

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animal stories based on Brown Bear, Brown Bear
15 years ago

A great idea from Pascale Noailly.  It would be lovely to share stories based on the original but in other languages.

Perhaps we could start a new project for this idea?

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messages: 1 | pending: 0

Continuing to discuss resources

An area where we can talk about the resources posted and add ideas.

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Animal dictionary from Romania
13 years ago
Many thanks for this. It is a lovely idea. I look forward to showing my pupils.

This project is part of a group of projects for Language Teachers. The idea is to support each other by sharing resources from our own classrooms to help teachers around the world who are teaching our language. It is a sub project of Sharing Resources for Teaching Languages.

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