Good Practice

Video Transcript

The teacher explains the instructions of the next exercise in Turkish and then again in English:

Teacher: Our learning objective is to be able to pronounce and recognise the colours. So we will do six colours. Okay. Now we'll start with these flash cards. Could you repeat after me:

The teacher then reads out the names of the colours while holding up flashcards of the colours.

Teacher’s commentary: Turkish, unfortunately, there is nothing in the website that gives us the resources in Turkish language. So therefore we have to do and think and plan our own lesson, so I do everything by myself – PowerPoint and some of the planning – and also last year there used to be a Turkish teacher in this school and she left me some of resources as well and I did on top of that.

The teacher continues to call out the colours, this time holding up flash cards displaying the names of the colours. The pupils repeat after her.

Teacher’s commentary: Teaching modern foreign language in primary school, the age of the children, they’re quite young, and they love languages because it involves lots of games and activities. It doesn't involve too much reading or writing and they love it, they enjoy it, they jump up and down.

Using different coloured objects the pupils are instructed to pass the objects around the classroom and say the name of the colour as they pass the object.

Teacher’s commentary: Using sign languages and using your body language, it makes them think ‘oh, I'm very clever’ because their understanding level goes up if you use sign languages. Using colour codes is another thing that if you use those colours and the sound, different sound, so that you relate it with English – doesn't matter if it is English it can be any language if they speak another language at home – so they can relate those sounds with something else to be able to remember easily. So we use different colours, other language and the sounds – different sounds.

The teacher then calls out a colour in Turkish and the pupils are asked to display the correct colour of flash card.

Finally, pupils are asked to display any colour. The teacher pulls a coloured object out of a bag, and the pupils who have guessed that colour receive points.