This week Radio Lingua Schools has been working with 15-16 year old students from across Scotland at the S@S Accelerate programme, part of the Strathclyde University’s Innovative Routes to Learning project. The participating students signed up for a week of language-learning activities and over the past few days have taken part in challenges and debates, learned some Italian, Japanese and Zulu, and have created multilingual radio shows in French, German and Spanish.

The students have learned how to produce podcasts using GarageBand, recording their voices, applying filters and adding jingles and sound effects. They’ve had the opportunity to practise their language skills and increase their confidence in speaking. Their podcasts can be downloaded from the links below.

Group 1 – download mp3

An celebrity chat show featuring interviews with Audrey Tautou in French and Antonio Banderas in Spanish.

Group 2 - download mp3

Comparing the relative benefits of holidaying in Madrid or Paris.

Group 3 - download mp3

Strathclyde University Radio interviews with language students about their experiences working and studying abroad.

Group 4 - download mp3

Agony Aunt Tía Dolores solves callers’ problems in a phone-in radio show.

Well done to all the students who have taken part!

Pupils in P5 at St John’s Primary, South Ayrshire, recently challenged Radio Lingua Schools to support them in a project on the human body. The class had been learning about the parts of the human body including the functions of bones, muscles, organs and the skin, and their class teacher wanted to reinforce their learning with a project which would involve various elements of media.

The first stage was to write a song: using GarageBand loops and a midi keyboard, the children created a rhythm and melody, and started to write the words to the song, working along with Radio Lingua Schools director Mark Pentleton. The pupils then spent a few days creating sponge versions of bodily organs. The class teacher wanted the pupils to understand how the parts of the body fit together, so we came up with an idea which would combine the song with a visual element involving time-lapse photography. The pupils were delighted with the result which exemplifies a real cross-curricular project.

Sing along to the Body Song with the lyrics below:

We’ve been learning about our bodies, all about our skeleton:
Bones and organs, flesh and muscles, let’s all sing our body song.

When you’re walking around or running a race
Your bones help you move all over the place.
You’d be very floppy all of the time
If you didn’t have a strong, straight spine.
Your ankle helps you walk, your wrist helps you write;
Your patella helps you kneel and your jaw helps you bite.
So without your bones you couldn’t do much,
And that’s all you need to know.

Every day of your life you are kept alive:
Without your organs you just couldn’t survive.
It’s complicated, so let us explain:
Your eyes send pictures to your brain.
Your heart pumps your blood, which makes you feel good.
Your intestines help you digest all of your food.
So without your organs you couldn’t do much,
And that’s all you need to know.

If you stretch or you jump, or even dance with your friend,
Your muscles help you move, they help you to bend.
You have 600 muscles in your body machine:
to smile you need to use seventeen.
Last but not least comes your skin,
Protecting everything and keeping everything in!
So your body’s made up of all these things,
And that’s all you need to know.

Pupils in P1 at St Mark’s Primary, North Ayrshire, recently took part in an animation activity in which they painted characters for a Pirate Story and then animated these characters in the iWork application Keynote.

Pupils in P1 at St Mark’s Primary, North Ayrshire, recently took part in an animation activity in which they painted characters for a Pirate Story and then animated these characters in the iWork application Keynote.

Pupils in P1 at St Mark’s Primary, North Ayrshire, recently took part in an animation activity in which they painted characters for a Pirate Story and then animated these characters in the iWork application keynote.

Pupils in P1 at St Mark’s Primary, North Ayrshire, recently took part in an animation activity in which they painted characters for a Pirate Story and then animated these characters in the iWork application keynote.

Pupils in P1 at St Mark’s Primary, North Ayrshire recently took part in an animation activity in which they painted characters for a Pirate Story and then animated these characters in the iWork application Keynote.

This project did not involve stop motion animation: instead we used the animation features in the presentation package Keynote to animate the characters and record voiceovers. This strategy worked extremely well with the children and the results are excellent. The final “animated storybooks” can be viewed using the links below:

• Pirate Jack and the Black Bird
• Pirate Bluebeard finds the Treasure
• Captain Hook and the Treasure
• Captain Bluebeard and Coco the Clown
• Pirate Redbeard and Spongebob

The pupils spent just five to ten minutes a day working with the podcasts and over the course of the project they learned between 30 and 40 words and phrases of basic Mandarin including greetings, saying their name, asking “how are you?” and giving answers to this question, counting up to 10, talking about the fact that they’re learning Chinese and saying that they don’t understand.

At the end of the four week learning period, the classes were challenged to create their own stop motion animation during a one-day Radio Lingua Schools animation workshop, and the results of these workshops are linked to below. The pupils in each school learned the same phrases so that they would ultimately understand the animations created by the other classes.

We’d like to congratulate all of the children who participated in this project: you should all be very proud of your animation work, especially as you were working in a language which you only started learning four weeks ago!

Castlepark Primary School

• Group 1
• Group 2
• Group 3
• Group 4

Glebe Primary School

• Group 1
• Group 2
• Group 3
• Group 4
• Group 5

John Galt Primary School

• Group 1
• Group 2
• Group 3
• Group 4

Loudoun Montgomery Primary School

• Group 1
• Group 2
• Group 3
• Group 4

Earlier this year, the pupils of Castlepark Primary in North Ayrshire spent five week learning Mandarin Chinese through the One Minute Mandarin series from Radio Lingua. They then tested their learning by producing a short animation in a one day workshop with Radio Lingua Schools.