All the above collages are created with Autocollage
If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.
Nelson Mandela
Description
Pupils are asked to create their original posters based on the 21 language facts, about the spoken in Europe languages, taken from the official site of European Day of Languages.
After that a PowerPoint presentation, an Issuu booklet and a movie with the use of Ms MovieMaker are created and uploaded on the relative hosts (Skydrive, Issuu and YouTube).
This is an indvidual work activity on creative thinking.
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This activity aims at developing linguistic/verbal and spatial intelligences but can developed and some of the other types of intelligence, such as:
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Interpersonal intelligence: good with communication
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Intrapersonal intelligence: good with analyzing things
Targets
For students to:
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Learn and reflect on the variety of languages that exist in Greece, in Europe and throughout the world.
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Understand the value of learning foreign languages.
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To link the language with the culture of those who speak her.
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To come to a first contact with the technique of making a movie with the stop animation technique.
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To have a first acquaintance with the program Ms Photostory.
For teacher to:
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To bring together students with the linguistic richness of European countries.
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To motivate students to learn foreign languages.
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To bring students into contact with the culture of other European countries.
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To help students develop a sense of European citizenship.
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To bring a fresh approach to everyday teaching reality.
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To motivate students to develop their own original material the with the use of the tools that have been taught .
European Day of Language.
E.D.L.
21 Language Facts
Activity 4
21 Language Facts
Duration 5 hours
1 hour for the poster preparation, 1 hour for the introduction about the European Day of Languages, 1 hour for sticking and colorizing the poster, 1 hour for the stop animation movie creation and 1 hour for a brainstorming about other uses of the stop animation techic and necessary feedback.
Development pathway
Step 1: Spread to students printed on a paper the "21 linguistic facts" that we have downloaded from the relevant European Day of Languages website . Each student reads one fact and follows a discussion about them.
Step 2: Each pupil create a poster relative to one of the facts
Step 3: Take photos of the poster and pupils have to stick them on the pre-decided space while teacher record the process with the camera in order to make the activity movie.
Step 4: A collage from all poster is created with the use of the program Ms Autocollage.
Step 5: A PowerPoint presentation is created with projector's help which have to be uploaded on Skydrive so as to take the embed code for the class website and to Issuu so as to be created a digital booklet with all posters and the Autocollage image.
Step 6: Demostration of the program MovieMaker Live and creation of the movie, with pupils to stick their posters on the pre-decided space, with the help of projector so as pupils to learn the basic function of the program.
Step 7: Upload the film to a site that gives this feature (the youtube in this case) to get the embed code for the class' website.
Step 8 Brainstrorming about other uses of the Ms MovieMaker live for educational uses and feedback about the activity.
Evaluation
Students
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Self evaluation: Personal effort and involvent in the activity .
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Peer evaluation: Evaluation of their classmates' aesthetic result of the poster.
Teacher
A rubric to measure:
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Students involvement.
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Willingness of students to use the Ms MovieMaker to create their movies.
Tools and programs
Photo camera, tripod, printer, Ms PowerPoint , Ms Autocollage, a Skydrive account, an Issuu account, a YouTube account, a PC and a projector (or a smartboard if there is any) .
Language facts
Did you know that...
01. There are between 6000 and 7000 languages in the world - spoken by 7 billion people divided into 189 independent states.
02. There are about 225 indigenous languages in Europe - roughly 3% of the world’s total.
03. Most of the world’s languages are spoken in Asia and Africa.
04. At least half of the world’s population are bilingual or plurilingual, i.e. they speak two or more languages.
05. In their daily lives Europeans increasingly come across foreign languages. There is a need to generate a greater interest in languages among European citizens.
06. Many languages have 50,000 words or more, but individual speakers normally know and use only a fraction of the total vocabulary: in everyday conversation people use the same few hundred words.
07. Languages are constantly in contact with each other and affect each other in many ways: English borrowed words and expressions from many other languages in the past, European languages are now borrowing many words from English.
08. In its first year a baby utters a wide range of vocal sounds; at around one year the first understandable words are uttered; at around three years complex sentences are formed; at five years a child possesses several thousand words.
09. The mother tongue is usually the language one knows best and uses most. But there can be “perfect bilinguals” who speak two languages equally well. Normally, however, bilinguals display no perfect balance between their two languages.
10. Bilingualism brings with it many benefits: it makes the learning of additional languages easier, enhances the thinking process and fosters contacts with other people and their cultures.
11. Bilingualism and plurilingualism entail economic advantages, too: jobs are more easily available to those who speak several languages, and multilingual companies have a better competitive edge than monolingual ones.
12. Languages are related to each other like the members of a family. Most European languages belong to the large Indo-European family.
13. Most European languages belong to three broad groups: Germanic, Romance and Slavic.
14. The Germanic family of languages includes Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, Icelandic, German, Dutch, English and Yiddish, among others.
15. The Romance languages include Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Romanian, among others.
16. The Slavic languages include Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Polish, Czech, Slovak, Slovenian, Serbian, Croatian, Macedonian, Bulgarian and others.
17. Most European languages use the Latin alphabet. Some Slavic languages use the Cyrillic alphabet. Greek, Armenian, Georgian and Yiddish have their own alphabet.
18. Most countries in Europe have a number of regional or minority languages – some of these have obtained official status.
19. The non-European languages most widely used on European territory are Arabic, Chinese and Hindi, each with its own writing system.
20. Russia (148 million inhabitants) has by far the highest number of languages spoken on its territory: from 130 to 200 depending on the criteria.
21. Due to the influx of migrants and refugees, Europe has become largely multilingual. In London alone some 300 languages are spoken (Arabic, Turkish, Kurdish, Berber, Hindi, Punjabi, etc.).
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