Activity Brief –  

• Introduce 5 Scots words that can easily have actions attributed to them.  

• Discuss with the Children how people particularly younger children can work out what words in a song means from the actions that we do whilst signing them.  

• Use the songs we do in assembly as an example.  

• Watch the video of the lady teaching the nursery children the actions and ask what the children what they see.  

• Use an example song and create some actions for a few lines of the song with the classes so they get an idea of what they are to do. 

• Explain to the children they will go into groups of 3 or 4 and be given a choice of Scottish songs.  

• Their first job building on their use of the DSL is to translate their song as a group.  

• Once they have accurately translated the song they can come up with the actions themselves. The intention will be to be able to teach the younger children within the school the songs and for them to understand what the song actually means.  

• Give children time to work with the P1s & P2s to teach them the songs now. 

How the lesson went –  

• What do you think worked particularly well in your classroom application?  

• The children engaged brilliantly with the musical aspect of the lesson 

• Having video resources such as WEE TV for the groups to use at any point hugely helped with pronunciation. 

• Some pupils created actions for 1 of the choice songs and asked if they could do it for more songs and ones that weren’t even discussed.  

• They were able to translate effectively without even using the need of the Scots Dictionary either down to the information available on Scots Hoose / Wee TV or from simply working with their peers.  

• The children were clearly motivated to do their best because they were going to be the teachers.  

• Is there anything you would do differently if you were to repeat this lesson?   

• I would probably choose some more complex songs for my learners due to their age or possibly see if I could challenge my learners to come up with their own simple Scots song and then ask them to do actions for that. That could simply be by letting them create a parody rather than a song completely up from their imaginations.  

• What are the next steps for your learners?  

• Next steps will be arguably what I said I could have done differently. Ask the children to create their own song or give them a more complex song to create actions for as this will deepen their knowledge of the Scots language. 

• How will you provide further opportunities to practise and reinforce the use and awareness of the Scots language?  

• We made really good connections with the Primary 1 & 2 classes within the school through this lesson as the Older ones had to go and teach them a song. I feel this is something that can be built on both to allow the older pupils to strengthen their understanding of the Scots language and it will begin to introduce Scots to the younger classes for them to develop throughout the years.