Active Scots vocabulary
Building vocabulary is essential to successful Scots language teaching. Looking up a dictionary can help achieve this and it is occasionally useful to write long lists of words on the whiteboard but children learn more when they use Scots in engaging and active ways.
Innovative ways of teaching Scots vocabulary
Take familiar rhymes, songs and games and try them out in Scots.
Heid, Shooders, Knaps and Taes is a tried and tested Scots activity for introducing new words about the body as is The Hokey Cokey or Shooglie Wooglie.
Items of clothing provide a rich source of Scots vocabulary but copying out a list of words like bunnet, semmit, breeks, troosers, jaiket, bitts, gutties, grauvit, sark, etc can be quite dull.
The Washin Machine
To teach Scots words for clothes, poet Sheena Blackhall sings instead about a familiar household object. Written and performed by Sheena Blackhall.
Download The Washin Machine (5.2 MB)
PDF file: The Washin Machine (14 KB)Sodger, sodger, will ye mairry me?
Lasswade Primary School choir has given a traditional song a Scots make-over.
Download Sodger, sodger (2.6 MB) PDF file: Sodger, sodger (10 KB)Sodger, sodger, will ye mairry me?
Lasswade Primary School choir has given a traditional song a Scots make-over.
Sodger, sodger, will ye mairry me?
Lasswade Primary School choir has given a traditional song a Scots make-over.