Some gems from ISMLA

Feb 28, 2018Feb 28, 2018 / dlh202 / 1 Comment

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I was recently invited to lead a seminar titled “Blogging for Languages” at the ISMLA conference in Cambridge. I had a great time, met some great professionals and learnt a lot over the course of the day. The following are some gems that I picked up from Jocelyn Wyburd, Wendy Ayres-Bennett and Jess Lund from the Michaela School

Jocelyn Wyburd (@jwyburd)

Jocelyn was the first speaker at the conference. She is the Director of Languages Centre at the University of Cambridge. She spoke about how the landscape in the United Kingdom currently looks for languages and language learning. There are some points from her talk that are particularly relevant and encouraging for us as MFL teachers.

Jocelyn mentioned referred to an article in the Washington Post, shared on the Transparent Language Blog that stated most important qualities required to work at Google were being a “good coach, listening, empathy, problem solver, communicating well, insights into others and critical thinker.” STEM came last on this list. Jocelyn’s view was that a language develops all of those qualities that Google look for.

The British Academy wrote in 2017 that half of global leaders have a arts/hums/social science degree, along with 58% of FTSE 100 CEOs and 62% of UK election candidates. This goes against what might be expected given the current push for STEM subjects. Jocelyn then referred to research into languages that the UK needs post-Brexit. A summary of that research can be found here courtesy of the British Council. There is also a report on Languages for the Future which was cited in Jocelyn’s talk.

Jocelyn’s spoke strongly about how the UK needs more MFL to remain globally competitive, how the CBI (confederation of British industry sees languages as a “valuable asset to businesses” and how the Financial Times when reviewing the book Languages after Brexit spoke of a need for greater “cultural agility”. Again this cultural agility is something MFL teachers are developing in our lessons, departments, displays and trips.

Lastly, she mentioned 300 different languages are spoken in London. I would imagine this situation is slightly reduced but similar in other large cities. The MET benefit greatly from police officers with language skills. She also highlighted the MOD, GCHQ and armed forces as recruiters who see the value of languages.

I have always been of the view that languages are important and develop a variety of skills. Jocelyn’s talk has reminded me of how much unseen development occurs in our students, the value of languages to employers and given me some really up-to-date stats, facts and information to share with my year 9s.

Wendy Ayres-Bennett – Multilingualism: Empowering Individuals, Transforming Societies

Wendy spoke about the MEITs programme (Multilingualism: Empowering Individuals, Transforming Societies). Here are some nuggets of information taken from her seminar:

1 in 5 UK school children have a language other than English as their home language.

90% of UK primaries do French but transition is variable and often poor in state sector.

Cognitive Benefits of learning a language were demonstrated in a study in Canada. The study involved 230 dementia patients. 50% were bilingual. The bilinguals developed dementia 4 years later. This study was then replicated in India in 2016. Another study showed that bilinguals recovered twice as well from strokes. Greater detail can be found in Wendy’s blog here.

Jess Lund – The Michaela Way

The Michaela School has divided opinion. The Guardian called it Britain’s Strictest School”, Tom Bennett writes “I left, as I have before, impressed. The kids are happy, and totally loyal to the school. Parents for the most part love it.” From what I have seen, they have a strong belief in their approach and a desire for their students to be the very best they can be.

Jess’ presentation was delivered at the kind of pace that makes speed cameras flash. It was informative, humourous and engaging. What came across was her love of language teaching, her passion for her pupils and her belief in the Michaela Way.

The biggest take-away for me personally was the acronym: “PROFS” (past, reasons, opinions, future, subjunctive). How had I not come across this before?! I introduced my year 9s to it on the Monday after the conference and they are getting the idea that PROFS = better work and higher marks.

Other ideas I took were:

Dotting silent letters in French to improve security with pronunciation. Unfortunately, my French class did tests in the lesson before half-term so I have not had an opportunity to try it out!
Constant phonics and over-pronunciation. I do fairly regular lessons on phonics but perhaps something more systematic and targeted would help my students even more.
Teaching high frequency structures earlier on. This is something I had been trying with my year 8s but not in quite the same way. Jess’ sets of “awesome top 10s” definitely go further than I have. They are something I am starting to look at.

Jess’ presentation made me question a few things about language teaching:

Should we be teaching high frequency structures in year 7 as student enthusiasm is higher? Also teaching the language that makes the biggest impact earlier could lead to greater long-term retention.
They attempt to have “no wasted time” in their lessons. This got me thinking, out of the 50 minutes I teach, how many might have been lost?

5 things to try tomorrow

Feb 17, 2018Feb 17, 2018 / dlh202 / 1 Comment

Here are 5 things that worked for me this week.

Voki.com

I had forgotten about this website until one of my pupils said “I know the words I just don’t know how to pronounce them when I’m practising at home”. My internal, unvocalised reaction to this comment – a comment innocently dropped after 4.5 years of Spanish – is probably best summarised by the picture below:

In hindsight, my internal monologue should have focused on the positive “when practising at home”. However, it was at this point that Voki came to mind. Whilst not perfect, it does offer text to speech conversion. It also can help occasionally with individual Spanish words. Once you have set the voice to Spanish and the accent to a relatively clear one (our preference was for Javier). Just remind the pupils they don’t need to sign up to use it, and also not to get distracted on creating avatars.

Imemorize

For learning answers to questions, this is a particular favourite. The address is as follows:

http://imemorize.org/download.html

It allows students to learn sentences and hide words to check their recall. The activities are scaffolded quite well. It would depend on the student who uses it as to how effective it is.

Students used to find this helpful in the days of controlled assessment. One has also thanked me for “saving” their GCSE drama coursework.

No snakes, no ladders (Idea from Gianfranco Conti / Dylan Viñales)

Image result for snakes and ladders

Secondary MFL facebook groups such as: Secondary MFL Matters, Secondary MFL in Wales, New GCSE 9-1 resources, Global Innovative Language Teachers and others) have taken over my news-feed. They allow some superb sharing of resources and ideas. However, lots of activities appear briefly and then disappear: balloon towers, one pen&one dice. This is one I want to keep. It involves speaking, listening, reading and translation. Students play in threes – 2 players and a referee. This is a refreshing change to the majority of MFL games, which seem to require a partner. Full instructions for No Snakes, No Ladders can be found here.

Treasure Hunt

Treasure chest

This is a slight variation on the MFL standard of battleships. Gives students a slightly larger grid (6×6) and tell them to hide some treasure somewhere in the grid. This variation worked in 98% of the pairs in my class. Sadly there was a kid who guessed it first time! 36 different squares! What were the chances?! I made sure that they had a rematch.

Quick Speaking Feedback

This next suggestion is a little bit embryonic. It is something I have tried with two classes and am still considering how it might work best.

There is a huge focus in UK schools on feedback, DIRT and responding to marking. The vast majority of DIRT I have seen on Facebook Groups and the TES relates purely to written work. I’ve written about that here.

I started to consider how I may give short quick feedback on speaking, a skill I believe to be substantially more important than writing. With two year 8 classes, I went around asking them to read a longer paragraph from a textbook page (Mira 2 or Listos 2). Whilst they were reading out loud, I scribbled one quick sentence in their book regarding their pronunciation. Some of the notes looked like this:

Speaking Feedback

Check “ci/ce” in middle of words – should sound like “th” eg: “vacaciones”, “francia”
Remember ll = y
Superb today, nothing to correct!
Remember silent h when starting a word, otherwise fine.

To save time and workload, I wrote one sentence per student. It did not take long to go through the class.

For those of you wanting students to respond to it then there were two ways I tried to engender this. Firstly, I modelled the sentence and then they repeated it back to me. This helped some to understand how it should sound. Secondly, I wrote a list of 4-5 words in their book that I wanted them to say containing the same sound. Lastly, in light of everything I had heard, I planned a lesson around J and G in Spanish. This youtube clip was helpful in that lesson. It took the focus off of me and gave them plenty of examples. In that lesson I read out a list of words and students corrected me if I made a mistake. We had races of words involving Js and Gs along with trying a few tongue twisters corporately and individually.

What I noticed from this was that some students got a substantial confidence boost. Their ability to pronounce words was better than they perceived it to be. Others appreciated the quick feedback. Some appreciated being able to respond to the feedback without a lengthy redraft of a piece of work. They also appreciated the lesson working on the J and G.

I’m still mulling over where to take this and what to do to refine the process but it was well received by the students and did appear to have a positive effect.

GCSE: Global Issues & Environment

Jan 10, 2018Jan 10, 2018 / dlh202 / 3 Comments

This was an ambitious one. Trying to make the topics of environment and global issues interesting was not the easiest task I have ever set myself. I’m admit that I am not entirely sure if I have succeeded on this one. Hopefully there is something for every reader. Maybe it is an activity, or an idea below reminds you of a great resource or activity you have not used for a while.

Before I start, the reader should be aware of the following:

AQA refers to “global issues” and refers to “the environment”, “poverty/homelessness”
Edexcel/Pearson refers to “international and global dimension” with subheadings of “environmental issues, being green, access to natural resources”
WJEC simply refers to “global sustainability”.

I have done my best to put ideas that can be applied to all boards. There will be a lean towards one in terms of the language used as that is what I am currently teaching. There is certainly no intent to promote one above the other.

This post will look at a mix of the environment and global issues. Poverty was covered here as I thought it went well with charity and volunteering.

What can I do with these themes?

Environment is a great opportunity to recycle or introduce previously learnt language. In the past I have taught “you must” and similar phrases. It has been used to revise the future (“will” or “going to”). I have also used it as a means of teaching the conditional (“i could…”). Lastly, it was a good means of introducing students to the subjunctive with impersonal statements such as “es necesario que”. They were then introduced to the subjunctive properly with the global issues. Global issues also became a good way to revise comparatives and superlatives.

Will my students be interested?

I think this is all about the “buy-in” from students. Some will have an interest in the environment and being environmentally friendly. They will go along with you on this topic. I can picture that with other groups, and you know the ones I mean, it might be a tough ask. I think in this case, any “buy-in” comes from the possibility that this topic could confront them on a roleplay card or photocard and they need to be ready for it. Some may not engage at all. I found the global issues topic engaged a mixed ability group, particularly the debate mentioned below.

Match up L2 & L2

Having seen this on a past paper example, I have started to use it more with my GCSE students. There is a reasonably detailed reading text about a topic. Opposite the text are 4 text messages from supposed young people that relate to points made in the text.

This infographic from día mundial del medio ambiente would serve just such a purpose. students would have to write a number based on the alleged text messages sent by 4 supposed teenagers.

I have put links to two French ones below and two German ones as examples, you may be able to find better ones.

These are simple ways to include some literary texts in your lessons without having to produce too much. There are other ways to include literary texts in your lessons but that is another blogpost.

You can also create your own infographics if you were looking for a different reading text for recycling vocabulary. Easel.ly and Infogram were two I came across on a brief search. If you know of a great one, put it in the comments section and claim the title of “First Commenter of 2018”.

Fake Whatsapp

I discovered this whatsapp generator. The disadvantage in using it is that it does mean a bit of work in terms of resource preparation. However, it will stop the normal glazing over that occurs when students see the textbook displaying a Nokia 3210 with buttons and a green screen (also known as the good old days). The advantage is that you can produce the language and recycle plenty of vocabulary that you have covered in class.

How does this relate to global issues? Very simple. Create a fake group-chat using fakeWhatsapp. Person 1 in the chat suggests they have a project where they have to ask people what they do to help the environment. Persons 2,3,4,5 simply answer with what they do. You could set some comprehension questions. You could read out some statements that they then match to the people in the conversation. Students could produce their own groupchat mimicking your one. Plenty of options here.

How environmentally-friendly are you?

Some textbooks will have these. However, if you are good with the language then translating this one will not take long. You can probably find others on the TES website. Quizzes are a great way to recycle and repeat language, along with revising time adverbs. Partners take turns reading the question and answering them. If answers are linked to points then students could grade how environmentally friendly they are.

Do you turn out the lights on leaving the house?

A. I always turn out the lights on leaving the house
B. I often turn out the lights on leaving the house
C. I sometimes turn out the lights on leaving the house
D. Never. I’m scared of the dark

The advantage of preparing your own is the recycling of previously learnt language.

9 Lives

Using the quiz above. Students pre-select an answer for each question. Their partner then has to get from the start of the quiz to the end of the quiz. Each time they are wrong, they lose a life.

Person 1 pre-selects answers

Person 1 reads question “Do you turn out the lights on leaving the house?”

Person 2 tries to guess pre-selected answer. “I always turn out the lights on leaving the house”

Person 1: “non/nein/no”

Person 2: now down to 8 lives, tries to guess pre-selected answer “I sometimes turn out the lights on leaving the house”

Person 1: “oui/ja/si” reads next question “How often do you have a shower?”

and so it goes on…

7 pictures 7 sentences

This was adapted from a commercially produced textbook. It involved 7 sentences, each was divided in two. There was also a picture. The first task was to match the sentence halves and then match the sentences to the pictures underneath. It would not take much to create your own version of this.

Moving on from the activity above, you could use these as a start of a photo-card discussion. You could also simply get the pupils to generate sentences relating to the picture.

Recycling container seen in San Sebastian.

Containers Card Sort

Again an adaptation of a commercially produced textbook (the same one in fact). It was a great way to acquire and use a variety of vocabulary in a meaningful context. Give students a series of headings in books (such as recycling containers) and a set of vocabulary (that can go in the containers). You could adapt this to different levels

Easy: put vocabulary in correct container

Medium: Scaffolded sentences explaining where you would put each item

Hard: Use of conditional + direct object. I would put it in … because

Debate in progress Photo Credit: Conselho Nacional de Justiça – CNJ Flickr via Compfight cc

Superlative/Comparative Debate

This was an activity that happened after a few lessons, in which we had covered opinion phrases, superlatives, subjunctive and global issues vocabulary.

A few years ago, there were a number of teachers talking about “Grouptalk”. One of the ideas I saw was the idea of a cyclical discussion. Students would start a discussion on a table of four and try to keep it going as long as possible. I tried this last year with a mixed ability year 10 group on the “biggest problem facing the world”. The conversation was heavily scaffolded with vocabulary help and some prompts on paper. I have rendered the potential conversation below in English. Names have been altered.

Ross: “In my opinion, the biggest problem in the world is poverty What do you think Phoebe?”

Phoebe: “For me, the biggest problem in the world is terrorism. Joey, in your opinion, between racism and terrorism, which is worse?”

Joey: “I believe that world leaders are the biggest problem.”

Rachel (interrupting) : “Joey you’re completely wrong, it’s global warming.”

Joey: “I disagree. Ross, what do you think: global warming or terrorism?”

Students were genuinely surprised that they could take part in a relatively tricky debate entirely in the TL.

Debate Round 2: Bingo cards

Were I to do the debate above again, I would give 5×5 grid bingo cards with phrases to use. Students that complete a line or a row would receive some form of reward. Something like this could work…

Questions	Subjunctives	Opinion phrases	Fancy Language
I asked someone an opinion	me da miedo que exista	Desde mi punto de vista	aunque quisiera pensar de otra manera
I asked a question with two options	es increíble que haya	Opino que	el problema que nos enfrenta es
Finished statement with a question	no creo que sea	A mi modo de ver	y por si eso fuera poco

If you do not trust the student who is claiming the reward then you have two options:

Students have to tell you one or two of the ways they used the phrases above
Their partner completes it while they talk

Original Tarsia

Environment Tarsia

Formerly an italian Renaissance design motif, now an educational activity. The idea of Tarsia puzzles was hotly debated on the GILT Facebook Group a while back. Some were heavily in favour; others were heavily against. Arguments for included testing of vocabulary. Arguments against suggested it was testing of being able to put shapes together. Both points of view have been put forward by experienced colleagues. Rather than a simple English-German matchup, I have tried to make them more challenging by doing the following:

Populate it with a mix of seen and unseen vocabulary.
Have the words around the outside edge as well – Maths do this with formulas to great effect. Students could translate the outside edge vocabulary as an extension task.
Have the tarsia composed entirely of synonyms in TL.
Have the tarsia composed of starts and ends of sentences.
Have the tarsia composed of a mixture of haben/sein verbs in perfect tense or etre/avoir verbs in passé composé.

Tarsia are puzzles I was introduced to by our maths department. They were used to match up formulas that would give the same result but there are many ways to adapt them for MFL. A google image search of the word will show you how they look. How can you make one? Download the program here. They are quite heavy on the photocopying and chopping up so you may need your tutor group to do the chopping for you.

GCSE: Social Issues. charity and volunteering.

Nov 27, 2017Nov 28, 2017 / dlh202 / 4 Comments

Photo Credit: mypubliclands Flickr via Compfight cc

The new GCSE confronted teachers with some topics they may not have ever had to deal with in any great depth. This post looks at ideas for teaching our GCSE students about volunteering, helping charities and good causes.

Before I start, you should be aware of the following:

AQA refers to “social issues” and refers to “charity/voluntary work.”
Edexcel calls it “bringing the world together” and names this topic “campaigns and good causes.”
WJEC simply refers to “social issues”.

My enthusiasm for this topic stems from my year abroad. I spent a year working in a home in Cochabamba, Bolivia, for kids who had lived on the streets, were orphans or suffered abuse at a young age.

Cochabamba, Bolivia

So how to teach the topic? I have tried to include a mixture of listening, speaking, reading and writing activities.

Synonyms Match-ups

Students need to learn a lot of words that they have not come across before. Two of my go to starters are gap fills and match ups. This week I came across a match-up of synonyms which was really effective. Students matched up two sets of words looking for the words with the same meanings.

Narrow Reading: spot the difference

This is a phrase I learnt from Gianfranco Conti’s blog. The philosophy behind narrow reading can be found here. The idea I chose to use was called Spot the Differences. I produced a text about working as a volunteer, copied it, pasted it twice and then made subtle changes. Students had to say how each text differed from the other ones. The vocabulary that differed included phrases I want them to know for subsequent lessons. My experience was that students focused far more closely on the text rather than merely skim-reading it until they found the relevant detail. Definitely a keeper for future classes.

Find the phrases

This is a stock favourite of all GCSE textbooks. “Find the French/Spanish in the text for…” I gave students texts based on some real charities that I had contact with. The fact that these were real people, that I knew or worked with, seemed to motivate them more. One website used to help produce this was Manos con Libertad , another was Mosoj Yan. Both are Christian organisations that work with people in Cochabamba. Whether you have a faith or none at all, these organisations do some great work with people in tough circumstances. I used others as well but they don’t have websites! The excerpts were written from the point of view of someone who worked there and talked about what they do. Great opportunity to revise daily routine and reflexive verbs.

Textbook Speaking Grids

Questions	verbs	complement
tend	quite	lots
to	often	of
appear	in this	stuff
here	bit	here

Many textbooks often give a grid and a few questions and answers to use. It is not the most exhilarating paired speaking task. I got thinking about how to spice it up a bit.

Method 1: Points for going beyond the grid. On your projector screen put a list of things that “go beyond the grid”. Students work in pairs.

Student 1: Asks questions and notes down a score of anything that goes beyond the grid.

Student 2: Answers questions trying to add other tenses, verbs, conjunctions, adverbs etc

Method 2: Beat your partner. If you have a tricky class you may wish to change the name here to prevent any wilful misinterpretation! Every student notes down 5 phrases from the grid without their partner seeing.

Student 1: asks the questions. This student receives 2 points each time the other uses on of their phrases. Maximum of 10 but probability of phrases being used is lessened.

Student 2: answers the questions, trying to use their pre-chosen phrases. This student receives one point per phrase used. Maximum of 5.

Method 3: Play a role. The grid in the textbook involved the questions ¿trabajas como voluntario ahora? and ¿Qué haces exactamente? along with a few others. Students were given a card with a role. They then had to pick answers using this perspective. The roles included:

Charity Shop Assistant
Eco-warrior
Care Home worker
Aid worker in Haiti
Aid worker in Sierra Leone.

Third World Diary

Mira 3 red does a brilliant diary of life for someone in the developing world. If you have access to it great. If not then use this site for inspiration.

You could produce a short diary script and then attempt any of the following:

You could display the script and read it out loud. While you do this, miss out some words. Make the students write down the ones you miss.
Use the desktop version of Imemorize and enter your own quote.
Put your script into Cueprompter and have students read it out loud with you or alone.
You could have multiple choice parts put in the script and students have to write down the one you read out. Por la mañana / tarde / noche me despierto a las siete y media / seis y media / cinco y media.
You could remove a whole sentence and have students fill it in as a dictation/transcription exercise.
You could even chop the text into pieces and give it to students to rearrange while you read it out loud.
Go to Voki.com and put it into their text-to-speech converter, setting the voice to Spanish. Then challenge your pupils to see who can do a better job than Javier or Carmen!
Be creative, there are so many options when it comes to a listening text.

Students could produce their own diary as a homework task. You could set a list of “ridiculous requirements” to challenge your high-flyers. For example: 7 lines of text, 6 reflexive verbs, 5 conjunctions, 4 clock times, 3 french hens, 2 higher level phrases and one subjunctive just for good measure.

The website was also tweeted to me at some point. I have yet to use it yet but it looks good, particularly if you are considering display work.

Newspaper Clipping Generator

Verbs & Infinitives

This chapter is a great way to practise all those verbs that are followed by an infinitive:

I’m going to raise money for..
I would like to donate to …
I can give £1 a month to
I’m thinking about going to…
I hope to help …
I want to work with …

A game of TRAMPA / TRICHER would be a great way to practise this. Students take a piece of A4 paper and divide it into 8. In pencil, on 4 or 5 of the sections they write a sentence like the bullet points above. On the remaining 3 or 4 they write “Trampa” or “Tricher” (cheat). Cards are then shuffled and dealt out among their table. Students say what is on the card before putting it face down in the middle. If the card says trampa they have to convince the other players there is a sentence on the card. They do this by making a sentence up and placing the card face down. If a student thinks another is cheating then they can call them on it. If the student was indeed cheating; the cheater picks up the card. If the student was falsely and wrongfully accused in a heinous miscarriage of justice; the accuser takes the cards. Winner is the first person to get rid of all their cards.

If you have had any great ideas then please leave them in the comments section below:

Meeting the challenge of the new GCSE

Nov 21, 2017 / dlh202 / Leave a comment

There has been a lot of chatter on Twitter, various Facebook groups, between schools and within schools on preparing students for the new GCSEs. Their concerns seem to relate to the following areas:

Grade boundaries – there has been a multitude of different percentages suggested. Some are based on Maths; others are based on previous C grades. Some would offend my maths colleagues as they did not show their workings out!
What does a grade 9 piece of work look like?
How to predict grades for data drops, SLT, line managers.
Applying mark schemes – some exam boards are beginning to publish exemplar material with mark-scheme applied.
Teaching the new elements – translation, literary extracts, roleplays, photocards, spontaneous speech, conversation questions.

I considered my own post, however it would appear that the following people have already covered most of this territory:

Steve Smith – Worried about the new GCSEs

Helen Myers – 9-1 Grading

Both are excellent, well-informed blogs by experienced professionals.

Steve’s post deals with practical ways you can bring about the results you want by what you do in the classroom. There are also helpful strategies and tips aimed at people who are teaching lower ability learners.

Helen’s post deals more with information that is out there. She looks at what is within your control and what is out of your control. She has some helpful links to Ofqual information on grading, predictions and how the grade boundaries will be set. If you are looking for some grade boundaries to use, this is not it, but it is a very enlightening read.

There are some answers out there, yet there are still a lot of unanswered question when it comes to this new GCSE. My main message would be to keep teaching as well as you can, focusing on delivering the best you can in the classroom and prepare your students as best as you can.

For those of you already thinking about the next cohort, have you tried EverydayMFL: The Options Lessons

New GCSE – one year in

Oct 28, 2017 / dlh202 / Leave a comment

September 2016 heralded the start of teaching the new ~~old~~ GCSE in MFL. It was quite a bit to prepare for and necessitated two blog posts: this one and another one. Having taught a mixed ability Spanish group this year, it seemed like a good time to look at what has worked, and what I would like to do next.

Keeping Going

Key Language Sheets

Students have these in the back cover of their exercise books. They have proven to be invaluable tools and they do use them. The sheets need some tweaking as my section of fancy language was titled “frases para conseguir 1 o 2”, having completely confused the top and bottom grade boundaries! These have been regularly used in class and at home. There is a box at the bottom with key conjugated/modal verbs and infinitives allowing students to take one, follow it with the other and then add an opinion. I feel a section is required on justifying opinions so a few tweaks to the sheet will be my homework at some point.

Photo Credit: <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/127406279@N06/31460315762/">christopher.czlapka</a> Flickr via <a href="http://compfight.com">Compfight</a> <a href="https://www.flickr.com/help/general/#147">cc</a>

Photo Credit: christopher.czlapka Flickr via Compfight cc

100 Most Common Words

Setting these as a vocabulary learning homework was…illuminating. Even after 3 years of Spanish some of the students did not know the 100 most common words in Spanish. The list on Vistawide is pretty good albeit not authoritative. I set 25 per week to get through them rather quickly. I told the group it was their new 5-a-day and still left weekends free. The reaction was muted to say the least! They were then tested on 20. I tried to vary the methods of testing to see if they had really learned them. It did work and the students did find it helpful.

1-5 Gap fill/anagrams

6-15 English –> Spanish

16-20 Spanish –> English

Roleplays & Photocards

Students are seeing at least one roleplay and photocard task with each topic that we cover. My way of managing to get them into class was to model how the task should be approached, give students some preparation time and then they complete the roleplay or photocard with two different people, with the unpredictable question being varied each time. They then calculate an average of their scores, thereby reducing any impact by over-generous or overly harsh markers. A full explanation of how I do this can be found on this post here.

Reinforcing the need for effective vocabulary learning

In the book “Why don’t students like school?” Daniel Willingham makes a number of points that have influenced my approach to students learning vocabulary:

“Memory is the residue of thought”

“Proficiency requires Practice”

P210 Why don’t students like school? – Daniel Willingham

Our homework is set online so attached with the list of words is a document detailing effective learning techniques, mostly sourced from the above book, personal experiences and The Language Gym website

Students need to understand that learning and memorising does not occur through merely reading or some imagined osmosis process. The more I can get them actively practising the vocabulary; the better it will be for them long-term.

Moving Forward

Regular Revision lessons

Every month I plan to do a revision lesson of one of the topics covered in year 10. If I have planned it right then I can do topics 1-7 at least once by February. This lesson will likely place a strong focus on the listening, reading and translation side of the exam. It will allow a refreshing of vocabulary and also emphasise the need to retain everything as they could be tested on anything. Previous exams have had questions on guide dogs for the blind, phoneboxes in Spain and nordic walking. The greater the emphasis on retaining vocabulary from previous topics; the better-prepared they will be for these weird and wonderful question topics.

Recycling

Schemes of work can be relatively linear, however that does not mean that vocabulary and grammar from before cannot be revisited. Some advice from Gianfranco Conti’s website was particularly useful:

Problem: “in typical secondary school MFL curriculum design as evidenced by the schemes of work – and the textbooks these are often based on – which in my view seriously undermine the effectiveness of foreign language instruction in many British secondary schools.”

“Solution: include in the schemes of work a section in each unit headed ‘recycling opportunities’ and include activities aiming at consolidating old material.”

To help combat this the revision lesson should help, but I have also added a section on my scheme of work to take the opportunity to revisit certain grammatical elements that are pivotal for students. Research by Graham Nutall (The Hidden Lives of Learners) suggests that students often need at least 3 exposures to new concepts to start to internalise them properly.

I will also be setting vocabulary learning on units not directly related to what the students are studying.

Vocabulary Championship and/or Ipsative Vocabulary Tests

To add an element of competition and purpose to vocabulary learning, I am considering a championship whereby their scores are noted down. Some form of reward will be given for the student who attains a high score each week but also the students who maintain an average of 75% or more per half-term. That figure was just plucked from the air so may change.

Ipsative assessment was a new word learnt from one of our SLT. It refers to the idea of comparing oneself to previous results. Athletics taps into this all the time as runners try to equal their personal best. I have experimented with this in a lower ability year 8 group. Their aim with each vocabulary test is to equal or better their score. Students have so far responded really well to this idea but we are only 3 tests in. It will get tougher later as they will need to maintain higher scores. I could picture this working well with lower ability GCSE groups as they would have a chance to succeed regularly.

Decipher the Question starters

The reading and writing papers feature target language questions. Similarly parts of the speaking exam prompts are in the target language. A starter activity might be to translate the question and some bullet points. The students may not actually complete the question but it gives them the feeling or working out an exam question in a short space of time.

Photo Credit: Lily Bloom Flickr via Compfight cc

Strengths / Weaknesses Audit via GoogleForm.

Prior to Christmas, I intend to send out a google-form requiring students to submit their responses to a number of statements eg:

I can understand questions in the target language 1 2 3 4 5

I can translate single sentences into English 1 2 3 4 5

I can use the preterite eg: fui, hice, tuve etc

This should give me an idea of their areas of strength and weakness and allow me to target my teaching better, and plan twilight sessions tailored to the individual student. It will also show me if my teaching has not sufficiently covered any of the challenges presented by the new GCSEs. The Google-form method allows me to conduct a quick analysis of their areas of strength and weakness as it automatically can produce graphs etc. If I am feeling really brave, I might add a box for their own comments.

5 Things to try tomorrow

Sep 30, 2017 / dlh202 / Leave a comment

It has been a manic start to term so I have not had much time to write. There is a post in production on lessons learnt teaching the new GCSE. It is a while since I have done one of these posts so here are 5 things that have worked in the past month.

Self-reflection questionnaires

Due to a residential, I missed the first few days of term. One of the bits of cover work I left for my year 8 bottom sets was to answer 3 questions.

What did you enjoy last year in languages?
What did you struggle with most?
If I asked them, what would your last teacher say about you?

I was predominantly interested in question 2. The three most common answers were:

Memorisation of vocabulary, verbs etc
Speaking and pronunciation
Writing

It was a really worthwhile exercise as each student wrote down their biggest obstacle to being successful in languages. It also gave an indication as to how they viewed the subject. My planning for my first 8-9 lessons with them was largely influenced by the above three things and will continue to be. I have kept their answer to the struggle question and will revisit it later in the year.

Core Language Sheets

Schools will have different names for these: knowledge organisers, language mats, helpsheets etc. I have given each of my lower year 8 sets a A5 sheet with everything I want them to know by the end of the year. Every other week between now and Christmas they will learn the vocabulary on this sheet and be tested on it in a variety of ways. The sheet has been divided into 4 sections A,B,C,D. This means homework can be “learn section B” and they will know which bit to focus on. They are regularly encouraged to use it in their work and I believe that over time it will make a difference. The year 9s,10s,11 have a similar sheet. I have my own design based on material from Rachel Hawkes website but would rather not see it end up on the TES with a charge attached. They are relatively easy to create, just pick all the things from the year that you deem to be important and condense on to a single page.

Phonics from the start

This came after a bit of reading of Rachel Hawkes’ website. I spent the first lessons of the year with year 7 teaching phonics and pronunciation using resources from the website above. I think it had a positive effect. My personal favourite activity was one involving saying a word and students using parts of the words to spell it. We did this with Spanish cities and also Spanish Mr Men. This really had an palpable effect on confidence as pupils started to rely on the rules they had learned. The downside is that year 7 classes get really giggly with “Don Pupas” (Mr Bump).

Find your match*

Puzzle, Cooperation, Together, Connection, Match

Reinforcing grammar through listening and speaking is infinitely more exciting than a standard gap-fill task or book work. This idea came from Gianfranco Conti’s website. I used this activity twice this week, once for the past and once for the future. Once you have made a template in Word then the replace feature makes it really easy to change the phrases. Gianfranco Conti’s original on the site has 12 boxes. To adapt it to a class of 32, I simply printed it 3 times. I told the students that if someone had the same name as them then they were not allowed to talk to them. They were also not allowed to show their card to anyone. Once they had found their match, they returned to their seats and translated their statements. The students seemed to enjoy it. ¡Gracias Gianfranco!

Android Game

Android, Cellular, Iphone, Mobile, Phone, Screen

This came from the aforementioned residential. It is easy to get stuck in a rut with vocabulary and repetition activities but this was a new one. It was based on students trying to cross an obstacle course.

Put 9 new items of vocabulary in a 3×3 grid on your projector screen. Students draw 9 dots on a mini- whiteboard. Then draw 5 consecutive lines like an unlock code on an android phone (see work of art below). Their partner tries to crack their pin-code by saying the vocabulary. The student with the code can only respond with “correcto” or “incorrecto”. They then swap around.

Further reading:

Alphabet, numbers, days of the week It’s that time of year again!

OFSTED handbook – If you’re facing it this year then it is always good to know what they are looking for. Pages 47-49 should help most teachers. Please look at the bit preceding the descriptors where it says the grade descriptors are not a checklist.

Making marking work

Aug 31, 2017 / dlh202 / 3 Comments

Photo Credit: BenjaminCookDesigns Flickr via Compfight cc

Time to get out the red pen

This post should probably start with a disclaimer. My marking is not perfect. I do my absolute best to make sure the pupils get the best feedback on their work but it will not always yield the seismic improvements that one might hope.

Before we discuss marking and feedback, I think it is worth pointing the reader towards this document produced by Sean Harford HMI. Yes, he does work for “they-who-shall-not-be-named” but you really do need to read it. You could also follow him on Twitter as he is quite good at busting the various OFSTED myths that fly around.

Over the past few years, I have seen a variety of marking policies in my own school and in visiting others. Out there, there is a plethora of feedback and marking styles such as “comment only” marking, highlighter marking, DIRT time, group feedback, whole class feedback, flipped learning, self-marking online assessments, self-assessment, peer-assessment, raw scores, averages, levels, flightpaths, progress indicators, RAG etc. Don’t worry, this post is not going to cover all of those! Instead, here are three that have really worked for me, and my students, in the classroom:

Whole class feedback & Individual Feedback.

Whilst marking a set of books I will formulate a series of targets to be placed on a PowerPoint. In the book, I will simply write something that the student did well along with T1, T7, T8. There is an example below. The following lesson will probably follow this pattern:

1) Whole class feedback or starter activity relating to an issue most struggled with.

2) DIRT time – students have opportunity to act upon individual targets. Extension tasks available for those who finish.

3) Remaining time refreshing material from previous lesson or preparing for subsequent lesson.

The activities in part 1 above could be…

Grammar exercises
Spot the errors / Correct the errors (anonymously lifted or amalgamated from work marked)
Match present and past tense verbs so that students are clear which is which.
Spot the correct sentence from a choice of 3.

An example of what students will see in part 2 above is below. I have found that the “what it means” and “what to do” leaves no room for excuses of “I don’t get what I have to do”.

feedforward

Feedback needs to be about improvement and development, not simply error correction. That is my hope behind targets 2,4,6. However, where some heavy error correction is needed, then I still want them thinking about it (see T1,T3).

T5 allows me to challenge, and insist on improvement of, any poorly presented pieces that I may not notice from across the room during the lesson.

T7 allowed me to work with one to one with a student who was miles ahead of the rest of the class and teach them something they can add to their work.

T9 was to give a student time to catch up on work missed through no fault of their own.

This approach massively shortened the time I spent marking and still allowed me to deal with misconceptions and give specific, personalised feedback that led to definite, visible improvements.

Highlighter Marking

Mentioned in a full length post a while back, I still think this is one of the best ways for boosting confidence of students.

Underline an entire piece of work in two highlighter pens. Green if it’s good. Yellow if it needs work. Immediately a student can see what is good and what is not. If the overwhelming picture is green then it can be a massive confidence boost. If they realise that the yellow is a repeated error, then we are on the road to eradicating it. If there is a substantial amount of yellow then maybe a rewrite is in order. Sometimes the yellow would not be underlining anything, to demonstrate that there was a need to add something. To show students bits of their work that were particularly good such as a wenn clause (German), a reflexive verb in the passé composé (French), or use of the imperfect subjunctive (Spanish), I simply double-ticked those parts.

I have tried to demonstrate the visual impact below:

Gestern Abend habe ich mit meiner Famille ins Kino gegangen. Dort wir haben “Fast and Furious 14” gesehen. Es war toll. Ich mag Actionfilmen, weil sie sind spannend

Advantages include how well it combines with marking codes and it is speedy. Disadvantages include that one needs a constant supply of highlighter pens or felt-tips!

Self/Peer Assessment

Peer assessment is something I struggle with in MFL. Sometimes I find that the students do not have enough knowledge to effectively assess the work of another. You find comments such as “great use of connectives”, when there were none in the work at all. I think it works best when the students have sufficient knowledge to draw upon, or with a reasonably restrictive mark-scheme.

I have tried a little bit with the new GCSE roleplays. The following pattern yielded some success.

Teacher shows students mark scheme and script for roleplay.
One student is selected to conduct the roleplay. Teacher plays role of student
Roleplay is then performed by teacher and student (in reversed roles).
- Teacher (as student) produces a roleplay that can be described as a shambles full of mistakes, hesitation, use of English, use of Spanglish, use of French, adding O to any English word to make it sound Spanish.
- Teacher (as student) produces a half-decent roleplay that ticks some boxes but not all.
- Teacher (as student) produces a roleplay that would knock the socks off the most examiners.
After each the students are asked to give numerical scores. The AQA mark-scheme is extremely helpful in this as for each element of the roleplay there is a score of 0, 1 or 2. Their language says “message conveyed without ambiguity” or “message partially conveyed or conveyed with some ambiguity”. In short: 2 = job done 1 = partly done 0 = was it done? Students are then asked to give a score out of 5 for quality of language. The teacher can guide them towards this one a bit more.
Students then have silent prep time for a roleplay on the same theme but with different bullet points. 10-12mins.
Students conduct the roleplay in pairs with script on projector screen. After which, they assess their partner’s performance. When they switch over, you need to switch the unpredictable question to something else! Or generate a new task for the other.
They need to repeat this so that they have two sets of scores. They can then calculate an average. By doing so, hopefully any overly generous or overly harsh marking is minimised.

Example:

Joe gives Martina 2+2+1+1+1 /10 +3 /5 = 10/15

Kelsey gives Martina 1+2+1+2+2 / 10 4/5 =12/15

Average = 11/15

Plenty to come from EverydayMFL

Aug 11, 2017Aug 11, 2017 / dlh202 / Leave a comment

Dear all.

It’s the summer holidays so I’m taking a few weeks off. From September there will hopefully be more regular posts as things got a little sporadic towards the end of last term.

In the meantime you can have a read of the following:

Teaching the weather

Jul 5, 2017Jul 26, 2022 / dlh202 / 1 Comment

Weather phrases in foreign languages are odd. I have never really understood quite why “il fait” or “hace” makes more sense than “it is”. However, we have to teach them so here are a few ways to make it more interesting.

Predict the weather

As a plenary activity students write 5 sentences predicting the weather in various locations on the day of your next lesson. As a starter in the subsequent lesson, they check if they were correct / incorrect / bit of both.

The maps on El Tiempo.es are really good for this. See exhibit A below weather

Photo Response

Show students some photos and have them write sentences quickly on mini-whiteboards. If you use Spanish speaking countries you can generate quite a bit of interest as pupils will inevitably ask “where is that?” Exhibits below include Peru in the height of summer and Bolivia during rainy season. That falling grey mass is rain, not a tornado, as one of the kids thought.

peru bolivia

Today at Wimbledon / Euros / World Cup Scripts

Students in year 7 cover present and future tense. It will take a little bit of revision of verbs but they should be able to produce the following using the near future

va a jugar va a ganar va a perder va a llover

va jouer va gagner va perdre va pleuvoir

They have hopefully covered simple time phrases such as “today”, “tomorrow”, “later on”.

All of this leads to being in a position to present a TV programme. Students need to produce a script for the Today at Wimbledon programme. Click here for the theme tune, which will remain in your head for hours afterwards. They should include

Weather today
Who plays who today
Weather tomorrow
Who is going to play who tomorrow
Opinions on who is going to win or lose.

They then perform this and can peer-assess each other on whatever criteria you set. Personally I would go for the following with scores out of 5 for each:

Fluency – does it flow? Can they sound natural?
Confidence – do they come across confidently?
Communciation – can they make themselves understood?
Pronunciation – How strong is their knowledge of phonics?

Translation Tandems

This idea came from Greg Horton on a CPD course about 2 years ago. He used it for vocabulary tests so this is a small tweak.

Hold an A4 piece of paper portrait. Divide the piece of A4 paper. into 2 halves down the middle.

¦ ¦ ¦

Students write sentences alternating between English and TL. Students then fold the piece of paper down the middle and sit facing each other. They have to translate whatever sentence their partner reads out into the other language. This is a great activity to practise translation both ways. It does require a fair bit of pre-teaching so that it is challenging but not demotivating.

Mira 1 Rap

Mira 1 has a listening text that might be a song or a poem. It can be found on p103 and works rather well as a rap. Challenge your class to turn it into one. A good rap backing can be found for free at this link here on TES. If you have VLC media player then you can alter the playback speed and slow it down if needed.

Real life listening

I experimented the other day. I listened to a weather report on eltiempo.es and the guy was super fast. I picked out 10-15 words that my students might pick up from the video, and then added some more that were not there. I challenged them to listen and see how many of my words on the board they would find. I was pleasantly surprised with the results, and so were they.

If you have managed to read this far then this weather report did make me chuckle.

Everyday Questioning

Jun 13, 2017Jun 13, 2017 / dlh202 / 1 Comment

Photo Credit: Ekspresevim Flickr via Compfight cc

A lot of subjects rely on questioning. Teachers of English, History, Geography, Science and RE can elicit huge amounts of discussion, understanding and thought through questioning techniques. Maybe your SLT are keen on Blooms, SAMR, lolly sticks, think/pair/share or pose/pause/pounce/bounce. It is first worth remembering that MFL is very different. This quote sums up much of my thinking around questioning:

“language teaching is not like the teaching of, say, mathematics or history. Much of our questioning is of a special type, with the purpose of developing internalised competence with grammar, vocabulary and, ultimately, fluency. Language teachers must therefore treat the most recent recent pronouncements on questioning technique with at least a degree of scepticism.” Quote from Steve Smith Frenchteacher.net

Steve mentions scepticism, not rejection. I believe that other subjects do have a few things to teach us and some of the CPD I have experienced around questioning can and has been useful.

This post is about some ways to sharpen your questioning in MFL lessons in the classroom. Some of the thoughts come from experience, others from seeing other colleagues.

Hands up or no hands up?

In one school that I trained in, hands up was considered pure evil, you simply did not do it. In the other school, hands up was fine. Since training and teaching I have tended to take a 50-50 approach. I personally like to see the enthusiasm and speed of recall that hands up reveals. I also like to challenge my students and keep them on their toes.

It seemed worth summarising the three approaches in a table below so you can make your own decision:

	Hands up	50-50	No hands up
Pros	Enthusiasm clear. Students rewarded for effort. Clear engagement and participation.	Effort rewarded. Opportunities to build confidence. Keeps pupils on toes whilst rewarding keenness.	Keeps everyone on their toes. Clear engagement Students forced to pay greater attention. Might be less likely to pick same kids.
Cons	Some students will not put their hands up. Tendency to pick the ones who know it. Some students remain unchallenged,	Students will not always be clear on which is required.	Some students find it very disconcerting. Could be demoralising if they genuinely do not know.

Think/pair/share

A much-used technique from other subjects that we can use in MFL. Tom Sherrington writes about this as “washing hands of learning”. I was slightly alarmed by the title but I see his point. This can be a really useful technique when you have presented students with a grammar structure and you want them to work out how it works, rather than simply telling them. Here is how it works: THINK: Give them at least 30 real seconds thinking time on their own (“teacher seconds” are a completely diifferent time frame). PAIR: discuss with partner or table group. SHARE: share with the class or another group. Tom writes “in doing this you are creating a small bubble of security around each pair; a safe space where they can think for a while and say whatever they like.”

Going off topic for a second. Tom Sherrington was a headteacher and his series of pedagogy postcards and great lessons blogs were really useful in my first few years of teaching. Worth a look.

Targeted questioning

Who are you selecting? Who is contributing in your lessons? One of my colleagues (who will probably read this), talks about first responders and second responders. I have tried to emulate this. First responders are any of the following:

Pupil Premium, underachievers, disengaged.

Second responders are the rest of the class.

More able.
English as an additional language.
Special educational needs & disabilities.
The rest of the class.

Random name generators

Targeted questioning could also be brought about by random name generators. I’ll be honest. I am not a massive fan of lolly sticks. It seems like a lot of preparation every year, you have to have somewhere to keep them and there is a yearly cost implication. I used to use random name generators and have not used them for a while. So that is my mission for this week.

Super Teacher Tools is a personal favourite

Classtools.net has an excellent one

Have you tried stacking the generator slightly? The first of the two above websites allows up to 40 names and maybe your class is only 28 strong. Some names could accidentally find their way in there twice or three times. If the kids start to question this then perhaps remind them that random means the same name could come up 3 times in a row.

You might want to consider when to use these generators as they will not always be appropriate:

Steve Smith (author of The Language Teacher Toolkit) writes the following:

“I understand the theory that we should have the same expectation of all students and that students need to be challenged and ready to respond at any time, but I also believe that as teachers we should be using our skill and knowledge of our students to pitch questions at an appropriate level. This is sensible differentiation. Each student can be challenged at their own level and we know all too well how great the variability is in language learning aptitude.”

With that in mind, let’s look at the next bit…

Planning your questions

There is a story that suggests a child was asked by an inspector what their favourite part of a lesson was. The child replied “the plenary”. The inspector was impressed that the child knew the word and pressed them as to why. The child responded: “because that’s the bit when we get to pack up and go home”.

Most language teachers will conduct a plenary at the end of a lesson. How many of the plenary questions do you genuinely plan ahead of that time? Similarly, when you are teaching grammar, what questions have you planned to check understanding? How are you going to seek the answers? Who are you going to ask? What questions could you add to challenge your high achievers?

No opt out

This comes from Doug Lemov’s “Teach like a Champion”. Doug insists that “I don’t know” is not an acceptable answer. I would largely agree unless you have asked a question that all students might not know the answer to. Looking at his ways of implementing this, my personal preference would be for formats 3 and 4.

Format 1. You provide the answer; your student repeats the answer.
Format 2. Another student provides the answer; the initial student repeats the answer.
Format 3. You provide a cue; your student uses it to find the answer.
Format 4. Another student provides a cue; the initial student uses it to find the answer

Source: teach like a champion field guide sample chapter

Occasionally on a reading text when going through answers I may accept that a student didn’t know the answer on number 3 but will tell them that I want the answer to number 8. They have until I get there to find it. This way you maintain your standard of everyone trying hard but accept they may simply not have found the answer. You know your pupils and can decide when this is appropriate.

5 Things to try tomorrow

May 17, 2017May 17, 2017 / dlh202 / 1 Comment

Number, Five, 5, Digit

It has been a while since writing one of these (or anything) so here are 5 things to try tomorrow.

Everydaymfl has been a little bit quiet of late but posts in the works include one on questioning and possibly one on the new GCSE – what I learnt teaching it so far.

No writing lessons

Writing is one of the easiest skills to show progress with.

Student writes something
Teacher corrects
Student improves

However, students are used to a lot of this. It really is quite something for them to have a “no writing” lesson in a subject they will typically associate with writing. An entire lesson of speaking and listening is not a bad thing as it reminds them how important the skills are. Some groups will be noticeably more enthused by this idea. It is quite heavy on the planning and paired activity so you may want a settling activity at some point – perhaps hands up listening.

Group Model Essay

After my year 10 group seemed somewhat intimidated by the 150 word task in the new GCSE, I thought I would approach it gradually. Here is what we did:

They were given a 150 word task from the AQA textbook.

In groups of 4 they drafted the best response on mini-whiteboards that they could come up with. After some feedback from me, they improved the draft on mini-whiteboards. One member of the group put it on to paper. They handed them in and I typed them up on a word document with significant amounts of space around them. I annotated the work highlighting tenses, good bits of grammar (comparatives, superlatives, subjunctives) and double ticks for anything that particularly stood out.

This was really well received and sometimes it is helpful to know “what a good one looks like” but also to know that you were involved in producing it.

Micro-listening enhancers

I have read a lot about these on Gianfranco Conti’s website. I have found myself using them quite a bit recently as my speakers are kaputt. The pupils did seem to be gaining confidence from them. In teaching the perfect tense in Spanish, it seemed to have a positive effect on the pronunciation of “he” and “ha” et al later in the lesson. Well worth a try and something I am looking to do a bit more of earlier on.

Photo Credit: immaculate-photons Flickr via Compfight cc

MM Paired Speaking

Possibly one of my favourite activities. The MM refers to a lady I worked with on my PGCE. In my mind the activity is named after her for two reasons. 1) I have never seen anyone else do it. 2) I’ve no idea what to call it!

Students divide their page into 3 columns. If they don’t have a ruler then gentle folds work well.

Column 1: days of the week or time phrases in a list going down. 3 lines between each approximately
Column 2: draw simple picture representing an activity
Column 3: leave blank.

Person A asks question for example: “Qué hiciste el lunes”
Person B responds using time phrase and makes sentence based on picture “el lunes fui de compras”.
Person A notes down in the empty column what their partner did on Monday.

You can add challenge by getting Person A to write in the third person on step 3. You could differentiate for weaker learners by getting them to write a quick note as to what they heard.

This is a very versatile activity as it can be adapted to different tenses and languages easily. It is good speaking and listening practice at the same time. Both students should have that last column filled by the end of the activity.

The Future Tense Three Musketeers

This came from a teacher I used to work with. She would teach the future tense telling students that there are three musketeers.

Musketeer number 1 has 6 moves in Spanish. Musketeer number 2 always does the same thing. Musketeer has different disguises but you can always tell it is him by looking at the ending. The three can never be separated. Once the concept has been introduced you may then move on to some mini-whiteboard practice. Telling students to check musketeer number 1,2 or 3 seems to be quite effective. It also seems to eradicate “voy a juego” or “voy a hago”

1 2 3

Voy a ______________AR/ER/IR

Vas

Vamos

Vais

Van

Some light reading

Apr 12, 2017Apr 12, 2017 / dlh202 / 1 Comment

Books to improve your practice

It might seem odd to some teachers out there to read a book about teaching, particularly during the holidays, when one should be relaxing. However, there is definitely a lot to be gained from some of the literature out there. Here are the ones I have learnt the most from when it comes to MFL teaching. To some readers, it may come as a shock that “The Language Teacher Toolkit” is not on there, however I have only just purchased it and have only read a couple of chapters.

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The Craft of the Classroom – Michael Marland (1934-2008)

This book was immensely helpful in my PGCE, NQT year and early years of teaching. Although it was written in the early nineties, the wisdom it provides is timeless. The late author covers relationships, discipline, establishing habits, parents, pressure, classroom layout, displays and more. Michael Marland, the author, comes across as a man who loved teaching. This book leaves nothing out. The effects of adverse weather on pupils is noted and the presence of plant-life to brighten up the classroom is suggested. His emphasis on the power of positive strong relationships comes across throughout. Having lent the book to an NQT, I am indebted to the Guardian for the following quote from the final page of the book:

“The craft [of the classroom] won’t work without a spirit compounded of the salesman, the music-hall performer, the parent, the clown, the intellectual, the lover and the organiser, but the spirit won’t win through on its own either. Method matters. The more ‘organised’ you are, the more sympathetic you can be. The better your classroom management, the more help you can be to your pupils.”

Michael Marland Obituary

Photo Credit: Richard Ricciardi Flickr via Compfight cc

Student reactions to speaking activities.

Target Language Toolkit – Allison Chase

Target language use varies widely between classes, teachers, students, lessons and schools. This book has 90 ideas to increase TL usage in the classroom and is great to dip into for ideas occasionally to avoid getting stuck in a rut. Having picked it up again recently I am very tempted to try the following:

List of 100 phrases. This is a list of 100 phrases or utterances that all pupils should be able to use. I think a mixture of testing and rewards may get them to use them more.
Talk Time – 5-10mins speaking at the end of a lesson using whatever prompts the teacher brings. This could be objects, photo, music, something to eat. The author mentions she tried a blindfolded taste test of dark, milk and white chocolate with learners having to explain which kind they were eating, and which they preferred. I may make this one a teacher-led activity!
Emergency flashcards for TL-shy classes – series of flashcards with the most basic phrases “yes”, “no”, “please”, “thank you”. I may adapt this slightly to have pronunciation on there too so that the learners can build their confidence.

Other areas covered include routines, games and activities, developing TL beyond the classroom and having a department wide TL policy. If you are considering a purchase, a longer review can be found here courtesy of Steve Smith. You can also follow the author on Twitter @AllisonChaseMFL.

Photo Credit: <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/35844974@N07/4635579067/">Arthur Schneider</a> Flickr via <a href="http://compfight.com">Compfight</a> <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/2.0/">cc</a>

Photo Credit: Arthur Schneider Flickr via Compfight cc

Why don’t students like school? – Daniel T Willingham

This is quite simply a superb book. The blurb on the front says “a cognitive scientist answers questions about how the mind works and what it means for the classroom.” It sets out this vision and sticks to it. A selection of chapter titles includes:

“Why do students remember everything that’s on television and forget everything I say?”
“How can I help slow learners?”
“Is drilling worth it?”
“How should I adjust my teaching for different types of learners?” This chapter ripped apart the Learning Styles Theories that I was taught on my PGCE.

The questions above are ones teachers ask themselves regularly! Each chapter is easy to read and answers the question it poses. Some chapters contain examples that the author explains. Sometimes there are examples that he lets you follow and work out, before presenting you with the answer, along with how your brain got there. Each chapter concludes with “implications for the classroom” and the book concludes by turning its attention to the reader. It asks the questions we should ask at the end of any educational book: What have you learnt? And what are you going to do about it?

German French Spanish Flags

Upgrade your French / German / Spanish – Margaret Jubb, Annemarie Künzl-Snodgrass, Silke Mentchen, Abigail Lee Six.

30 days of grammar, vocabulary and language development lie within the pages of these books. The books are generally designed for those between Sixth Form and University to shore up the basics of their language use. I would suggest they are excellent for MFL teachers who wish to work on their weaker language, but cannot access evening classes or are pressed for time. They may also be a good resource for your G&T students or native speakers.

Self-testing quizzes allow you to track your progress and see how you are doing. Answers can be found in the back. The first week of the German one is as follows:

Cases
Describing people -acquaintances, hairstyle, eyes, glasses, character, attitude, being keen on someone
Pronouns
Family and Society – genitive and possessive pronouns
Nouns – genders and plurals
Leisure – sport, verbs using fahren, meeting up with friends,
Relative Clauses

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Cracking the Tough Class – Bill Rogers

Bill Rogers is a bit of a favourite on PGCE courses. None of the books on behaviour seemed to deal with some of the classes I encountered. This one gets close. It looks at the features of tough classes and how to deal with them. There is an entire chapter on how to establish the right environment with a tough class at the outset and how to effectively follow up disruptive students. One of the later sections suggests how more experienced colleagues might support members of their department. An idea – from this book – that changed my practice was having my tougher classes in teams that worked together. There would be a prize for the top two at the end of a term, and a transfer window at the start of a the new term. This book will not solve all your problems, but it might help you to find some solutions. If the picture that headed this review summarises how you feel, when that group (you know which one) appear on the timetable; it may well be worth a look!

Everyday Revision

Mar 3, 2017Mar 3, 2017 / dlh202 / 1 Comment

It’s getting light in the mornings now so that means it is probably time to look at revision. This is a new post that is attempting to improve upon an older post. Here’s how I’m planning to ~~drag~~ help my year 11s through their final listening and reading exam.

Make a plan

My plans tend to work like this. As I’m running a fast-track course then we probably have no more than 1 lesson per common topic on the Edexcel Spec. Therefore my students need vocabulary, listening practice/reading practice and things that they can actively take away from the lessons and try. The following is an example:

Topic to be taught	Vocabulary	Focus L/R	Take away exam technique	Take-away revision technique
General interests	Sports, hobbies, free time.	L	Dealing with the picture questions	Mindmapping
Lifestyle (healthy eating)	Foods, drinks, gern/nicht gern Gesund/ungesund etc	L+R	Dealing with multiple choice (pick 4 from list of 8)	Flashcards
School and college	Subjects, likes/dislikes,	L+R	Dealing with past/present/future questions	Make a Tarsia

Vocabulary – Revise / Refresh / Build

The listening and reading exams are essentially one massive vocabulary test of 2 or 5 years worth of learning (depending how you run your course). Therefore most lessons need to begin with some refreshing of vocabulary.

I have the following principles when it comes to selecting revision activities:

The students need to be made to think or to listen carefully
It has to involve the students using and hearing target language
How much do students gain from it?

Here are a few go-to ideas:

Worksheets – For a few years it was almost heresy to suggest a worksheet but if it is a good worksheet then use it. The benefit is that the students have something to take home to revise from and they may appreciate not having to write things down for a bit.

Last man standing bingo – students write five words from a vocabulary list and then stand up. Teacher (or willing student) calls out the words. If all five are called out the student sits down and has lost. Winners are those left standing.

Environmentally friendly strip bingo – students write a list of seven words on the mini-whiteboard from a vocabulary list. Teacher (or willing student) calls out the words. Students may only rub off the top or bottom word when they hear it. Winner is the first one with a clean whiteboard.

Normal bingo – You’re reading this and you’re a language teacher. I’m not going to explain this one!

Vocab battles – Students have two lists of vocabulary and test each other. Winner is the one with the most correct.

Wordsnakes – Students have to separate the words in the snake. Here is one for work and work experience topic. If doing German, you will probably need to remove the capital letters.

arbeitspraktikumchefgehaltbedienenkundigen

Tarsia puzzles – This involves chopping up a sheet of A4 into 8 pieces and writing matching English and German along each inside edge. The idea is to put the paper back together again with every English and German definition matching perfectly with no text around the outside. They can be automatically made here.

Dictation – minimal preparation. Read out sentences from a past paper transcript or textbook reading activity. Students have to write down exactly what they hear.

Discovery Education Puzzlemaker – This was a staple of my NQT year until I accidentally and rather dramatically exceeded my photocopying budget . I only recently remembered its existence. Well worth a look and free to create simple puzzles involving vocabulary.

Vocabulary Toolkit – These are some rather old but still very good books in our department. They are sadly out of print but perhaps purchase a few for PP students. The book in question is here. Whilst it will not relate exactly to your exam board they are good little tools for revision. German and French versions only I think..

Collaborative Mindmaps – Students work in a group of 3-4. Start with the topic area in the middle and give them 4 branches out. They have a minute to add whatever they can before passing it on to the next person. Rinse and repeat.

It is worth mentioning that in the above activities I will probably focus on non-cognates over cognates. Most students can deduce a word such as “telefonieren” but may struggle with “anrufen”.

For more ideas of games that work then head to Frenchteacher.net or this page (shameless self-promotion).

Teaching Exam Technique – some thoughts on past papers.

This technique of going through past papers is something I have found valuable. My thanks to Chris Hildrew’s website for this:

PQRST Past Paper Method

Preview: revise the topics before tackling the paper

Questions: now do the paper.

Review: see questions below

Scribble: note any new vocabulary on the paper that was not known.

Test: test yourself two or three days later on that vocabulary to check retention.

Past papers should not just be an end in themselves. Completing a past paper is good but using it to push revision and learning forward is better. Students should be looking at the following after completing a paper:

What new vocabulary is there that I didn’t know?
Did I miss out on marks from misunderstanding the question requirements?
Did I miss out on marks because I didn’t know the material?l
Did I miss out an answer – the crime above all crimes on an MFL paper. When the odds on a correct answer are 33% or higher, missing answers out is silly.

General Exam Technique Teaching Ideas

Teach features of language such as prefixes and suffixes. For example, “ent” always implies removal of something in German (entfernen, entspannen).
Test them regularly on the little words and the negatives “jamais” “rien” “personne”.
Use the listening 5 minutes well. Model it on a visualiser if you have one or get your entire group stood around you while you do it and invite their contributions.
Have a twilight with your higher level students where you practise the target language question at the end of the higher reading papers.
There will be a question on tenses – can they spot them? Sometimes time markers play a role here. Students need to be aware of the features of each tense. Chris Fuller made a good point that anything future adds and anything present/past takes away in French and Spanish. If they spot an infinitive it is likely a future tense unless preceded by an opinion phrase.
Higher level papers will often mention all three of their multiple choice options. The trick is working out the right one. Two are probably close to right so listen carefully the second time to the ones that appear similar.
Exam boards have to promote SMSC just as schools do, students need to remember the exam is written for teenagers. When the question says “What are Karla’s views on smoking?” The answer is unlikely to be “it is harmless and we should all just light up now”
Remind students that Edexcel exams follow a peak-trough model where harder questions are preceded by easier ones. They need to make sure they do not give up too quickly. Question 9 can be a walk in the park after question 7 on nordic walking or the training of guide dogs.
Leave nothing blank! I’ve had a student get 5 extra marks in past paper as a result. When the kid said he got an A, he shocked most of his classmates! He later admitted not answering 8 questions but guessed them and was rewarded for it.
Some subjects have introduced walking/talking mocks. I prefer to brief students before they do they paper, allow them to make any notes of reminders and then let them go.

Remind them that they have been preparing for this for 2-5 years but shouldn’t assume that they can just do it without revision. Make the following your mantra:

EverydayMFL’s typical revision lesson

As a teacher of a mixed ability group on a fast-track 2 year course. Here is a lesson outline that I would use. There are so many good revision activities out there and I’ve seen all sorts of ideas on the Facebook groups involving balloons, jenga, trivial pursuit etc. You will notice that these do not feature heavily in the plan below. It is simply that with the time pressures of such a course, I’ve had to prioritise listening practice and as much vocabulary input as possible. The final lesson will generally involve some revision fun and German or Spanish food.

Topic: Healthy living and lifestyle

STARTER: activity that refreshes their memory of large amounts of vocab eg: odd one out, make a mindmap, 30 word vocab test German–> English or English–> German.

MAIN:

Present: a revision activity students could do at home on any topic but model it with this one. Students do the activity building in vocabulary from the starter and what they can remember.

Listening practice using past exam questions or revision workbook questions. Immediate feedback and discussion of where the marks were won and lost. Suitable for both higher and foundation although leaning towards higher. Sometimes completed with transcript.

Split class into two groups

Highers do some practice reading questions on the topic while foundations do practice listening appropriate to their level on the topic, then they switch. Students doing the listening will be talked through how to approach the question, what the question is looking for and any handy strategies that come to mind. We then attempt it. Those doing reading are largely left to it.

Set homework: revision via vocabexpress / samlearning / past paper / make a mindmap / make a tarsia puzzle / languagesonline / linguascope / language gym workouts etc

PLENARY:

Students then may face one more listening text (because you can never practise this skill enough) or another vocabulary building activity based on my experiences over the course of the lesson.

Students on study leave – what to do when you cannot do anything to help them anymore!

Make sure they know what constitutes effective revision – for a blog that changed my practice, click here.
Mail a document on useful ways to revise for languages to the parents.
Set them up some vocab lists on Quizlet / Memrise / Vocabexpress.
Give them a pack of past papers to work through and the mark schemes.
Give them a sheet of QR codes leading to language revision websites.
Make them purchase a revision workbook or guide to help them revise prior to study leave.

All the best with the final furlong.

The Options Lesson

Jan 24, 2017Jan 1, 2018 / dlh202 / 3 Comments

These next few weeks, we’re trying to convince the year 9s to carry on with a language or two. Here’s my thinking for…

The Options Lesson.

STARTER: Brainstorm every reason to learn a language. Could be done as a Think Pair Share. Students can then share with the class. Some commentary from teacher probably required to clarify, explain and correct. Typical answers include

Travel, teaching, interpreting, translating, fun, challenge, interaction with others, live abroad, get girls, get guys etc.

MAIN – 3 sections of approx 10 minutes each

Section 1: English is not enough

Quiz using powerpoint from TES. Slides 8-12 On this powerpoint you will find:

Guess the amount of speakers
Guess the percentage of people in Europe who speak…
Match the language to the people who speak it

The last activity may require some updating so modern multilinguals include Roger Federer, Bradley Cooper, Tom Hiddleston and more found here

The percentage question and the guess the amount activity could be done on mini-whiteboards so every student has to think about the answer.

You could also share some quotes from celebs found on the internet if you so choose. Mandela is my personal favourite:

Section 2: Skills and Business

Explain skills that can be gained by learning language using above PowerPoint.

Give pupils a list of 10 jobs and work out how a language could be useful in those jobs. Alternatively ask them to generate a list of jobs, give it to another group who then suggest how a language could be used.

Here are some if you are pressed for time:

Walkers Crisps Employee
BMW Employee
Easyjet Steward/Stewardess
Hotel Receptionist
Surf Instructor
Civil Servant
MP
Firefighter
Police
NHS Frontline staff.

Get pupils to generate a list of French / German / Spanish companies that have links with the UK. The list below is just to get you started.

French: Christian Dior, L’Oreal, Michelin, Peugeot, Renault, EDF, Agence France Presse, Bugatti.
German: Audi, Siemens, Mercedes, BMW, Volkswagen, Adidas, Haribo, Aldi, Lidl, Puma, Hugo Boss, Bauhaus, Bayer, Carl Zeiss, Bosch, Kraft,
Hispanic: SEAT, BBVA, Santander, Iberia, Alpargatas, Topper, CoronaExtra

Ok, maybe don’t mention that last one…

This section of the lesson finishes with this:

Section 3: What about Brexit?

“Brexit means Brexit” we were told. Most students seem aware that we will leave the E.U and some believe all sorts of weird and wonderful things about what this means. Regardless of your view when it came to leave or remain, and regardless of what kind of Brexit we go through, languages will remain vital to trade, business and growth of the UK economy.

Share the following statements with students. The links to the original websites have been added so that you can fact check the statements.

“Language skills are vital for our exports, education, public services and diplomacy.” – All Party Parliamentary Group on Modern Foreign Languages. Article found here

Lack of language skills costs the UK £48,000,000,000 a year in lost trade- Department for Business, Innovation and Skills). Quoted in The Guardian here

30% of UK businesses have no need for foreign language skills – Confederation of British Industry. Also found in Guardian here. Conclusion from this one, 70% would welcome someone with language skills

¨If I’m selling to you, I speak your language. If you’re selling to me, dann müssen sie Deutsch sprechen” – Willy Brandt

75% of the world speaks no English. -Routes into Languages quote this statistic in a helpful article here

“Brexit means higher priority for language skills. If we found it challenging to deal with the 24 official and working languages of the EU and the Single Market, let’s consider that there are 164 members of the World Trade Organisation. Each potential trading partner and regulator will be requiring precise negotiations. New relationships require trust, reliability and cultural empathy – those soft skills that come from knowledge of other languages and cultures.”- Bernadette Holmes MP. Original article here

PLENARY

Coming in to land now… I will try and explain what the GCSE entails and how they make their choices. All the normal warnings “don’t pick subjects based on friends/teacher preference/perceived ease/novelty”etc will be given at this point. We will conclude with a video:

Finish off with Options Girl

And/Or finish with Lindsay.

And/Or Alex

During my “research” for this lesson. I stumbled across the British Council video below. It sadly does not fit in to what I plan to do, however their series of videos are pretty good.

Also considered using this one…

And this…

Things to keep from 2016

Jan 15, 2017Jan 15, 2017 / dlh202 / Leave a comment

A belated Happy New Year to any readers and huge big thank you to almost 7500 people who read my ramblings last year! It is quite humbling to see stats like that and also how far across the world it has gone. Having said that, I’m sure there are some NFL fans out there wondering quite how they ended up on a language teaching website!

A bit of a reflective one to kick off 2017. Looking back at 2016, there are some things I did for the first time that I want to keep doing. Here they are…

Core Language Sheets

My 8s,9s and 10s have a sheet glued in the middle of their book where the staples are. These sheets contain key verbs (conjugated and infinitives), time adverbs, conjunctions (not a fan of “connectives”), opinion phrases and much more. They are used regularly by the majority of students in my class. They are adaptations of ones that can be found on Rachel Hawkes’ website. I changed some vocabulary items and also gave the fonts a slight upgrade. They are great for learning homeworks such as “learn time adverbs section” or “write a sentence using each infinitive with no repetition”. It has also stopped some of the “me gusta juego” that pupils often default to.

50-50 no hands up/hands up

I’m a fan of “hands up” and “no hands up” when questioning. I am aware that some teachers will advocate a 100% no hands up approach. This was suggested as an “outstanding” technique when I was training. I’ve listed the pros and cons in the table below. Hopefully you will see why I favour a mixture of both…

	Pros	Cons
Hands up	1) You see student enthusiasum for learning. 2) You gain an idea of student competence 3) Occasionally low-confidence students will go for it so you have a good opportunity to build their confidence with success!	1) Some students will never put their hands up 2) Some students will be too passive in lessons 3) The two above may become learned behaviours
No hands up	1) Keeps everyone on their toes 2) Does not allow an “opt out” 3) Allows teacher to target questions to underachievers, pupil premiums, G&T etc.	1) High anxiety for some students low on confidence 2) Some students will go with “don’t know” and resist your attempts to lead them to an answer. 3) If targeting underachievers, pupil premium etc too often, you may miss others.

Find someone who…

My new favourite speaking/listening task. For a detailed explanation look at 2.7 on Gianfranco Conti’s blog. The example Gianfranco shares links to free time. I have used it for future tense practice “find someone who will…” or past tense “find the person who did…” It requires a little bit of preparation and printing. The hard part is making sure that the students stay completely in the TL.

Teacher-led listening (Nick Muir / Gianfranco Conti / Steve Smith)

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Listening activities in textbooks can be useful. However, I object greatly when the listening text involving types of transport contains sound effects! I have started to do some of my own with varying successes.

Sense or nonsense – Students work out if the sentence given is sense or nonsense.
LH, RH, BH – Allocate three categories in advance, students close eyes and put hands up. This can be done with tenses, opinions, negatives etc
1. Left hand = future tense
2. Right hand = past tense
3. Both hands = present tense
Spot the word missed. Sentences on board, teacher reads out and students spot missing word or word added in.
Mr Men/Real Madrid listening – used at the start of the year to help develop sound and spelling links. Students have to spell the name of the Mr Man having only heard the Spanish. Can also work with members of Real Madrid’s reserve team.

Invitation only twilights.

Finally, we get to some of my own ideas! That being said, I’m sure that it is not original. I know a number of teachers who organise twilights and invite their entire class and attain varying attendance figures. This is compounded when you are up against core subjects, intervention classes, after-school detentions and some departments with more clout. I tried a different tactic. I invited 2-3 students each time. Only one did not turn up. Ways to make it work are as follows:

Invite the student personally a week in advance, have them note it in a planner.
Make it really clear what they are going to get from the session.
Bring something of a sugary nature

Having a smaller GCSE group helps, but even with a larger one you could plan it out over time.

L shapes game – conjugation and translation

Produce a grid of conjugated verbs in TL or English (8×8, 6×8, 10×5 whatever size suits you or whatever preparation time allows). Students start in opposite corners but can only move in L shapes like the knight on a chessboard. To be able to shade in the next square they need to be able to pronounce the word accurately and translate it. They keep going until they cannot move any longer. Winner is then the one with the most squares.

Traffic light book hand in.

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This came from one of our newer teachers. She has three boxes in her room. Green, yellow and red. Pupils put their books in at the end of the lesson depending on how well they feel they have coped with the material covered.

Green = I’m fine, no problems
Yellow = I struggled a bit
Red = I found that really tough. Help!

You can then mark in an order that deals with the greatest need first, and target your marking more effectively.

Snakes and Ladders with heavy TL use.

snakes-ladders

I tried this with a low ability group and then with a higher one. Pupils have to do a task if they land on odd numbers. If they fail they move vertically down a square. Pupils also have to do a task to ascend a ladder or stop themselves slipping down a snake.

1 – sentence with fui a + country
3 – sentence with fui + transport
5 – sentence with fui + people
7 – sentence with fue +opinion
9 – sentence with fueron
Ladder ascension: sentence with fui + country, transport and people
Snake Stopper: sentence with fui + country and 2x activities in preterite.

Save your money by doing the following:

Get 8-10 boards photocopied for your class.
Counters are rubbers, sharpeners, pen lids, 5 pence coins etc.

GCSE: Technology, Social Media and the Internet

Nov 7, 2016Oct 29, 2018 / dlh202 / 2 Comments

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I’m learning new words with this topic! Here are a few:

delizar – to swipe
tuitear – to tweet, hotly debated – should it enter the Spanish language or not?
unidad de red – cloud storage

So how do you teach it to tech savvy teenagers? I’ll be honest. I haven’t cracked it and I’m teaching the module at the moment. I’ll add to the ideas below if I stumble on anything useful.

Translation challenge

Divide students into A and B before revealing a slide with these:

	Translations A	Translations B
5	Sentence in Spanish here	Sentence in English here
10	Tougher sentence in English here	Tougher sentence in Spanish here
15	Equally tough sentence in Spanish here	Equally tough sentence in English here
20	Horrible sentence in English here	Horrible sentence in Spanish here (present subjunctive anyone?)

Student who gets the highest points score wins. They can start wherever they like.

A3 Answers B2 Responses and C1 sentences

This is an adaptation of an idea from the brilliant Rachel Hawkes. You give the kids questions like the ones below but tell them that you want an A3 answer. The kids then have to include those things in the answer to the question.

¿Para qué usas Facebook?

¿Tienes un blog?

¿Cuántas seguidores tienes en Twitter?

A use perfect tense 1 use a linking word that is not “y”

B use a sentence containing lo/la 2 use an opinion without the word “gusta”

C use present tense 3 include a time phrase

D use opinion 4 include an item of vocabulary from last lesson

5 lines up

Whilst this is not in anyway linked to the internet topic, it is something I am experimenting with. All learners rule off their page 5 lines up from the bottom. This new section of book is for any new vocabulary. This could be something they ask me for, something they find in the dictionary, or a new word encountered in a reading or listening text that they plan to look up later. It has the advantage of allowing them a means of retaining the new language and also shows it linking to the learning that took place in that lesson. Hopefully that should mean that words heard once or seen once, are not simply forgotten. My hope is that by processing it a few more times that they will retain it. It might also foster some independence.

Language Gym Verb Trainer & Boxing

The topics in the AQA book have a hefty amount of grammar (perfect tense, verbs with prepositions, por/para and the present continuous).

The Language Gym website has a great verb trainer but also in the “games room” section there is a boxing game on technology. It is a nice way to consolidate and extend vocabulary. It could be very effective in the practice phase of a lesson or equally as a consolidation homework. The rock-climbing game is really clever although I feel terrible when I get it wrong and hear the “aaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh” sound.

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Photo Credit: beyondhue Flickr via Compfight cc

How long can you keep it up for?

This one is all about conversation. Give groups of 3-4 students a series of cards with questions and maybe some support via a speaking mat if needed. Nominate a starting student. Explain that student 1 can question any of students 2,3, and 4. After 2,3 or 4 has answered then they have 3 options. The first is to ping the question back at person one. The second is to ask someone else the same question. The third is to ask another question of someone else. Tell the group they have to keep the conversation going as long as possible. Write up on the board the amount of minute and half-minutes they have managed to keep the conversation going in Spanish. I think some teachers call this group talk. It may well be that but I want the focus to be on the time aspect. They tend to feel more confident and sit taller when they realise they have just managed 5 minutes in Spanish together.

Perfect Tense – “Have you ever…?”

The AQA book uses the internet topic to introduce the perfect tense so once the students have got the concept then you could get them generating a series of 5 questions for their partner on any topic.

¿Has jugado … ?

¿Has probado …?

Tarsia Puzzles & Dominoes

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Tarsia is one of my favourite activities but does take a while to set up. It is a good plenary or starter to recap something you have taught in a prior lesson. You will need a printing and photocopying budget! Clicking the link will take you to the website where you can download the program. It allows you to make activities such as dominoes. You can also make triangles of little triangles where all the vocab must match in both languages. Maths teachers use it for formulas. Remember to set the form of entry to “TEXT” or it will crush your letters together. If you can trust your students with scissors then they can chop them. If not, employ the skills of your tutor group and ~~bribe~~ reward them for their efforts.

2 options for use:

English – Spanish vocabulary matching “deslizar” = “to swipe”
English word – Spanish definition “Youtube”= “Sitio para videos” “desinstalar” = “proceso de borrar app”.

¡No te metas a mi facebook!

Resources for this lesson can be found here

Lyric video here

If the lesson plan and resources on TES are not enough then how to exploit songs can be found in the Teacher’s Guide section of Frenchteacher.net

Spanish Text Lingo

I believe the kids call them “group chats” now but teach them some basic Spanish phrases for this purpose. See if the students can work out any of the following:

grax – gracias
tqm – te quiero mucho
bss – besos
komotás – ¿Cómo estás?
de nax – de nada
50538 – I’m not telling you this one. Turn your phone upside-down and read it

Verb Tables / Verb Stars

There is a lot of good grammar in this topic if you are following an AQA scheme of work so make use of it as an opportunity to teach them verb tables and how to use them.

descargar – to download

descargo descargüe voy a descargar he descargado etc

Whilst I am not a massive fan of learning styles theories, I appreciate that some learners prefer to lay out information in different ways.

Lists – colour-coded subdivisions:

Descargar

Present: descargo

Past: he descargado / descargüe / descargaba

Future: voy a descargar / descargaré

Make sure students stick to the same colour coding or they are simply going to cause themselves confusion.

Brainstorm / Star

Put infinitive in the middle and add others around it. To make it more asthetically appealing putting a star around the infinitive is useful.

How many different ways can you use that infinitive?

There are many verbs in Spanish that precede an infinitive. Students could use those as well. Germanists will know what I mean by Modalverben.

Puedo / Quiero / Tengo que / Debería / Me gustaría etc

5 Things to try tomorrow

Oct 5, 2016Oct 5, 2016 / dlh202 / Leave a comment

Here are 5 things I have tried this week…

Los Meses Del Año en estilo Macarena.

The kids loved this! The trick is getting them to practise the lyrics before doing it with the actions.

Equipment check in TL

This idea was borrowed from an excellent seminar by Eva Lamb earlier this year. When teaching students the items in the pencil case then get them to do an equipment check and stitch up their friend.

Persona 1: ¿Tienes un lápiz?

Persona 2: Si, tengo un lápiz.

Persona 1: ¿Tienes una calculadora?

Persona 2: no tengo una calculadora

Persona 1: ¡Señor, mi compañero no tiene calculadora!

12 sided dice revision

Teach a topic, such as family. Then at the end of the topic go through with the students how the new speaking exams will take shape. There is a general conversation section. Get a set of 12 sided dice and set a GCSE group 12 questions of which they must ask their partner at least 7. I found this was a great way of practising, ensuring spontaneity and helping them to learn to deal with unpredictability. The students then peer assessed their partner using the following guidelines:

Start low, ask yourself: did they do that? If yes, move up.
When you have reached the highest level. Ask yourself: how well did they do?
Pick a mark higher or lower depending on answer to Q2

12 sided dice were a great little investment and did not break the bank.

3 Minute KS3 Marking

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This is a variation on a strategy suggested by Ross Morrison McGill (known to Twitter people as @TeacherToolkit). Normally the suggestions from Teacher Toolkit take 5 minutes; this one takes two!! I cannot find the original link but I believe he suggested only 2 minutes per book. I have been trying it this week with some success and no perceptible dip in quality. If you can manage 2 minutes then even better. Here’s the Math…

2mins x class of 34 = 68mins

3mins x class of 34 = 102mins

Now if you’re like me a class of 34 is a massive amount all at once but the principle really helps. You can still highlight errors, write a positive comment and set 2-3 targets in this time.

My Favourite Spanish Alphabet Song

I have used this as a way of recapping the phonics we did in the first lesson (see Rachel Hawkes for Powerpoints on this). The lesson consists of introducing the alphabet sounds and getting a handle on those. Then I use it as a vehicle to remind the students of the sound and spelling links. We then look at a verse from a song (without telling them what it is) going through how each word should be said. If they know the rules, they can do most of the words, before concerning themselves with what song it is. We use the first verse of this one below…

Everyday Grammar Fun (part 1)

Sep 3, 2016Sep 3, 2016 / dlh202 / 1 Comment

Grammar teaching is an inevitable part of MFL teaching. Whilst there are debates about how much should be taught and how it should be taught; there is no escaping it. Grammar can be tougher to teach in some schools than others. So below are a variety of ways that I have used to try and make it a little bit more memorable and enjoyable.

Verbs and Conjugation

Chocolate can be used to explain a fair number of grammatical principles. Whilst it is ideally suited to the idea of singular and plural, I stumbled across this one a while back.

Chocolate – In Spanish to conjugate any tense, one removes the AR/ER/IR ending on the infinitive and replaces it with a different ending. It is a bit like having a bar of dairy milk (infinitive), ripping off the final third (ending) and replacing it with a piece of Yorkie. The bar is largely still a dairy milk (thankfully) but the ending has changed and so looks slightly different as a result. I have found this can help some students to get the concept in their head. If using this explanation it is best done visually with the chocolate bars themselves. You can offer them to whoever works the hardest that lesson, or simply consume it yourself at lunch.

Throw – Normally this is a plenary activity. I have seen a good number of MFL teachers throw some form of stuffed toy around a room with some differentiated questions to discern the level of understanding their pupils have attained or demonstrate what they have learned. Equally you could use the stuffed toy to explain verbs, pronouns and ending changes. I throw, you throw, he catches, she throws, we catch, they throw etc. When moving into plurals you may need 2 animal toys…

Yo tiro Tu coges El/Ella tira El/ella coge etc

Ich werfe Du wirfst Er wirft Wir fangen Er fängt etc

In AS & A2 German, I had a teacher who insisted that we conjugate verbs as a starter every lesson. It would follow this pattern:

Class call out verbs – the more varied the better: springen, streichen, schminken, treffen, lesen, lassen, sprengen, pfeiffen etc.
Verbs listed down side of whiteboard with for weak verbs/regular verbs
Each verb would be chanted: “pfropfen, pfropft, pfropfte, gepfroft”, “denken, denkt, dachte, gedacht”, “singen, singt, sang, gesungen”.
She would demand snappy sentences with modal verbs in various tenses “i have to sing”, “i want to sing”, “I wanted to sing”, “I had to sing”
After that came the recent grammar items eg: relative clauses “the man, who had to sing”.
After the main part of the lesson began, the challenge was then to use them in written or spoken form later in the lesson.

It worked as I can still do it years after. Admittedly the nature of German tenses makes it easier and rhythmic but maybe there is a way to do it in French and Spanish. I have started to try stages 4 , 5 and 6 with Key Stage 3 and 4 in Spanish to get them combining verbs and infinitives.

Present Tense

Today at Wimbledon. This is a nice one for Mira 1 after the modules on verbs, sports and weather all appear within a short space of time. You will need to recap the verbs, particularly in the third person and then the weather phrases.

Students have to script the Today at Wimbledon programme to explain what is happening today.

eg: Hoy en corte número uno Roger Federer juega contra Bob Marley*. Ahora es la una y media. Esta manana hace sol y hace calor pero a las cuatro llueve.

*most of your class will only know a handful of tennis players but they seem to enjoy it when Roger Federer defeats the Headteacher in straight sets 6-0 6-1 6-0.

To extend them and prepare them for the idea of tenses, you could give them a conversion table for the key verbs for future and past tenses. It might be helpful for them to see how the stem remains largely unaffected but the ending changes to indicate the time-frame.

jugó ¦ juega ¦ va a jugar ¦ jugará

Past Tense

Consequences is a great game whatever age you are. Great for practising past tenses. You give a kid a piece of paper and ask them to put their name at the bottom. This is a really important bit of instruction but you would be amazed how many go on autopilot at this point! The students write a sentence, folder the top of the paper over so it cannot be read and pass it on. You may like to give them a particular verb to use or a time/manner/place phrase to fit into their sentence. This is ideally done at the production phase of your lesson when they have acquired plenty of vocabulary and past-participles.

Anna hat Georg getroffen.

Anna und Georg sind ins Kino gegangen

Anna und Georg haben Krieg der Sterne gesehen

When you are finished with the story the students should be able to locate and return the original piece of paper to its rightful owner. From there you could turn it into a translation task or a comprehension task. You could set homework to produce a corrected or embellished version.

Songs – Songs get stuck in heads. Fact. One for French and one for Spanish below. Enjoy!

Raps – I wish these guys would go slightly slower but they have added subtitles!

Future Tense / Conditional

The following two are definitely more for the practise/production phase of your lesson.

Bucket lists – The idea of making a list of things to do before you kick the bucket has been around for a long time and was popularised by the appropriately named Hollywood feature “the bucket list”. Most students will be asked at some point about things they would like to do later in life, probably in a GCSE oral exam. Depending on the level you teach you may want to warn them not to overcomplicate!

I will go to Disneyland – Ich werde nach Disneyland fahren

If you are going beyond the simple then insist on reasons with subordinate clauses or a new clause bringing in a third person “my friend will…”

Scenes we’d like to see – This was borrowed from a mixture of Frenchteacher.net and popular comedy TV show Mock the Week. The TV show has a final round where comedians give short comments on topics they are given. Here are some “topics” you could use in class:

Things the queen will do at the weekend
Things <insert teacher here> will never do – this one is dangerous in the wrong hands!
Things that will never happen – expect England team related comments here!
The new school uniform will be..
<insert teacher here>’s new years resolutions.

Imperatives

In French this is largely easy to teach. The “tu” form for informal commands and the “vous” form for more formal. If you have presented and practised the rules then you could do the following:

Blindfolded directions – set your classroom up in a bit of a maze shape and get students to direct a blindfolded partner through the maze. Teach them the word “step” so they can take two, three, four steps forward etc.
School trail – give students directions to follow around the school. They probably need a sound warning about behaviour. You can get very creative with this. Here is how:
1. When students arrive at the location, they collect a new set of directions from the room of that particular member of staff. Give another member of staff an envelope containing a second set of directions back to your room. Alternatively blue-tac the envelope to the door
2. If students study two languages then use both!
3. Have an expert in your group. Give one student an idea of the route they will take and have them occasionally advise the group on the right way to go.
4. On their return the group composes a new set of directions. It is then given to another group to test out!
Make paper aeroplanes/swans etc – give the students a set of instructions and a piece of paper. Using their knowledge of conjugation and translation, students have to follow the instructions to make whatever paper creation you have decided upon.

Prepositions

In German these are trickier as they involve cases. Most students do not struggle with accusative and dative ones. The struggle is for the ones that could be either. Explaining the rule of movement vs position helps massively. My university professor once took great delight in telling a class that my translation had me driving my car “into the doctor”. He did miss a teaching opportunity for further practice with sentences such as “mein Arzt liegt auf dem Boden” or “jetzt bin ich direkt vor dem Richter”. I find the following flowchart helpful:

Prepositions

Feel free to use this resource in your own teaching. To alter a well-worn teacher cliche I would be “angry and disappointed” to find it on TES with a charge attached.

Eclairs – My old German teacher finished a lesson on prepositions by positioning chocolate eclairs (the little ones, not the cream filled ones) around her classroom as a plenary task. If you could explain where it was in German, you got it. Instant engagement and a bit of a challenge. Strangely, the class wanted to practise prepositions every week after that…

Frog – there is a really good powerpoint somewhere out there where a frog appears in different places in a room. Students then have to produce the sentence on mini-whiteboards. As I cannot find it anywhere then here is a link to a worksheet on the topic. For those who are au fait with Powerpoint, it should not take too long to produce a powerpoint with a picture of a room and a frog that appears in different locations. With the mini-whiteboards you do gain an idea of who simply knows the vocabulary and who can manipulate it.

Reflexive verbs

I would assume most MFL teachers would introduce this with a few rounds of Simon says and a comic strip for homework. My boss looked worried when I told a class to use a website called Strip Generator. I really have no idea what was going through his mind… Reflexive verbs are almost always introduced in this context. One thing I will absolutely hammer throughout the lesson is that “me” only precedes the verb if it is “an action you do to yourself”. When, or if, they start to giggle you can pretend to have no idea why they are laughing. This is one way to get them out of the misunderstanding that me = I. Sometimes I wonder if we teach me gusta etc too early and to our detriment.

There are probably a limited number of ways to make daily routine more interesting. However, one way I have done it is this:

Third World Daily Routine. Mira 3 does this quite well with a comic strip of life in a developing country. Having lived there I will give pupils a text based on the experiences of a child I worked with. You could give the text on paper or have it appearing in short chunks on a slide with pictures to illustrate. Students could then produce their own text, produce a script for a Tear Fund video that explains a little bit about the life of someone in a third world country or even do the old comic strip.

Adjectival Agreements

Definitely one of the times i can get boys engaged in working on their grammar. For more details, read on…

Adjectival agreements are mostly introduced in the context of clothes and colours. For Spanish, my lesson would have multiple present/practise/produce sections. I divide the colours and other adjectives into 3 groups.

Group 1: O/A/OS/AS

Group 2: +ES

Group 3: + S

I will explain the first group, pointing out they are the trickiest and if they can handle that then they can manage the rest. I show them some examples, do a couple of gap-fills and then with mini-whiteboards I ask them to describe a football shirt that fits the colours in group one. We then do the same with groups 2 and 3 to embed the rules. At this point I then give the class a health warning regarding the next few football shirts. Type into google “truly awful football shirts” and what will greet you is aesthetic anarchy. The great thing is that they allow you the students to practise the rules they have been working on with both masculine (un jersey) and feminine (una camiseta) nouns. The starter for the next lesson will likely be another fashion disaster to see if they can still apply the rules a few days on.

Was he mocked endlessly by his mates? Probably.

Known at the time as “the bird poo kit”, poor Norwich fans…

Described as resembling tube of fruit pastilles at the time.

Summer is here

Jul 18, 2016Jul 26, 2022 / dlh202 / Leave a comment

It finally happened! After a weekend that was full of fog, rain and dull weather, summer appeared. I’m not sure if it is sticking around but it happened for all of 1 day.

If you’re not feeling summery enough then click here or here or even here before continuing to read. Don’t do all three as that would be like mixing mint ice-cream, strawberry ice-cream and honeycomb ice-cream. All the right intentions but it would not end well!

Photo Credit: `James Wheeler via Compfight cc

It’s the end of term so this blog contains some stats, a quick thank you and an update on what to expect from Everydaymfl.com in the future.

Stats

The most read post were: Outstanding MFL Everyday and GCSE Revision lessons
The least read posts were: Numbers, days of the week and the basics and Raising your game. One on the present tense was pretty ropey so I’m not counting that…
The countries viewing this blog most are: UK, USA, Brazil, Spain and Austrailia. So thank you, obrigado and gracias.
The site saw 5000 unique visitors this academic year.

Thanks to…

Thank you to all the people from the secondary MFL facebook groups for your encouragement and suggestions. Thank you also to those who have commented on the site or have followed me on Twitter. Thank you to Steve Smith for listing me on the excellent FrenchTeacher.net.

What’s coming?

Fun with Grammar– Since someone asked for it on facebook, I’ve wanted to do a post on quirky ways to make grammar rules stick and good grammar practice activities.

Teaching the new GCSE – I’ve done two posts on preparing for it here and here but as I’m teaching it next year then I need to reflect on things such as how well am I preparing the students for the exams they will face?

Teaching the new GCSE content– some of the newer content. I’ve trialled a bit this term such as customs, festivals, poverty and homelessness so there will be a blog on that.

A facelift for the site – This is something I consider every now and again but it hasn’t happened yet.

A guest blog? – Maybe you have been reading this thanks to the facebook groups and thought “I wouldn’t want to run my own site but I could do that!” Drop me a line here and let me know.

Sorting out the categories – there has to be an easier system. I’m working on it!

Have a great summer!

Everyday MFL

Ideas for the everyday MFL teacher.

Author: dlh202

Some gems from ISMLA

5 things to try tomorrow

GCSE: Global Issues & Environment

GCSE: Social Issues. charity and volunteering.

Meeting the challenge of the new GCSE

New GCSE – one year in

Keeping Going

Moving Forward

5 Things to try tomorrow

Making marking work

Plenty to come from EverydayMFL

Teaching the weather

Everyday Questioning

5 Things to try tomorrow

Some light reading

Everyday Revision

The Options Lesson

The Options Lesson.

Things to keep from 2016

GCSE: Technology, Social Media and the Internet

5 Things to try tomorrow

Everyday Grammar Fun (part 1)

Summer is here