5 things to try tomorrow

Nov 26, 2015Aug 30, 2016 / dlh202 / Leave a comment

5 things I’ve tried this week. You could try them tomorrow…

Picture Starters

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Mira 1 gets students describing their teachers. I wanted to see how much my year 7s could remember so I demanded between 3 and 5 sentences based on a picture I showed them. Initially I typed in angry teacher into google and used one of them before using an image of Robin Williams from Dead Poets Society. I was pleasantly surprised what they were able to generate.

Me gusta el inglés porque el profesor es interesante

En mi clase hay un profesor interesante

Odio el inglés pero el profesor es interesante

This one came from Greg Horton. You can learn more about the work he does here, the big O seem keen on him.

Hands up listening

In an era of no hands up being in vogue this one goes against the grain. The teacher can prepare the listening phrases and it is really good in seeing who in your class has the best auditory processing skills and is an effective listener. It may well surprise you.

Mano derecha	Opinión positiva
Mano izquierda	Opinión negativa
Dos manos	no hay opinión

You read out a sentence and depending on the content, the students put a right hand, left hand or both hands up. This idea came from Nick Mair and I’ve tried it a few times since. It also can be massively adapted with tenses, negatives, comparisons, conditionals etc

Forms and Functions

An idea from the effervescent Rachel Hawkes.

1) Past	A) Future plans
2) Present	B) Uniform
3) Future	C) School rules
4) Negative	D) description of school
5) Comparison	E) Teachers
6) Conditional	F) Other students
7) Sentence with two tenses	G) Homework
8) Sentence linked with subordinating conjunction	h) Stress

The students could do this with mini0whiteboards or a series of exercises could be set on the board and students work quietly through them. The teacher demands a 1A sentence from the students. This might mean that the student has to write about future plans whilst incorporating a past tense in there somewhere. 5E might be easier as students would simply compare two teachers. It is great getting them to think about content, meaning and including the right things in their work.

Literary texts

My year 8s are reading Peter Pan together. I picked it up for 75 centavos. I’ve taught them about reading around both sides of an unfamiliar word (deducing meaning from context).

Deducing meaning from what has gone before

Bob entered the kitchen and saw his son doing the dishes. His son threw a ______ at him.

The most obvious suggestions the students generate are dishcloth and sponge, along with some other, rather imaginative ones…

Deducing meaning from what has gone after.

Bob entered the kitchen and saw his son doing the dishes. His son threw a ______ at him, which hit Bob and shattered into pieces.

Why do it? It is mainly to stop them getting hung up on the one word they do not know.

We have also done a fair bit of work on infinitives and knowing the little words such as “de” “el/la/los/las” “un/una” etc. Someone reads out loud before we look at what is going on.

Authentic Texts

The hotel boca juniors powerpoint on the TES was good for getting students working with some authentic material. Here are some I am looking to try out:

Quinoa – bit of reading for healthy living and food topics

Farting cows – animal/environment topic maybe? Might need simplifying…

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5 things to try this week

Nov 1, 2015Aug 30, 2016 / dlh202 / Leave a comment

Half-term – where did that go?!

Anyway, here are 5 simple things to try this week…

Mini-whiteboard Vocab Scrabble

You need some large tables, mini-whiteboards and pens. Start by writing a word across the middle (a long one). Students score points for the following:

Point per letter
Point per letter of word they create and the word it bisects
Double points if the word links to the topic from the previous half term (another way of making it stick).

Alternatively you can use paper but mini-whiteboards are more environmentally friendly 🙂 If you’re feeling nostalgic you can do it with a whole class and an OHP.

Odd-one-out remix.

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Give students a line of 4 vocabulary items on the same topic and a big capital letter at the end. They have to invent the odd one out. Again you could demand that they recycle knowledge from a previous topic.

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Find 5

Great way to build vocabulary. If you have access to dictionaries, picture dictionaries or Usborne’s first thousand words. Get students to find 5 of something so they broaden their vocabulary. Try to avoid them getting hung up on finding the duck!

Taboo

Talk or write about a topic without using certain words. In the cases of one or two students, I’m going to declare war on the next individual who uses interesante, aburrido, bueno, malo, emocionante.

Mark – Plan – Teach

I’ve been reading a little too much on the Teacher Toolkit website but I like this one. It should be the way we approach marking. I have just marked a set of year 8 assessments and whilst most did what was asked of them, there are a number of errors that I want to sort out.

It would appear most of them have great command of possessive apostrophes in English but these do not exist in Spanish yet nowhere in Mira 1,2, or 3 does it cover this.
Me gusta + Me encanta are often followed by conjugated verbs so that needs sorting.
ie and ei keep getting confused so some phonics drilling is probably in order.

Making it stick!

Oct 18, 2015Aug 30, 2016 / dlh202 / 1 Comment

Possibly the biggest lament of language teachers in my department and across the country is this: why do my students insist on writing “me prefiero”, “me gusta juego” and “mi gusta”?! Is my teaching really that ineffective? Are my students so inattentive? What on earth is going on?!!!

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Making it Stick – 5 ideas for increasing the right kind of retention

Palabras importantes

At the end of the unit I talk my students through the key vocabulary that they need to take into the next one. I go through on the board what the most important phrases are and put them into groups. For year 7 Spanish it might look as follows:

Verb phrases	Little words	Question words	Others
(no) Hay	el/la/los/las	Como	y
(no) Tengo	un/una/unos/unas	Que	también
es	de	Por que
necesito	en	Cuando

They are then set homework to learn these phrases and tested on them in the subsequent lesson. I find it gives them value and increases the likelihood of remembering the key vocabulary rather then being able to say “lápiz” and “monedero” but not being able to do anything with them!

Palabras importantes part 2

2-3 weeks later I test them again on the same words. It adds value and reinforces their importance.

Flowcharts and process

Students are used to these in other subjects. They use them in technology, science, maths and even history when composing essays. I have been teaching my year 9s the future tense and the conditional. They have a sheet in their books that has the endings and the persons along with a table of irregulars. Breaking it into steps is working even for the weakest ones. Chris Fuller made a pertinent point in a webinar: the past and present take away from infinitives; whereas futures and conditionals add to them. Most of them in a middle set can now take the majority of Spanish verbs and turn them into a “will” or a “would”. On the whiteboard, I put a flowchart which simply says 1) “what is the English action?” 2) “what is the verb in Spansh?” 3) “go to table in book” 4) “who is doing it?” 5) “add that ending”. The issue now is sorting out the past and present tenses!!

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Photo Credit: orangejack via Compfight cc Scarily I can see my students working their way through this process in their minds!

Practice, practice, practice.

I have increased the amount of grammatical practice in my lessons this year and it is gradually working. There has been a lot of animosity in schools towards textbooks, however they often have some very good exercises and I have seen multiple powerpoints on the TES resources ,which replicate the book word for word. Even Elodie, Patricia and Gert are still in the exercise on the PowerPoint! So why not just give the kids the book?! Again, with my year 9s, I have increased the practice they do using a combination of books, Languagesonline and the Language Gym websites. It is taking effect with the dedicated ones. The question is now what to do about the less-dedicated ones but that is another blog post!

Clarity of Explanation

In a survey of teaching by John Hattie, the following things were found to be most effective:

Daniel Willingham writes in his book “Why don’t students like school” (i’ve blogged on this book before) that “deep knowledge must be our goal”. This is borne out by the effect sizes above of instructional quality and quantity. Willingham explains the following two principles:

We understand new things in the context of things we already know.
We therefore need to ask “what do students already know that will be a toehold in understanding this new material?”

I teach German and one thing I have been trying to do is to link new learning to old learning at every opportunity. For example, we tackled weil with a nice animated powerpoint showing the verbs moving to the end of the clause. We then considered “wenn” and “obwohl” before tackling “ich denke, dass”. Before I introduced ,weil we looked at what they knew of clauses in English and introduced the idea of a main clause and a sub clause. This might sound very basic and something that you do all the time but I find that quite often textbook schemes of work do not have this link from one element to the next. For example: Mira 2 introduces tener que, poder, querer and “le gusta” in the space of two pages. The next chapter does not reinforce them at all. Neither do the three after that!

Teaching numbers, dates, days of the week & the basics

Sep 16, 2015Aug 30, 2016 / dlh202 / 2 Comments

Bored of doing the same thing year after year. Have a look below, be brave, dare to be different!

Numbers

I have blogged on this before, you can find it here

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“Burro” – students are in a group of 4 or 5. They count up to whatever number you choose and down again. They can say one, two or three numbers at a time. Any student made to say a number in a particular times-table (of your choosing) gets a letter. If they spell out “burro” (donkey) then they are out.

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Last man standing – Sometimes called Irish Bingo. Students write down four numbers in a given range and stand up. Teacher or a student calls out numbers. If all four of their numbers are called out, the student sits down. The aim is to be the last man standing (or woman if you are being politically correct).

Write either side – give students some numbers but they have to note down the numbers either side, rather than the number itself. This tests comprehension and recall.

Photo Credit: StreetFly JZ via Compfight cc If M&Ms did calculators….

Sums – make them do maths. Or better still make them create sums for their partner to do. Insist that they can be as nice or cruel as they like. It generally depends on how much they like the person next to them.

Months

Ordering – possibly one of my favourites. Students put themselves into birthday order using only the TL. Teach them phrases like “to the left” or “to the right” and how to say their birthday. Do it by academic year or calendar year. It allows the July born ones to not feel quite so young!

Class surveys – students go around interviewing people. Avoid them going straight for their friends by insisting that they cannot talk to people in their tutor group, or their English class, or people with the same colour eyes, hair etc.

Days of the week

Yabba Dabba Doo!!!!!! The kids will likely have no idea what memories this song evokes but they’ll sing along anyway.

Repetitive but scarily effective.

Key verbs

Avoir = Mission impossible works for this. Unfortunately there is not a youtube video, you will have to sing! Failing that…

Etre = Oh when the saints works reasonably well with this

It’s that bad it deserved a mention!

Tener

Ser

Latin American Spanish so misses out vosotros form.

Catchy and fun song. Never used this one before so I’m going to give it a whirl this year.

Teaching the alphabet can be found here. If you’re already ahead of the game and looking at present tenses then try this page.

Is there anything I have missed? If you can think of something then add a comment and share it with others!

“Sir! When are we going to the computer room?”

Feb 8, 2015Aug 30, 2016 / dlh202 / 4 Comments

Whilst not a pre-requisite to good teaching or good learning, some ICT room input is useful every now and again. Students enjoy the occasional trip to the computer room. I should use it more and my classes often remind me to do so! Here are my regular ICT room lessons. If you have a good idea drop one in the comments section below.

Sell your sibling (thanks to a former colleague for this one)

https://www.tes.co.uk/teaching-resource/Sell-your-brother-on-Ebay-6193621

Surprisingly, I have never got into trouble for this and the kids love it. If they are an only child like the writer of this blog then suggest they sell their teacher. Currently I am for sale on the wall of my own classroom. In the event that your pursue the latter course, you may wish to correct any factual inaccuracies that ensue from the pupils description of you (which can often best be described as skewed, misinformed or just wrong). If you’re wondering, I went for €1500.

WANTED

Great way to reinforce descriptions. Give the pupils a helpsheet with phrases like “armed and dangerous”, “do not approach”, “reward” and then get them to find a celebrity and go for it. A good plan is to tell them they are doing this lesson and have them think of someone beforehand, otherwise the normal battle of pictures vs content ensues and content loses out. Ideally, they should probably avoid doing one of their teachers but if they’re learning and being creative with the language don’t stop them. Display it in the corridor for maximum effect!

Gap Year

Students plan a gap year using the future tense. They need to explain where they are going to go, would like to go, intend to go etc and why. If you have access to www.youtube.com then “where the hell is matt 2008” could provide some inspiration, although it might have more of an effect on your travel plans this summer.

Students could add more details and description. The trick is to get them to focus on the language first and the pictures later.

Lebenslauf

Designing a CV. Great way of teaching a range of vocabulary and revising a variety of topics. Microsoft word has some good templates for this that can be customised. You could set homework prior to this lesson so the pupils find the vocabulary they need and then produce the CV, or equally do it the other way around and teach them how to use http://www.wordreference.com properly.

Audio guide using audacity

Students produce a radio advert to encourage people to visit their town. This can be done using the program audacity (free to download – or it used to be). The difficulty is recording it. Most students will happily do it but in an ICT room it does mean there is a lot of background noise. Maybe suggest they do it at home or if your school allows then use http://www.spreaker.com/

Past listening exam papers

If you have a mixed ability group the ICT room is a great place for these. Give the pupils the papers and put the listening tracks on the system or intranet where they can access them. It also allows them to control volume and work through at their own pace. This is good when you are developing exam technique. Obviously some in-class or exam hall practice is good but this helps build confidence. It allows you to cater to higher and foundation students if you have a mixed group.

Google Earth Directions

Why not create some directions that the pupils have to use google-earth to follow. They could also create directions for their friends. If they get to the right place then clearly they understood the directions – very easy way to evidence progress. There is a good resource on the TES for this but if you know where you are and where you are going then do your own. I tried some with Madrid and got pupils going around the main square before being dropped elsewhere in the city and having to find the Bernabeu stadium.

Languagesonline.org.uk and samlearning.com

Both of these are superb websites and are improving all the time. The former has recently been improved to facilitate use of tablet and smartphone. The latter is gradually building up its stock of listening practice. Languages online is free to use and has a lot of good exercises for practising grammar. It also offers the explanations and hints to remind students of the rules they are practising and links well to Key Stage 3 schemes of work.

Little explorers picture dictionary

Great resource for early years or lower school. My students have recently found this a great help on the house and home topic. Whilst they see the title of “little explorers” as patronising, the website is very good. Useful resource for weaker learners and perhaps getting students to make their own vocabulary lists.

Christmas Webquest

Worksheets 1 and 2 are great for developing cultural knowledge. I’ve only just discovered the rest of the site and there looks to be some really good material for French, German and Spanish.

Making writing more exciting

Nov 7, 2014Aug 30, 2016 / dlh202 / 1 Comment

I personally feel there is too much of an emphasis on writing in GCSEs. In spite of this it is a good means of checking understanding, encouraging creativity and developing literacy.

This is a short summary of 5 things that you can try and apply next week. You can judge my maths abilities at the end!

Writing Points.

Give students a grid of phrases with various points for various things. It is similar to a writing frame but encourage them to use the more complicated material by giving it a higher points score:

5 10 20

me gusta reason with porque es double reason with porque

me encanta reason with porque son use of “en mi opinion”

no me gusta creo que use of connecting word not y/también/pero

odio pienso que use of negative in reasons given

This works really well with year 8-9 boys and a set time limit. It also gets numeracy into your lesson. It is really easy to differentiate by ability. If you have a top set, stretch them, maybe 20 points should be for another tense. The example above is for year 7s and links in with last week’s post.

Writing Bingo

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Same as above but the mission is to use everything in the grid whilst still making sense. Winner is first one to use them all.

Writing frames

These can be effective however they need to be tailored to the relationship you have with your group and material you have covered. I have seen a number of excellent ones on the TES website but sometimes they need altering, correcting or rewriting for another topic as the layout is good but the material doesn’t help you! If you know of particular interests within the group then consider playing to those. For a more able group, the key to a good one is how much it forces adaptation and develops creativity. For a lower ability group the question should be how it helps them to sequence their work and does it help to prevent the phrases such as “me lamo” “me prefiero” or “me juego” and the ubiquitous “me odio”?

Silly sentences

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This works, my old German teacher used to practise grammatical concepts by increasing the difficulty of what we were expected to produce. Emily’s horse said that it did not want to be eaten (passive, modal verbs and konjunktiv I – she had high expectations).

Pupils love it but it is about practising structure and aiming at automaticity with the structures. Can students manipulate the language successfully?

Scenes we’d like to see

Borrowed from the popular jocular television show Mock the Week. This is excellent for future tense or present tense writing. “Things … will not do at Christmas” (insert name of celebrity or royalty). “How Katniss Everdeen will spend her weekend.” It really helps if you use mini-whiteboards as you can check that pupils have grasped the structures. I made the mistake of allowing the kids to use me for the first one. The results were interesting to say the least…

Flow Charts

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Students are used to these in other subjects such as technology. So use them to your advantage in structuring an argument. Say for example you want the pupils to debate the environment, work experience etc. Start with a variety of opinion phrases so that students make a point, explain it, add a contrasting view with “einige Leute denken, dass” and then add a further opinion and reason. The exam boards say “express and explain a range of ideas and points of view.” This is ideal for that very aim.

Teaching House and Home

Oct 21, 2014Jul 16, 2015 / dlh202 / Leave a comment

Whilst it may not be up there with my preferred topics of food, holidays, media and Christmas, house and home always makes its way on to a year 7 or year 10 course. Here’s a few of my favourite activities.

Origami houses (massive thanks to Mrs Shepherd and Mrs Cotton on my teacher training course)

This is tricky but kids love it and there are plenty of youtube videos showing how to make morecomplicated ones. Once you have the technique nailed you can produce it year in year out.

Try this.

Get A4 sheet
Hold it so it is landscape
Fold it in half to make it like a birthday card.
Fold in half to make it like a small birthday card but don’t press all the way down the fold, just make a crease
Open out 6)
Fold from edge into crease on both side and press down the fold. At this point it should look like a wardrobe.
This is the really tricky bit to explain.
Where the tops of the wardrobe are you need to put your thumbs in and pull down on the paper. It will make a triangular roof http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZioO5aeHhY 2mins 30 explains what I am aiming at here.
Students are then free to decorate the outside and inside, label it in French/Spanish/German and you have some excellent display work or a good revision activity.

Luxury House

Independent learning is the order of the day. After teaching the house topic, students have to produce an A3 brochure page for a luxury house. One half must be the pictures and students can get these from magazines or the internet. the other half has to be a description. Put students in pairs. You have of course the normal options here

Friendship pairings – often produces good results but naff results in other cases as they chat too much
Single -sex pairings – same as above
Mixed pairings – careful the brighter one does not do all the work.
Abiliity pairings – pair together students of similar ability

“I can’t help noticing I am considerably richer than you”

Based on the Harry Enfield sketch. This is essentially the shops game. Students try to out compete each other as to the features their house has. This is great for practising plurals and numbers too.

Student 1: En mi casa hay un baño grande.

Student 2: En mi casa hay tres baños grandes, dos aseos and a partridge in a pear tree etc…

Chocolate eclairs prepositions mini-plenary

I remember this lesson from when I was in school a long time ago. Our teacher had taught us the prepositions but to test us, she had glued or placed a number of Cadburys chocolate eccairs in positions around the room. Any one who could use it in a sentence got one. The nature of toffee is that it keeps kids quiet for a while. Genuis! Make sure your most disruptive student is not lactose intolerant 😉

Sherlock

If you have seen the TV programme of the same name. You will notice the hero’s ability to remember and remark upon every feature of a room. Give students a picture and get them to do the same

12 days of House-mas

Great practice of rooms in house, phrases like il y a, numbers and plural endings. Using the 12 days of Christmas as a model get students to describe a house. Then get them to draw a floorplan of their partner’s house and label it accurately.

En mi casa hay doce …

En mi casa hay once ..

En mi casa hay nueve…

Before and after.

Exactly what it says and there is not much of a leap between il y a and il y’avait or es gibt and es gab Give students two pictures of the same rooms and get them to comment on before and after.

Spot the difference

Again exactly what it says, try and find two pictures of a similar room on google. Or compare a double and a single room from a hotel website

Famous houses

Essentially the same as the Sherlock activity above however you can recycle language previously taught by bringing in family vocabulary.

Dans ma maison au premier etage il y a la chambre de mes parents. Mes parents s’appellent Robert et Carla.

Lessons learnt teaching MFL to KS3 bottom sets

Oct 4, 2014Aug 30, 2016 / dlh202 / 1 Comment

I’ve not quite cracked it with KS4 yet but i’ll have a go at ideas for key stage 3.

Having taught a number of bottom sets in the past 3 years I’ve learnt the following:

1) The next level is quite a big jump in their minds

2) Memorisation, literacy, behaviour and confidence are your main battlegrounds

3) Positive reinforcement has to be relentless – yep even for that kid you just thought of. 🙂

4) Relationships and rules are of equal importance.

5) They are reluctant to use the TL.

Some teaching ideas that regularly work:

1) Writing challenge (adapted from Rachel Hawkes)

Rachel Hawkes’ idea is to give an answer to a question that is exactly … words long 9/11/13. The idea was to get students extending sentences with ,weil. I’ve changed it a little. Get a student to pick a number between 35 and 55 (whatever range you choose). Then tell them that whoever can write a piece using everything they’ve learnt, the textbook and their exercise book gets a merit or whatever reward system you run with. 80-90% of kids will give it a good shot and be surprised that they can be quite successful.

2) Running dictations

Really good way of practising speaking, listening and writing. Just make sure the runner does not have a pen or they will write the difficult words on their hand. Caught a budding tattoo artist the other day. Another thought: don’t make them too long. Or if they must be longer put part II on another piece of paper somewhere else in the room and that way it doesn’t look like so much!

3) Bingo/Last man standing bingo

Bingo is exactly what it says. Last man standing bingo is similar. Write down four items of vocabulary on topic then stand up. One student is a caller and goes through words. If you have all four crossed out then you are out and sit down. Winners are the last few left standing. Good mini-test of listening skills and injects some fun into the lesson. Think it might work well with Queen’s “another one bites the dust” music as they start to be “out”

4) Speaking bingo grid.

You make a 4×4 grid of phrases you want them to use. Students then have a time limit to use as many as possible making sure they make sense. Their partner notes the ones that they use. The person who uses the most in the time wins.

5) Points for speaking/writing.

You make another grid but the top row has various point allocations for what they say. So depending on what you want them to use then give them various points (keep scores in 2 or 5 times table for easy adding). Again give a time limit and set them off. Award winners appropriately.

6) Teams idea (massive thanks to Bill Rogers “tackling the tough class).

Get the students to write down someone they respect and someone they like. Put your class into teams and give them points for everything: uniform, presentation, work rate, use of TL in lessons, helping others, helping put out equipment, being kind, answering questions, winning team games etc. Take off points if they talk when you are or break other rules. Keep this going over a term with a prize for winners at the end of the term. Seems laborious at first but can engender really good habits and cooperative/collaborative learning. Allow students to submit transfer requests at end of term that you will “consider”. Have done this 3 years in a row with tough groups and find I have far less bad behaviour and far less detentions. Kids, particularly boys are used to team sports and it plays to their sense of competitiveness.

7) Reading reduction paper (thanks to my HoD although he swears he can’t remember having this idea).

If students with weak literacy are tackling a tough reading text then give them a post-it note or an opaque ruler and encourage them to tackle it line by line. I have found that the reduction of information bombardment helps and they can then work at their own pace. It is a simple way of catering to students who find reading difficult. It is also successful with dyslexics.

I think this post requires a part II sometime. I’ve enjoyed writing it, hope you’ve enjoyed reading it and have something you can use.

Everyday MFL

Ideas for the everyday MFL teacher.

Writing