5 MFL Games I have been playing this week

Dec 8, 2025Dec 8, 2025 / dlh202 / Leave a comment

Since my PGCE, I’ve always thought that games have a place in MFL teaching and learning but they must have a purpose. That purpose could be: the practice of vocabulary or structures, practising spontaneity or revision of vocabulary.

Variations on Sentence Stealer

It always amazes me how Sentence stealer started in Kuala Lumpur and has made its way to classrooms across the UK and Australia and probably further afield. I’ve played it with a variety of classes in different schools and it always seems to go down well. I have come across one or two obstacles in playing with trickier classes

One student gives others their cards so that they win at the end
Students use a mixture of English and Spanish “do you have joo-ey-go al football?”
Some students don’t talk enough

Here are a few variations I have tried to counter this:

Pink writing – While the students make their cards. Write out four using a pink pen (or any colour they are not using). Slip them into a couple of students piles. Winners are now the ones that have the pink writing ones at the end or the ones with the most cards.

English = lose a card – While students are completing the activity, I walk around. If I hear English, I take a card from them.

Sudden death round – 1-2 minute timer (dependent on class size). Each student starts with one card. They continue to play as normal but as soon as they lose their card they return to their seat. Hint to students that the more they talk the less likely they are to be out quickly.

The 10 phrases game

Made this up after a game of 1 pen 1 dice earlier this week. Write ten phrases or chunks on the board. The more advanced the group, the longer the chunks can be. Colour the sentence complements in red (complement = word phrase or clause necessary to complete expression)

Juego al fútbol

Escucho musica

Student A: reads through the sentences trying to finish them in a different way.

Student B; counts how many they manage.

When finished they swap, but here’s the thing…

Student B cannot use any phrases student A has already used.

The game forces students to use what they know. The intention is to move them away from saying what they want to say and instead saying what they have learnt.

The Algo Game

Every now and again, you rediscover a game that works. The “algo” (something) game is one such example. You can find full instructions here (with pictures) and here (bit further down). This activity is great for reading aloud practice and practice of chunks. I can see it being particularly useful with the reading aloud element of the new GCSE. In the past, I have gone with a point per correct word. It motivates them to focus on listening and transcribing what they hear.

Points for sentences

This came from a lovely MFL teacher called Deborah who ran some training for us back in the days of controlled assessments. It works for both speaking and writing.

Verbs 5	Verbs 5	Time Phrases 5	Conjunctions 10	Showing off 20

You can imagine the kind of things that will fill the grid. You can also vary the requirements e.g. “weil” and “obwohl” might score more than “und” and “aber”. Students have a minute or two to make as many sentences as they can.

Student A: just talks and makes sentences

Student B: listens and notes down their points

Swap

Winner is the person with the highest points score. You can then also set it as an end of lesson writing task. The Nice Man Who Teaches Languages (whose blog is well worth a look) has written about getting students to write sticking to what they have learnt and they know from their repertoire. This activity helps with that as students stick to the phrases there as they score points.

Two truths and two lies

One of the easiest activities to do on the spot, likely inspired by the BBC programme “Would I lie to you?” Minimal Prep, maximum effectiveness. This came towards the end of a lesson on negatives in Spanish using the theme of sports and free time. It is easily adaptable to food, clothes, healthy living etc.

Students write two sentences that are true for them and two that are not. Most students do this in the order you say. Make sure they read them out loud to their partner in a different order!!! It’s then up to their partner to spot the fact from the fiction.

Cultural Capital: Strategies for Language Classrooms

Oct 14, 2025Oct 30, 2025 / dlh202 / Leave a comment

Other cultures have always fascinated me ever since learning about Norway in Year 5 or tasting a Stollen in German class in Year 7. My experience of teaching secondary languages suggests that this fascination is true for our students as well.

*Was Norway where this fascination with other cultures started? Possibly! It’s still on the list to visit…*

We teach culture to build enthusiasm interest and develop the cultural capital of our students. for those students who do not enjoy the language learning process so much, this can be a great way to hook them in.

There are four approaches to the teaching of culture that I have used in my career.

Unit based approach

The obvious benefit of a unit-based approach is that students can gain a deeper understanding of the target language culture full stop. I’ve seen units structured around the films “Innocent Voices” or Valentín. I have seen lessons centered around schools in Latin America or French speaking Africa. I have taught lessons about Cuba (thanks Listos 2), Dali, Goodbye Lenin and the Carnival de Oruro over time. There are schools who use artists such as Miro, Matisse and Picasso as the foundation for some of their early Spanish modules. Some textbooks base entire chapters around a target language festival, country or city. Indeed, one of my former colleagues convinced a class that Mira 2’s “Barcelona Te Quiero” song was once a successful Eurovision entry! The language gym has exercises on La Tomatina. There are plenty of ways to integrate culture into our lessons.

Just as there are benefits to this approach, there can be drawbacks. Culture can be relegated to an end of year project or sometimes a module around culture ends up with grammar or vocabulary “shoe-horned in” as they are good revision opportunities when actually other opportunities might have existed. The way to counter this is to ask the question: “Is this the best learning my students can do with the material that I am presenting them with?”

This might be a slightly extreme example but let’s take bullfighting:

It could be used as an opportunity to describe the colours of clothing worn by matadors, body parts or…

Do you use it as an opportunity to build opinions and justifications?

I think that	bullfighting	is can be	dangerous	as	animals are killed	however although yet
I believe that			barbaric		people risk their lives
In my opinion			unpleasant		the animals have no choice
In my view			cruel

The Pop-up approach

Do we simply just teach about the culture when it just pops up? Festivals in particular lend themselves to this approach. Events such as Las Fallas, Barilletes Gigantes, Dia de los Muertos, Christmas, Karneval and Bastille day are all opportunities to engage students with the target language country and its culture. Sometimes a textbook will have a single or double page spread on something. It does not take long to find a short appropriate video to show towards the end of a lesson.

The benefits of this approach are that it does not take up too much classroom time at the expense of learning the language. The drawbacks are that much can be missed if it is the only way culture is taught.

Displays

There are some wonderful displays out there. I have never quite had the artistic abilities to produce an amazing cultural display of the types one often sees on Facebook groups, X and BlueSky although I have done my best. I managed one on Germany with a lot of authentic materials after a trip to Berlin but our school then made the decision (against my protestations) to phase out German…

If you’re wanting inspiration, you can find some materials here with MFL Magic, Jose Garcia is has some of the most artistic cultural displays I have seen or you can go full mural as seen at this school on X. There are companies who can produce bespoke murals when given a set of criteria. If you are really stuck for inspiration regarding layout and how it could look then the picture below was created by giving an AI image generator a prompt “classroom dia de los muertos display.” Bear in mind these are highly predictive generating tools and will not be perfect but it might spark some ideas.

Like other approaches this does not detract from classroom time and it makes for a pleasant learning environment. The drawback is again that the display may need refreshing every so often and then you have to balance time invested against the return.

Culture slide approach

This is probably my most recent evolution in culture teaching and the one that I actually feel has done it best. Dedicating 2 minutes of a lesson to culture after answers to a starter/do now task and before the lesson fully starts. I prepare a single slide on a topic that includes some pictures and some fun facts. I talk through it for a minute or two and then we crack on with the lesson. The benefits of this approach are that there is largely something for everyone. The students who enjoy history enjoyed learning the history of Spain. The musicians enjoyed learning about singers/songwriters, bands and music. The students who go on holidays learn a bit more about the places they have been. The students – for whom a holiday abroad is unlikely – broaden their horizons. The students who don’t appear to enjoy language lessons often appear to enjoy this part.

Just to unpack what I mean a little bit more by “some pictures and fun facts”…

The Spanish island of El Hierro had a whistling language that was used to communicate between villagers. William Shakespeare was given a barrel of wine from Tenerife as part of his salary. Ibiza and Formentera were used as a base by pirates. Francesco Tarregas’s Gran Vals in A contains a tune known by millions around the world without realising its Spanish origins (seriously, look it up). The Menorcan city of Mahon is home to Salsa Mahonesa, or – thanks to the French – as we now know it: Mayonaise (an utterly disgusting substance with which people inexplicably ruin sandwiches).

I cannot reproduce the slides as they produced in the context of my work for an academy trust and therefore property of the trust, however, here is a rough guide to what you could do:

Year 7

Term 1	Term 2	Term 3	Term 4	Term 5	Term 6
Spanish Islands Mallorca Tenerife Ibiza	Major players in Spain. King, President, famous people	Spanish cities Madrid, Valencia, Barcelona, Sevilla	Spanish speaking countries in South America	History of Spain Cavemen to present day in 10 lessons. *	Customs / Festivals Mealtimes Siestas Padel Tomatina San Juan

*Simon Barton’s History of Spain was quite useful for this for the division of eras into 10 lessons.

Year 8

Term 1	Term 2	Term 3	Term 4	Term 5	Term 6
Spanish artists.	Spanish musicians	Central American countries	Foods including Paella Mole Negro Pique Macho	Idioms from Spain	Quirky places to visit in Spain + South America Smurf village Water fights in Bolivia Colombian festival of Yipao

Culture can make great cover work

Feedback from the cover supervisors in my first school was that they hated covering Spanish/French/German as they didn’t know the answers, students would struggle with not knowing words and most people sending in cover are often too ill to provide much more than “do these grammar exercises.” Whilst a set of sentence builder activities goes a long way towards solving this, a cultural based lesson could work. A set of cultural based activities means students are still learning, they do not pick up or reinforce misconceptions with unchecked exercises and the cover teacher has a significantly easier job.

I have done this two ways in the past:

Spain Live – This was a great textbook teaching pupils about Spain. It works very like a geography textbook with articles and questions to answer. There are also France and Germany versions.

IT room/library – Write out a list of Spanish speaking countries, periods in Spanish history or famous Spanish people. Give each student a different one so that they have to do their own piece of work. Students have to create a poster / powerpoint / document of some description that explains everything they can find using the computers or the library (if your school has one). To avoid copying and pasting, make them write it in a horrible histories style where it has to be accessible for a child aged 8-10.

Conclusion

However you choose to teach it, there is no escaping the fact that culture can broaden horizons, enrich the mind and enthuse our students. The above are some ways I have done it over the past 15 years. You may have others in which case feel free to suggest them in the comments or underneath the social media posts.

5 Things to Try Tomorrow

Dec 1, 2024 / dlh202 / Leave a comment

The whole idea behind these posts is five simple things you can do in your classroom with minimal preparation tomorrow.

Adam Boxer’s Tick Trick (adapted to MFL)

This arose from a post on X by Adam Boxer (you can find his website here). I started using this with my classes for translation tasks. It’s devastatingly simple to add into a lesson: “If you have that bit on your answer, give it a tick on your board.“ You can even convert it into TL with more simplistic language “If you have A, correct. If you have B, correct.” I used it to break sentence translations down into chunks of languages so that students were being rewarded for the bits that they were getting right. The current AQA GCSE does a similar thing where 2/3 chunks correct might equal a mark.

Photo by Photo By: Kaboompics.com on Pexels.com

The power of underlining.

Recently, our department has begun experimenting with sentence builders. I currently share some groups and wanted to check how much of the sentence builder my class actually knew and could reproduce because when you see them every other lesson, it is inevitably harder to track their progress. Being a fully-signed up fan of mini-whiteboards, I chose 5 sentences from the sentence builder for my class to reproduce in Spanish. In this case, the sentence builders described a house. Each sentence was different, used adjectives with the highest surrender value (that is to say applicable across multiple contexts) and students could attempt an extra sentence from the previous sentence builder if they finished quickly. I asked students to turn their sentence builders over and try to produce the sentences from memory. If they peeked, looked up a word or phrase then I asked them to underline that phrase on the sentence builder. It gave me quick intel as to how much each student could remember.

Seed-planting for GCSE

One of my Year 9 class this week asked a question about GCSE. It was one of those “let’s slow the lesson down by getting the teacher to talk about something” moments. I quickly weighed up the pros and cons and thought let’s take the opportunity to sell GCSE MFL to this mixed ability group. We have not begun our options process yet but they had some thoughts that needed unpacking.

Do I have to take it?

What is foundation / higher?

My sister says it’s ****** hard?

Do i really have to talk for 12 minutes?

What if i don’t want to teach / translate? Is it worth it?

It’s always worth reminding students that they have been preparing for their language GCSE since Y7. The words that they learn then are equally likely to make an appearance and the topics in Key Stage 3 often map to the GCSE ones. When the foundation reading text says “does Ximena enjoy her history lessons?”, they learnt that in Year 7. I sometimes think we are not so different from maths in that our GCSE is the culmination of everything learnt so far.

Photo by Yan Krukau on Pexels.com Grumpy Smurf picture was copyrighted

Grumpy Time

Not my idea at all and full credit goes to Gianfranco Conti for this one. Having seen that my class had used the sentence builder mentioned above to write about where they live (more ideas for this topic here), I asked them to produce me an answer that was entirely grumpy. Having not done this for a few years, none of my students had written a grumpy answer before so we had a brief moment about adding in adverbs of degree (sometimes MFL teachers and resources refer to these as quantifiers). We noted down a few to add in to sound significantly more grumpy. Students then produced some extremely grumpy sentences and seemed to enjoy it rather than the generic “write about where you live.”

Spot the difference with AI

You might notice we have been teaching a fair bit of “in my house” stuff recently from the post above. This idea continues that theme I asked ChatGPT to produce me an image containing two houses and specified what rooms i wanted in each (after a disastrous first go where we had staircases to nowhere). In the end, I ended up using both images! One for a simple writing activity where students wrote “In house A there is but in house B there is not…” The disaster house came in useful as an extension where with a few adjectives given students could write “there is a useless staircase”, “there is a garage upstairs which is stupid.”

A cautionary note on this one. ChatGPT only allows you a certain amount of images per day also since then I have also learnt that AI image generation has a significant water footprint.

Lastly, if you are starting to look for Christmas MFL ideas then…

Here’s 9 ideas

Here’s 9 more ideas

Also a relatively new blog from Beth M is well worth a look. I remember Steve Smith being kind enough to mention mine in the early days which raised my viewing numbers. I hope this will do the same.

9 New ideas for Navidad, Noel & Weihnachten

Nov 26, 2024Nov 30, 2025 / dlh202 / 2 Comments

After recycling my yearly Christmas blogpost for the last few years, I decided it was time to make a new one. As a result you now have 18 ideas. Enjoy!

Idea 1: Lyrics Training, Christmas songs and mini-whiteboards

Create an account on Lyrics Training. Load up the website. Give out a set of mini-whiteboards. Pick a song, set your difficulty level. Decide on write mode and choice mode (write means writing full words and choice is a selection from four). Project the video on the screen and hit play. Students write the words when the music stops, show their answers and keep a points tally. Ones I have used in previous years.

Santa Claus llegó a la ciudad Enzo- Laura Pausini version

Feliz Navidad si tu quieres – Enzo

Mi burrito sabanero – Juanes – more on this one later.

You can find others just by typing in Navidad / Noel / Weihnachten or Christmas related words.

Idea 2: The Christmas Quiz is the vehicle for teaching about Christmas.

I’ve seen a lot of Christmas quizzes like this one by Alex Rose on TES. My personal favourite is this one although now it will cost you the wallet destroying sum of £1. It’s a bit shorter and cultural knowledge is dropped in with the answers.

Idea 3: Plan to reuse them every year.

I now have Christmas, Easter and day of the dead PPTs with all of the following in. Yes, it makes for a large file size but at least it is all in one place and easy to load up. It took me 8 years of teaching to think this up but it works now. The resources that go with the PPT are all in the same folder.

Year 7	Lesson 1: Cultural talk, Christmas Quiz + Worksheet. Lesson 2: Burrito Sabanero.
Year 8	Lesson 1: Navidad Mexicana. Lesson 2: Lyrics Training lesson (see above).
Year 9	Lesson 1: Lyrics training lesson (see above) or Todo lo que quiero eres tu Lesson 2: El Gordo
Extras	Christmas Calligrams Writing a letter to santa Spanish Christmas info

Idea 4: Mi burrito sabanero (or similar in German/French)

Most UK primary school kids have come across the song “little donkey”, and if they haven’t then they are missing out/lucky (delete as applicable). I like to think that “mi burrito sabanero” in Spanish is the equivalent!

Do now: 12 words on screen. 8 from the song, 4 not but similar sounding. Students work them out or look them up. Avoid “Belén” as to some teenagers, apparently it sounds quite rude…learnt that one the hard way.

Listen 1: Students listen to the song and identify which ones they hear in the song.

Listen 2: lines from the song mixed up on screen / on paper. Students number them in the order they hear them.

Listen 3: Gap fill

Listen 4: With video containing lyrics to check answer.

If i have heard the song too many times in that week then listen 1 moves straight to listen 3.

Idea 5: Class discussion sentence builder 1

Set up a single powerpoint slide with: “What is the best Christmas film?” in your target language.

Opinion phrases	Name of Film	Simple reasons	Agree/disagree phrases
I love	Home Alone	I like the story	I agree, it’s fantastic
I like	Muppet Christmas Carol	it makes me smile/laugh	I disagree it’s terrible
I enjoy		it makes me feel christmassy	I haven’t seen it

Consider it a sentence builder with reactions added at the end.

Students discuss in pairs and then pick a few to listen to.

Idea 6: Class Discussion Sentence Builder 2

I’ll be honest here, I got to 8 ideas when writing. So, take the idea above and change “best” to “worst” and alter opinion phrases and reasons.

Idea 7: Penguins (Spanish only)

Yep, you read that right.

One whole lesson ready to go. Neil Jones’ Madagascar Penguins is a great “off the shelf” lesson that is fun, enjoyable, Christmassy and goes down well with most groups i have done it with. If you are in the kind of school that doesn’t allow films then maybe try adding it to the scheme of work first.

Idea 8: Activity around a short film (French only)

Courtesy of Josiane Cullis on TES. Le Loup qui n’aimait pas Noel is a lesson based around a short film and with plenty of activities including pre and post listening tasks.

Idea 9: German Christmas Digital Escape Room

I wish I could make something like this but Ann-Kathrin Latter definitely has some skills. This German Christmas Digital Escape Room looks great fun, is beautifully presented and I can see it going down well with Years 7,8,9.

picture of the escape room resource from above

Turning Around Challenging Classes: Strategies for Success

Nov 20, 2024Nov 20, 2024 / dlh202 / Leave a comment

My current school uses mixed ability groups so the scenarios below are from previous years in teaching groups largely set by ability but I thought this might give some hope to those teachers that are struggling.

8×6 – Year 8 Set 6

I had battled with this class up until Christmas and January needed something new, something different to avoid seven months more of students not learning as much as they could. This class was extremely boy heavy and whilst more recently books such as “Boys don’t try” have advocated avoiding competition, we leaned into it. Bill Rogers “Cracking the Hard Class” played a major part in this one and much of what follows is based on the advice found therein.

My classroom at this point was set up with square tables much like a primary school with four students to a table. The overly rectangular shape of the room suited it and lent itself to this. Rows ended up very long and a horseshoe wasn’t possible with student lockers and cupboards etc. This did however mean that whiteboards and rubbers could be left in a tray in the middle of the desk and all that needed to be given out was pens.

Students were in teams of four. Students had a say in the teams. They could nominate one person they thought they would work well with and 2 people they would rather avoid. This meant that certain combinations did not end up together. Ultimately, I didn’t satisfy everyone but the buy-in increased slightly. The rules and what they could score points for was clearly explained.

Our teams were Bolivia, Paraguay, Peru, Chile, Argentina and Panama. Points were awarded for completion of work, good work, using the target language in class, positive behaviours such as helping others and completion of homeworks. I occasionally had a TA in this group and they were allowed to award points too. Points were counted in two places a small whiteboard on the wall (which normally held learning objectives) and on a mini-whiteboard when I was mobile so they didn’t get forgotten. We would finish lessons ever so slightly earlier to give time to add up the points for each team. These would be displayed on a PowerPoint slide before students left the room, as well as at the start of lessons. As I taught this class Friday period 6 then this was declared the double points lesson. This meant that friday period 6 was actually quite a nice end to the week. At the end of each half-term we rewarded the top two teams and reset the scores to zero. Certain behaviours would mean points being wiped off. We limited this to rudeness and anything you might deem physically aggressive. The school policy remained in place for other infractions.

The mix of positive reinforcement, short term rewards combined with the team accountability that grew turned this class around. The TA and I actually ended up quite enjoying this class and were both disappointed when they got restructured for Year 9.

8×5 – Year 8 Set 5

I hesitate to include this one but I’m going to and the reasons will become clear later on. This class looked great on paper. There was only 12 of them. How difficult could it be? Our first lesson went actually well, expectations were set, books were neat and students did what they were asked. I went home thinking “job well done lad.” Then came the second lesson. One student decides to run over the tables throwing various items at other students. Another hides under the table refusing to come out. One claims they don’t have a pen. The pen magically appeared flying through the air towards me when i asked them to leave after they had delivered a number of x-rated outbursts at other students. Three others refused to work as they didn’t believe there was anything wrong with the verbal outbursts from the other one. One walked out because they didn’t want to do the work “it was too hard” and that was just copying the date and title. Their book showed they did it perfectly the previous lesson. Another walked out because I asked them to open their book and make a start.

I said the reasons for including this would become clear later on. Being completely honest, I don’t think I ever fully turned around this class but some of their lessons did get better. There is a model of bringing change to organisations that i think works with classrooms and is relevant here. I have paraphrased it below:

Stage 1: “Early Adopters” – Approx 10-20% of a group – Some people will just join in straight from the off. They will go with you.

Stage 2: “Ok, i’ll join” – Approx 20-30% of a group – Some people will join with you after a short while when they have had time to size you up.

Stage 3: “Don’t want to get left behind” – Approx 40-50% of a group – Some people will realise the tide is turning and join you.

Stage 4: “Critical mass” – Approx 55-70% of a group – At this point more people are with you than against you. Some people will not join you as they have decided they don’t like you, or your ideas.

It was clear with this class that we needed to get to critical mass. Here are some of the steps we took:

Removing 1 key player from the group and moving them to another group with a teacher they had had the previous year. They were more comfortable with her.

Getting SEN department involved to assist students under their remit. One was extracted for extra literacy as with a reading age equivalent to that of approximately 5 years old, accessing Spanish was extremely hard.

Getting our behaviour specialist to work with another key player or two. One particularly tricky student was removed for a period of 2 weeks while they worked with him. They then accompanied him to his next two lessons as a means of re-integrating him. The three of us had a conversation prior to his return. It allowed the class to settle a bit and then we carried on. The other we met with in a PPA to try and sort out some of the issues they were having. They highlighted some issues that we could deal with. There was a mixture of the content and the nature of the group.

Having a talk with one of the more challenging students outside the room that went something along the lines of “I’m never going to stop believing that you can do well in my lessons”. After that chat, I had to live up to this every single lesson. Some lessons they did well, some they didn’t but there was a definite increase where we had more good days than bad.
Once it was realised that this group were an issue, someone from SLT would drop in occasionally to see how the class were working and positively reinforce any good behaviours. Simultaneously, they would also look out for, and be quicker to any calls made to remove pupils. It took time and following rules and policies for at least a term or two to get to this point. Once the data of the time out room started showing that these students were an issue across the school and that MFL was over-represented in its two lessons a week (compared to the subejcts with one lesson) then the question became “what needs to happen for the students in that room to be successful?” rather than “what on earth is happening to the students in that room and why aren’t they being successful?”

Talking to their tutors and asking what information they had beyond the stuff that was available from SEN that could help me understand them or use to build a better relationship with them.

Having a starter task on paper, on the desk on arrival and making sure it could not be failed. It could be argued this was a massive lowering of expectations and to an extent it was. Once we had good behaviour and a good start to the lesson, we could get on with the learning.

Listening activities were largely done by me rather than the recordings. It was about giving the students confidence. Some struggled with processing so I would take the transcripts and slow them down or amend the language in them slightly, removing distractors and increasing the cognates.

Battleships and other games became a common feature of lessons and were always done with a model first so that students could “defeat Sir” and practise the language before doing it with their partners.

Writing was very much “write a short bit from memory to answer this question and then look up something to add.” Students had vocab lists. I had stamps where I could praise or give simple feedback. Stamp stacks from this supplier worked quite well.

We made regular use of the computer room (some ideas here) and used a variety of sites such as Languages Online, Language Gym (which was in its infancy at the time) and Linguascope.

We sought support from parents via phone-calls and posted occasional reward postcards home. Some parents were more supportive than others but again it helped in reaching that critical mass.

One teacher who was on a PPA would occasionally come and do their work in the classroom and help out here and there. They didn’t have to, they realised it was a battle and just wanted to help out.

I did wonder about posting the above and indeed writing this whole post as it doesn’t make me look like the world’s greatest teacher. I was my own worst critic in that I would go home thinking: “you’ve done this for 7-8 years now, how is this group of 10 giving you such a hard time.” I didn’t realise at the time but I wasn’t alone; other teachers struggled with these students but the timetable didn’t put all 10 together in one room apart from in MFL and ICT!

If you are that teacher going through that class at the moment or looking at taking on a new class that makes you think “aaaaaaahhhh” then know that there are steps you can take. Don’t be afraid to talk to line managers, SENCOs, pastoral staff and SLT. If things are really really bad, then there is support out there: https://www.educationsupport.org.uk/ is one such source. Union reps can also help. I would also recommend subject Facebook groups. You can post anonymously if you are just out of ideas and don’t want to be identified.

If you love teaching, love your subject, are passionate about your pupils and want them to do well then don’t let that one class change that.

9x Something – We’re not doing this next year

This next one is an amalgamation of a couple of classes. What do you do when they are not taking it next year?

Class 1 had very much decided this from about September 3rd. I used the setup from 8×6 above, as it had worked well the previous year and went for it. The group contained mostly different kids and in the end, a few were convinced to take Spanish.

Class 2 were a re-structured group post-option confirmation. They had had the options lesson and even despite our best efforts as a department, they had all opted for other things. All those that were studying it were moved into another group: my group. Continuing with the textbook chapter was a non-starter. So we went practical with the idea: If you were dropped in Spain, what would you need? These lessons were all resourced via old textbooks, bbc clips, resources online or lessons from TES.

The rough order was as follows:

Lesson 1: Shop names including this classic

Lesson 2: Directions (how to get to shop)

Lesson 3: Buying things (in the shop you just got to) recap of larger numbers and prices

Lesson 4: Buying ice-cream (if you can ask for ice-creams you can pretty much buy anything)

Lesson 5: Ordering food in restaurants

Lesson 6: Complaining about food

Lesson 7: Hotel vocab

Lesson 8: Checking in and out

Lesson 9: Transport by train/bus

Lesson 10-11: Body parts, illness and injury

Lesson 12: Getting what you need in the chemist

Most students will buy in to the fact that you are teaching them something useful and that in itself can be a big help. Inevitably, there are some who will not but more ideas can be found in this post

Ultimately, my hope in writing this is to give some hope and pathways forward to the teacher who is dreading “that class” tomorrow. If this post achieves that, then it’s worth it. Don’t stay silent and do lean on the support that is out there.

5 things to try tomorrow

Apr 23, 2024 / dlh202 / Leave a comment

You may have been wondering about the lack of posts over the past year and a half. Teaching another subject (I can add Python to my Spanish, German and KS3 French), some health issues and raising a toddler (who is awesome) has meant that the blog has had to take a backseat. Fortunately, there are plenty of good blogs out there. If you haven’t come across MFL Craft, Frenchteacher, the nice man who teaches languages or many of the MFL Facebook groups, Threads communities etc then definitely open up some of those in a new tab.

5 things to try tomorrow.

In the early days of my MFL there were forums on the TES website (anyone remember those??). One contained “minimal preparation, highly effective” activities. It probably had a role in inspiring some of this blog and the number of posts titled “5 things to do tomorrow.” I think edu-language over time has changed a bit so I will characterise these five as “low effort, high impact” and the first one counts as two 😉

Clipboard / mini-whiteboard

*best free whiteboard pic out there, obviously yours will be smaller*

Recently on Twitter/X, a simple clipboard shook the education world (or the small subset thereof that exists on Twitter/X). The writer of the post suggested walking around with a clipboard and making notes during class. This ground-breaking practice is something I had been doing for the past 2-3 years and maybe longer; I can’t quite remember when it started. I humbly suggest you do it with a mini-whiteboard/mini-board (the chipboard type as they are easier to write on). By doing so you have just probably saved a tree and also you nearly always have a whiteboard pen on you. So what could you possibly be noting down?

1) Mispronunciations
2) Misconceptions
3) Random name generation
4) Rewards
5) Sanctions

Ultimately, it is up to you. If you don’t currently do it then give it a go. Today, walking around I picked up that my year 7s couldn’t manage “hermoso” (they all pronounced the “h”) or “increíble” (they almost all added a non-existent “d”). Was my modelling poor? I don’t think so but it gave me useful intel to correct them. In addition to picking up things like this, I can note pupils to reward and/or sanction. To save time I sometimes use little codes; you will develop your own. What it might look like is crudely drawn below:

=====================

=====================

===========

| 1 4 6 7 2 3 8 5 |
| 2 4 6 8 1 3 5 7 |
| 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 |

===========

I occasionally use something like the above for random name generation. I teach 6-7 different rooms so it doesn’t take much to adapt the layout. On the board at the front of the room, I will write “front, middle 1, middle 2 , back” (in target language). I will then quickly write out the numbers 1-6 or 1-8 depending on how many students there are in a row on my board in a random order. After cold-calling one student, they will then select (in TL) “front number 3” or “back number 2” to pick the next person. As much as I love a wheel of names (Vincent Everett has a completely different use of wheel of names which is well worth a look – not sure if it is him doing the voiceover but his idea), it does save some time. Maybe you already do this and I’m aware a good percentage of Twitter keep it in their heads. I prefer to have something to refer to.

Live-marking – underline, question, double tick and bad English.

Live-marking seems to be one of those newer buzzwords. We have finally moved away from triple marking, deep marking etc or hopefully are in the process of moving away from some of the more heavy duty marking practices that have dominated the 2010s. While students are writing answers to questions, I will circulate and do one of the following:

• underline/highlight something that needs sorting that I think they can sort
• circle something and ask the student question out loud that forces them to think
• double tick any particularly nice Spanish that no-one else is using

It isn’t rocket science and you’re probably already doing it. If not, give it a whirl. It is quick, simple, effective feedback.

Live marking however does not just need to be for writing. I will circulate while students are speaking and if needed borrow their exercise book. I will write the word they are struggling to say with a “bad English” version next to it or immediately underneath. For example: “increíble” = “in cray ee blay” or “divertido” =” dee v-air tee doh.” It allows the pupil to be successful and serves as a very simple aide-memoire. I find very few students relapse with pronunciation after this little intervention.

Positive Post-Parents evening email

Occasionally on parents evening you do not see the students you want to see. Often those students are the trickier ones. However, sometimes you do not see a student who is performing well and deserves recognition. It might be that they were involved in something extra-curricular. It does not take long to write a quick email like the one below and from experience the vast majority of parents welcome it. It can be quickly done in a PPA the next day or day after.

Dear Parent
I’m sorry I didn’t get the opportunity to see you at parents evening. I just wanted to drop you a quick email to say how impressed/pleased/encouraged I have been by …’s effort/progress/attainment in Spanish this year. Their participation / effort / speaking / written work is of a really high standard / excellent / showing some promise. Please pass on how pleased I am with them and they are a credit to you.
Kind regards
Teacher

If you’re not a fast typist, then most modern versions of Word have a dictate mode that is decent. Like all dictation software it will inevitably struggle with some pronunciation so do check before sending.

If you’re considering this approach for the trickier students then I would suggest a phone-call is an infinitely better approach. If you’re relatively new in your career and need to do this then seek out a supportive Head of Department or Head of Year for advice on how they might approach this kind of phone-call.

3x TL Phrase to use

We almost all play a game in our language lessons at some point. Whether it is the classic battleships, sentence stealer a la Conti, Steve Smith’s Alibi or some from EverydayMFL.

I propose pre-teaching three target language phrases before the game. These could fall into different categories. The table below gives you a few ideas. You can convert them into TL.

Game phrases	Horror Phrases	Gloating phrases	Moving along phrases	Delaying
Your turn	I can’t believe you just did that	I win	Come on	Wait a sec
You first	You’ve got to be kidding me	I win again	Hurry up	Wait a moment
My go	What are you doing?	I’m the best/champion	It is my turn yet	So…. Errrm…

Some games might lend themselves to specific vocabulary. For example, in battleships your three might be “hit”, “miss”, “sunk”.

You might have a hard to motivate set so if you feel your class are less likely to engage with this then get their partner to tick every time they hear one used. If their partner doesn’t hear any of them, then they don’t win.

The Obligatory World Cup Post.

Nov 1, 2022Aug 13, 2022 / dlh202 / Leave a comment

If you’re looking forward to enjoying the World Cup (2 weeks to go) then you’re probably a football fan or have Brazil, Spain, England (yep, I said it) or France in the staff sweep-stake. If you’re not enjoying the World Cup then chances are you’re not a fan of football, or the staff sweep-stake left you with Morocco or Qatar.

The World Cup does lend itself to a variety of activities to revise material you have likely covered this year…

Recapping clothes and colours

This is one of my favourite ways to teach adjective endings. Football kits lend themselves to this task as the link explains. This could also be achieved with the flags of the countries.

Developing opinions and reasons

CCO Public Domain

Why not get each member of your class to write a prediction? You could even involve yourself in this, particularly if you’re still bitter about the sweep-stake.

I think that <insert country here> is going to win

I believe that <team that is not England> is going to win

In my opinion <probably Spain> is going to win

You could change this depending on the ability of the students. Students could add a reason for their opinion “because they have better players”. You could use the “will” future in French and Spanish instead of going to. They could add superlatives “because Ronaldo is the best”. More advanced students could use a subjunctive: “I hope that”. There is an opportunity to revise descriptions and opinions “I like … because he/she is talented.” You could also teach some colloquial language.

Never ending debate

The opinions above can be turned into a never-ending debate (at least that’s the name I’m giving it for now). This is based on something I hazily recall from a video I saw by Greg Horton a number of years ago where students did something similar with school subjects (apologies to Greg if I have in anyway misrepresented what was going on in the video- happy to amend if needed). It requires some structuring from the teacher. Your slide/lesson resources will require the following:

A sentence builder with opinions similar to the ones above about who is going to win.
Some questions such as “do you think … have a chance?”
Some positive, negative, neutral opinions in your sentence builder.
Some colloquial phrases “no way”, “not in a million years”

Put students into 3s or 4s.

Student A (to student B): Who do you think will win?

Student B: “I think … is going to win because…” “What do you think student C?”

Student C: “No way! I think … is going to win because”

Student A: “not in a million years, … is going to win because”

There are 36 teams in the world cup, you should be fine to keep going for a while!

Ways I have found to make this more effective is to do the following:

Firstly, this one only works first time! Secondly, choose well. Get one student from each group and tell them that if the group is still talking French/German/Spanish after 2mins to silently raise their hand. You reward any groups with hands raised.
Tell students you are walking around and will reward anyone speaking really good French/Spanish/German. Write the names silently on a whiteboard and tell them afterwards. It’s a handy reminder to the rest that had they been doing it too, they would have had the reward.
Tell one student in the group to be deliberately controversial. “Yes Morocco are going to win the world cup because…”
Gradually remove/disappear parts of the sentence builder.
Put a timer on the screen. If students are still talking in TL when timer hits zero then there is a reward.

How are you going to watch the final – future tense revision.

Students produce their plans for the day of the final. There is an opportunity here for a short piece of writing involving time phrases, opinions, reasons and the future tense. If they are not planning to watch it at all then it is still good future tense practice. This is a great opportunity to teach some more complex structures such as “after having done…” or “before watching…”

Consequences Activity

Students write their name at the bottom of a piece of paper. They write a sentence at the top, fold it towards themselves and pass it on. They keep going until all the sentences have been written. It can produce something amusing. Watch the kids closely (you know the ones I mean).

In the morning I’m going to…

For lunch, I’m going to…

In the afternoon, I’m going to

For dinner, I’m going to..

After having eaten, I’m going to…

… and … are going to be in the final.

Phonics Practice

This is one I have used a number of times. I always wonder why students can pronounce any footballer but then get every other word with the same sound patterns wrong!

For Spanish teams, pick one of the South American sides. Far harder. Most of the Spanish team will be well known to your kids whereas Costa Rica or Honduras’ first elevens will not be well known.

Recap target sounds with students. For Spanish this may be G, J, CE, CI, LL among others. For French this might be silent endings or other sounds. For Germany this could be sounds with umlauts, “ch” endings or double vowels.

Option 1: students announce the team to their partner as if they were on TV reading out the lineup.

Option 2: students race through the team trying to beat their partner to the end.

Option 3: teacher goes through lineup and students have to spot the mistakes made and correct them. You could do this as a Conti style “faulty echo”. With faulty echo I tend to have students write “la primera” and “la segunda” on each side of a whiteboard. They show me after hearing both versions of the word and keep a points count going on their board.

Song Activities

I think England could have stopped at that John Barnes rap or Footballs Coming Home

Sergio Ramos was involved in this beauty…

How to exploit it…?

Well, I had some ideas but then found this superb guide on Frenchteacher.net Anything I write would simply be repeating the list.

Or use their Euro 2016 effort…

If you are a bit sick of the football, or your class is, then do the same with the song “Así Soy” It worked wonders with my Year 10 class.

Comparatives/Superlatives Revision

The world cup is an opportunity to revise comparatives and superlatives. Who is better, worse, faster, slower, uglier, less talented, more talented? Who is the best, worst, most irritating? There is a TES worksheet from a previous tournament that just needs a little bit of updating, based on who didn’t make it this year.

Player Biography / Description

Mira 3 has a section on biographies of famous people. Viva 2 does a similar page on musicians. Why not do the same with footballers. There is an opportunity here to practise the past tense with “he played for”, “he signed for”, “he was born in”. There is an opportunity for the present tense “she plays for”, “she is a defender”. I’m sure you can come up with even more ideas.

Whilst this post is predominantly about the World Cup, England quarter final hero and goalscorer Georgia Stanway has just joined Bayern Munich. A quick proofreading of this post shows that there has been a lot of French/Spanish emphasis so far so this is for the German teachers.

You could put together a reading text covering past career, present situation and future hopes.
You could use this text from FCBFrauen with an emphasis on cognates.
You could use it as a listening text. There is a “Text Vorlesen” option. It is a little stilted. Whilst I would normally advocate slowing listening texts with beginners, I’m not sure you would want to in this case.

Read some tweets

The vast majority of international teams are on Twitter, as are their players. You could screenshot a few and use them as a translation task. Example below:

"Hay siete jugadores que no han tenido minutos. Y esos siete, más los que hemos tenido minutos, han puesto todo al servicio del equipo. Somos gente que está haciendo todo lo posible por ser gente que merezca ganar": @CH14_ #NadaNosDetiene

— Selección Nacional (@miseleccionmx) June 26, 2018

Listening Bingo

Give students a selection of football related terms. You could record yourself commentating over a video clip, you could mute the clip and improvise on the spot, or use the original commentary (with advanced level)

Option 1: students select 5 terms and you play bingo. First person to hear all 5 wins.

Option 2: students have a list and tick off as many as they hear. People who get the correct number win.

Everyday Displays

Aug 19, 2021Oct 30, 2025 / dlh202 / 2 Comments

Over the past 9-10 years, I have had a number of classroom displays. I’ll be the first to admit, I’m not very artistic. I look at some of the displays I see on Twitter and think “that looks incredible”, shortly followed by “I could never do that.” If you search MFL displays on Twitter you will soon see what I mean, along with a wonderfully deadpan nativity one! Here is what I can do with my limited artistic abilities and have done. Hopefuly ahead of the new term, it inspires some ideas.

When it comes to displays, I think there two types of display:

Learning
Inspiring

The kind of questions we need to be asking are:

How does this display help my students learning, or help me while teaching?
Is this display doing the thinking for them or making them do some thinking?
Is this helping to inspire a love of languages, an understanding of their value or an appreciation of culture?

I have 4 display boards in my classroom.

Display Board 1 (front) – TL phrases I want students to use in lessons

Display Board 2 (side) – Phonics board – this is an experiment from September

Display Board 3 (back) – Why study langauges

Display Board 4 back) – Map of Spain

My Current Displays

I’m aware that some people out there argue in favour of a “less is more” approach from a perspective of aiming to reduce visual stimulus in a classroom. I can completely see their point of view and definitely lean more towards this now than I did when I first started teaching.

Display Board 1: TL Phrases

I cannot find the original online so it is entirely possible my Head of Department made this. The phrases on this board are largely similar to this one on TES: https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/spanish-classroom-language-mat-12359711 The overriding aim in any display like this is that it has to be stuff that students are actually going to use. We have quite a strict equipment policy in our school so any “I have forgotten a pen/book” phrase is out. The rationale for having this at the front of the room is that I can just tap the board if a pupil asks me something in English that could easily be done in Spanish. Phrases it includes are:

“te toca a ti” (your turn) “espera un momento” (wait a second) “lo he dicho bien?” (did I say it right?)

he puesto (I’ve put…) “creo que es” (i think it’s…) “no es justo” (it’s not fair)

Display Board 2: Phonics

Credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/jeffdjevdet/20611280311
Owner requests speedpropertybuyers.co.uk/ be credited

This is an experiment for this year. I wanted pupils to be a bit more conscious of how words are formed in Spanish and essentially take a bit more responsibility in working out how they are said. That way if someone says “I don’t know how to say it”, they can break the word down and reconstruct it. This uses some enlarged slides from Rachel Hawkes’ phonics powerpoints here.

Display Board 3: Why study languages

Question Mark Response - Free image on Pixabay

This one is at the back of the room so chances are students are only going to see it when they are a) walking in and b) turning around to look at the clock (how dare they!). It could be more prominently placed if my classroom allowed for it but the material on there is large enough to read even with a cursory glance. Again, I am not the most artistic of people so my first trip was to Instant Displays for some lettering and then to use these resources from NST.

Display Board 4: Map of Spain

File:CCAA of Spain (Blank map).PNG - Wikimedia Commons

If I’m honest this is the one I am most proud of. It took a while to make so here is how:

You will need:

yellow and blue display paper
A marker pen
a projector that projects on to a whiteboard

Here is how to do it:

Find this map of Spain.
Fix yellow display paper to your whiteboard.
Project map on to the yellow paper.
Draw around the outline map adding dots for places.
Remove yellow paper from whiteboard.
Cut it out.
Cover display board in blue paper (sea).
Fix your map of Spain in the middle.
Write on the places.
Don’t forget the Canary Islands and the Balearic Islands.

This tends to be used quite regularly in lessons particularly when a place is mentioned in a text. It can be quite helpful to say: “This place is here. If you have been to … then you were not very far way from it.”

One year we also put some stars on places where students and staff in the school had been to Spain and where.

With apologies to Portugal.

Other things on the walls

The Weather: Students in our lessons write the date, learning aim (post on learning aims and objectives in the works) and weather.

Numbers 1-20: This is quite useful for lower ability classes when getting feedback on tasks. “How many people scored …?” Or for randomly selecting the next person. “Charlie, pick a number between 1-20.” you count along the rows for the next person. This is of course when you are not using Wheel of Names.

Both of these can be found at Instant Displays.

Spanish Speaking countries: This is quite a nice poster set by Twinkl. You can check it out here.

My Past Displays

The Sentence Builder

In the past I have turned a display into a giant sentence builder. The sentence builder was modelled on one in this video from Vincent Everett (the sentence builder appears at the 3min 20), which uses modal verbs and infinitives. It was extremely helpful to students, however I quickly learnt I needed to cover it up during tests!!! He also has an excellent blog, which you should check out. His Toblerone idea will be making it into a lesson in September.

Origami Houses

You can find out how to make these here

I set up a display board as above and then populated it with the origami houses that the students had made. I asked a few students to print off some useful vocabulary that could float in clouds in the sky, which they duly did….only with a few additions such as the house from Up! and the Death Star from Star Wars.

The Three Tenses Board

This was quite a simple idea from my previous Head of Department but effective. It contained 30 phrases all students had to know. His original looked something like the table below. I will let you decide what verbs should make it into the 30.

Past	Present	Future
J’ai mangé	Je mange	Je vais manger
J’ai bu	Je bois	Je vais boire

Teaching Spanish at the time I simply adapted the phrases. Again, this was a “cover up during assessments” board.

Hopefully, this has inspired you with a few ideas. I have probably done others that I cannot remember but these are the ones that I feel answered the three questions best.

GCSE: Marriage/Partnership/Relationships

Feb 23, 2019Feb 23, 2019 / dlh202 / 1 Comment

Photo Credit: The Quiet One Harumi Flickr via Compfight cc

I doubt the above picture will ever be the subject of a “qué hay en la foto?”, however it’s copyright free so feel free to use it in your lessons!

It is definitely time for another post on GCSE topics, which is another way of saying it’s half-term and I have some time to write. Having covered GCSE topics such as school, the environment, technology, customs and festivals and social issues charity and volunteering, it was time to look at the marriage and relationships topic.

AQA calls it marriage/partnership. Edexcel calls it “relationships”, as does Eduqas. This topic is one that I believe requires a degree of sensitivity when teaching. I have always found it useful to pre-warn students when there are upcoming lessons on this topic. For some, family relationships, divorce and arguments are the last thing they want to talk about because they are living through it. The last thing you want is to dredge up unpleasant memories or experiences.

I’ve tried a variety of activities to make this topic more enjoyable for students and will share a few below. Before starting this topic, it is really worth considering what you want your students to be able to say at the end and how it might be assessed. You might think “well I do that all the time”. However, are we thinking in terms of grammar, chunks of language or set phrases? From a brief look at AQA’s speaking sample assessment materials. Students should be able to…

give their opinion on marriage and appropriate age to marry
to explain a cause of divorce
talk about their ideal partner
state whether you believe marriage is important

You could also imagine how the topic is likely to appear in writing, listening and reading.

Here are some activities I have tried with groups on this topic.

Word Family Matchups.

Give students a list of nouns, verbs and adjectives. They should all have very similar meanings eg: “love”, “to love”, “loved” or “girlfriend/boyfriend”, “to go out with”, “dating”. Students have to match all three. I found this was a good start to the topic as most students started picking up the spelling and meaning links between the phrases and gave them a good base of vocabulary for future lessons.

Synonyms match up around the room.

Give students a list of words. Around the room you will have synonyms with a TL definition. Students have to work out which synonyms go together. This is best done with higher level groups after pre-teaching some basic vocabulary around the topic.

Ideal partner modal verbs

This topic is ideal for revising modal verbs (most common verbs). If you are a fan of Sentence Builders à la Conti, there is plenty of potential here. I’ve put two examples below. Feel free to adapt them to French/German/Spanish/Italian etc.

I want to meet a man who is adjective

I would like a woman can be adjective

I hope

My ideal partner should be adjectives

would be more adjectives

would have nouns

You can then do various games and mini-whiteboard activities based on these.

Consequences ideal partner.

I have used the above phrases in a consequences style activity. Give out A4 paper, one between two. Fold in half lengthways and chop. Students put their name at the bottom of the paper. Give them a sentence to create. They write it at the top, fold towards themselves and pass it on. Give them another sentence. Repeat until most of the paper has been used and then return to original owner. The original owner now has two jobs. Job 1: translate what has been produced. Job 2: write out a version correcting anything they deem not to suit them. For example, if their piece of paper says “my ideal partner would have brown hair” and they would prefer otherwise then they need to change it.

This vocabulary would also lend itself to a trapdoor activity!

Starts and Ends

I have always found this a good pre-writing activity to see how much students can produce independently. Give them the start of a sentence that they must finish or the end of a sentence that they need to start. It goes some way to mitigating the tension that arises when a student is asked to produce 40-90 words on this topic.

Mi novio ideal ______________________________

_____________________________________________ me hace reír

Semi-authentic Texts

I have a love/hate relationship with authentic texts. With some topics I love them (food, restaurants etc) and find them helpful. With some topics I cannot seem to find any that would better what is in the textbook. This is where you can create your own (highly patterned and flooded with language you want them to learn, naturally). I recently had some success with Fake Whatsapp. Rather than an authentic text where you cannot select the language, here you can, in a way that looks authentic. Add in some French textspeak, German textpspeak, or Spanish textspeak if you dare.

How can you turn this into something about relationships? Let’s return to our earlier bullet points:

Your opinion on marriage: Produce a short conversation between two people discussing it.
What is the right age for marriage? Produce a conversation between two people about a friend getting married.

Do every roleplay and photocard on this topic you can find

My experience of the new GCSE so far shows me that when students are confronted with a roleplay or photo card on school, free time, holidays or healthy living then they are largely fine. When confronted with one on marriage or family relationships. They panic. In class I would make sure we have a go at these topics and trust them to be ok with holidays and school. As there is only one of you and potentially 20-34 students in your room. I have found some success using the following process for doing roleplays and photocards in class. I have copied it verbatim from another blogpost on marking here.

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 omnishambles 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

5 Things to try tomorrow 2019 Edition!

Jan 26, 2019 / dlh202 / 2 Comments

A very Happy belated New Year to you. If you’re reading for the first time then you are very welcome! Over 10,000 busy teachers visited last year from countries all over the world. Hopefully, you found something useful. Anyway, to kick off this year, here are 5 things you can try tomorrow.

Photo Credit: Ekspresevim Flickr via Compfight cc

Vocab Sheet/Knowledge Organiser Dice Quiz

Some schools have vocabulary sheets, some have knowledge organisers. Get some 12 sided dice and set 12 chunks/items for students to test each other. They need to produce the Spanish for this activity to be most effective. Students test each other on 5 things. My year 8s are working through a foods topic so the phrases they were testing each other on primarily concerned restaurants.

3pts – perfect recall without help.
2pts – needed sheet to prompt
1pts – needed sheet but not correct
0pts – silent response

Quick run-through:

Harvey rolls dice, rolling a 9. He looks at the screen. His partner Lewis has to do task 9. Lewis reads task 9. “Order a dessert”. Lewis consults his vocabulary sheet and says “quiero un helado de chocolate”. Lewis has achieved 2 points. He then rolls the dice for Harvey.

Double chance to win bingo

Students divide a mini-whiteboard into 6. They put three adjectives and three nouns into the spaces. This worked best with school subjects and opinions. Bingo was one of the go-to games for my German teacher in year 7. I find doing it this way forces learners to listen to more of what you say. I guess you could do it with 9 squares and alter the verb too. The Year 7s loved it this week.

me gusta la geografia porque es útil

Bomb Defusal

Using a writing frame, put a sentence from it on a mini-whiteboard. Learners have 10 opportunities to defuse the bomb or a set time limit using this website. Very simple guessing game but actually allows you to check their pronunciation of the target structures. Make it more interesting by having the first person pick the next person, who picks the next person. Or use a random name generator.

Live Marking

This was sold to me a year or so ago as a way to “dramatically reduce your marking load”. This idea from a history teacher was that you went around the class adding comments to kids work such as “how could you develop this point further?”. The kid then had to respond instantly. In humanities subjects I can see it being effective. I came up with a variation recently designed to help a class that are not particularly confident speakers.. Here’s how it works:

Find a text in TL (textbooks are great for this).
Work student by student having them read out the text – no prior preparation.
With each student write a quick note in their book on their speaking. Here are a few examples:
- 15/1 Speaking: “superb today – no issues.”
- 15/1 Speaking: “check words with LL otherwise fine.”
- 15/1 Speaking: “check words with “CE.”
- 15/1 Speaking: “pronunciation fine, now try to sound more confident.”
If you feel that they need to respond in some way, write out a series of words containing the target sound and work through them with the student. Or get them to redo the line.

Students seemed motivated by it and seem more confident as a result. As a teacher, it is quick simple feedback and if a response is needed then you can do one very quickly! It takes very little time to do a whole class.

Sense/Nonsense Listening

This is a really simple warm-up activity prior to a recorded listening on a similar topic. Recently year 8 working through the food topic and have arrived at restaurant situations. This one was a bit of a “off the cuff” thing. Read out a sentence. Students have to listen carefully and decide if it is “sense” or “nonsense” based on vocabulary they have covered recently.

De primer plato quiero una tortilla española con helado de chocolate.
De segundo plato quiero una sopa de manzana.
De segundo plato quiero un filete con patatas fritas.
Por la mañana juego al fútbol con mis amigos
A las dos de la noche juego al baloncesto
me gusta el inglés porque es interesante
No me gusta el teatro porque es divertido

The possibilities are endless.

GCSE: Current and future study

Nov 16, 2018Nov 16, 2018 / dlh202 / 1 Comment

After a far longer break than planned, EverydayMFL is back. Prior to this hiatus, I had worked my way through a number of the less desirable GCSE topics to teach. After going through global issues, customs and festivals and charity and volunteering. I decided school and study should be next. Kids have mixed feelings about the topic. Teachers might also have mixed feelings. It comes with some nice easy grammar in Year 7 but then it is less fun to talk about in Year 11.

Here are a few ways to make the school topic fun.

Who’s the greatest?

Photo Credit: jtfmulder Flickr via Compfight cc

Flowcharts are used heavily in other subjects but rarely in languages. I’ve often used one set out as follows to allow students to give their opinions on the best teacher. It is also great CPD as you can find out the one they genuinely believe to be the best and then learn from them. Quite often the one described as a “legend” is different from the one they feel they learn best from.

Opinion phrase

Teacher

is the most …

because (positive reasons) because (negative reasons)

although he/she can be

positive adjectives negative adjectives

You could achieve a similar effect with a writing frame but I think the flowchart gives a slightly different feeling of progression.

At the end you could get them to apply it to a different topic. Whilst the phrasing is slightly artificial, it should show the students that the same structure can be applied across topics.

I think that <insert sport here> is the most … because … although it can be …

Hogwarts Conditional

The majority of students still appreciate the Harry Potter books. This allows you to teach conditional clauses: “if I went to Hogwarts, I would study …” “If I were at Hogwarts, my favourite teacher would be…”

List of subjects here if you need them.

Alternatively …

If I were the boss

Again teaching conditional clauses, you would be surprised how many students want to talk when they are given a writing frame on school improvement.

“If I were the head, I would…”

“If I had the choice, I would…”

“If I could, I would…”

Clause structures & Descriptions

Early in year 7 students are likely to have learnt how to describe people. It is often worth revisiting in year 10-11 but I have tried to do it with more advanced clause structures:

Not only…but also
Both … and …
Neither … nor
Regardless of whether … is …, I think that …
He/she can be … but can also be …
In spite of being … , he/she is also …

Germanists can have a field day here with “weder…noch…”, “egal, ob…”, “zwar…aber…” and “sowohl…als auch”. I’m sure French and Spanish teachers can come up with a few.

Describing your school

This has got to be one of the most tedious bits to teach. I cannot imagine many students enjoy relating the facts that their school has classrooms, modern science labs and a small playground. Here is an activity to make it ever so slightly more interesting:

Teacher gives half of the class mini-whiteboards. The other half are given cards containing a description of a school (parallel text in both languages). Starting in the top corner students draw in the rooms as they are told where they are. The whiteboard is then passed to the other person to check. They then rub out any wrong rooms and read those parts again.

You will need two sets of descriptions so that both people can have a go.

This could also be done as a whole class listening task. You could even do the school you are in and get students to spot the mistakes you make.

After School Clubs

Again, another topic to enthuse…

Essentially from this you want students to come away with a structure such as: “después del instituto”, “después de haber terminado mis clases”, “après avoir fini mes cours”, “am Ende des Tages” combined with the preterite/passé composé or perfekt tense

Have students look up some slightly more interesting activities in advance of this lesson. Fencing, bungee jumping, quidditch, gaming. They can then practice the structure you want them to learn. I can imagine some quite creative efforts once you add in TMP (Germanists only).

Future plans Cluedo

ah…the good old days

I was introduced to “who killed Santa” cluedo in my NQT year by two super language teachers I worked with. The structure can largely be applied to anything. Another popular language teaching website calls it mind-reading.

Give students the following table on a slide.

They pick three phrases and write them on a mini-whiteboard or in books. The student guessing needs to read out the verbs at the top and the infinitives. The person with the three answers can only tell them how many they are getting right.

I want to…	I’m going to…	I would like to
infinitive chunk infinitive chunk infinitive chunk infinitive chunk	infinitive chunk infinitive chunk infinitive chunk infinitive chunk	infi YOU nitive infi GET nitive infi THE nitive infi IDEA nitive

This is great as you can recycle quite a lot of language and also three ways of talking about the future at once.

European Day of Languages

Sep 19, 2018Sep 19, 2018 / dlh202 / 2 Comments

It is that time of year again and it always comes around really fast. European Day of Languages. If your school does not take part then this is your opportunity. It is great free publicity for your subject! Not to place ideas in any of your heads but you could even call it “Languages Week”…

There are many ideas out there, resources on TES and even on the EDL website itself. Here are a few I have seen work over the years…

Update: ALL have also produced some ideas here.

School site quiz quest.

This one requires some prior preparation, you will require: a quiz on paper, answers on paper, blue tac, sweets. Give students a set of quiz questions with answers around the school in creative places. Put the answers up a few days before announcing to generate interest. Any students who complete the quiz in their breaks and lunches get some kind of reward. It is very likely you will have a fair number of keen year 7s for this. Students collect the quiz sheets from you and hand in to an agreed location.

Tutor time quizzes/videos.

Some schools do not have a tutor time programme so create one for the week. Your other staff will often get on board if they are invited to take part. If they are forced then they may resent it. My experience was that 2/3 of staff would willingly go along with it.

We did the following:

Quiz on a different European country each day.
Video on a different European city each day.
The register in a different language each day (modelled and practised in staff briefing of course).
Staff used Digital Dialects to teach themselves and the kids a new language
Some members of staff taught languages they knew such as Gaelic, Spanish Welsh and Hebrew.
Some members of staff from other countries insisted on registers being done in the language in their classes!
Some members of staff kept the language from registration going all day.

Who speaks what? Display board

Do you have pupils and staff from other countries? Prepare a display with a photo and a short bio as to what languages they speak, how they learnt and how much they can still do.

Who speaks what? Video interviews

Get around your multilingual staff and interview them about their experiences of language learning. How easy/difficult did they find it? What are the benefits and advantages of speaking a language? You could show the videos in an assembly or tutor time.

Displays

Various famous people have learnt languages. If you want a list then here are a few… It didn’t take long to create a nice PowerPoint background, add a picture from the internet and a text box with the languages they have learnt. These then went along the corridor.

Bradley Cooper – French.
Carlo Ancelotti – English, French, Spanish.
Mark Zuckerberg – Mandarin.
Zlatan Ibrahimovic – English, Spanish, Italian.
Tom Hiddeston – Spanish, French, Greek.
Tom Daley – Spanish.
José Mourinho – English, Spanish, Italian, French.
Natalie Portman – German, Spanish, Japanese.
Colin Firth – Italian.
Viggo Mortenson – Spanish, French, Norwegian, Italian.
Dory – Whale.*
Christoph Waltz – French, English, Italian.

*may not be a recognised language

Assemblies

I appreciate that some readers may have visibly tensed up at this suggestion. It is a great bit of free advertising for your subject! Two years ago, I did an assembly titled “I never planned to teach languages”. It went down really well. We began with a quiz of film quotes translated into other languages (we used google, more on the evils of google here). They got sweets for guessing the film and the quote. Languages such as Portuguese, Dutch and Romanian are great for this. Then I started telling a little bit of my story about how I got into MFL teaching and where it has taken me. If you’re interested in that story, or in need of a good night’s sleep then you can read a bit here.

Dress up

One of my former colleagues is a little too keen on this idea… I’ll let your imagination take care of this one.

Foreign Food Stall/Tasting – courtesy of a great colleague from previous school.

Bring in plenty of foreign foods for kids to try at a breaktime. Staff and students could contribute to this. This could be run much like a cake sale with profits going to a language related charity or a charity run in a European country. Efforts we had one year included Schwarzwaldkirschetorte, Tortilla Española, Tarte au Citron Apfelstrudel and Croissants. You could even insist on orders being given in the foreign language.

Get the canteen involved.

If your canteen is up for it, then take over the menu for a week. I’ve given each day a theme as they will know what is practical. As nice as it may be to have a Croquembouche, it might be a little too much to ask!

Monday – French.
Tuesday – Spanish.
Wednesday – Welsh (that’s for Secondary MFL matters in Wales – you guys are great).
Thursday – German.
Friday – Portuguese.

Your canteen staff will probably welcome the opportunity to vary the menu a bit, just give them plenty of warning.

Language Learning Videos

Here are a set of videos with a pro-language learning theme.

Funny Foreign Language Videos

Who doesn’t love a funny or odd Youtube video at some point? Here are a few favourites from the past few years:

This one had the kids saying “poom” for a few days.

PE Department will approve of this one!

One semester clearly hasn’t convinced her…

What do you do? Share your ideas on Twitter

5 Things to try tomorrow

May 22, 2018May 22, 2018 / dlh202 / Leave a comment

These may already form part of your everyday teaching repertoire but here are five activities to try tomorrow. Each has a differentiation and challenge added.

Quiz Quiz Trade

Everyone I know seems to understand this one differently. I have seen it used in MFL and English in different ways. It can probably be applied to other subjects too. Here’s how I make it work in my classroom.

Get the mini-whiteboards ready
Project on screen 3 questions students have been learning.
Students pick one of the questions and write it on their board.
Students go around the room. They must ask a question, answer a question and then swap whiteboards.
They must perform 5,6,7,8 swaps before heading back to their seat.

Differentiation: You can differentiate this by getting students to write the start of an answer on the other side of the whiteboard.

Front of whiteboard: ¿Qué llevas normalmente?

Back of whiteboard: Llevo…

Challenge: You could have students put a word on the back of the whiteboard that has to be incorporated into the answer. You could increase the variety of questions used or vary tenses used by questions.

Rewards: whilst the students are doing this, go around, listen and note down the ones who are going for it. Reward them at some point in a manner of your choosing.

MM Paired Speaking

MM are the initials of the excellent teacher who showed me this. It is an information gap activity but I like it as it practises speaking, listening, reading and writing.

Students divide page into 3 columns
Column 1 – write days of week in TL leaving 2-3 lines in between each
Column 2 – pupils draw picture that represents vocab they have been learning such as places in town.
Column 3 – leave blank.
Project on board a question such as ¿Adónde vas el lunes? (where do you go on Monday?). You could also project a model answer “el lunes voy al cine” (Mondays I go to the cinema).
Model the activity with a keen student. This stage is crucial for the activity to work well.
Fiona asks Shrek where he goes on each day of the week. When Shrek answers, Fiona uses her final column to write down exactly what he says.
Shrek and Fiona swap roles.

Differentiation: Weaker students might need this printing out on paper.

Challenge: You could increase the complexity of the sentence demanded by insisting pupils add an opinion. This could be done by adding a column in between 2 and 3.

Car Race Quiz

I resurrected this little gem this week. I cannot find the original car race powerpoint but you will find similar powerpoints here by the same author. Car race, horse race or (at Christmas) race to Bethlehem should work. For those of you big on knowledge organisers, this could be a different way to test them.

Have a list of questions ready to test everything in a unit from key vocabulary to how to form various tenses or structures covered.
Divide class into teams
Teams take it in turns to answer.
If they are right then click the car/horse/wise man (whichever you choose to download) and they will gradually move towards the finish line. If a team is unable to answer, pass it to another team.
Winners are first to the finish line.

Differentiation: This can come through the questions you ask and how you tailor the activity to the students in front of you.

Challenge: you could turn this activity into a translation challenge. First group to produce correct translation of a particular phrase gets to move their car forward.

Song gap fills

I don’t do these too often but a colleague of mine did one with a class recently. Find a song and take out a variety of vocabulary. You could look for words with a particular phoneme that you want students to practice or remove some verbs you have learnt recently. They listen twice or three times trying to put in the missing words and then you show them the lyric video for them to check their answers.

It is best done last lesson of the day or you will be hearing it all day. Whilst my colleague suggested Kevin y Karla (check their Youtube channel out), This one was a hit with my year 9s:

Differentiation: depends on the quantity words you take out.

Challenge: have two versions with words removed. Remove significantly more from one version, or equally put the wrong words in and students correct them.

12 sided dice topic revision

If you have a set of these then great. If not then tell students to roll a six sided die twice and add the numbers.

Set 12 tasks on the screen that link to the topic you have been studying. Give each task a points score according to complexity.

1 Simple vocabulary recall task

2 Explain grammar structure

3 Translate something

4 Make a sentence including …

etc

Differentiation: you could pair up students who are at a similar level. You could turn it into a rally-coach task (the more advanced student does their own task but coaches a weaker individual to help them achieve).

Challenge: depends on the complexity of tasks set

GCSE: Customs & Festivals

Apr 30, 2018Apr 30, 2018 / dlh202 / 3 Comments

800px-Santiago_Sacatepequez_Kite_Festival

Picture of Santiago Sacatepequez by gringologue [CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons

The Spanish speaking world is full of a variety of festivals. From the perilous San Fermín to the picturesque Fiesta de los Patios en Córdoba or contemplative Semana Santa. If you look further afield you will find El Día de Los Muertos/El Día de La Muerte, and El Yipao in Colombia.

AQA refers to this topic as “customs and festivals in Spanish speaking countries/communities”.

Pearson/Edexcel refer to it as “celebrations and festivals”.

WJEC refer to it as: “festivals and celebrations”.

The ideas discussed in this blog and inevitably the language used will unavoidably favour the exam board I’m currently preparing my students for. Nevertheless the ideas themselves should be applicable to any exam board and adaptable to languages other than Spanish.

It is worth considering how a module like this one might be examined. It could be tested by all four skills

Speaking: any of the three elements could include something related to this topic. Your sample assessment materials should give you an idea.
Writing: write about a festival/celebration you went to or would like to go to
Listening: listen to an account of Carnival and answer questions (AQA SAMS)
Reading: same as above but text on page

Here are some activities I have tried over the course of teaching this module.

The VLOG

This was an idea from a colleague of mine and one of the best MFL teachers I know. The ultimate aim is that students produce a VLOG (video-blog) in which they describe a Spanish festival. A growing number of the students I teach want to be “Youtubers” so they welcomed this idea. Students were told they can appear in the VLOG if they choose or they could do something similar to Tio Spanish. The main rule was that it was them doing the talking. The structures I wanted the students to be using included the following:

it celebrates, it takes place in, it is, there is/are, you can see, you can, it starts, it finishes, it lasts, it is one of the most … , it has, it involves, it includes, I would like to go, because it looks, i would recommend it because it is.

Part 1: 2-3 lessons of controlled listening, reading, speaking and writing practice ensued trying to recycle these structures as much as possible. I had been reading quite a bit over half-term and wanted to try out some new ideas. One source of ideas was The Language Teacher Toolkit The Language Teacher Toolkit. Another was the Language Gym Blog. A number of these formed part of the lesson and I wrote a number of texts that recycled the target structures above.

Part 2: I took the students to the ICT room. They researched key details about a festival from a selection I had produced. No-one did La Tomatina because that was on the scheme of work for subsequent weeks. After that students produced a script using as many of the target structures as possible.

Part 3: They handed in their scripts, which I marked. They then corrected and improved it based on feedback they were given so that their VLOG recording is grammatically sound. As part of this, they also had to underline any words that they felt were tricky to pronounce. Those that finished this redrafting process worked with me on how to pronounce the words. Others were directed to Voki. Whilst not perfect, it will do the job.

Part 4: Students are currently recording their vlogs.

Festivals that match interests.

Sometimes it is worth investigating a little more to find out some more festivals out there. UK textbooks tend to emphasise la tomatina or navidad. I think the former because it captures the imagination and the later because students can relate to it. One student was quite motivated by the fería de caballos in Jerez. Another really enjoyed looking into la mistura peruana (Peru’s food festival). Día de amistad (South America) was perceived to be a great idea by another student and they wondered why we don’t have it here.

Android Game

This was a way of practising the key vocabulary around festivals. Here’s how it works: Frodo draws 9 dots on a whiteboard in a 3×3 pattern. Frodo then joins up 4-5 of the dots consecutively like an Android phone password.

On the screen have 9 squares with phrases in. These correspond to the 9 dots.

Sam’s job is to crack Frodo’s password. Sam says the phrases on the screen trying to guess where Frodo’s password starts. Frodo can only respond “si” when Sam has guessed the first one. Even if he has said other parts of the pattern up to this point, he must get the first one.

The main aim here is repetition of vocabulary and familiarisation with the target structures. You should advise students beforehand not to use their actual phone password. You would think it might not need saying, but it does.

Trapdoor with lives

Trapdoor seems to be a staple of MFL teacher PowerPoints on TES.

Danielle was kind enough to let me use this example of trapdoor. You should visit her site: Morganmfl

The prevailing methodology seems to be that students restart when they get it wrong and go back to the beginning. A slight twist I have tried recently is giving students a number of lives. They then have to reach the end alive. This means that they have a greater chance to use all of the vocabulary on the activity. I tend to base the number of lives on 1-2 guesses per section.

For festivals I used the idea of a past tense account of the festival including the following vocabulary:

I went to, we went to, my friends and I went to, we participated in, we threw, a lot of, we ate, we drank, it was, we are going to go again, because it is, we are never going to go again,

Mastermind with lives

Again using the same principal as the trapdoor activity above. Students have to guess what their partner is thinking. They can only tell their partner how many they get right. Place a table on the board with 3-4 columns. The original game to the left uses four. Personally, I prefer three for MFL lessons. One student writes the target phrases in their book. The other tries to guess the phrases that they have written. This can be made quicker by giving students a number of lives. It also means both students are likely to get a go. Students seem to enjoy this one.

TL Questions and TL answers

By Carlesboveserral [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)%5D, from Wikimedia Commons

This module has been great for training students to respond to target language questions with target language answers. Using the AQA book, we covered la tomatina. I wrote text about la tomatina from the point of view of “Marcos” who attended la tomatina. There were then 8 TL questions with relatively simple answers in the text. Part of the activity was to train pupils to look for language that is similar to the verbs in the question.

If this is the answer, what is the question

In the subsequent lesson, I jumbled up the TL questions and TL answers and asked students to match them. The answers were on the left of the slide and questions on the right. To increase the level of challenge in this activity, you could have students create the questions themselves.

Four Phrases One festival

Have four boxes of text on the screen. Three of the boxes all partly describe a festival. The final box should have some details that do not correlate with the others. Students need to work out the festival as well as which box does not help them. The idea behind this was to give them practice of filtering out the distractors when looking at higher level reading texts. Depending on the level of your class you can make this as subtle as you feel is right.

Dice

I’m not quite sure where I would be without a set of 6 sided and 12 sided dice in lessons. Aside from the rather popular “one pen one die” activity, you can do a variety of things.

Improvisation – students make a sentence based on prompt. You could add a minimum word count to stretch them.

Where was the festival?
What was it about?
What did you see?
How was it?
Who did you go with?
What did you like most?

Roll, say, translate – Hugh rolls the dice and says the sentence. Zac translates into English.

se celebra en abril
tiene lugar en Sevilla
hay muchas casetas
empieza dos semanas después de la Semana Santa
la gente baila sevillanas, bebe manzanilla y come tapas
Quiero visitarla porque parece bonita

etc

Extreme Snakes and Ladders

By Druyts.t [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)%5D, from Wikimedia Commons

I’ll be honest with you; it is not extreme but the name seems to have an effect on classes. Find a snakes and ladders board. Set sentence-making challenges for anyone who lands on a number ending in 1,3,5,7,9. You could also add a snake stopper and ladder allower. These should be tricky tasks.

1 Where was the festival?

3 What was it about?

5 What did you see?

7 How was it?

9 Who did you go with?

Snake Stopper: make three sentences about a festival that includes the words … , … and …

Ladder Allower: Describe a festival you wouldn’t go to and why

If you have managed to read this far then well done! Feel free to tweet any ideas to @everydaymfl or leave a comment below.

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:

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.

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 MFL

Ideas for the everyday MFL teacher.

Fun

5 MFL Games I have been playing this week

Cultural Capital: Strategies for Language Classrooms

5 Things to Try Tomorrow

9 New ideas for Navidad, Noel & Weihnachten

Turning Around Challenging Classes: Strategies for Success

5 things to try tomorrow

The Obligatory World Cup Post.

Everyday Displays

My Current Displays

Other things on the walls

My Past Displays

GCSE: Marriage/Partnership/Relationships

5 Things to try tomorrow 2019 Edition!

GCSE: Current and future study

European Day of Languages

5 Things to try tomorrow

GCSE: Customs & Festivals

5 things to try tomorrow

GCSE: Global Issues & Environment

GCSE: Social Issues. charity and volunteering.

5 Things to try tomorrow

Plenty to come from EverydayMFL

Teaching the weather