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.

Developing Target Language Teaching II

Sep 19, 2022Aug 15, 2022 / dlh202 / Leave a comment

There are many superb teachers of languages out there and if you are teaching your lessons perfectly in the target language then this post really is not for you. I wrote about this first in Developing Target Language Teaching however it has been an ongoing journey of improvement since. In 10 years, I’ve had to teach 3 different languages and am at varying levels with each. In a previous school, this meant all three in the same day on most days and hourly switching. If you are less confident with a language then this post is for you. If you are following NCELP schemes of work or similar then this is for you. If your department is more EPI influenced then a substantial amount of your target language input is probably coming from the LAM (listening as modelling) activities in the modelling, awareness-raising and receptive practice phases, however there may be something for you to take from it.

Routines

In my previous post, I wrote about how scripting was helpful. Lockdowns really helped with this. I began each lesson with the exact same language and it has stuck since. In my department, we moved from using command forms to “we’re going to”. This was partly due to the higher surrender value of “we’re going to” and it has worked a treat as students know a higher proportion of infinitives and are familiar with read/write/translate/speak etc. It also saves working out command forms in a variety of languages where they don’t come as naturally.

How do you start/finish a lesson?

It is well worth considering what are the first and last things that your classes hear from you? Is it target language? Is it comprehensible target language? Do you vary what you say depending on the level of the group?

Working it out Step by Step. This is how I set up a …

If you are teaching a language in which you are not particularly strong then it is a worthwhile use of a PPA to sit down and script out how you would set up a speaking / listening / reading / writing / translation task in that language and then check it by a more confident colleague. For example, let’s take a listening task. I’ll put the script in English below with “stage directions” in brackets.

We are going to listen (check understanding of listen, use gestures)
In your books, the information that you write is numbers / letters / positive / negative (check understanding, use gestures)
We are going to listen two times (gesture, make sure fingers correct way round, check understanding)
If it is dificult, possibly third time (gesture, check understanding).
Number 1 (let it play as per recording)
We are going to check
Number 1 = A
Who has number 1 correct? Hand up (gestures).
We are going to continue with 2,3,4,5 etc.
Afterwards we are going to correct it.

Get pupils to translate as you go.

My one caveat with setting up activities is that certain things are best done in English. I would argue these are (but not limited to):

Some games with high value (no snakes no ladders) are sometimes best explained in English the first time as ultimately the game is forcing the students to produce the language and you might arive at that quicker.
Grammar explanations. I find these are best done in English however practice activities after can normally be explained in TL.
Negative discipline with consequences. Best done in English so complete clarity exists.

Icons

Doug Lemov’s Teach like a Champion refers to “Means of Participation.” Essentially, Lemov’s premise is that students should know exactly how to join in with each phase of a lesson. Ben Newmark (whose blogs are well worth a read) writes: “Clarity and predictability around Means of Participation results in better lessons; better behaviour, clearer teaching and children who learn more. It results in pupils who accept the rules around lesson contributions as non-personal organisational routines that create a fair and purposeful environment.“ There are two ways to ensure that the means of participation in our lessons are clear. Firstly, we can frontload instructions as we mentioned above (in bold). Secondly, we can add simple icons to our PowerPoints. It could be argued that this is taking away the need to listen. On the contrary, I’ve found the icons tend to help weaker learners and the stronger ones will focus on my instructions anyway. I would also add that the icon is often accompanied by the infinitive underneath.

Praise Praise Praise

As language teachers we’re pretty good at praise. We know every word for good, amazing, brilliant, fantastic, splendid and we encourage the students to use them in their writing. I have friends who still know tres bien from their French lessons back in the late 90s but I’m not sure the feedback was that helpful. I’ve tried altering some of the praise I give to pupils in the target language. This was partly with an aim to making it more specific (yet still comprehensible) and also helping them to hear a greater diet of words. In bold below are some phrases I will often use in target language.

Your pronunciation was perfect (this one really builds confidence “I said it right”)

98% correct. One small problem. (highlight problem) Can you repeat? (pupil repeats) Perfect

Incredible. Applause for … Very long, lots of details (with actions and occasional writing of cognates on board, detalles = details).

Great answer, one more time, more confidence please.

I don’t agree (pause) but your Spanish was perfect (often used when student has expressed a view that I disagree with such as mushrooms are tasty, Manchester United aren’t as good as …)

“Again, more passion” or “Again, stronger” Our school is currently using SHAPE to help pupils formulate better responses. This relates to the P for projection.

Displays

I have been through many displays in my time but my target language phrases one is probably the most used in class. I cannot remember where I got the phrases from but having them at the front of the room is quite useful for pointing. The blog link above will give you a flavour of the ones on the wall.

Coaching & hits/misses

It takes time in a language you are less familiar with to develop target language teaching. I suggest you have a friendly colleague who can pop in as a coach. They can praise you when you are getting it right and persevering, which helps to reinforce the routines. They can also log your hits/misses. Were there moments when you used English but simple French/German/Spanish was possible? There is not always time to reflect in a school day and this can be really helpful as long as the process is developmental and not judgmental.

What to do when it slips

Let’s be honest, it slips when we’re tired, stressed, sleep-deprived, not had tea/coffee or when we’re lacking confidence because it’s language number 3 and not your best one or you’re ~~battling~~ teaching 8×6 on a friday period 5. At this point, it is simply a case of get back on track as soon as you can. Don’t beat yourself up. Things that I have done in the past are:

Stick TL phrases in weakest language to my desk.
Stick TL phrases inside front cover of planner.
Write a TL phrase at the top of my planner everyday for a week and try to get it into any lesson.
Leave your door open and use TL whenever someone walks past.
Tell yourself that someone is listening next door to see how much you’re using. Or actually have someone next door.
Spanish minute. No-one is allowed to talk unless what they are saying is in Spanish (including the teacher), set a student to monitor it.
Sometimes you just need to hit reset with a class. “I know we haven’t used as much … as I would like lately. I’ve done that too. We’re going to step it up a bit from Monday, be ready. I will be listening to hear you using …, there will be rewards if I hear lots of it from you. Likewise if you hear me using a bit too much English then you have to call me out on it.” This works better with more co-operative classes. The phrasing will need changing with less co-operative classes.

Language teaching can be exhausting. I have taught 5 new subjects to fill timetable gaps and languages seems to demand more energy than many of the others. It can be easy to slip into english, hopefully this post will help you Deutsch zu erhalten, maintenir votre français or mantener su espanol.

Evolution of Starters

Sep 1, 2022Aug 15, 2022 / dlh202 / Leave a comment

Over the time I have taught, the role and types of starter activity have varied massively. When I first started teaching, a starter was a quick activity to get the lesson off to a speedy start, ensure that every pupil was “doing something” and allow the teacher to deal with any admin (forgotten books, registers etc). The best starters were differentiated or had challenge tasks (with added chillis. If you don’t know what I mean by chillis, you’re probably better for it). This post is charting the journey of where I started to where I am now. As I researched for this post, I stumbled across MFLClassroomMagic who has a list of principles we should consider when planning starter tasks. I wish I had this list in the early days.

The Early Years

Match ups, gap fills, anagrams, spot the errors and two way translations were the name of the game in these days.

The Pros:

Quick to produce.
Environmentally friendly (no paper needed).
Accessible for most learners.
Easy to differentiate

The Cons

Were these cognitively demanding enough.
Would these have been better after introduction of vocabulary.
Students had to recall single words not chunks.

The Paper Based Ones

I went through a phase of paper based starters. I got to a point where I was quite quick at condensing them on to a page of 4 to a page (without needing a class set of magnifying glasses. These involved simple puzzles, gap fills or occasional Tarsia puzzles. For those unfamiliar with Tarsia, a tarsia puzzle is a shape divided into smaller shapes with clues along the inside lines that match. If you match them perfectly, you will create the shape.

*Example from Mrbartonmaths.com. Whilst not language-specific, you will see the principle.*

The Pros:

Quick to produce is using websites such as Discovery Education Puzzlemaker.
Every student has something in front of them with little excuse for not doing it.
Students do enjoy puzzles or working things out.
Fallen phrase, double puzzles and letter tiles were my go-to puzzles. Never wordsearches.

The Cons

Were these cognitively demanding enough?
Have enough glue-sticks to glue in the tarsia puzzles. Avoid tarsia puzzles during pollen season.
Sometimes took too long for some students and you would find them completing it in the lesson when they were meant to be on other things.
Again single words more likely so lost opportunity for longer chunks of transferable language.

The Vocabulary Test

I went through a phase in one school of vocabulary test starters based on learning homeworks. All students had vocabulary booklets and were allocated a section each week. 5 were Tl to English and 5 were English to TL.

The Pros:

Students had the resources, they just had to learn the phrases.
Rewards the diligent.
Workload light in terms of administering the test. Tests could be marked by partner.
Easy to differentiate to ability groups

The Cons

Working out what to do with those who don’t revise or process things slowly.
Regular repeated failure for students can be quite demoralising.
Harder to make work in mixed groups.
Some kids with dyslexic tendencies admitted they did not enjoy this part of the lesson.

I moved schools in 2018 and learning resources cannot be shared outside of the Trust so examples of the following cannot be given, even on request, sorry. As the Steve Smith style starters and “return of the vocabulary test” are no longer departmental or trust current practice (at least as starters, some of the activities may inevitably feature at other points in a lesson), then I will share them. The final one titled “The Hybrid” (sounds like a sci-fi film) is still in development and refinement. It may make an appearance on this blog one day.

The Steve Smith Style starters

I would characterise the next phase of my evolution as the “Steve Smith style starter.” This is not because they are solely Steve Smith creations (although they may indeed be) but mainly because they (and variations thereof) all appear in this nifty list on his website! One starter task that I cannot locate the author of (wondered if it might have been Kayleigh Merrick via Twitter. If you are reading this and it is you, and you’re not Kayleigh, then please let me know and I will happily link to your blog/Twitter feed), was “Find 4”. This could have been 4 ways to start a sentence, 4 items of vocabulary on a particular theme, 4 connecting words. One would assume that with such an activity marks would be awarded for creativity and originality.

The Pros:

Start/End the sentences. I always referred to it as “starts and ends.” Students enjoyed the freedom with this activity to finish the sentence. Your most creative students will enjoy finishing some of these, particularly anything that involves their classmates. Sentences such as “at the weekend … is going to” or this weekend (insert past tense activity here) said The Prime Minister (or any celeb, other teacher etc)
Activities like “change one thing” work really well. You can also colour some words so that half of the room change one thing and half of the room change another thing.
Convert the sentence from present to future was always challenging but I found worked better if an infinitive was given in brackets

The Cons

Keeping the creativity going with these is ever so slightly trickier.
Odd one out was a good activity and students would enjoy it but it helps to have some phrases so students can explain their decision in TL otherwise you risk going into English for too long. Phrases such as the ones below, allow for a bit more TL use.
- I think the odd one out is … because of the spelling / length /meaning / type of word
- I’ll be honest, it was a guess

Return of the Vocabulary Test

Our school moved to silent starts of lessons for the first 10minutes for all subjects and all lessons. This meant we had to be creative in what we did with our first 10mins that did not involve talking. In that time, students would have 10 phrases to change from English to TL. They were tested on the same phrases for 3-4 lessons in a row so that they got better at them.

The Pros:

Allowed testing of chunks and single words chosen by the teacher.
A positive marking scheme of “2 points for perfect 1 for close” rewarded effort.
Questions could get progressively tougher.
Students repeatedly tested on the same chunks.
Worked well in remote learning.

The Cons

Bit repetitive.
Hard to stop students checking previous page in book for answers.
Always had to go through answers, some students would copy down during this and maybe not think enough during the test.

The Hybrid

Where we are now, is a place I’m quite happy about. It takes some of the better elements of all the above. It ticks most of the boxes on MFL Classroom Magic’s list. It is not perfect (few things in education are perfect) but the direction of travel seems right There are two tasks to complete in our first ten minutes, with the suggestion they apportion their time appropriately. Elaborating on this will have to wait for another day.

Final Words

Hopefully this post stirs you to thought. Maybe that thought is “I’m really glad my school does … and not what I have just read.” Sometimes it’s quite nice to be reminded we are doing the right thing. Maybe that thought is “I can’t believe Everydaymfl is not doing this awesome thing which we do, he absolutely should know about this awesome thing!” If that is your thought then please drop it straight in the comments.

However, that thought might be “I should really look at our department starters ahead of the new term.” If the ideas above have not hit the spot then I would whole-heartedly recommend this list from MFLClassroom Magic for 25+ more ideas (with added templates). If you’re stuck after that then ask your team, they might just have a brilliant idea.

Everyday Displays

Aug 19, 2021Jul 26, 2022 / dlh202 / 1 Comment

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

File:WA 80 cm archery target.svg - Wikimedia Commons

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.

GCSE: Customs & Festivals

Apr 30, 2018Apr 30, 2018 / dlh202 / 2 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.

MFL & Parents Evening

Apr 11, 2018Oct 28, 2022 / dlh202 / Leave a comment

Perhaps this rings true for some of you. I’m not sure how you see parents evening or how they work in your school but I’ll do my best to make sure that there is something for everyone.

I firmly believe that strong relationships facilitate greater progress in the classroom. Parents evening offers a unique opportunity to build two relationships. Empathy and enthusiasm are crucial in those few hours.

1) Student – Teacher. Parents evening is one of the few times you will get where you can talk to the child about their progress without their peers being around but with a level of accountability, as their parents heard it.

2) Teacher – Parent. Parents might have heard from their offspring that you are a fire-breathing ogre with a volcanic temperament, liable to go off at the slightest infraction. Conversely, they may have heard that you are a “legend”. Either way, it is an opportunity for the parent to put a face to a name and to have a dialogue about their child’s progress.

Making the most of parents evening:

Preparation

In my current school students seek you out for appointments and you are encouraged to seek appointments with them. They bring you a flurry of pieces of paper (these diminish as they progress through the years) and you try and pack them all into 3 hours. Other schools do their appointments online and I’ve seen that be quite effective.

Once my appointments are written in then I do three things:

Locate data and assessment results for classes being taught
Look at the list of names and note the first few things that come to mind for each student.
1. Penny – presentation, homework variable, good effort in class.
2. Leonard – speaking good, needs to increase detail and variety in written work.
3. Howard – off-task, focus, incident thurs.
4. Raj – equipment, off-task, consider seating move?
Make sure that I have a mug of tea ready.

Approach

I have seen a variety of approaches at parents evening. Some teachers ask the student questions “how do you feel you are progressing?” “How do you think Spanish is going this year?” My feedback from students is that they do not enjoy this moment of being put on the spot and are not always certain about what to say. Most students will likely opt for a conservative response irrespective of how they are progressing, as it will minimise fallout if they feel they are not doing so well.

Personally, I prefer the following:

Positive Appointment

Know your student. A couple of words about the student shows that you definitely know them. “This is the second year I’ve taught Anakin”. “Teaching Luke in year 7 and now in year 9, it’s great to see how far he has come”. “What has pleased me most about Rey this year is how she has…”
Data and progress. Talk about how they have performed in assessments or data-drops. Are they where you expect them to be? If not, why not? Was it the assessment or the revision? How can they get there? How can home be involved in helping them?
What’s next? Explain that there are a couple of things they could do “to really help themselves move forward”. Keep it short, simple and to the most important stuff. If a parent is writing notes then feel free to say more. Consider that if there is a conversation at home afterwards then what do you want them to remember? There may be more, but that parent might have had 7 appointments already.
Any questions? Leave a minute or two for the parents to ask any questions that they have.

With year 10s and 11s I have taken sheets of useful revision websites for parents to take away. The students may have already been given this sheet but an extra copy at home never hurt!

Less positive appointment:

Know your student. A couple of words about the student that shows you definitely know them and have caught them being good. Even the very worst students I have taught have not been 100% bad for 100% of every lesson. Key point to consider here: how can you build that relationship? How can you involve home in bringing about a turnaround in fortunes for that student?
Data and progress. Talk about how they have performed in class. Are they where you expect them to be? If not, why not? How can they get there? How can home be involved in helping them? At this point, the student or parent may suggest something that would help. Make a note of it and then deliver on it. This could be a seating plan change, a resource, a need for greater help, checking understanding prior to starting a task. This shows your intentions to secure the best outcomes for their child. Actions speak loudly.
Issues. If the issue is behaviour or homework then talk about where things need to improve. Most parents appreciate honesty. If the parent appears supportive then tell them you will give them a ring, or an email, in 2-3 weeks to review how things are going. As you do this, write it in your planner and then do it. Sometimes parents will engage positively with you at this point. Others may choose not to.
Finish well. Find a way to finish the appointment on a positive note. No kid should feel like they are a lost cause.
Any questions? The parent may well wish to question you further. Do not be afraid to involve your Head of Department if you need to. Perhaps warn them prior to the appointment if you know of a particular tricky parent. If the parent is taking up undue time then politely suggest that you continue the discussion at a later date, possibly with your Head of Department present.

Take a sheet

In previous years I have brought copies of the following to parents evening:

Sheet titled “how to help my son/daughter succeed at languages”.
Sheet titled “effective revision techniques for MFL”.
Sheet with QR codes for revision websites.

Each one has gone down well with parents. It takes a bit of prep time but you can reuse them most years.

Parents that care will likely read the sheet. Those that do not care will not but I have seen them appear in Spanish books, or have heard that it was stuck to the fridge or useful later down the line.

What do you do when they say….?

“Why does he/she need languages?”
“He/she is never going to go to France/Germany/Spain”
“I was never any good at languages”
“Why does he/she have to do a language?”
“Everyone speaks English”
“You can give it up in year 9 anyway”

If you read my previous blogpost Blogging for Languages without nodding off, then you will have an idea of my answers to these questions. Firstly, I started Spanish at university at the age of 18. Secondly, I never planned to teach languages. Lastly, I never thought I would ever end up in South America. However, all of these things happened. I find this normally works as quite a disarming start to a number of the above statements. After this, I can then talk about the importance of languages, the doors they opens and the benefits for their child. You will need to come up with your answers to these questions and similar ones. If you want some statistics to back up your answers then have a look at the Year 9 Options post or some things I picked up at the ISMLA conference. The main thing is delivering them with empathy and enthusiasm.

Some gems from ISMLA

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

View image on Twitter

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

Jocelyn Wyburd (@jwyburd)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jess Lund – The Michaela Way

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

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

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

Other ideas I took were:

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

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

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

5 things to try tomorrow

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

Here are 5 things that worked for me this week.

Voki.com

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

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

Imemorize

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

http://imemorize.org/download.html

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

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

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

Image result for snakes and ladders

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

Treasure Hunt

Treasure chest

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

Quick Speaking Feedback

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

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

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

Speaking Feedback

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

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

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

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

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

GCSE: Global Issues & Environment

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

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

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

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

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

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

What can I do with these themes?

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

Will my students be interested?

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

Match up L2 & L2

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

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

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

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

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

Fake Whatsapp

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

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

How environmentally-friendly are you?

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

Do you turn out the lights on leaving the house?

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

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

9 Lives

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

Person 1 pre-selects answers

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

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

Person 1: “non/nein/no”

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

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

and so it goes on…

7 pictures 7 sentences

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

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

Recycling container seen in San Sebastian.

Containers Card Sort

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

Easy: put vocabulary in correct container

Medium: Scaffolded sentences explaining where you would put each item

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

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

Superlative/Comparative Debate

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Debate Round 2: Bingo cards

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

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

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

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

Original Tarsia

Environment Tarsia

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

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

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

Meeting the challenge of the new GCSE

Nov 21, 2017 / dlh202 / Leave a comment

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

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

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

Steve Smith – Worried about the new GCSEs

Helen Myers – 9-1 Grading

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

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

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

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

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

New GCSE – one year in

Oct 28, 2017 / dlh202 / Leave a comment

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

Keeping Going

Key Language Sheets

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

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

Photo Credit: christopher.czlapka Flickr via Compfight cc

100 Most Common Words

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

1-5 Gap fill/anagrams

6-15 English –> Spanish

16-20 Spanish –> English

Roleplays & Photocards

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

Reinforcing the need for effective vocabulary learning

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

“Memory is the residue of thought”

“Proficiency requires Practice”

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

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

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

Moving Forward

Regular Revision lessons

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

Recycling

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

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

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

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

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

Vocabulary Championship and/or Ipsative Vocabulary Tests

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

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

Decipher the Question starters

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

Photo Credit: Lily Bloom Flickr via Compfight cc

Strengths / Weaknesses Audit via GoogleForm.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

5 Things to try tomorrow

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

Number, Five, 5, Digit

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

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

No writing lessons

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

Student writes something
Teacher corrects
Student improves

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

Group Model Essay

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

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

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

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

Micro-listening enhancers

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

Photo Credit: immaculate-photons Flickr via Compfight cc

MM Paired Speaking

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Future Tense Three Musketeers

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

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

1 2 3

Voy a ______________AR/ER/IR

Vas

Vamos

Vais

Van

Everyday Revision

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

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

Make a plan

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

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

Vocabulary – Revise / Refresh / Build

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

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

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

Here are a few go-to ideas:

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

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

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

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

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

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

arbeitspraktikumchefgehaltbedienenkundigen

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Teaching Exam Technique – some thoughts on past papers.

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

PQRST Past Paper Method

Preview: revise the topics before tackling the paper

Questions: now do the paper.

Review: see questions below

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

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

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

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

General Exam Technique Teaching Ideas

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

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

EverydayMFL’s typical revision lesson

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

Topic: Healthy living and lifestyle

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

MAIN:

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

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

Split class into two groups

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

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

PLENARY:

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

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

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

All the best with the final furlong.

The Options Lesson

Jan 24, 2017Jan 1, 2018 / dlh202 / 5 Comments

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

The Options Lesson.

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

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

MAIN – 3 sections of approx 10 minutes each

Section 1: English is not enough

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

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

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

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

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

Section 2: Skills and Business

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

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

Here are some if you are pressed for time:

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

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

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

Ok, maybe don’t mention that last one…

This section of the lesson finishes with this:

Section 3: What about Brexit?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

PLENARY

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

Finish off with Options Girl

And/Or finish with Lindsay.

And/Or Alex

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

Also considered using this one…

And this…

Things to keep from 2016

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

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

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

Core Language Sheets

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

50-50 no hands up/hands up

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

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

Find someone who…

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

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

Photo Credit: musiccard Flickr via Compfight cc

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

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

Invitation only twilights.

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

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

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

L shapes game – conjugation and translation

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

Traffic light book hand in.

Photo Credit: <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/34001170@N03/31256222322/">enzovelasco</a> Flickr via <a href="http://compfight.com">Compfight</a> <a href="https://www.flickr.com/help/general/#147">cc</a>

Photo Credit: enzovelasco Flickr via Compfight cc

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

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

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

Snakes and Ladders with heavy TL use.

snakes-ladders

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

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

Save your money by doing the following:

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

Everyday MFL

Ideas for the everyday MFL teacher.

german

5 things to try tomorrow

The Obligatory World Cup Post.

Developing Target Language Teaching II

Evolution of Starters

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

GCSE: Customs & Festivals

MFL & Parents Evening

Some gems from ISMLA

5 things to try tomorrow

GCSE: Global Issues & Environment

Meeting the challenge of the new GCSE

New GCSE – one year in

Keeping Going

Moving Forward

Teaching the weather

5 Things to try tomorrow

Everyday Revision

The Options Lesson

The Options Lesson.

Things to keep from 2016