grammar

GCSE: Current and future study

/ 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?

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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

hogwarts-2404482_1920.jpg

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

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

Image result for school floor plan

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

Image result for fencing

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

Image result for 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.

 

 

 

5 Things to try tomorrow

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

Self-reflection questionnaires

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

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

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

  • Memorisation of vocabulary, verbs etc
  • Speaking and pronunciation
  • Writing

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

Core Language Sheets

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

Phonics from the start

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

Find your match*

Puzzle, Cooperation, Together, Connection, Match

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

Android Game

Android, Cellular, Iphone, Mobile, Phone, Screen

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

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

android

Further reading:

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

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

5 Things to try tomorrow

/ 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.

  1. Student writes something
  2. Teacher corrects
  3. 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

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.
  1. Person A asks question for example: “Qué hiciste el lunes”
  2. Person B responds using time phrase and makes sentence based on picture “el lunes fui de compras”.
  3. 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

Va

Vamos

Vais

Van

 

GCSE: Technology, Social Media and the Internet

/ dlh202 / 2 Comments
Photo Credit: Apex Web Firm Flickr via Compfight cc

Photo Credit: Apex Web Firm Flickr via Compfight cc

 

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

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

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

Translation challenge

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

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

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

 

A3 Answers B2 Responses and C1 sentences

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

¿Para qué usas Facebook?

¿Tienes un blog?

¿Cuántas seguidores tienes en Twitter?

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

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

C use present tense                                           3 include a time phrase

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

5 lines up

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

Language Gym Verb Trainer & Boxing

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

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

Photo Credit: <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/36647280@N07/29104615800/">beyondhue</a> Flickr via <a href="http://compfight.com">Compfight</a> <a href="https://www.flickr.com/help/general/#147">cc</a>

Photo Credit: beyondhue Flickr via Compfight cc

How long can you keep it  up for?

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

Perfect Tense – “Have you ever…?”

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

¿Has jugado … ?

¿Has probado …?

Tarsia Puzzles & Dominoes

Photo Credit: <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/111950422@N04/29791627590/">toonarmy59</a> Flickr via <a href="http://compfight.com">Compfight</a> <a href="https://www.flickr.com/help/general/#147">cc</a>

Photo Credit: toonarmy59 Flickr via Compfight cc

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

2 options for use:

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

 

¡No te metas a mi facebook!

Resources for this lesson can be found here

Lyric video here

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

Spanish Text Lingo

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

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

Verb Tables / Verb Stars

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

descargar – to download

descargo    descargüe    voy a descargar    he descargado   etc

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

Lists – colour-coded subdivisions:

Descargar

Present:  descargo

Past: he descargado / descargüe  / descargaba

Future: voy a descargar / descargaré

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

Brainstorm / Star

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

How many different ways can you use that infinitive?

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

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

 

 

 

 

Summer is here

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

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

8072673734_71b791a196_m

Photo Credit: `James Wheeler via Compfight cc

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

Stats

Thanks to…

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

What’s coming?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Have a great summer!