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.

5 Things to try tomorrow

May 9, 2019May 9, 2019 / dlh202 / Leave a comment

My new years resolution of at least one post a month has not been kept. Sorry if you stopped by in April looking for some MFL inspiration. However, here are 5 activities you can try with your classes tomorrow…or after the weekend!

4 in a row translation practice

Photo by Miguel Á. Padriñán on Pexels.com

This was inspired by a game on my old Nokia (the only one they made that didn’t have Snake on it). Pupils draw a 5×5 grid on miniwhiteboards. You project a 5×5 table of phrases they must translate. The winner is the first to score 4 in a row. It’s like connect 4 but you can start anywhere. The translations could be into English, or into the target language. My preference is for the latter. This works well when when you want to do some structured production before moving on to something more creative afterwards. The example below shows a close battle between two students.

Considerably richer than you…

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This was inspired by a Harry Enfield sketch in which a character often pointed out to others that he was considerably richer than them. Having recently taught house and home this works rather well. Jed makes a basic statement such as “in my house I have …”. His partner Leo then has to better the statement in some way. This could be as simple as turning it plural or extending it.

Jed: “In my house I have a garage.”

Leo: “In my house I have 2 garages with a ferrari.”

Jed: “In my house I have a bathroom.”

Leo: “In my house I have 4 bathrooms and a swimming pool..”

Scattergories

Photo by Startup Stock Photos on Pexels.com

This is a good revision activity if you need a quick activity for year 11. 10 categories on a slide and then give them a letter to begin with. Pupils have 1 minute come up with ideas. If someone else in the class has the word then they get no points. If no-one has it then they get a point. This can be done in teams or alone. An example list is below.

animals you wouldn’t have as pets
School subjects
Colours
Weather
Hobbies
Festivals
Adjectives
House
Holiday
Food

Slowing listening on Windows Media Player or VLC

Photo by Song kaiyue on Pexels.com

Students often find listening texts tough. Some of the textbooks I have used over the past few years are exposing Year 7 to near-native speaker speeds and then give them a tricky activity to do! A decent textbook that we often use had a good listening activity for practising directions but with a low ability year 8 group. Groups like these often see listening as a test. I slowed the track down to 0.7-0.8 of the speed. It seemed to work, they found it slightly easier to pick out the language they were hearing and complete the activity.

In Windows Media Player, open any track. At the top there is are: file | view | play | Under “view” you should see “enhancements” and then “play speed settings”.

If using VLC, then it is even easier. Under playback look for “speed” and it has “slow” and “slower” options.

You will need to use your judgement for when this is appropriate.

Vocabulary Championship

man wearing blue suit jacket beside woman with gray suit jacket

Photo by rawpixel.com on Pexels.com

With exams approaching, I gave my foundation year 11 group a series of vocabulary tests consisting of common words from the exam board’s minimum vocabulary list. We mark them, write in any that they didn’t know, glue them in books for revision later and then I collect in the scores. There are prizes awarded as follows:

Top score in a single lesson
Top 3 at the end of the week
Top 3 scores of fortnight (this may not be the same three as end of first week)

The scores then reset from zero for the following week. Each lesson, I would hint at the themes/topics for the next test. Some students really will surprise you with their efforts.

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.

5 Things to try tomorrow

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

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

Quiz Quiz Trade

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

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

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

Front of whiteboard: ¿Qué llevas normalmente?

Back of whiteboard: Llevo…

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

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

MM Paired Speaking

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

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

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

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

Car Race Quiz

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

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

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

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

Song gap fills

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

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

Differentiation: depends on the quantity words you take out.

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

12 sided dice topic revision

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

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

1 Simple vocabulary recall task

2 Explain grammar structure

3 Translate something

4 Make a sentence including …

etc

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

Challenge: depends on the complexity of tasks set

GCSE: Customs & Festivals

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

GCSE: Global Issues & Environment

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

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

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

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

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

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

What can I do with these themes?

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

Will my students be interested?

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

Match up L2 & L2

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

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

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

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

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

Fake Whatsapp

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

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

How environmentally-friendly are you?

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

Do you turn out the lights on leaving the house?

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

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

9 Lives

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

Person 1 pre-selects answers

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

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

Person 1: “non/nein/no”

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

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

and so it goes on…

7 pictures 7 sentences

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

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

Recycling container seen in San Sebastian.

Containers Card Sort

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

Easy: put vocabulary in correct container

Medium: Scaffolded sentences explaining where you would put each item

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

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

Superlative/Comparative Debate

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Debate Round 2: Bingo cards

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

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

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

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

Original Tarsia

Environment Tarsia

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

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

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

GCSE: Social Issues. charity and volunteering.

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

Photo Credit: mypubliclands Flickr via Compfight cc

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

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

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

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

Cochabamba, Bolivia

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

Synonyms Match-ups

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

Narrow Reading: spot the difference

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

Find the phrases

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

Textbook Speaking Grids

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Third World Diary

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

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

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

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

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

Newspaper Clipping Generator

Verbs & Infinitives

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

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

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

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

5 Things to try tomorrow

Sep 30, 2017 / dlh202 / Leave a comment

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

Self-reflection questionnaires

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

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

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

Memorisation of vocabulary, verbs etc
Speaking and pronunciation
Writing

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

Core Language Sheets

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

Phonics from the start

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

Find your match*

Puzzle, Cooperation, Together, Connection, Match

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

Android Game

Android, Cellular, Iphone, Mobile, Phone, Screen

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

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

Further reading:

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

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

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.

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 Literary Texts

Apr 6, 2016Aug 30, 2016 / dlh202 / 1 Comment

After a couple of blogs titled getting ready for the new GCSE and getting ready for the new GCSE: the sequel (clearly I’m great at naming things). I thought it was about time I made some headway with the various elements required in listening and reading. Literary texts are making an appearance in the new GCSE. Regardless of whether you think it is a good idea, they are coming and this means an opportunity to make the best of it. The government state the following:

“Pupils should be taught to read literary texts in the language [such as stories, songs, poems and letters], to stimulate ideas, develop creative expression and expand understanding of the language and culture” – National Curriculum for Languages

Before going overboard on new resources, budget allocations and looking at every single website for a satisfactory literary text, we need some perspective. It is highly likely that this element of the new GCSE will only be tested in the reading paper.

This blog will look at how we can incorporate the demands from the DfE into our normal teaching practice. Readers of this blog should be advised that my main languages are Spanish and German so French teachers may be slightly disappointed but I would encourage them to head to the excellent Frenchteacher website.

Texts

Our textbooks are technically full of literary texts:

Listos 2 p 92 – biographical text on footballing legend Diego Maradona.
Mira 2 p101 Barcelona Te Quiero – song about Barcelona. One of my former colleagues convinced the kids that this song won Eurovision! To be fair, it is probably better than some Eurovision entries.
Expo 2 Red p93 La Marseillaise – The song that most people know the first bit of!
Klasse 3 – every chapter has a “Lesepause”, what more could you need?!

If your school is on a bit of a “move away from the textbook” crusade then I would encourage you to make use of the texts that are in those books. There is no shame in using a book! You are also doing your bit to promote literacy so on this occasion your use of a textbook is entirely justified. You can also guarantee they have been through proof-reads and revisions, which lessens the time you may spend correcting the errors on a power-point found on a resources website.

Stories

It is likely the story will be only a short excerpt. I would be amazed if they could fit a whole story into an exam paper! To access stories your students will need the following:

To know how speech is indicated in a Spanish text.
To know phrases such as “said”, “mentioned”, “argued”,”insisted”, “replied”.
An understanding of the preterite (events) and the imperfect (description).
To realise that they do not need every single word to understand a text.
Some regular practice texts http://www.cuentosinfantiles.net/ , http://all-literature.wikidot.com/ or http://www.grimmstories.com/de/grimm_maerchen/index You could do this termly or half-termly in class or as part of a homework.

There are many ways you can incorporate a story into your lesson plan. Here are some

Teaching Past Tense: How many past tense verbs can you find in …? I do this with an excerpt from Harry Potter. It tells you if they have internalised the verb endings.
Teaching Present Tense: A day in the life of …
Teaching House & Home: A short text about where someone lives. I normally use Papa Francisco as he could have lived in the Vatican but chose a small modest flat instead.
Teaching Future Tense: pick an unfinished story and get students to write sentences about what will happen next.
Teaching School: A day in the life of … Pick a student in your class with a good sense of humour and write as if you are them.
Teaching holiday experiences: write a tripadvisor review or borrow a real one. Could the students then create their own? Could they take your one and make it better?

Songs/Poems

If a song is catchy or cheesy it will probably stick with the students. Here are some sources:

Lexibexi – German versions of English songs.
Wiseguys – German songs with some English ones rewritten.
Gypsy kings – Spanish songs in Spanish but very clear pronunciation most of the time.
Lyrics Training – gap fill of pop songs. You may need to censor the videos!
Navidad – Christmas is a great time for using songs.

What can you do with a song?

Gap fill lyrics.
Multiple choice questions – which word did they hear?
Make them learn it.
Get them to perform it.
Use it to internalise pronunciation rules
Write another verse.
Predict the vocabulary used in the song – listening bingo
Rearrange verses

Remember we are talking about songs in the context of literary texts so at some point the students will need to encounter the lyrics.

Letters

My assumption is that these will be letters of complaint, emails about holiday experiences and emails asking for information about a job. I think we would do well do let these topics arise as they normally do on our scheme of work.

What I would recommend is giving students a crash-course in letter writing. This can be as simple as teaching phrases like “dear”, “yours faithfully” and various similar phrases. Some weaker students might struggle with “un saludo cordial” as cordial in their minds is something you drink. I really do not think we are treading any new territory here in terms of reading. However, given that the curriculum also mentions registers then students may well need to write a letter using formal or informal modes of address.

Other literary texts

Literary texts may not be encompassed solely by the above so here are some other options you could incorporate:

Newspaper articles eg: Cholita Fashion (clothing unit), Quinoa (healthy eating) or Messi. You could also Prepare your own. After Rosaespanolas superb murder mystery lesson my trainee produced a newpaper article for the students to use so they could write their own.
Websites – one of my ICT-minded colleagues made a brilliant lesson where students were given a budget on an excel spreadsheet and had to buy an outfit for a particular occasion using Galeria.
Signs, adverts and notices:

bastian-sick-tritt-am-27-april-im-theater-an-der_full

5 Things to try tomorrow

Mar 9, 2016Aug 30, 2016 / dlh202 / 2 Comments

Image by Cool Text: Logo and Button Generator – Create Your Own Logo

I’m snowed under with marking, reports and grades at the moment. So here’s 5 ideas which helped me procrastinate, which you may like to try tomorrow…

Target Language Answers

How do your pupils respond at the end of starters, reading activities, listening activities? I’ve started getting my classes to use the following:

creo que es …A,B,C etc
pienso que es
podría ser …
Estoy seguro que es …

It’s a simple way of drilling in key phrases and it keeps the lesson in the target language. I thought it might slow things down but it hasn’t. Even better is that students are using them and they are appearing in their work.

Dice

Such a simple thing but so versatile. Get a set of 6 sided or 10/12 sided dice. Try any of the following:

1 me gustaría trabajar con animales

2 mi amigo le gustaría trabajar en una oficina

3 mi profesor debería trabajar como domador de leones

4 no me gustaría trabajar al aire libre

5 mi mama debería trabajar con la gente

6 mi papa debería trabajar como profesor ~~estresado~~

1 Give an opinion about … using ich denke, dass

2 Give an opinion about .. using gefallen

3 Give an opinion about … and add a weil clause

4 Give an opinion about … using gern

5 Give an opinion about …. that adds a sentence in another tense

6 Give an opinion about … using meiner Meinung nach

Or vocabulary revision

1/2 Partner names 5 words on topic of …

3/4 Partner gives 5 adjectives on topic of …

5/6 Partner gives 5 verb phrases on topic of…

or create your own…

“Hide your whiteboards.”

The credit for this one goes entirely to a trainee teacher who gets better and better with every lesson. She insists that students keep mini-whiteboards under their chins once they have written and then they raise them on her instruction. Copying other people is one of my pet hates and this eliminates it and also forces the “less motivated” (bone idle) to work harder and produce something or it’s really obvious.

DIRT mats.

cooltext170479354004015

Our school has introduced DIRT time. One pupil suggested it be called “time for improvement, reflection and development” but then realised that “TIRD” had a slightly unappealing ring to it. During that time, my focus needs to be on the students with genuine questions about how to improve their work. The rest need to get on. These mats are editable and really easy to adapt. Despite the fact they are aimed at KS1 and KS2 they can be adapted and used with all years. My experience so far is that the younger years like the Pixar one and my 10s & 11s feel that the force is strong with the Star Wars versions.

Hands up listening

This came courtesy of Nick Mair on a course. It is incredibly versatile and quite effective in terms of assessing the skill of listening. It also shows you who your best listeners are.

The teacher talks in the target language. Students have 3 options: left hand , right hand, both hands. You assign something to each hand. Maybe it is “opinion”, “reason”, “two tenses used”. Or “sensible”, “idiotic”, “mixed”.

Here are two examples using Mira 1, which would lead to students putting both hands up.

“En mi casa hay un salón, un comedor y una cocina. Había un baño en el jardín.”
“En mi casa hay un salón, un comedor, una cocina y un baño. Arriba hay un dormitorio, el dormitorio de mis padres y el dormitorio de mi tortuga.”

Credit to www.cooltext.com for the cool text effects.

Everyday Homework

Feb 16, 2016Aug 30, 2016 / dlh202 / 4 Comments

Leading headteacher Tom Sherington writes on his blog “great teachers set great homework”. In fact, he dedicates an entire blogpost to it. I thought I would do the same but with an MFL slant. I’m sure I have set some good homeworks and some bad ones in my time. Below is a buffet of homeworks. It will allow you to add to your plate the ideas you like, whilst avoiding those that you don’t.

One of the best bits of the blog mentioned above is this:

“The research by Hattie et al shows that homes make more difference to learning than schools. So, take away homework and what do we have? Essentially, homes with the greatest cultural capital, typically more affluent and middle class, will just fill the gap with their own family-education as they always have. They’ll be fine. Meanwhile, children from families where home-learning is scarce or simply doesn’t happen are left without structure or resources to fall back on. The same inequalities that give children such different learning orientations from pre-school persist. I’d argue that homework for all is a basic element of an educational entitlement; it is a leveller – provided that schools offer support for ‘homework’ to be done anytime, any place.” – Tom Sherrington September 2nd 2012

So, how can Everyday MFL teachers such as you and I make sure that learning continues outside the classroom? Just as feedback and marking should drive learning forward; homework should do the same!

Vocabulary learning

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Well that was obvious wasn’t it! As MFL teachers, we know the value of vocabulary learning but how can you ensure that they have actually learnt it. One method I have used in the past particularly with lower ability learners or year 7s is the look, cover, write, check sheet. You can find an example on the TES here. There is also one that I would recommend with your weakest students at this link.

Sites such as Languages Online, The Language Gym, Linguascope, Memrise, Duolingo, Pons Vocabulary Trainer all have their place and role to play. The Language Gym focuses quite heavily on conjugation. This excellent with the advent of the new GCSE and the greater focus on being able to manipulate language. Memrise I like as it forces the students to type the vocabulary and produce it, rather than simply reading. I’m a big fan of the phrase “reading is not revision” so this site is right up my street! Languagesonline is also excellent. The only issue I have with these sites is you cannot see which students have done the work! I believe Vocabulary Express does allow such things but have yet to try it.

Rachel Hawkes suggests that students should achieve a certain amount of points from a selection of activities to prove they have done their homework, using a variety of different techniques. Too many students will simply stare at the words and assume that some osmosis will occur unless they are given specific tasks to do.

I tend to teach the students as much as possible about how to learn vocabulary early on. Look, cover, say, write, check can be very effective. Flashcards and mindmaps equally so. By testing it, you will give it value. By sanctioning unacceptable performance, you will find students are more likely to do it. I’m not going to give a minimum acceptable level as sometimes that can vary depending on the student.

A couple of colleagues in another department have recently experimented setting the same vocabulary for 2-3 weeks with lower ability classes. They have tested them each week but only taken in the marks on the third time. Looking at the books, they have found that the students improved and their confidence was boosted by this process. I would argue the amount of reinforcement also helped. You could do this with some high-frequency language for your weaker groups. It is an experiment I would certainly like to repeat.

The multi-skill homework.

Currently my favourite! Why set homeworks that test only one skill??! This epiphany came to me at some point in the middle of a lesson! It has only taken 5 years to have it.

Slow German, Audio Lingua, Conjuguemos and the websites previously mentioned might allow you to set a variety of different tasks. My current year 10 were set the following last week:

Listen to this podcast on audio-lingua
Complete following exercises on languagesonline and samlearning
Produce dialogue for … situation

I’m allowed to set up to 50 minutes worth of work so I might as well go for it! I was not exactly popular when I did this. Once the rationale was explained, most students went for it.

Exam boards also have past papers on their websites, that would easily allow multiple skills. Again the specimen papers for the new GCSE could be used in this way. Admittedly speaking would be out of the question but listening, reading and writing would all be possible.

The worksheet

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There are some brilliant worksheets out there on websites such as TES and the excellent Frenchteacher. Having said that, you might have a low photocopying budget so I would encourage you to create your own or borrow bits from other people and condense it on to a single page. The big question with the sheet is: does it make the students work hard? Does it take them from a level where they might follow a model to get the answer to being able to apply the grammar rule? With the appearance of translation in the new GCSE, this could be a place to include it?

The paragraph

Produce a paragraph on … Produce two paragraphs on … These can often be effective as it gives the student time to work on something using what they have learnt. However, beware the evils of googletranslate. This website, long the bane of the Everydaymfl teacher, is getting. Students shouldn’t need to recourse to it if they have been taught how to use wordreference.com correctly, or if they have sufficient resources on your VLE, in their book or on paper.

Have you considered a point scoring paragraph? Higher point scores generally indicate better work…

5	10	20	25
Simple connecting words	More complex connecting words	More complex structures um…zu ohne..zu ausser…zu ni…ni bien que…	The amazing mindblowing structures to really impress examinersKonjunktiv II Konjunktiv I Si hubiera pensado… French subjunctive
Simple time phrases	More complex opinion phrases	More of the above	More of the above
Simple adverbs	Less common adverbs	Less common adverbs	More of the above

Another idea would be to ask students for an ASL calcuation. Average Sentence Length. They need to divide the amount of words by the amount of sentences. Scores of 7+ indicate they are probably using opinions. Scores of 12+ indicate they are justifying those opinions. Scores of anything higher and they might need to consider the occasional full stop!

Have you considered banning certain words from their paragraphs? Some of the below would be top of my list!

French	German	Spanish
ennuyeux	langweilig	aburrido
interessant	interesant	interesante
amusant	lustig	divertido

The example sentences

Regularly I will set my learners a task to produce some examples using a grammar point we have worked on. This is mainly because I want to see if they can do it outside the classroom without me and also to reinforce the material at a later date. The Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve suggests they will have lost some of it after the lesson so this is my attempt to fight the curve! Perhaps suggest a theme for their example sentences:

Future tense: “what Homer Simpson will do at the weekend”

Past Tense: what”insert celebrity” did last week

The Culture Homework

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I tend to set one of these once a half-term (homework is weekly). Students are naturally curious and like to learn about the country. I remember, when I was in school years ago, a couple of homeworks from my language teacher: “find out what you can about who won the election in Germany?” Gerhard Schröder was the answer, which seems like a long time ago now, probably because it was! Students like to know about the place, not just the language. However, we are language teachers and so the homework should be proportional to what we do. I would also counsel that you tell them to avoid the blindingly obvious and go for a more horrible histories style in their research. “Madrid is a city in Spain” is the kind of thing you can open yourself up for if not careful!

I have highlighted my favourite one in orange. Google it, you will see why it is such a cool festival!

French	German	Spanish
What is “la marseillaise” actually about?	What is Karnival?	What happens at “la tomatina”?
Find out 10 facts about the French Revolution	Find 10 facts about the fall of the Berlin wall	Produce a poster showing what happens at “las fallas”
What is Bastille day?	Who is Angela Merkel?	What is Yipao and why is it celebrated in Colombia?
What is Mardi Gras?	Produce a timeline of major events in German history starting from 1800	What is día de los muertos all about?
How do the French celebrate Christmas?	10 Facts about any German city	Produce a short biography of Franco or another famous figure from Spanish history
Who was Marie Curie?	Who was Hans Riegel from Bonn?	Who is the current King of Spain?
Find out 10 facts about a city that is not Paris.	Find out 10 facts about a city that is not Berlin or Munich	Find out 10 facts about a city that is not Madrid or Barcelona

Flipped Learning

I’m a bit of a skeptic at the moment when it comes to this. John Hattie claims that along with effective feedback; clarity of explanation is crucial in our teaching. Most youtube videos teach a grammar rule and then explain EVERY exception known to man. If you are not confused by the end then it is because you got up to make a cuppa 2-3minutes in. I think there is a place for it, but video selection needs to be carefully done. Then the students need to do something with the knowledge to reinforce it, otherwise it is just another video. The questions the teacher needs to ask are as follows:

Is this better than explaining the concept in class with worked examples?
Is the person on the video easy to listen to?
What will I do about students who do not watch the video?
Should I use the video to introduce or consolidate?
Is the video clear, too fast, too slow?

If you have read this far then well done but don’t forget it’s half-term. Enjoy yourself, rest, have some fun, have some more fun and be ready to go again on Monday.

9 ideas para Noel/Navidad/Weihnachten

Dec 2, 2015Dec 4, 2023 / dlh202 / Leave a comment

Christmas is approaching. I’m fairly certain most MFL teachers have done the following over the past few years:

Make a Christmas card
Christmas Wordsearch
Christmas crossword/sudoku etc
Break out the DVDs…if SLT are reading, I didn’t suggest this…

Here’s some ideas that go beyond the minimal with years in brackets as a guide.

Cluedo: who killed Santa? (yr 7,8,9,10,11)

Prepare three columns of phrases on whiteboard.

People (Santa, Herod etc)
Places (santa’s workshop, lapland)
Murder weapons (tinsel, christmas trees, presents, satsumas). You will need to pick one of each in your head. Students then give you their opinion on who killed Santa, where, and what weapon. You tell them only how many they get right or wrong. Brilliant game for teaching deduction and reinforcing opinion phrases such as “a mon avis” or “pienso que”.

Euroclub schools (yr7,8,9)

Take them to an ICT room and complete any of the pdf quiz worksheets on http://www.euroclubschools.org.uk/page2.htm. French, Spanish and Italian are on offer here. Whilst not huge on the TL; it is brilliant for their knowledge of culture. Some exam boards are looking at increasing the cultural side of the new GCSE so it cannot hurt.

La pesadilla antes de la navidad

Lyrics are in the description, exploit to your hearts content

Gap fills, multiple choice, missing sounds or letters, translate bits. Over to you… Lamentably, months on, all your students will remember are the words ¿qué es? ∏ë

Letter to Santa (Yr 7,8,9,10,11)

The new GCSEs have writing tasks that involve “write a letter to” (at least one of the sample assessments does). Why not introduce this with a letter to Santa. It is also a great opportunity to revise tenses.

El año pasado recibí … aunque quería …

Este año quiero/me gustaría …

Lots of potential and easily transferable between year groups.

Food-tasting

Some students will never get to try turrón or stollen, why not bring some in? If finances are stretc
hed then you could ask for a voluntary contribution…or hand the receipts to your HoD to claim back under “vital lesson resources”. Serious point: check for nut allergies otherwise a great lesson and experience for the children will end up in the headteacher’s office, putting a downer on any festive season cheer.

Real Christmas (yr 9,10,11)

Typical Spanish animated cartoon telling the story of the nativity.

Madagascar Penguins (7,8,9,10,11)

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This has been my stock Christmas lesson for a couple of years created by sanferminuk on the TES website who has a number of excellent resources

Link to Madagascar Penguins

I know, I know, I made a comment about DVDs but this is an entire lesson planned around understanding a 20 min video in the target language. Surely that’s a different thing, right?! The video clip can be found on Youtube.

Origami santa (Yr 7,8,9,10,11)

For the grammar-lovers out there some revision of imperatives might be in order…

There are plenty of others out there but this might help get you started. Practice makes perfect so get practising!

The Great British sing off (yr7,8)

With names like that I should clearly get a job naming things… Anyway, team up with a couple of colleagues who teach at the same time as you. Each group learns a song and then a sing off is had with an impartial judge. Plenty of carols and songs can be found on youtube.

Bit of fun part 2

Aug 16, 2015Aug 16, 2015 / dlh202 / 1 Comment

Blogging during the holidays, you cannot be serious?!!! A while ago I did a post of favourite MFL youtube videos. It’s the holidays and I’m not doing any work yet so enjoy the light-hearted fun below:

French

German

Spanish

Multi-language

Listening Activities

Dec 3, 2014Jul 27, 2015 / dlh202 / 1 Comment

Hit a milestone with visitors on this blog today. thank you to those of you who read it. I hope you find something useful that helps your teaching, or at the very least it triggers an idea. Drop a comment if you want a particular topic or skill exploring . You could also be the first comment (another milestone).

GCSE Languages places a heavier emphasis on writing and speaking, which can lead to listening being neglected. Listening activities can be time consuming but they are vital in being able to understand a language. They allow students to experience a range of accents, ages and speeds of talking without leaving the classroom. Some are contrived and others are effective but how can you exploit a listening text for all it is worth? There seems to be a school of thought emerging that if teachers teach using maximum TL then that counts as listening. I think there is still a place for the recorded material.

Listening can be differentiated for pupils of various abilities. Below are some of the ways I have used in a classroom that work. I wish I did them all more often. The majority will work at Key Stage 3 and Key Stage 4.

This takes some planning but consider how you could stretch your more able and support your less able.

More able

Ask them to look for particular things.
Have a column of extra details if completing a table and get them to fill it in as they go.
Could they do a dictée on a particular line? You could suggest to a class that all those with a target grade of … could do this?
Can you do a higher level listening with your more able while the foundation students do a reading activity and then swap. This works for mixed ability groups.
Could they write their own extract afterwards based on the recordings they have heard?

Less able

Multiple choice – you can give them this on a handout or on a slide.
Write down the words that they hear that they definitely know. Essentially give them a chance to understand bits before asking them to find answers.
Give them the script for the first recording so they can read along
Give their TA the script – TAs appreciate this as the teacher’s guides generally have the answers afterwards.
Give them the answers and have them highlight the ones they can hear this should help you see how much they comprehend,
Teach them skills to help them – key words, cognates, sound patterns, discerning plurals etc
VLC is an excellent media programme and has a facility to slow down recordings, I would not go much below 0.90 but it can help.

Conducting a listening effectively

Try not to talk too much
Consider the following order
1. Play recording all the way through without stopping, students do nothing.
2. Play through and students try to get answers.
3. Play through and have breaks in between for students to either write answers or check their answers.
Make sure students are clear on what they are listening for.
Don’t tolerate chat in between. It needs to be their own work
Try to do them regularly.

Make it lead to something.

Could your students do a similar thing later in the lesson? Perhaps they could record it and you could use that instead (providing you have permission). Could they do a speeddating style activity and use some of the phrases from the listening recording, or any other activity for that matter?