The New New GCSE

Aug 19, 2024Aug 29, 2024 / dlh202 / 5 Comments

15 years of MFL teaching and I’m now on my third GCSE. I watched the sun rise and set on controlled assessment. I welcomed the spontaneous conversation in the “new gcse” only to seemingly now bid it “adieu”. The current GCSE, in my mind, actually only required minor tweaks. If I had my way the bullet points would be in English, the roleplays would have been purely confined to typical holiday occurrences and speaking would have been worth 30%.

I’m not a Head of Department but have worked previously as a Second in MFL. Currently, I’m just an everyday language teacher but here are my thoughts on the “new new GCSE.”

Thought 1: The New GCSE needs to be seen as evolution not revolution.

The new GCSE contains plenty of stuff we have already done and are already doing. Photocards, roleplays, 90 word writing tasks, 150 word writing tasks, translations, listening and reading tasks are all things we have been doing for the past few years and all still in there.

One line that caught my eye was “It should be noted that learners are expected to know all
items on the vocabulary list, not just the ‘required’ ones.”

It may be worth at some point just looking through the list by topic and making sure any words without clear obvious meaning (e.g: tamaño) are taught or brought up somewhere in teaching. I imagine that the list before long will appear on Quizlet or similar apps. Given that the list is accessible to students there is nothing to stop them using it as part of their revision. For example, a student could do a mind map using the celebrity culture topic with Taylor Swift at the middle and a fair amount of vocabulary from that list could easily build up around it. Again, I would encourage students to focus on the non-cognates. Most students will work out “conflicto” (especially if they study history) or famoso, however words like “impuesto” might need teaching and/or revising.

Thought 2: Beware the washback effect

I’m not entirely sure who coined the phrase “washback effect”, it may have been on a Steve Smith blog. I think there can be a tendency within MFL to make sure things such as our assessments and resources align with the GCSE the pupils will ultimately take. It sounds like a reasonable premise and it is well-intentioned. Inevitably, resources on TES and books from various publishers will appear aligning with the new GCSE and contain the types of task that the new GCSE is demanding.

Over time, I have come to believe that there must be a happy middle ground that it can be found. A place where Key Stage 3 gives students the tools, language and confidence to succeed later on but doesn’t batter them with GCSE style assessments in Years 7, 8 and 9, which reduce their confidence. Describing a photo is not a life skill. It can wait until Year 10 and 11 and still be done well. Similarly, does a Year 7 need to be able to describe their house in a roleplay-esque fashion to their Venezuelan friend? If we define learning as “knowing and remembering more” (current ofsted vernacular) then we need to be assessing what they know in a reasonable way that allows the student to show what they know. Why complicate it in Years 7 and 8 by adding in the description of a photo or a roleplay? Do we just simply assess their pronunciation when they talk rather than adding in some sentences to read aloud?

With respect to writing, it is great if a Year 7 can manage 50 words but does it need to be in the format of a blog with three bullet points? The answer is: probably not. In the AQA new GCSE there are grammar questions worth 5 marks. Do these need to feature in your Key Stage 3 assessments? Again, they may be part of your grammar teaching but do not need to form part of their assessment.

Jess Lund once said in a conference “Year 7 is where the magic happens” and I’ve never forgotten her saying that. Let’s not make Year 7 – and I would argue Key Stage 3 – too much like Year 11. We can train them in exam technique when they get to Key Stage 4. The only caveat to the above is that sometimes Year 9s at a particular point benefit from feeling that they “can do” GCSE style activities, which then helps with those options conversations and Year 9 parents evening.

https://www.deviantart.com/redpandaa11/art/Meet-the-Phonic-Letter-Sounds-Placemat-891479101

Thought 3: Phonics/Sentence builders

Our trust will be using AQA so I am not sure quite how relevant this next point will be to Pearson/Edexcel users.

One of the new elements is the reading aloud task. Allow me to explain why i don’t think it should faze us as teachers nor faze our students.

The “reading aloud task” is worth 15 marks however it includes 4 questions on the topic the text is about. The actual reading aloud bit is only worth 5 marks. The main thing for this task is making sure that students are capable of pronouncing common words with the sounds that non-native speakers find trickier. Looking at the AQA sample materials in Spanish, you will encounter at least one of the following: “j” “ll” “ce” “ci” “ge” “gi” “gui” “ñ” and the word “que”. Pronouncing the latter as “cue” will cost marks. Train them out of it, now! There is also a definite lean towards words that are linked to the topics students are already studying. Those Js will almost inevitably come with any part of the jugar word family. Similarly, any mention of festivals is likely to include frequency adverbs “cada año” or “a veces”. However you teach your students phonics, be it via explicit phonics teaching or implicitly via sentence builders, there are a few key sounds such as the ones above that you need to prioritise and trust that your students will be ok with the rest. Phrases such as “mucho dinero”, “amigo cubano”, “en el campo” should provide little challenge. Again, be mindful of the backwash effect further down the school. Could you just “live mark” their speaking in class? If you’re unsure what i mean then this post here explains just how you could do that.

Thought 4: Don’t lose the good stuff

If you have good resources, keep using them. If you have good activities that help the pupils learn then please keep doing it. Sometimes a new course can lead to throwing the baby out with the bath water. Don’t do it. Resist the temptation. Your department will have good practices so continue to lean into those. If you get good results on the roleplays then keep doing what you are doing. If what you do gets great listening results then keep doing it! And, perhaps consider getting in touch and submitting a guest blog? A lot of schools seem to use a PALMW approach for photocards (position, actions, locations, mood, weather). If it works, keep it. It is worth drawing pupils attention to the commonalities we have seen in the photos over the past few years:

Where there is a nature scene, the weather is invariably good.
Where they are people, they are almost always family or colleagues and seem happy, interested, excited or smiling (learn those four words: happy, interested, excited, smiling).
Where there is a table, there is almost always food (learn phrase “a variety of food/drink” in case individual food items not known).
Where there is a school, it is almost always a canteen or classroom.
Phones, recycling, houses, shops, sports pitches and “a group of” are good words to know.

Thought 5: Tactics

Maybe this is the armchair football fan speaking but there are some tactics our students can use to approach aspects of this new exam:

Roleplay -In the words of the pundit and superb former player Roy Keane (yes Everydaymfl is a Manchester United fan) ” just do your job”. This task is 100% no fuss no frills, just remember a verb.

Reading aloud – Write it in bad English if you need to “hwaygo” in your prep time and then go for it. You can still score 3/5 with “major and minor errors”.

Post reading Questions– Aim for 3/4 qs answered and 2 longer answers. Use your prep time wisely on this.

Writing – pick the right question – Pick the question you can do best. Divide the word count by the bullet points, 90/3 = 30 words per bullet point. Whilst the exam board say equal coverage is not necessary, 3 x 30 word short sections will inevitably feel more manageable for students. 3 tenses is a must to achieve the top marks (AQA) along with complex language and having a game plan will be crucial. Whilst that game plan from Vincent Everett’s blog is for speaking, It works really well for the new writing too. The mix of verb + infinitive structures could also be key.

Writing – know your table – A Head of Department I used to work with introduced me to this for French and I’ve converted it into Spanish. This table works for regular verbs in the past and present and the majority of verbs in the future. The little minus signs next to past and present are to remind students that they are “taking away tenses” (think that was a Rachel Hawkes idea) where the verb ending is removed. The plus is to show that you add to the verb by putting something either before or after it but leaving the verb itself alone.

In my university days, I memorised the adjective endings and der/die/das/die tables for German and copied them out at the start of exams. I can imagine most students would be able to manage with the table below. 2mins of writing out ensures that the majority of verbs are used correctly.

	Past –		Present –		Future +
	AR	ER/IR	AR	ER/IR
I	É	Í	O	O	VOY A	+ VERB	going to
HE/SHE/ IT	Ó	IÓ	A	E	ME GUSTARIA	+VERB	would like
THEY	ARON	IERON	AN	EN	VERB +	É	will

Thought 6 – Don’t be limited to one language’s sample materials (if you are in a school that teaches 1-2 languages)

Your exam board will have produced resources for French, Spanish, German etc. If you are in a school that teaches one language then your sample assessment materials have actually just trebled.

Photocards in the other languages will give you an idea of potential photocards that could be given.

Open Google Translate on your phone (yep, i said it, eeek…despite this post). Use the camera mode and hold it over the questions and it will translate them for you. I will advise that this mode occasionally has its limitations (it translated “bacon” in Croatian as “violated ham” once) but it should give you a good idea.

The same can apply to the writing tasks and suddenly you have a load more practice materials for your Year 11s.

GCSE: Customs & Festivals

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

800px-Santiago_Sacatepequez_Kite_Festival

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The VLOG

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

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

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

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

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

Part 4: Students are currently recording their vlogs.

Festivals that match interests.

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

Android Game

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

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

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

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

Trapdoor with lives

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

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

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

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

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

Mastermind with lives

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

TL Questions and TL answers

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

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

If this is the answer, what is the question

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

Four Phrases One festival

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

Dice

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

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

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

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

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

etc

Extreme Snakes and Ladders

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

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

1 Where was the festival?

3 What was it about?

5 What did you see?

7 How was it?

9 Who did you go with?

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

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

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

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”.

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.

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:

Meeting the challenge of the new GCSE

Nov 21, 2017Aug 28, 2024 / dlh202 / Leave a comment

NOTE – IF YOU ARE READING THIS IN 2024 THEN THERE IS NOW A NEW NEW GCSE.

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

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

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

Steve Smith – Worried about the new GCSEs

Helen Myers – 9-1 Grading

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

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

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

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

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

New GCSE – one year in

Oct 28, 2017Aug 28, 2024 / dlh202 / Leave a comment

NOTE – IF YOU ARE READING THIS IN 2024 THEN THERE IS NOW A NEW NEW GCSE.

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

Keeping Going

Key Language Sheets

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

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

Photo Credit: christopher.czlapka Flickr via Compfight cc

100 Most Common Words

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

1-5 Gap fill/anagrams

6-15 English –> Spanish

16-20 Spanish –> English

Roleplays & Photocards

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

Reinforcing the need for effective vocabulary learning

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

“Memory is the residue of thought”

“Proficiency requires Practice”

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

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

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

Moving Forward

Regular Revision lessons

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

Recycling

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

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

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

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

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

Vocabulary Championship and/or Ipsative Vocabulary Tests

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

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

Decipher the Question starters

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

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Strengths / Weaknesses Audit via GoogleForm.

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

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

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

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

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

Making marking work

Aug 31, 2017 / dlh202 / 4 Comments

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Time to get out the red pen

This post should probably start with a disclaimer. My marking is not perfect. I do my absolute best to make sure the pupils get the best feedback on their work but it will not always yield the seismic improvements that one might hope.

Before we discuss marking and feedback, I think it is worth pointing the reader towards this document produced by Sean Harford HMI. Yes, he does work for “they-who-shall-not-be-named” but you really do need to read it. You could also follow him on Twitter as he is quite good at busting the various OFSTED myths that fly around.

Over the past few years, I have seen a variety of marking policies in my own school and in visiting others. Out there, there is a plethora of feedback and marking styles such as “comment only” marking, highlighter marking, DIRT time, group feedback, whole class feedback, flipped learning, self-marking online assessments, self-assessment, peer-assessment, raw scores, averages, levels, flightpaths, progress indicators, RAG etc. Don’t worry, this post is not going to cover all of those! Instead, here are three that have really worked for me, and my students, in the classroom:

Whole class feedback & Individual Feedback.

Whilst marking a set of books I will formulate a series of targets to be placed on a PowerPoint. In the book, I will simply write something that the student did well along with T1, T7, T8. There is an example below. The following lesson will probably follow this pattern:

1) Whole class feedback or starter activity relating to an issue most struggled with.

2) DIRT time – students have opportunity to act upon individual targets. Extension tasks available for those who finish.

3) Remaining time refreshing material from previous lesson or preparing for subsequent lesson.

The activities in part 1 above could be…

Grammar exercises
Spot the errors / Correct the errors (anonymously lifted or amalgamated from work marked)
Match present and past tense verbs so that students are clear which is which.
Spot the correct sentence from a choice of 3.

An example of what students will see in part 2 above is below. I have found that the “what it means” and “what to do” leaves no room for excuses of “I don’t get what I have to do”.

feedforward

Feedback needs to be about improvement and development, not simply error correction. That is my hope behind targets 2,4,6. However, where some heavy error correction is needed, then I still want them thinking about it (see T1,T3).

T5 allows me to challenge, and insist on improvement of, any poorly presented pieces that I may not notice from across the room during the lesson.

T7 allowed me to work with one to one with a student who was miles ahead of the rest of the class and teach them something they can add to their work.

T9 was to give a student time to catch up on work missed through no fault of their own.

This approach massively shortened the time I spent marking and still allowed me to deal with misconceptions and give specific, personalised feedback that led to definite, visible improvements.

Highlighter Marking

Mentioned in a full length post a while back, I still think this is one of the best ways for boosting confidence of students.

Underline an entire piece of work in two highlighter pens. Green if it’s good. Yellow if it needs work. Immediately a student can see what is good and what is not. If the overwhelming picture is green then it can be a massive confidence boost. If they realise that the yellow is a repeated error, then we are on the road to eradicating it. If there is a substantial amount of yellow then maybe a rewrite is in order. Sometimes the yellow would not be underlining anything, to demonstrate that there was a need to add something. To show students bits of their work that were particularly good such as a wenn clause (German), a reflexive verb in the passé composé (French), or use of the imperfect subjunctive (Spanish), I simply double-ticked those parts.

I have tried to demonstrate the visual impact below:

Gestern Abend habe ich mit meiner Famille ins Kino gegangen. Dort wir haben “Fast and Furious 14” gesehen. Es war toll. Ich mag Actionfilmen, weil sie sind spannend

Advantages include how well it combines with marking codes and it is speedy. Disadvantages include that one needs a constant supply of highlighter pens or felt-tips!

Self/Peer Assessment

Peer assessment is something I struggle with in MFL. Sometimes I find that the students do not have enough knowledge to effectively assess the work of another. You find comments such as “great use of connectives”, when there were none in the work at all. I think it works best when the students have sufficient knowledge to draw upon, or with a reasonably restrictive mark-scheme.

I have tried a little bit with the new GCSE roleplays. The following pattern yielded some success.

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 shambles 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

Plenty to come from EverydayMFL

Aug 11, 2017Aug 11, 2017 / dlh202 / Leave a comment

Dear all.

It’s the summer holidays so I’m taking a few weeks off. From September there will hopefully be more regular posts as things got a little sporadic towards the end of last term.

In the meantime you can have a read of the following:

5 Things to try tomorrow

May 17, 2017May 17, 2017 / dlh202 / 2 Comments

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.

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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

The Options Lesson

Jan 24, 2017Jan 1, 2018 / dlh202 / 7 Comments

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

The Options Lesson.

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

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

MAIN – 3 sections of approx 10 minutes each

Section 1: English is not enough

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

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

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

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

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

Section 2: Skills and Business

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

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

Here are some if you are pressed for time:

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

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

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

Ok, maybe don’t mention that last one…

This section of the lesson finishes with this:

Section 3: What about Brexit?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

PLENARY

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

Finish off with Options Girl

And/Or finish with Lindsay.

And/Or Alex

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

Also considered using this one…

And this…

Getting ready for the new GCSE: the sequel

Feb 28, 2016Aug 30, 2016 / dlh202 / 3 Comments

“There is an immutable conflict at work in life and in business, a constant battle between peace and chaos. Neither can be mastered, but both can be influenced. How you go about that is the key to success.” Phil Knight

I’m not actually sure who Phil Knight is, but I like the quote and it has relevance to this situation with the new GCSE. We will not master the new system in its first few years but we can influence the outcome by preparing our students well. The last post on this topic looked primarily at preparing pupils for the new speaking tasks and a previous one examined the return of the roleplay. This one will focus on the writing element of the new GCSE. I have previously blogged before on writing but this is specifically aiming at the new GCSE. Whilst I aim to be unbiased, three exam boards are submitting 3rd and 4th drafts. This post therefore will be written with the AQA specs in mind. Today’s post is an amalgamation of my own thoughts and ALL South West’s conference in Bristol yesterday.

Here is a summary of what candidates have to do based on the AQA spec.

Foundation Writing	Marks Available	Higher Writing	Marks Available
4 Sentences in TL based on picture	8	90 word task in TL Instructions in TL	16
40 word paragraph in TL. Instructions in TL	16	150 word task based on 2 bullet points Instructions and bullet points in TL	32
Translation of sentences into TL	10	Translation of paragraph into TL	12
90 word task in TL Instructions in TL	16

The question inevitably is: how do we prepare our pupils for this? A quick look at the mark scheme provides us with two themes to be aware of:

Foundation students will need to focus on content and quality of language.

Higher students will need to focus on content and range of language.

From what I can see, it appears the higher students will need to do more, with more. We are looking at breadth and depth, which is great. Teachers of foundation students might this allows more time for reinforcement and repetition of material, once you have worked out how to teach all the topics in 2 years but that is another blog post. Given that we now have 6-7 lessons per CA back then we have to maximise the time on language learning.

Whatever you choose to do the focus will be on preparing students to use the language in a situation where they have no help other than some TL prompts, a picture and what they remember. Some of the ideas below were gleaned from yesterday’s conference and credit has been given below where appropriate.

Folded tests (thanks to Greg Horton)

Greg suggested this idea yesterday. I might have modified it as I couldn’t remember it all. Students have an A4 sheet of absolutely key phrases that they should know (creo que, es, son, pensaba que, pienso que, voy a, espero, me gustaría etc). English is down one side and Spanish down the other. You hold the sheet portrait and fold it in half. The students then test each other: Sherice says the English and Chardonnay aims to recall the Spanish working down the list. They then swap but Chardonnay starts at the bottom of the list and works up. They then check their scores and see who wins. The test reinforces and tests spontaneous production of key phrases. Greg then suggested a penalty shootout between the two highest scorers at the front of the class. This would ensure that the students know quality language and it places value on knowing these phrases. You could also develop the range and breadth of language with higher sets by changing the test papers after a term. A homework task could be to make sentences involving the words.

TL Instructions for all written work

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The new exam is going to be largely in TL. Some exam boards may supply “probable rubrics” but why not start now? The more students are used to it; the less scary the exam will be. As MFL teachers we are used to acting and a lot of gesture and mime can probably help to ingrain the key phrases in the minds of our learners. Failing that then you can teach it to them or have your most frequent utterances displayed on walls or learning mats.

Learning walls

Displays of posters might need to become a thing of the past (perhaps save them for the corridors). What can students learn from your wall? At the moment, I will be honest, they cannot learn enough from my walls. A fantastic idea I saw at Bradley Stoke Community School was a teacher who had pouches on the walls of short summaries of how to do each tense or how to form negatives in French. What do your walls contain that improve written work? Foundation students will need this kind of support. Otherwise they will become too dependent on dictionaries they are no longer allowed to use If I had my way the walls in my room would act like the ones in Minority Report, but we’re not there, yet!

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Equipment checks

One of the curses of controlled assessments is that students memorise entire paragraphs about their work experience but cannot form sentences in a foreign language or hold a basic conversation. Eva Lamb spoke yesterday about engineering situations such as an equipment check and repeating TL that can be used in other situations:

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Eva:Hast du ein Heft?

Boris: Ja ich habe ein Heft?

Eva: Hast du dein Heft?

Vladmir: Ich habe kein Heft

Eva: Hast du dein Heft verloren

Vladmir: Ja Ich habe mein Heft verloren

Eva: detention!

Ok…so she didn’t say the last line…but it is a very simple way to recycle language and one I am itching to try. She suggested doing it with year 7 from the very first lesson. It forces every student to speak and the haben verb paradigm is instantly being absorbed. From then, change it to homework, who won the Manchester United Arsenal match (sorry Arsenal fans) etc. It is also not much of a stretch from knowing “ich habe, some personal pronouns and some past participles to being able to use them in written work.

More Grammar practice; less nouns.

Students can find the nouns for homework on Wordreference. Textbooks are massively guilty of presenting nouns, nouns and more nouns. Students need verbs. Every sentence on this blog contains a verb, some might even have more than one. Verbs are going to be key. Foundation students will need a stock of them that they can deploy at any point. Higher students will likely need a greater range of them but know what they can do with them. For example: knowing that adding é ía to a Spanish infinitive will change the meaning and equally removing the last two letters and replacing with o or é will also change the meaning. Irregular verbs will likely need to be learnt. This could be done for homework.

Core language

Two of my colleagues from English recently tried testing their bottom set 3 times on the same vocabulary. They took in the marks from the third time. They also made the students then write some sentences using the vocabulary. Unsurprisingly the scores increased each time, even for the weakest.

MFL departments need to nail down a core of language that students should know at the end of years 7,8 and 9. If you work with primary schools then you can do even more of this. Every student should be able to produce certain structures. Why is it that last year’s year 11 bottom set could also remember juego al fútbol (pronounced “joo way go al fut-ball”)? Yet a simple pienso que, debería, tengo que or other verbs was beyond them. They need a core and they need testing on it regularly to give it value. They also need testing on their ability to apply it.

Some phrases need to be procedural in the same way that students are taught a procedure to approaching a simultaneous equation, expanding brackets or a quadratic formula. We do this with ,weil clauses but do we do it with other structures?

Transferable structure plenaries

Most of our lessons contain some nouns but it is the grammatical structure that is important. Take for example the Expo 1 lesson on “dans ma ville”. The structure that the book is teaching is a very simple “il y a” and “il n’y a pas de”. Quite often students will remember this in the context of “dans ma ville il y a” but the question is can they apply the il y a elsewhere?

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This photo could be shown at the end of the lesson. Qu’est-ce qu’il y a dans le photo? Suddenly the students have to apply their knowledge of the structure along with the previous topic of house and home. Get them to produce the sentences on mini-whiteboards. This way you can measure their spontaneous production of the TL (thus managing the first task of the foundation paper) and also check their understanding of the structure. Then try it with another photo (maybe the one below). Qu’est-ce qu’il y a dans le photo?

Say more

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Greg Horton had a slide which simply had question words on it. One of his class would sit at the front and be given a simple sentence to read or you could give them a picture. The students ask questions to elicit more detail from the person sat at the front. Continuing on from the previous idea, the starting sentence could be: “Hay un perro” Pupil could then ask:

¿Cuántos? ¿Dónde? ¿De qué color es?

More advanced students could ask:

¿Por qué? ¿Qué hace? ¿qué opinas tú de los perros?

Again it is about spontaneous production. Students could note down the answers on whiteboards to test their listening. They could change the verb forms to practice grammar. They could even do a tabloid version on mini-whiteboards where they exaggerate every claim that is made or completely misrepresent what the student says:

Student: en la foto hay un perrito tierno.

Students: en la foto hay un perro agresivo y violente.

Everyday Homework

Feb 16, 2016Aug 30, 2016 / dlh202 / 5 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.