Since my PGCE, I’ve always thought that games have a place in MFL teaching and learning but they must have a purpose. That purpose could be: the practice of vocabulary or structures, practising spontaneity or revision of vocabulary.
Variations on Sentence Stealer
It always amazes me how Sentence stealer started in Kuala Lumpur and has made its way to classrooms across the UK and Australia and probably further afield. I’ve played it with a variety of classes in different schools and it always seems to go down well. I have come across one or two obstacles in playing with trickier classes
One student gives others their cards so that they win at the end
Students use a mixture of English and Spanish “do you have joo-ey-go al football?”
Some students don’t talk enough
Here are a few variations I have tried to counter this:
Pink writing – While the students make their cards. Write out four using a pink pen (or any colour they are not using). Slip them into a couple of students piles. Winners are now the ones that have the pink writing ones at the end or the ones with the most cards.
English = lose a card – While students are completing the activity, I walk around. If I hear English, I take a card from them.
Sudden death round – 1-2 minute timer (dependent on class size). Each student starts with one card. They continue to play as normal but as soon as they lose their card they return to their seat. Hint to students that the more they talk the less likely they are to be out quickly.
The 10 phrases game
Made this up after a game of 1 pen 1 dice earlier this week. Write ten phrases or chunks on the board. The more advanced the group, the longer the chunks can be. Colour the sentence complements in red (complement = word phrase or clause necessary to complete expression)
Juego al fútbol
Escucho musica
Student A: reads through the sentences trying to finish them in a different way.
Student B; counts how many they manage.
When finished they swap, but here’s the thing…
Student B cannot use any phrases student A has already used.
The game forces students to use what they know. The intention is to move them away from saying what they want to say and instead saying what they have learnt.
The Algo Game
Every now and again, you rediscover a game that works. The “algo” (something) game is one such example. You can find full instructions here (with pictures) and here (bit further down). This activity is great for reading aloud practice and practice of chunks. I can see it being particularly useful with the reading aloud element of the new GCSE. In the past, I have gone with a point per correct word. It motivates them to focus on listening and transcribing what they hear.
Points for sentences
This came from a lovely MFL teacher called Deborah who ran some training for us back in the days of controlled assessments. It works for both speaking and writing.
Verbs 5
Verbs 5
Time Phrases 5
Conjunctions 10
Showing off 20
You can imagine the kind of things that will fill the grid. You can also vary the requirements e.g. “weil” and “obwohl” might score more than “und” and “aber”. Students have a minute or two to make as many sentences as they can.
Student A: just talks and makes sentences
Student B: listens and notes down their points
Swap
Winner is the person with the highest points score. You can then also set it as an end of lesson writing task. The Nice Man Who Teaches Languages (whose blog is well worth a look) has written about getting students to write sticking to what they have learnt and they know from their repertoire. This activity helps with that as students stick to the phrases there as they score points.
Two truths and two lies
One of the easiest activities to do on the spot, likely inspired by the BBC programme “Would I lie to you?” Minimal Prep, maximum effectiveness. This came towards the end of a lesson on negatives in Spanish using the theme of sports and free time. It is easily adaptable to food, clothes, healthy living etc.
Students write two sentences that are true for them and two that are not. Most students do this in the order you say. Make sure they read them out loud to their partner in a different order!!! It’s then up to their partner to spot the fact from the fiction.
I’ve been a teacher for nearly 15 years. Over the past seven or eight, due to timetable pressures and a variety of other factors, I’ve found myself teaching several different subjects. Often, as a languages teacher, I’ve sat in CPD sessions thinking, I’m not entirely sure how I can apply this to MFL.
In the last seven years, I’ve taught across five different subject areas: History, English, Religious Studies, Drama, and more recently, Computer Science. For those of a footballing persuasion, I guess i’ve ended up as a versatile super-sub*. A mix of Wayne Rooney and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer.
History
A few years ago, I was given a Year 9 top set history class, shared with another teacher. I like to think this was a mutually beneficial arrangement. They helped me deliver the lesson by explaining content and the activities; I fixed their German pronunciation. Two things particularly stood out from this time.
The first was that the starter tasks—or “do now” tasks —increased in difficulty from question one to question four. The idea was that every single student should be able to answer at least questions one and two. This meant every student in the room came in with an instant chance to be successful and get their lesson off to a good start. They followed the following pattern:
True / False
Multiple Choice
Short answer
Sentence / Multiple Sentence answer
There was a culture of “no excuses” for not answering or attempting question 1 and 2. I was encouraged to circulate and particularly demand extension to answers on question 4 and support those struggling with 3 or 4. I think a similar principle could work with MFL starters.
The second thing that really stood out was how each lesson was framed as a question to be answered. Now, in History, this is significantly easier than in MFL. Take, for example, the questions: What happened at Pearl Harbour? or What did the failure of the League of Nations mean for the future of Europe? Both of those questions immediately build interest, curiosity, and engagement.
In languages, this is obviously significantly trickier. The question: How do we form AR verbs? does not bring with it the same level of curiosity or interest (apart from for a select few of us who love our grammar). Could we possibly rephrase that question to: How can I master 88% of Spanish verbs?
There are, however, some areas of language teaching that naturally lend themselves to this “lesson as a question” approach. The teaching of ordering food in restaurants would lend itself well, for example: How can I order food and drink in Spain? Similarly: How can I describe people? or how can I say what is wrong with my hotel room? By phrasing the lesson as a question, students can walk out knowing they have learnt the start of the answer. How can I master 88% of Spanish verbs? I need to know the six endings; I need to remember to remove the AR and replace with the correct ending. For those wondering, the 88% is from a 2019 analysis of the Royal Spanish Academy Dictionary.
Religious Studies
In 2019, I taught Religious Studies due to timetabling issues. My main learning from this year of teaching would be the idea of spending entire half terms on one thing. For example, one half term was Christianity, one half term was Buddhism, and one half-term was Sikhism. These were Year 7 modules that were about six lessons each.
One popular Spanish textbook I used to use had the following five pages: ages, members of the family, pets, descriptions of hair and eyes, and descriptions of personality. The topics were well presented, the grammar chosen was sensible when linked with the topics, and the activities were, to an extent, useful. However, was this too much for two lessons a week in Year 7? The answer is probably yes.
At the end of each term in Religious Studies, we would assess what had been covered in the previous five lessons—and only that. I wonder if sometimes in languages we don’t teach sufficiently narrowly, and then we don’t assess that narrowly either. Gianfranco Conti recently wrote in a blog about the desire to correct everything that persists in many schools and trusts across the country. Perhaps we need to ensure that they can do fewer things well?
Drama
One year shortly before half term, I had a visit from a member of SLT suggesting that they needed someone to teach Drama for four weeks until the new Head of Drama arrived. To make matters worse, they said it was Key Stage 3 Drama.
I had the fortune to take on a good class comprised of pupils I had taught before. My biggest learning from the Drama department—and indeed from watching the new Head of Drama at work—was that projection was emphasised. Phrases such as “say it again but say it better”, “tell me, don’t ask me”, “say it like you’re really confident”, “say it like you believe it” were all used to develop their students’ ability to project, to sound confident, and to deliver lines with character, or as one of my English colleagues would say “with gusto!”
In MFL, sometimes I wonder if we neglect this in paired speaking activities. Recently, with my classes, when we’ve done short conversations, or short question-and-answer work in pairs, I’ve asked them to stop and then repeat it sounding like they are more confident. This might mean I ask them to sit up straighter, or I ask them to stand up.
If you think about it, most conversations in real life do not happen at a table where the person next to you is directly to your left or right. In a café, they are often opposite or slightly to the side. In passing, they are often stood up. It may be confirmation bias, but I tend to find that the second time students perform the activity, they sound better.
My version of the activity quiz quiz trade helps with this. Here’s how I run it. If you have read this blog for a while, then you will know my fondness for mini-whiteboards. They will help us here:
Students have a question on a mini-whiteboard and the start of the answer on the back. Whatever language you teach, you can apply the examples below:
Side facing student = question
Side facing away from student = help with answer
What do you do in your free time?
In my free time …
Do you play football
Yes/No ….. sometimes / never
Do you swim
Yes / no …… regularly / rarely
Students must 1) ask a question, 2) answer a question 3) swap their whiteboard. They can sit down after 5 ask/answer/swap cycles.
In our school, we have a policy that is known as SHAPE. Lots of schools have this, although I wonder sometimes if we focus on the S at the expense of the P. Languages, like Drama, are an opportunity for us to develop our pupils’ oracy—that is to say, their ability to speak confidently and fluently.
Computer Science
More recently, I have taught Computer Science. It may surprise you that both subjects can learn a lot from each other. As a languages teacher teaching Computer Science, I have found that my appreciation of mini whiteboard checks for understanding can continue. However, this post is about what we can learn from other subjects.
One of the things I’ve noticed in Computer Science is that flowcharts are extremely useful as a means for understanding. By this, I do not mean a bullet point list or a “1-2-3 steps for conjugating.” I mean a clearly laid-out visual flowchart. For example, this could be used for explaining when to use the subjunctive in Spanish:
Am I expressing a wish or desire? → If yes, use the subjunctive.
Am I expressing an impersonal reaction? → If yes, and if the sentence includes “it is + adjective,” then yes, I should use the subjunctive.
This could be a helpful way for students to visualise and decide whether the subjunctive is required using my favourite language teaching acronym: WEIRDO (Wishes, Emotions, Impersonal statements, Reactions, Doubts, and Ojalá).
I have also used these to help students build their opinions when talking about school. Word’s SmartArt can be quite helpful in this regard. An example in English is below:
Similarly, a flowchart might be useful in forming the passé composé in French. Students would then be able to decide easily between avoir and être and then progress onto Mrs Vandertramp (does anyone remember—or still use—the YouTube “Umbrella” version?) or however you choose to characterise the remaining verbs.
The second thing I’ve learnt from teaching Computer Science—and this is more aimed at GCSEs—is what we call the Moneyball approach. Moneyball is a film about baseball where a lower-league baseball club finds value in players that people didn’t rate very highly and their data-driven approach makes the club very successful. In the film, one of the main characters tells his club director that he needs to “buy runs,” not “buy players.”
To turn this into a modern-day football analogy: you are essentially buying goals, not buying a striker. Harry Kane scores you 30 goals a season. Other strikers, although highly thought of, may not reach those numbers but you could buy two players who will score 15 goals a season each such as Matheus Cunha and Bryan Mbeumo.
We can apply this Moneyball approach to exams. If the average needed at foundation level for most languages and exam boards (according to ChatGPT) is 60% for a grade 4, and the average for a grade 4 at higher tier is somewhere between 37% and 43%, then we need to consider: How are we going to put our students in the best place to get those marks? What are the things that we can control, that we can drill, and that we can best prepare them for, in order that they may achieve that?
I will leave you to think about those last couple of questions.
Conclusion
I hope this post has shown that, while not every strategy from other subjects will seamlessly translate to MFL, there is a wealth of insight to be gained from stepping outside our own discipline. Whether it’s the deliberate staging of questioning in History, the focus on oracy and projection in Drama, or logical and data-driven thinking in Computer Science, each subject offers something valuable.
By borrowing and adapting these approaches thoughtfully, we can enrich our language teaching and better support our students in becoming confident, capable communicators.
*James Milner was a consideration for comparison at this point but then I remembered his previous club history
It’s been a long while since I studied A-level German, however I would argue the starters to those lessons constituted some of the most effective and efficient retrieval practice in languages I have ever received. They set me up very well for university and I can still remember the verb conjugations over 20 years on. We had five German lessons a week. This post will explain how four of them began. The other one was a vocabulary test on our “5 a day” from that German student staple: Wort für Wort.
This is a very German-centric post and I can hear Germanists out there saying “es ist an der Zeit” (“it’s about time”). I hope it’s useful and thought provoking. I have tried applying the same in Spanish but I cannot quite get the musicality and rhythm to work, although the processes beyond that stage would probably be applicable to other languages
How it worked:
Our teacher – who I should at this point say was brilliant – would begin the lesson saying “ein paar Verben” (a few verbs). We would suggest a number of verbs ranging from the weird to the actually useful in a sentence. She would add in some that linked with the lesson we were about to do or a lesson that had recently been done and the infinitives would be written down the side of the whiteboard. Weak verbs would be marked with a next to them. Occasionally, where time might have been tight, we were left the verbs from the year above and used those.
We would chant our way through the verbs (working from left to right). There was definitely a rhythm that built up and it even worked with separable ones. I’m aware some teachers prefer to skip the present ones where they don’t change but for the rhythm, I prefer to leave them in.
denken
denkt
dachte
gedacht
essen
iβt
aβ
gegessen
springen
springt
sprang
gesprungen
hören
hört
hörte
gehört
absagen
sagt ab
sagte ab
abgesagt
Next, we would be tested with some quick fire whole class responses on modal verbs.
I can / I want / I must or have to / I like / I should / I’m allowed to
These would also be dropped into the imperfect.
I was able / I wanted / I had to / I liked / I ought to have / I was allowed to
We would then move to “silly sentences” which more often than not included ,weil ,obwohl and other subordinating conjunctions. These sentences often incorporated class members, their interests and quirks. On reflection, I believe this was also used an opportunity to see if recent grammar had stuck such as cases, adjective endings and prepositions.
Quite often the subjunctive (Konjuntiv II) would make an appearance at this point with hätte, wäre and a past participle. Using the verbs above the sentence would likely be “I would have jumped out of the window, if I had thought quicker” or “i would be ill, if i ate the food because it contains gluten.” I can also remember the Konjuntiv I making an appearance to challenge one of the top students in our class (not me) shortly after we had learnt it. Being a skilled teacher, she gave him some reported speech including a genitive and adjective endings.
10-15 minutes of an hours lesson four out of five times a week meant that we did not struggle for verbs or conjugations come the exams. Even if you were not the one cold-called to do a silly sentence, you could be immediately pounced upon if the person doing it had struggled and stopped. You had to be constantly thinking and ready to answer.
EverydayMFL was meant to be a place to share my ideas and there are more of those to come. This post is a tribute to an inspirational teacher that taught me A-level German for two years and probably developed my passion for languages more than most other teachers I have had. She is sadly no longer in teaching but still works with young people as a life/image coach.
The whole idea behind these posts is five simple things you can do in your classroom with minimal preparation tomorrow.
Adam Boxer’s Tick Trick (adapted to MFL)
This arose from a post on X by Adam Boxer (you can find his website here). I started using this with my classes for translation tasks. It’s devastatingly simple to add into a lesson: “If you have that bit on your answer, give it a tick on your board.“ You can even convert it into TL with more simplistic language “If you have A, correct. If you have B, correct.” I used it to break sentence translations down into chunks of languages so that students were being rewarded for the bits that they were getting right. The current AQA GCSE does a similar thing where 2/3 chunks correct might equal a mark.
Recently, our department has begun experimenting with sentence builders. I currently share some groups and wanted to check how much of the sentence builder my class actually knew and could reproduce because when you see them every other lesson, it is inevitably harder to track their progress. Being a fully-signed up fan of mini-whiteboards, I chose 5 sentences from the sentence builder for my class to reproduce in Spanish. In this case, the sentence builders described a house. Each sentence was different, used adjectives with the highest surrender value (that is to say applicable across multiple contexts) and students could attempt an extra sentence from the previous sentence builder if they finished quickly. I asked students to turn their sentence builders over and try to produce the sentences from memory. If they peeked, looked up a word or phrase then I asked them to underline that phrase on the sentence builder. It gave me quick intel as to how much each student could remember.
AI seedling image
Seed-planting for GCSE
One of my Year 9 class this week asked a question about GCSE. It was one of those “let’s slow the lesson down by getting the teacher to talk about something” moments. I quickly weighed up the pros and cons and thought let’s take the opportunity to sell GCSE MFL to this mixed ability group. We have not begun our options process yet but they had some thoughts that needed unpacking.
Do I have to take it?
What is foundation / higher?
My sister says it’s ****** hard?
Do i really have to talk for 12 minutes?
What if i don’t want to teach / translate? Is it worth it?
It’s always worth reminding students that they have been preparing for their language GCSE since Y7. The words that they learn then are equally likely to make an appearance and the topics in Key Stage 3 often map to the GCSE ones. When the foundation reading text says “does Ximena enjoy her history lessons?”, they learnt that in Year 7. I sometimes think we are not so different from maths in that our GCSE is the culmination of everything learnt so far.
Photo by Yan Krukau on Pexels.com Grumpy Smurf picture was copyrighted
Grumpy Time
Not my idea at all and full credit goes to Gianfranco Conti for this one. Having seen that my class had used the sentence builder mentioned above to write about where they live (more ideas for this topic here), I asked them to produce me an answer that was entirely grumpy. Having not done this for a few years, none of my students had written a grumpy answer before so we had a brief moment about adding in adverbs of degree (sometimes MFL teachers and resources refer to these as quantifiers). We noted down a few to add in to sound significantly more grumpy. Students then produced some extremely grumpy sentences and seemed to enjoy it rather than the generic “write about where you live.”
You might notice we have been teaching a fair bit of “in my house” stuff recently from the post above. This idea continues that theme I asked ChatGPT to produce me an image containing two houses and specified what rooms i wanted in each (after a disastrous first go where we had staircases to nowhere). In the end, I ended up using both images! One for a simple writing activity where students wrote “In house A there is but in house B there is not…” The disaster house came in useful as an extension where with a few adjectives given students could write “there is a useless staircase”, “there is a garage upstairs which is stupid.”
A cautionary note on this one. ChatGPT only allows you a certain amount of images per day also since then I have also learnt that AI image generation has a significant water footprint.
Lastly, if you are starting to look for Christmas MFL ideas then…
Also a relatively new blog from Beth M is well worth a look. I remember Steve Smith being kind enough to mention mine in the early days which raised my viewing numbers. I hope this will do the same.
After recycling my yearly Christmas blogpost for the last few years, I decided it was time to make a new one. As a result you now have 18 ideas. Enjoy!
Idea 1: Lyrics Training, Christmas songs and mini-whiteboards
Create an account on Lyrics Training. Load up the website. Give out a set of mini-whiteboards. Pick a song, set your difficulty level. Decide on write mode and choice mode (write means writing full words and choice is a selection from four). Project the video on the screen and hit play. Students write the words when the music stops, show their answers and keep a points tally. Ones I have used in previous years.
Santa Claus llegó a la ciudad Enzo- Laura Pausini version
Feliz Navidad si tu quieres – Enzo
Mi burrito sabanero – Juanes – more on this one later.
You can find others just by typing in Navidad / Noel / Weihnachten or Christmas related words.
Idea 2: The Christmas Quiz is the vehicle for teaching about Christmas.
I’ve seen a lot of Christmas quizzes like this one by Alex Rose on TES. My personal favourite is this one although now it will cost you the wallet destroying sum of £1. It’s a bit shorter and cultural knowledge is dropped in with the answers.
Idea 3: Plan to reuse them every year.
I now have Christmas, Easter and day of the dead PPTs with all of the following in. Yes, it makes for a large file size but at least it is all in one place and easy to load up. It took me 8 years of teaching to think this up but it works now. The resources that go with the PPT are all in the same folder.
Idea 4: Mi burrito sabanero (or similar in German/French)
Most UK primary school kids have come across the song “little donkey”, and if they haven’t then they are missing out/lucky (delete as applicable). I like to think that “mi burrito sabanero” in Spanish is the equivalent!
Do now: 12 words on screen. 8 from the song, 4 not but similar sounding. Students work them out or look them up. Avoid “Belén” as to some teenagers, apparently it sounds quite rude…learnt that one the hard way.
Listen 1: Students listen to the song and identify which ones they hear in the song.
Listen 2: lines from the song mixed up on screen / on paper. Students number them in the order they hear them.
Listen 3: Gap fill
Listen 4: With video containing lyrics to check answer.
If i have heard the song too many times in that week then listen 1 moves straight to listen 3.
Idea 5: Class discussion sentence builder 1
Set up a single powerpoint slide with: “What is the best Christmas film?” in your target language.
Opinion phrases
Name of Film
Simple reasons
Agree/disagree phrases
I love
Home Alone
I like the story
I agree, it’s fantastic
I like
Muppet Christmas Carol
it makes me smile/laugh
I disagree it’s terrible
I enjoy
it makes me feel christmassy
I haven’t seen it
Consider it a sentence builder with reactions added at the end.
Students discuss in pairs and then pick a few to listen to.
Idea 6: Class Discussion Sentence Builder 2
I’ll be honest here, I got to 8 ideas when writing. So, take the idea above and change “best” to “worst” and alter opinion phrases and reasons.
Idea 7: Penguins(Spanish only)
Yep, you read that right.
One whole lesson ready to go. Neil Jones’ Madagascar Penguins is a great “off the shelf” lesson that is fun, enjoyable, Christmassy and goes down well with most groups i have done it with. If you are in the kind of school that doesn’t allow films then maybe try adding it to the scheme of work first.
AI generated madagascar penguins
Idea 8: Activity around a short film (French only)
Courtesy of Josiane Cullis on TES. Le Loup qui n’aimait pas Noel is a lesson based around a short film and with plenty of activities including pre and post listening tasks.
AI generated wolf
Idea 9: German Christmas Digital Escape Room
I wish I could make something like this but Ann-Kathrin Latter definitely has some skills. This German Christmas Digital Escape Room looks great fun, is beautifully presented and I can see it going down well with Years 7,8,9.
This Blogpost was inspired by a Twitter conversation I have seen over the past week or so and posted a whole year later. Sorry it took so long!
The 150 Word Question appears on the higher GCSE paper. It is the showcase question. This is where 5 years of hard work in Spanish needs to appear on the page.
Irrespective of whether you follow a 2 year or 3 year Key Stage 3, I tend to introduce this in Year 10. Below I will explain how I did it. The suggestions are similar to some suggestions by two teachers on Twitter. I will say now that the similarity is entirely coincidental and it was quite reassuring to read their tweets, as I means I might just be doing the right thing!
Here is how I went about getting my class ready for 150 Word Questions:
Show class a question. Explain to them that this is the showcase question. It has to show them at their best and what we have spent 4-5 years teaching them.
Translate question in pairs, then share answers.
See if class can divide the two bullet points into three, four or five sections.
Divide 150 by number of sections to give approximate and more manageable word counts (3 x 50 word sections sounds more achievable)
Go through how it is marked, including how many opinions, justifications etc are needed. Unpacking phrases such as “narrate events” is also worth a few minutes of your time.
Divide class into groups of 3-4. They write the best section they possibly can on mini-whiteboards or on paper with alternating lines (any means that allows editing). This means tenses, opinions, reasons, conjunctions, adverbs. Remind students that if they have speaking prep that matches the bullet point then they use it.
Remind students of their core language sheets and encourage use of them when writing.
Remind students of their Top 10 Complex Language sheets and encourage use of at least 2-3 phrases from it.
Students compose sections, If they finish then they can try another section.
Hand in mini-whiteboards.
Teacher types up student contributions into a 150 word answer. Mark it and annotates it with why it scores high marks. If you have a visualiser, you could do this live.
Students then attempt a similar question in subsequent lesson. They are allowed their example one, along with core language and complex language sheets. They cannot copy but can adapt it. They do this on their own. You could then mark it or take in a few and give generic feedback. Students do appreciate knowing how they scored on a first attempt.
Complex Language Sheets – basically A* language from use back in the day (wow I sound old) of controlled assessments. Mix of simple memorable subjunctive, past tense, future tense phrases “cuando sea mayor”, “si tuviera la oportunidad, iría a…” etc or “bien que ce soit”
What happens next?
Probably, I will get back to teaching the course, as later in the year they will likely have a mock exam or an assessment point so they can do one without support then. They also have two good versions to revise from! Combining the graduated approach above, along with regular practice of 90 word questions should help in preparing for that.
Other thoughts
Encourage students to avoid duplication of vocabulary. Ban the boring adjectives! “boring”, “nice”, “interesting” and “fun”. Instead things can be pleasant, enjoyable and exciting.
Remind them that the poor examiner has to read loads of these and they are all 150 words long! Encourage them to make it different to the average student. Tell them they play piano in their room rather than football at the park. They do not “go to the park with my friends”. They “go to the cinema with my little brother who is <insert adjective here>”. Again an opportunity for a more interesting adjective here (but not too interesting)
Remember that avoid does not mean you can’t use them when your mind goes blank.
Cutting the question into manageable chunks is always helpful. Can one bullet point be divided into two? To some of our students 40+40+75 does not sound as bad as 75+75.
Lastly: make a plan. What language am I going to use? How can I show off?
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!
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.
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..”
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.
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.
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.
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
Or
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.
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.
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.
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.
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…”
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.
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).
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 ToolkitThe 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.
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
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.
I had forgotten about this website until one of my pupils said “I know the words I just don’t know how to pronounce them when I’m practising at home”. My internal, unvocalised reaction to this comment – a comment innocently dropped after 4.5 years of Spanish – is probably best summarised by the picture below:
In hindsight, my internal monologue should have focused on the positive “when practising at home”. However, it was at this point that Voki came to mind. Whilst not perfect, it does offer text to speech conversion. It also can help occasionally with individual Spanish words. Once you have set the voice to Spanish and the accent to a relatively clear one (our preference was for Javier). Just remind the pupils they don’t need to sign up to use it, and also not to get distracted on creating avatars.
Imemorize
For learning answers to questions, this is a particular favourite. The address is as follows:
It allows students to learn sentences and hide words to check their recall. The activities are scaffolded quite well. It would depend on the student who uses it as to how effective it is.
Students used to find this helpful in the days of controlled assessment. One has also thanked me for “saving” their GCSE drama coursework.
No snakes, no ladders (Idea from Gianfranco Conti / Dylan Viñales)
Secondary MFL facebook groups such as: Secondary MFL Matters, Secondary MFL in Wales, New GCSE 9-1 resources, Global Innovative Language Teachers and others) have taken over my news-feed. They allow some superb sharing of resources and ideas. However, lots of activities appear briefly and then disappear: balloon towers, one pen&one dice. This is one I want to keep. It involves speaking, listening, reading and translation. Students play in threes – 2 players and a referee. This is a refreshing change to the majority of MFL games, which seem to require a partner. Full instructions for No Snakes, No Ladders can be found here.
Treasure Hunt
This is a slight variation on the MFL standard of battleships. Gives students a slightly larger grid (6×6) and tell them to hide some treasure somewhere in the grid. This variation worked in 98% of the pairs in my class. Sadly there was a kid who guessed it first time! 36 different squares! What were the chances?! I made sure that they had a rematch.
Quick Speaking Feedback
This next suggestion is a little bit embryonic. It is something I have tried with two classes and am still considering how it might work best.
There is a huge focus in UK schools on feedback, DIRT and responding to marking. The vast majority of DIRT I have seen on Facebook Groups and the TES relates purely to written work. I’ve written about that here.
I started to consider how I may give short quick feedback on speaking, a skill I believe to be substantially more important than writing. With two year 8 classes, I went around asking them to read a longer paragraph from a textbook page (Mira 2 or Listos 2). Whilst they were reading out loud, I scribbled one quick sentence in their book regarding their pronunciation. Some of the notes looked like this:
Speaking Feedback
Check “ci/ce” in middle of words – should sound like “th” eg: “vacaciones”, “francia”
Remember ll = y
Superb today, nothing to correct!
Remember silent h when starting a word, otherwise fine.
To save time and workload, I wrote one sentence per student. It did not take long to go through the class.
For those of you wanting students to respond to it then there were two ways I tried to engender this. Firstly, I modelled the sentence and then they repeated it back to me. This helped some to understand how it should sound. Secondly, I wrote a list of 4-5 words in their book that I wanted them to say containing the same sound. Lastly, in light of everything I had heard, I planned a lesson around J and G in Spanish. This youtube clip was helpful in that lesson. It took the focus off of me and gave them plenty of examples. In that lesson I read out a list of words and students corrected me if I made a mistake. We had races of words involving Js and Gs along with trying a few tongue twisters corporately and individually.
What I noticed from this was that some students got a substantial confidence boost. Their ability to pronounce words was better than they perceived it to be. Others appreciated the quick feedback. Some appreciated being able to respond to the feedback without a lengthy redraft of a piece of work. They also appreciated the lesson working on the J and G.
I’m still mulling over where to take this and what to do to refine the process but it was well received by the students and did appear to have a positive effect.
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.
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
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.
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
and other details
etc
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.
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:
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
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.
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.
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.
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”
Feedback and marking conjure up a variety of responses. Some teachers secretly enjoy it. Some would like to drop their marking pile in a woodchipping machine. If you are reading this because you want to improve your feedback then hopefully you find something new to try. If you are snowed under then I would point you in this direction.
We know from research by people such as John Hattie that feedback can be incredibly important. Two videos that demonstrate the importance of feedback and how it can be used well are below. The first: Austin’s Butterfly, has done the rounds on Twitter, Facebook and in schools. Watch for the kid at about the 45-50second mark with his encyclopaedic knowledge of butterflies…
The second video shows that over time with a diet of quality instruction and effective feedback people generally improve at whatever they are doing. Pay attention to his control, his reactions and his speed. It is one way I get the kids to “buy in” to my marking and then the subsequent reflection time.
Feedback or Feedforward?
I know, “feedforward” is not a word but this came from a discussion with some colleagues the other day. Most students do not care about the work they have done once it is over. They care about the next piece. So whilst our feedback is reactionary and responds to what they have done, they are already looking at the next thing. One colleague said that he gets students to copy the target from the previous piece of written work at the top of the next piece of written work they are set, so that it is in their mind while they are producing it. If you are following Mira 2 then you maybe approaching a module on clothes. Here is how you could apply this:
Homework 1:Produce a 75 words on things you wear at different times
Student completes piece of work with the following 2 targets
Try to use a greater variety of vocabulary
Add reasons to opinions given
Homework 2:write 75 words about a party you went to and what you wore
Student writes at top of work
TARGET: Use greater variety of vocabulary.
HOW: no repeated nouns or adjectives where possible.
Suddenly we have a situation where the feedback informs the next piece of work. This means the next piece of work is not only a response to the marking but it is also driving the learning forward.
Doyouuse colouredpens?
Schools vary on this. Here are some of the ones out there I have heard about:
The purple pen of progress. This is for improvements to work or redrafting of work.
The pink pen of pride. This is for work a teacher wishes to highlight as particularly good or because of how well the task has been met by what has been written
The green pen of growth. This incorporates targets to improve.
The green pen of peer assessment. It’s for peer assessment, the clue is in the name. It is quite a good way of visually defining who did the marking (more for observer than the kid)
The red pen of teacher marking.
The turquoise pen of…you’re just making it up now!
I have seen coloured pens used really effectively in one of our feeder primary schools. The presentation of their work is stunning too particularly given a very tough catchment area. Something goes wrong between the Summer of year 6 and the Autumn of year 7, cynics might suggest it’s adolescence…
Highlighters
My new favourite. This came originally from a colleague in Bristol and a colleague currently on maternity leave. Underlining an entire piece of work in different highlighters.
Green = good leave it as it is
Yellow = something needs correcting
You could add some codes such as (G) = grammar (W.O) = word order (S) = Spelling to aid understanding where needed or just let the yellow stand for itself and force the burden of correction and thought back on to the pupil. Some may disagree but I find this visually powerful for the kids. Weaker ability kids who receive a piece of work that is largely green with one or two hints of yellow get a massive morale boost from this. Even the ones that get more yellow than green benefit as they still appreciate knowing that at least some of it was right!
Stamps
Ross Mcgill who runs the Teacher Toolkit website has a post about verbal feedback stamps. I see no point in repeating him. However many stamps can save time and I have benefited from the stamp stacks supplied by a website out there. The stamps contain things such as:
“please give nouns a capital”
“please take more care over presentation”
“please watch your verb endings”
“great work, keep it up!”
DIRT
I mentioned DIRT mats in this post. There are a number of things you can do to maximise DIRT time. Firstly, make it really clear what you want students to do with the time and how you want them to do it. Secondly, refuse to take any questions apart from ones concerning your handwriting for the first 5 minutes. Lastly in that first 5 minutes, focus on the ones who need your attention most.
Prove to me beyond all reasonable doubt
My Head of Department posed a difficult question last week: “early on in year 7 when you have an able kid getting everything right, what feedback do you give that drives their learning forward?” I happen to have just such a year 7 so here is what I tried. When we have done grammatical exercises, her DIRT task has been to “prove beyond all reasonable doubt that you can apply the grammar points from the previous lesson using pages … of Mira 1,2,3”. She then gets on with exercises that challenge, extend, consolidate and deepen her learning. Sometimes the grammar book used is not the regular one (e.g: listos rather than Mira or the GCSE foundation book if I was feeling really mean). She has responded really well.
Patricia’s problems page.
Patricia is a student I teach who struggled with a new language: German. We decided that at the back of her book we should have a problems page. Initially, I did not mark much of her work to keep her confidence levels high but we had an ongoing dialogue on the problem page. It was not triple impact marking or deep marking or excessive dialogue. It was just an honest conversation where she could ask the questions she did not want to ask in class.
“I get that the verb goes second, what if you have two or three verbs?”
“How do you form questions?”
“Why can’t German be easier?”
“What is the difference between denn and weil?
Feedback sheets
TES is full of these. Rather than writing the comments then they can be on a sheet. This can be very effective but again the sheet has to be meaningful and linked to your assessment criteria. I remember marking an oral exam with another teacher and they suggested I listen to the amount of subjunctives and connectives the student was using. The problem is that the Edexcel Speaking mark scheme does not really mention either. If you are going to produce a sheet like these then make it a good one. The question the sheet needs to answer is not only “what do I need to work on?” but also “how am I going to go about it?”
Formative Comments
For a while we ran with comment only marking and to an extent we still do in that pieces of work are not graded. It can be very easy to get into a rut of formative comments. The following are based on the new GCSE Writing mark scheme (AQA is the only accredited one I am aware of).
Content
Quality of Language
Accuracy
Language Specific
Stick more closely to the
question
Include greater variety of tenses
Check genders
Spanish accents only go one direction: /
What else could you say about?
Use a greater variety of opinion phrases
Check spelling
Please give nouns a capital
How could you make … clearer?
Find more interesting adjectives than “aburrido”
and “interesante”
Check verb/adjective endings
Check direction of accents
Aim for longer, more detailed sentences
Include more complex clauses and structures
Check accents
Check use of avoir/etre
If making comments then they should be demanding a response. Mary Myatt has some points to make on this here.
Subtle comments.
The exercise book is a way of communicating with your students. Do not underestimate the power of a well-placed positive comment. Matt Walsh’s blog has a brilliant post worth reading called “to the quiet boring girl in the class“. Sometimes they just need a little encouragement. One of the most talented students I have ever worked with once said to me “why must it always be “to improve”, why can’t I just be good for a few seconds?” Here’s the challenge: pick the quiet kid that doesn’t contribute much in lessons. Look through their book, find a piece of work, single out the positives and finish with a comment about how much you valued the effort and thought that went into it. If you need convincing of the effect you can have then read this.
“I thrived on the quiet praise I was given” – Emma Thomas
Everydaymfl’s Marking & Feedback
I’ve outlined a lot of different stuff here. I’m sure you have lots of other idea. If you saw Everydaymfl’s books, what would he hope you would see?
Underlined date, title and label as to class or homework
Legible work.
Pieces of work marked with highlighters.
Codes where absolutely necessary but very few to force the student to examine their work.
2-3 targets at the end of work with how to improve.
DIRT task for the student to work on (using purple pen).
Some elaborate positive comments – not just “well done” but “this is great because.”
Challenging and redrafting of poor quality or poorly presented work.
Regular marking (half-termly)
A comment somewhere to make the quiet kid feel ten feet tall.
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
Or
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.
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.”
“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.
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!
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:
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?
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?
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.
next to them. Occasionally, where time might have been tight, we were left the verbs from the year above and used those.
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.
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Everyday MFL 