This all started because I was compiling some simple classroom activities from my own archives for a project for work. Then I realised that it would be even better if I crowd-sourced some ideas and as ever, the #mfltwitterati were magnificent in sharing.
The main aim was to collect those basic, no props required, vocabulary drilling activities. In collecting them, other simple ideas snuck in, but I decided that was absolutely fine – who’s going to complain!
I’ve separated them into four different categories to make it a little bit more manageable. There will be errors, I’m sure, and you’ll have your own versions. In fact, @langwitch has a Lingo Bingo all of her own and she has explained it far better than I can, so hop over to her blog and have a look yourself.
Then there’s always the issue of what to call these activities – I call it one thing in German, another in French, and that’s without regional variations!
But call them what ever you like, you’re more than welcome to them!
Has there ever been a TeachMeet which wasn’t worth attending? I don’t think so!
This particular event was organised on a Friday evening by @DeputyMitchell and @Dughall, and the room was packed out. Not only that, but there was a live video feed, and the event was being watched in Plymouth, Buckinghamshire, and in various other locations!
There were so many good ideas to take away, and the place was buzzing by the end. @simonhaughton has already done the hard work in covering the highlights in his post, and I did my slot on one of my favourite collaborative learning activities, which you can find information about in these previous posts, or by typing collaborative learning in the search box on this blog.
But what I wanted to do was quickly highlight some of the ideas and links that I could see having a use in language teaching. The majority are familiar to most, but by mentioning them here, at least I’ll know where to find them when I need them!
So, in no particular order:
Audioboo and ipadio for instant sound recordings and uploading to a blog.
Logo54 generates any words you like in the style of famous logos (like the one at the top of this post)
Those last couple of links were courtesy of @ideas_factory, who kindly shared a link to a whole host of generators here. Whilst browsing, I found this one:
onlinewahn.de is an image generator specifically in German, which may be of interest to some.
Huge thanks to the organisers, and it was great to meet and learn from such dedicated and talented practitioners.
I learned about the brilliant Fakebook (fake Facebook pages) and Twister (fake Twitter messages) at the MFLSAT meeting at Cramlington Learning Village last month. I have just this evening (thanks to @nikpeachey) discovered ifaketext.com, which will reproduce a screenshot of a text conversation on an iPhone. I just tested it out – the foreign characters appear in the image which is generated, but disappeared into nonsense when I embedded the result in my blog (which may indicate an issues with WordPress – perhaps you could tell me?). But I took a Jing screenshot below.
Not the most imaginative conversation, but I hope it illustrates the point.
Some people have been dropping hints lately that I should share a few more of my favourite co-operative learning strategies.
OK, OK I can take a hint!
Here’s one called Numbered Heads Together. To get the most out of it, you need to seat pupils in groups of 4 and of mixed ability. Each pupil will need a mini-whiteboard, and a pen that works
Pupils numbers themselves 1-4 round their table, then teacher asks the question.
Using mini-whiteboards, pupils work individually at first to write down their best response.
When ready, each pupil gives a thumbs up, then all stand up. They huddle together, discuss and decide upon the group’s best answer, then sit down.
Teacher rolls a die, and which ever number it lands on (1-4), that person from each group must share their answer with the class.
Teacher can see errors, ask pupils to explain how they reached their conclusion, ask pupils to explain errors to other groups.
Some examples of how I use this activity:
Give the infinitive of an unknown regular verb and ask pupils to give a particular conjugation (ie getting them to apply the rule)
Give a sentence in the present tense and ask pupils to put it into the past/future tense
Give pupils all the words required to make a sentence, and ask them to unjumble it (very good for practising correct word order in German)
Give four or five words or phrases, ask which is the odd one out and why (could be gender, irregular verbs, phrases in different tenses)
Give four or five words in the target language (the dafter the better!) and ask pupils to create a grammatically correct sentence using all of the words (they can add other words, but must still use the words you supply) eg Jupiter, hatstand, monkey, George Bush.
Ask pupils to write rules for a particular grammar point they have learned (good for starter or plenary).
To help me with classroom organisation, I will often prepare the questions on PowerPoint first, but it’s not necessary to do this everytime.
Following on from other successful events, the North East became the latest region to host a meeting for MFL teachers to share good practice. Hosted at Cramlington Learning Village and organised by the most wonderful Chris Harte, the day brought together colleagues from up and down the country, who brought some examples of tricks and tips to enhance language teaching and learning.
I can’t begin to do full justice to all of the presentations here, but I’ll share the highlights, and where possible, link to people’s own blogs or presentations of their own work so that the information comes straight from the horse’s mouth.
First up was Mark Purves. Mark is an enthusiastic advocate of singing as a tool for learning, and he got the day off to a rousing start by sharing some strategies for just that. Music lifts the mood, and singing helps with controlling breathing – warm up exercises for voice,which is the instrument of languages.
Samantha Lunn was next, with some fabulous suggestions for routines in the language classroom – she explains it all – and posts links to relevant documents – on her blog, so head on over and see what she has to say!
Thinking skills were the feature of Lynn Smith’s presentation, and she shared with us a multitude of ideas for developing these in MFL teaching and learning:
Odd one out
Give a selection of words, use each word once only to make 8 phrases in past tense
Almost encouraging pupils to be confused, part of the learning and thinking process
Memory map – a house is described on page outside classroom – pupils must take it in turns to read description, return to group and draw what they have read
DeBonos hats to promote discussions
Plenary- create mind-map ( = synthesising)
Clare Seccombe (whose article was recently published in TES) spoke to us about reading books for use in language learning. Her presentation, including audio, can be found here, because she will explain it better than I ever could! Oh, and she blogs here!
Emma Bains talked about some changes which she is in the process of introducing to her department’s curriculum. They sound fabulous, and really imaginative. Here’s a taster:
Pupils become a SatNav when learning to describe their town
Cluedo-type activity to encourage pupils to repeat several phrases whilst trying to guess the correct response
Rights and responsibilities
I had been looking forward to meeting Simon McLoughlin, as I am a huge admirer of the work he has been doing with his primary pupils. He started by sharing a clip from Friends, to illustrate his point:
Simon uses Audioboo to record his pupils speaking, then lets them listen to themselves so that they can improve their pronunciation. It works a treat!
The University of Newcastle’s computer aided learning resources were shared by Thomas Snell, who showed us the link to a vast archive of language materials available at www.universed.co.uk.
Blockbusters was enthusiastically championed by Terri Dunne. She presented an interactive template and a variety of language structures which work with the game, including practising different tenses. Intensely competitive!
Dominic McGladdery shared some of his favourite classroom activities, which included:
Amanda Salt had flown over from Belfast just to attend this event, and she didn’t disappoint. Amanda related the details of her school’s annual Spanish immersion weekend for A level students. During this off-site weekend event, students take part in Dragon’s Den and treasure hunt style activities, and are not allowed to speak English in the presence of their teachers. Amanda’s school wiki has all of the details …
We were then challenged to alter the way we mark our pupils’ books by Alex Blagona. Alex was looking for ways to re-engage a group of demotivated year 8 pupils, so he began by asking them what they liked and didn’t like about their lessons. Alex then adapted his teaching to suit the responses, and at end of each of lesson, asked again for feedback from pupils in their exercise books. The marking process then became a dialogue between teacher and pupil, personalising the learning and assisting in developing conversations with parents too. Pupils enjoyed the fact that they felt free to comment and had ownership of learning.
Joe Dale extolled the virtues of the QR code in this presentation so wander on over to have a look. If you’re not sure what a QR code is, there’s an example below (you need a smart phone to read it), and there’s an explanation here.
We then has a very special guest appearance, live from Oldham via Skype – Isabelle Jones told us about some cross curricular work she had done with music and art, resulting in some amazing rap music produced in French by some of her most demotivated boys. We were all well and truly bowled over. and it was lovely to see Isabelle with us virtually!
Rene Koglbauer has done some lovely work with social media to improve writing, particularly that of boys. Initially it was a dialogue for marking through email, and expanded to using Facebook in German for writing film reviews. Pupils and staff commented on posts, and despite initial concerns over safeguarding, it turned into a very successful venture.
Class Dojo – real-time behaviour rewards in class – increases engagement
Triptico – suite of IWB tools, eg Word Magnets for grouping, class timer, scoreboards, ordering priority of sentences
Lingro – turns a webpage into a clickable dictionary resource
During the day, there were also several ‘genius bar’ sessions, where people sat as experts during coffee break on a variety of topics. As I was hosting one myself I don’t know what went on, but given the calibre of the other speakers I have no doubt they were worth the effort.
If you’d like to see the notes from my own genius bar, you could use the QR code above to take a look (see what I did there!), or check out this post.
I’ve been fascinated today by Brad Patterson’s blog post challenge, where he has challenged people to present two different but connected photos.
It really sparked my curiosity, so here’s my contribution. I have to admit, I came up with two pairs of photos and couldn’t decide between the two, so I’m going to share both. If it’s any justification, the two pairs are connected to each other.
Last Saturday (24th September) I took part in the MFLSAT event held at Cramlington Learning Village, where my contribution was to share some thoughts on co-operative learning structures at my ‘genius bar’ (my host’s description, not mine!). Watch out for a longer post soon about other speakers’ contributions.
I have talked about collaborative learning structures before (here and here), but I make no apologies because these techniques were the thing that turned my teaching around and gave me the confidence to hand the learning over to the pupils.
So here are the few slides I prepared as an overview, and below is the handout explaining some of the activities in a little more detail. Please help yourself!
… Stop Press … Samantha Lunn is also working with these structures now, so you may want to wander over to her blog to see what she’s up to – she’s just blogged this, for example …
It occurs to me that one of the qualities of a successful teacher is that, in the course of their work, they are constantly thinking about other people – their pupils.
Working with trainee teachers, I was always delighted to observe the change in thinking from “what am I teaching” to “what do I want my pupils to learn”, because this shift in perspective usually indicates a much better understanding of what makes good learning and teaching.
So this means that teachers are always involved in the search for activities to engage pupils and are really pleased to find something which their students enjoy doing, because that brings a greater likelihood that they are learning at the same time as having fun.
But then I wondered – what learning activities do teachers like to use because they enjoy them themselves? To be selfish for a moment – what doyou love to do in the classroom?
One of my own personal favourites is Quiz Quiz Trade (you can find an explanation in this post), because it means I can be peripherally involved, do some formative assessment, and the pupils are moving around the room (not stuck to their chairs), and asking as well as answering questions.
To get a broader view, I then asked my Twitter amici“What’s the teaching/learning activity you love to use because you enjoy it?”
Here are some of the answers which I received
pass the teddy
X&O, hunt the object/flashcard
blindfold food tasting and naming
PUPPETS!
write dialogues\scenes and then act them out.
fashion show, cafe (even inviting parents in) and songs.
anything which takes me out of the picture; e.g. Running Dictation
Shoe box decorated as a room (doll’s house furniture), then video with running commentary a la Through the Keyhole.
I love the game ‘snatch’ takes forever to make but the kids love it and you can play match up, word and picture bingo with cards
“remote-control partner”, with big open space e.g. footie field/sports hall and lots of those little cone thingies
Cheat! Makes me completely redundant once I’ve made the cards. I also like post-it mania or headbands as I believe it’s called?
Pass the parcel – brilliant with sentence stems – very little time required to set it up.
Now although these are a varied bunch of activities, two things struck me about this collection of responses.
Firstly, although some of them may take a little preparation, the majority then hand control over to the pupils. To me, this doesn’t indicate laziness on the part of the teachers, or a wish to opt out. It’s promoting active learning, with the teacher as facilitator and not as holder of all knowledge.
And secondly, there’s the fun element. The #mfltwitterati all shared activities which are fun for everyone involved, teacher and pupil alike. Fun, which means engagement, involvement, and perhaps even forgetting that it’s work. On both sides.
It may be a bit much of a stretch to link this to the quote by Confucius: ”Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life”, but I do think it’s true that in what can be a tremendously demanding and stressful job, planning things which are fun for everyone involved makes the job a little easier, and much more enjoyable.
At this time of year, what with sports day, visits to Alton Towers, and induction tours with Year 6, I find it difficult to keep both my classes and myself motivated, and I try to find activities which will hopefully keep pupils engaged.
Below the video are some materials which I have thrown together, which may be useful for part of a lesson – steal away if they’re of any use! (and apologies for any mistakes).
I love using film in lessons, but I believe the audience should participate in some way; too many times, films are used as a method of keeping pupils quiet towards the end of term, which for me diminishes the art and craft of film making. I want to encourage my pupils to watch foreign language films, even after they stop learning the language.
So here’s one of my favourites. I absolutely love this film, and use any opportunity to show it to my students, because they usually love it too.
I find it interesting and useful for the classroom on many levels:
First and foremost, it’s a great story.
It’s set in a school, so has a lot of young protagonists, which is usually a bonus for hooking pupils in.
The students are from a range of backgrounds (social, cultural, family).
Tranferring the original story from USA to Germany provides an extra dimension when considering autocratic government/leadership.
It opens up avenues to discuss some of Germany’s historical past, and to dispel some myths.
I use the film in a number of ways, depending on the class I have:
One year, I used the film as a stimulus for an extended piece of writing, before watching the film.
I showed my class some stills from the film, and told them nothing other than the names of the characters and that the setting was school. I told them they could be either one of the characters, or a friend of one of the characters. I suggested that they think about describing the people, their relationships, the school, and what a typical day would be like. For more able, I added that they might want to use their imaginations to describe something unusual that happened at school.
They loved it! The less able (it was a mixed GCSE group containing pupils with targets from A to G) did basic descriptions of the characters, whilst the more able had one of the pupils with a crush on the teacher, or one of the pupils stabbing another!
After working hard on the task, the reward was to watch the film, and the pupils were intrigued to see what actually happened to each of the characters. Some were very close to the truth.
With a much weaker group, I introduced the film and some of the historical/political references which they might have missed, and let them watch it. Afterwards they used a gap fill exercise to summarise the story.
This year’s Year10 group get to watch it after they’ve done their next Controlled Assessment – 0n school!
As a result of an excellent couple of sessions recently from Joe Dale and José Picardo (thanks, guys) I now seem to have been inspired to get my own blog. Not sure how that happened! So the question now is, what to put in it?
Keeping it simple for the first one, I thought I’d share an idea that I picked up from Sara Sullivan at the SSAT National Languages Conference in October this year. She explained how she put a proverb on the board in a foreign language as her Year 11 class were coming in, and that they loved the challenge of working out the meaning before the lesson began in earnest. So I decided to try it with my class, and I am really impressed with the results. In fact, if I have forgotten a proverb, they even ask me why there isn’t one for them!
Here’s a website I use to find proverbs in German.
I also brought back a few postcards from a recent trip to Berlin, which had some nice phrases on them. My class asked if this one was of me. Cheeky monkeys!
When I hear the words ‘Controlled Assessment’, this is what I think…
I think I’ve been worrying more about the new controlled assessments than my pupils! And I suppose that’s to be expected, because although neither of us really knows what we’re in for yet, I at least have been pondering the practicalities since around March, whereas Year 10 are just trusting me to do the right thing. No pressure there, then!
I have therefore persuaded the languages department to take a proactive approach, and we will be ‘training’ Year 10 in the requirements of the written task in January, although not actually using the outcome as a ‘proper’ task.
The idea is this: school is suspending the normal school timetable on 13th January, to enable such things as super learning days and theatre visits to occur, and the languages department is taking Year 10 for the day.
I am going to introduce the concept of the controlled assessment to them together, then we will split into groups of the different taught languages.
Pupils will be given some still images from a film in the language they are studying, but (hopefully) have not seen.
Teachers will lead pupils in deciding what information they could give about the stimulus images, and perhaps share some useful phrases.
In small groups, pupils will create sentences or phrases to describe the images.
The title of the task will be given to pupils. Working alone, they will be given a restricted amount of time to compile their response, and condense it to something resembling the 40 word list they are allowed to use for the assessment.
Pupils will then have around 30 minutes to write up their work, using only their prompts.
To round things off, we’re going to let them see part of the chosen film, to see how close their comments were to the reality of the film’s characters. On the off-chance that one of the pupils reads this (highly unlikely, I’m sure), I’m not going to divulge the title of the task just yet, but will gladly share all after the event.
The idea isn’t to produce a decent piece of writing (although that would help!), but to understand the steps involved in this part of their GCSE examination.
Maybe I’m mad to try this, but I don’t want the first experience of a controlled assessment to be an actual one, as I don’t think it’s fair. And I also think it will be good for me as a teacher to get my head around the structure of the beast, even if the timescale is squashed. It’s still making me tackle something I’m nervous about, which can’t be all bad.
Am I totally bananas? Have you just jumped in with a proper assessment? I’d be interested to know your thoughts.
Before the Christmas holidays, I mused on why I was feeling anxious about the GCSE Controlled Assessments (Panic? Moi?) in which I set out an outline for an attempt to help both teachers and pupils feel a little more confident.
Well, that day was last Wednesday, and I’m pleased to report that it was generally regarded as a successful venture. We ended up having to be a little flexible with some of the timings, but for a first attempt, I was pleased. Staff appeared to be smiling on the day, which indicated things were going reasonable to plan. No pupils were sent to me for non-participation, which was a delight. And pupil feedback so far has identified the following:
pupils feel more confident about tackling their actual Controlled Assessments when the time comes (little do they know, but the first one isn’t that far off!)
they also feel more confident in their language lessons as a result
pupils enjoyed working with people from other groups with whom they wouldn’t normally work
for several pupils, it was their first viewing of a film in a foreign language
the majority of pupils enjoyed seeing the film, and wanted to see more in a foreign language
On a personal level, I do feel more confident myself now with the Controlled Assessments; having had to prepare the plan for the day, it really made me think about the structure and sequence of the tasks, and my teaching methods. Although the final written task was not the most important thing for me, for the most part I was delighted with the work which was produced, with some pupils achieving a better standard that I had thought they would have done. And finally, I think I have a better relationship with my class now, and feel that we are all heading in the same direction, which is an added bonus.
I’m happy to share the day’s resources if anyone would be interested – just let me know.
To keep morale up, a lot of tea was definitely consumed during the breaks – and the major criticism from pupils seems to be that they wanted chocolate whilst watching the film. Ho hum, sometimes you just can’t win …
It’s that time of year again, when Year 9 are being persuaded to make their option choices. On the one hand, as a language college, we’re fortunate that choosing one language is a core requirement of the Year 10 curriculum. On the other, we’d love to have some more GCSE dual linguists, but somehow art, drama or extra science seem to be the preferred option!
So this Tuesday, we will be attempting to a) convince pupils why continuing with one language is a good thing, and b) try to entice some of them into choosing a second language in their options.
Among our weapons will be a fabulous PowerPoint by the wonderful Rachel Hawkes, to whom I am eternally grateful. Finding her slides also reminded me of an assembly I did last year, based on this article in The Independent from a few years ago. Hopefully parents might appreciate it, and it made me feel good for a short while! Feel free to have a look at the slides .
I was going to start with ‘it’s that time of year again’, but nowadays, it always seems like ‘that time of year’. Year 11 are preparing for yet another controlled assessment, and I am running out of inspirational ways to help them get ready.
I went through all the usual stuff again – “once I give you this task, I can’t help you with anything else”; “you have until next Monday to prepare”; “no, you can’t use those verbs in your 40 words” – usually followed by “a verb is an action word”!
And then there’s the issue that always makes me wonder if I’m doing it correctly- “you can’t take home your draft or your planning sheet”. “But Miss, isn’t most of this in our exercise books anyway…?”
And of course, it is, because that’s the vocabulary and grammar they have been learning in lessons for the past few weeks. Otherwise I wouldn’t have been doing my job properly. I feel like I’ve missed something somewhere, but I am assured that I haven’t.
So therefore I started to ask myself – Are these assessments just hoops to jump through, or are they really giving our pupils the opportunity to respond spontaneously to the target language? For me, until we see how the examination results turn out, it’s still in the balance …
I had heard about Show and Tell gatherings in the context of teacher CPD, and had followed a number of events from afar, generally via Twitter, but today I had the privilege of attending one in person for the very first time. What an excellent day it was!
I’m not exaggerating when I say people travelled the length of the country to attend this event in Oldham. A good number of those there shared resources or experiences on a wide range of topics, and I learned so much from every one of them. I came away totally re-enthused and ready for next week!
My own small contribution was a few quick ideas on getting pupils to engage more in speaking, and I mentioned 3 different activities, which I learned during training on Kagan co-operative learning structures.
1. Rally Robin
Ask the question which you want responses on (eg what did you do at the weekend?)
Allow 30 seconds silent thinking time (this is important – gives pupils time to formulate their thoughts)
In pairs, pupils take it in turns to say a sentence until the teacher stops the activity
2. Stand Up, Hands Up, Pair Up – Same idea as before, but allows pupils to interact with more of their classmates
Ask the question and allow thinking time
Play some music – when the music stops, pupils raise their arm to indicate they are looking for a partner
They move to a partner and ‘high five’ (this is crucial!!!)
Pupils take it in turns to say a sentence until the teacher starts the music again
Pupils then move onto a different partner
The advantage of this one is that they repeat (ie practise) the phrases they know, and pick up phrases from other pupils, in particular from those which whom they would not ordinarily choose to work.
3. Quiz Quiz Trade – as above, but this time, pupils ask their partner a question
If you want to control the questions, you need to provide each pupil with their own question card, and the prompt for the answer. If you’d like to use one of my versions, you are welcome to do so – click for QuizQuizTrade.
Pupils move around the room. They each ask and answer a question, then trade their card with their partner, so they move on to the next person with a different question.
You can adapt this by asking pupils to prepare their own card for homework, or by giving pupils a post-it note and asking them to write the question and answer as the starter activity.
An event such as this could not have happened without excellent hosts, and I would like to thank again Isabelle Jones and the staff in the MFL department at The Radclyffe School in Oldham for their warm welcome, and excellent organisation. Thanks also to sponsors ALL , Mary Glasgow and Links into Languages.
Sharing is good – and logical: ”The miracle is this — the more we share, the more we have.” Leonard Nimoy
Individually, my Year 9 German group (set 2 of 2) are nice pupils, some funny, some a bit odd, but by and large OK. Put them together, however, last lesson on Tuesday and Wednesday, and they become a different life form. I have lost track of the number of times I have been unable to actually start the lesson because they come in to the room talking and just don’t shut up.
I’ve tried being calm and quiet, loud and shouty, mixing the groups, working individually – the only thing they seem to engage with is Linguascope. Great for learning 12 items of vocabulary, but after that …? Then they complain at me because they didn’t get level 5 on their last assessment.
Those of you who are Star Trek aficionados may recognise Kobayashi Maru – the no-win scenario – and most of the time this is what I feel like with this group. However, if you do know about the voyages of the Starship Enterprise, you may also recall that James Tiberius Kirk actually beat the Kobayashi Maru – he won the no-win scenario.
So this is my 5 week mission to … OK, I’ll stop the Star Trek references, but I have devised a plan to see if there is any way I can engage this group more successfully.
I have asked the group to tell me how they want to learn for the next half term. I have given them the non-negotiable facts (which topics and grammar they need to learn, what level they are expected to be working at, and the fact that there will be assessments at the end).
The rest is up to them. They have been compiling a list of activities they want to do to show off their learning (role play/drama, board games, posters), and have split the work between groups so that they will each be responsible for teaching the class a different aspect of the unit. They have also made a list of what they need me to do (eg explain about separable verbs, coach on pronunciation).
Over the holidays, my job is to put it all together, and I’ll be handing it over to them in January.
It could work, it could be a disaster. But at least I’m trying. I’ll post updates here as we go along.
I’m sure this is familiar to you, but I was searching for a starter to get Year 7 going again after the Christmas break and came across my ‘Question of Sport’ picture boards in PowerPoint, useful for both starters and plenaries.
Year 7 loved it – as they were getting one point for each thing they said about the person hidden, competition was fierce to produce longer and longer descriptions!
Please feel free to take the files if you think they’ll be useful. I’ve colour-coded the squares for different languages – all you need to do is replace the pictures or text on the slides to whatever is appropriate.
I had an interesting experience at a meeting recently. Serious items were being discussed, and I was making my contribution to the conversation.
I happened to mention that I had come across the information I was about to share via a colleague on Twitter, and no sooner were the words out of my mouth, than I realised that a certain amount of mirth filled the room.
Why was I surprised to receive such a response? Had I said that I found the information ‘on the internet’, or that it had come to me ‘via email’, I am sure I would not have had the same response.
And yet, the fact that the source was a trusted professional (whom I have actually – not just virtually – met) seemed risible to some of the people in the room just because of the method of discovery of this interesting and important piece of information.
Now, I am aware that there are still many who think that people who use Twitter are engaging in little more than a daily dose of ‘Heat’ magazine, following vapid celebrities for their inane chatter. And I will admit to following my share of celebrities, too, but I have chosen to follow them because they offer me something which I like: film commentary (Mark Kermode); giggles (Dara O Briain and Sarah Millican); veggie recipes (Simon Rimmer).
But looking through the 300-odd people whom I follow, the vast majority are fellow education professionals, most of them language specialists, to whom I am indebted for ideas, camaraderie, virtual hugs and a wealth of information.
Will the response from ‘real life’ colleagues stop me tweeting? No way! In fact, I feel a little sorry for those who have not yet discovered the power of Twitter. It’s an incredible network, through which I have met some fabulous people, and learned an amazing amount.
Whatever the reaction, I am going to carry on tweeting!
In December, concerned about issues arising from the Schools White Paper The Importance of Teaching (and learning?), for the first time in my life I wrote to a number of Members of Parliament, to seek their views on language teaching and learning in schools.
I had three responses acknowledging my email, all of which indicated that because these people were very busy, it might be some time before I received a response. (I hope they are ‘busy’ finding out about and representing my views, actually.)
Today I received an email from an address which showed up as ‘Unmonitored.ACCOUNT’. I almost deleted it, as it didn’t look particularly healthy sitting in my Inbox, but I’m glad I didn’t.
Because as it turned out, the email was from the Public Communications Unit at the Department for Education, replying to my messages to both Michael Gove, and Sarah Teather. Toofer the price of one – or rather, one response, where I asked two separate people for their views.
Dear Ms O’Sullivan
Thank you for your emails dated 13 December addressed to the Secretary of State and the Minister of State for Children and Families, about modern foreign languages in the curriculum. I hope you will appreciate that due to the large volume of letters that Ministers receive, I have been asked to reply.
The Coalition Government is fully committed to the teaching of languages in schools, not only for its social and economic benefits, but also because learning a language helps pupils to understand the different cultures of people around the world. In his speech at the Westminster Academy on 6 September 2010, the Secretary of State announced that learning a modern or ancient language would be one of the core subjects of the new English Baccalaureate, along with English, mathematics, science and a humanities subject: further detail was included in the White Paper The Importance of Teaching.
I know that primary school teachers and others have worked very hard over the last few years to stimulate an early interest in language learning, and a recent NfER study showed that 92 per cent of primary schools are now teaching foreign languages within class time at Key Stage 2. The Coalition Government believes that learning a language at primary school can inspire children with a love of languages that will stay with them throughout their secondary education and beyond.
Given the importance of language learning, and the benefits of an early start, we expect that the majority of primary schools that are already teaching languages will continue to do so.
On 20 January, the Secretary of State for Education announced that we would be carrying out a review of the National Curriculum to return it to its original purpose – a core national entitlement organised around subject disciplines. The review will consider the place of languages within the National Curriculum in both primary and secondary schools and will ensure that our core curriculum can compare with those of the highest performing countries around the world. In designing the new curriculum, we plan to consult a wide range of academics, teachers and others with an interest in what is taught in schools. You can read the full remit for the review at: http://www.education.gov.uk/nationalcurriculum
I hope that you will feel able to respond.
Yours sincerely
Public Communications Unit
Now, the whole prompt for writing in the first place was the White Paper, so that’s not helpful. And having already given my response to the Call for Evidence, I’m not sure where that leaves me.
Why? Well, when I first created it, it was really a bit of an experiment. I was a beginner in such things, and wasn’t sure I had much to say, so I gave my blog the first name I thought of at the time (Marie’s Language Stuff – original, huh?).
Over the last few months, however, I find I have much more to say and share, so have been thinking that I should find something more creative to headline my comments. In addition, I’m giving a presentation soon (which I haven’t done for a while) and wanted to share my blog with the delegates. I just wasn’t happy with the original title.
After almost a day thinking, googling and cross-checking, I’ve decided to change the name to Lingua Franca. I liked the language-related connotations, but also the fact that, on occasion, I can use my blog to speak frankly on things about which I have a strong opinion.
There are a few other sites with a similar name, but I want to make it clear that I have absolutely no intention at all of stealing anyone’s property, intellectual or otherwise. If you search for Lingua Franca, none of the sites presented could be confused with my little blog, so I hope no-one will feel compelled to complain.
And finally, I want to thank @mark_purver for actually coming up with the name when inspiration had deserted me. Sometimes all you need is an astrophysicist!
So 10 lessons down the line, and it’s time to evaluate the attempt to engage Year 9 in their own learning. If you missed the introductory ramble, you’ll find it here.
I’m really pleased with some aspects of the work. For example, having the pupils work in peer-designated groups has highlighted which pupils are the ones actually causing the noise. It just seemed like it was all of them until recently!
I also like the progress that some of the quieter or demotivated ones have made by being in a group with an enthusiastic leader, who went out of her way to include everyone.
I’m not so pleased with the fact that actually getting the pupils to listen at any point, either to each other or to me, is still extremely difficult. Even though they are fed up with the noise themselves, they haven’t figured out the cause and effect thing yet.
Anyway, here are their comments on the half-term, which I received in response to a questionnaire (I was experimenting with Spicynodes!):
Whatever happens, I will still be meeting the same group of pupils last lesson on Tuesdays and Wednesdays until the end of the year, so I need to keep trying to get through to them. Guess what I’ll be doing at half-term …
I was delighted to be invited to speak to teachers from Catholic schools in Manchester today. It was nice to catch up with a few colleagues whom I hadn’t seem for a while, and it was also a pleasure to work with such a receptive and enthusiastic group of teachers. I was asked to share some collaborative learning strategies, which seemed to go down well – at least, I had some lovely comments which indicated this was the case, so a good start to my half-term!
Here are the slides from the presentation.
The linked files or templates are here, if you find them useful.
Feel free to use / adapt the materials here. If you use any of the activities, please do let me know, or if you need help understanding how the PowerPoints have been constructed, do get in touch.
It may be a couple of weeks late, but better late than never! The ICT Links into Languages Conference in Southampton (12/13 February) was packed full of so many things that I genuinely had to wait until half-term, to give my self enough time to really take in the amount of high-quality information to which I was exposed in the space of 48 hours.
Initially I had second thoughts about attending at all – a whole weekend so near the end of a long half-term would be something of a commitment, and the travel to Southampton – well, it’s down south, innit, and such a long way for us northerners …
But, as I wrote on the evaluation, it was the best CPD I had experienced in a very long time, and absolutely worth the time and effort to be there.
Before I get down to the details, I must thank Joe Dale, Zena Hilton and the team at Links SE for making it such a brilliant event. I have no idea how they managed to keep us all under control, and I’m sure lots of sleep was lost in the planning and preparation. But I hope they all feel, like so many of us do, that it was all worth it in the end.
An early start from Manchester, and a taxi driver who left me at the wrong place, but apart from that, I was very happy on Saturday.
Joe Dale perfectly set the tone for the weekend with his keynote “If you build it, they will come! The rise and rise of the MFL Twitterati”- singing the praises of social networking for its blend of both professional and personal support – a real community, a personal learning network. One of the wonderful things about the event was actually meeting my virtual personal learning network face to face – people I had met often, once, or maybe never before, but with whom I felt instantly in harmony.
During the day, I attended break-out sessions by Lesley Walsh, Helen Myers, Wendy Adeniji and Clare Seccombe, all of whom left me with loads of ideas and resources to try out – once my head has stopped spinning from the amount of enthusiasm and knowledge which each of the ladies shared! Clare in particular was a star – her session on sharing was precisely what the whole weekend was about for me, and I am really grateful to her for all the marvellous websites she collated and then unveiled to us.
After a very short break to catch my breath, we set out for the MFL Show and Tell, an informal evening where anyone there could stand up for 10 minutes and share something of interest for teaching and learning. The audience was lively, involved and game for a laugh, joining in with the songs, and even singing some of their own at the end of the evening(!). Perhaps foolishly, the session was recorded, and you can find the files here – but don’t blame me if you can’t get the darned tunes out of your head all day!
Boy did it rain on Sunday! But it didn’t stop another collection of excellent sessions taking place. Dale Hardy led a lively and challenging session on gifted & talented MFL learners, Amanda Salt shared some top tips for making sure ICT is a successful tool across the whole of the department, and Kath Holton demonstrated just how she gets her pupils to engage with languages by using a variety of web 2.0 tools. Each of the sessions gave me pointers as to how I want to improve my own practice. But for me the highlight of the day was that, in less than an hour, I succeeded in creating and editing my own wiki, under the guidance of Alex Blagona. Discovering how relatively easy it was made me wonder why I hadn’t done it before, and the subsequent sessions I attended supplied a whole list of ideas to incorporate into the wiki itself. It’s still very much in its formative stages, but I continue to add to it, and intend to use it much more next term. If you’re interested, you can find it here.
The whole weekend was summed up excellently by Rachel Hawkes, who reflected on all the positive work which is being done by teachers to support and promote language learning, and the mutual collaboration and sharing between those teachers which happens not just at events like this, but all the time.
… there was one downside to the weekend, it was that I missed so many other sessions that I really wanted to attend. I would love to turn back time and do it all again, catching up with sessions led by Chris Harte, Isabelle Jones, Chris Fuller, Lisa Stevens, Suzi Bewell … the list goes on. Fortunately for me, most of the speakers have made their sessions available either here or on their blogs, so there is no excuse for not knowing about what went on!
I was catching up today with a very good friend who is a retired teacher. I happened to mention that I had just read this article in the TES, headlined Labour to ‘guarantee’ C in English and maths. Now that would be something good … perhaps even miraculous? With the best will in the world, this seems at best an ill-advised statement to make. Whilst I am completely in favour of every child leaving school with a minimum level of literacy and numeracy, I cannot accept that a GCSE grade C is either the way to demonstrate this, nor achievable by all.
Mike Baker’s article from the ASCL conference in Manchester words it slightly differently:
A further question for the Labour Party’s policy review, he [Andy Burnham] said, would be how to ensure that all students reach adulthood with a ‘decent proficiency in maths and English’. He said he wanted a debate to see if it is possible ‘to have the ambition for all students to leave with at least a grade C in GCSE maths and English’.
I’m sure there are several people who would be willing to engage in this debate with the policy makers.
My retired friend said it reminded her of when she was a pupil at school, at a presentation event. The local dignitary charged with handing out the awards praised all those who had been successful, and ended with the encouraging words “Now next year, I want to see all of you getting above the average.”
Now I don’t claim to be any kind of mathematician, but I would love to know how he expected that to happen …
I came across this song by the German group Wir Sind Helden at the weekend.
Not only is it a catchy tune, but I liked the fact that the band members hold up some of the words, which brings additional opportunities for work in class.
The full lyrics are here, and the worksheet I used for gap fill is here. Hope you like it!
As we’re investigating New Media (or whatever the GCSE theme likes to call itself), I set Year 10 some homework which involved them using either Facebook, YouTube or a search engine of their choice. If you’d like to see the actual task which I set, it’s here.
In brief, most of them decided to find things on YouTube, the links to which I have added to my wiki, so they can have a look and comment over the Easter holidays.
I still couldn’t entice all of them to do their homework, but those that did came up with some interesting things (and some not so interesting, to be honest) and at least it did get them searching for things beyond what they would normally look for.
Here’s the link to the wiki page, if you’d like to have a look at what they found.
I was really excited last Sunday to be able to attend a free screening of a prize-winning film Die Fremde (literally translated as The Foreigner, but the film was shown under the English title When We Leave). The screening took place at my favourite cinema, Cornerhouse, on Oxford Road in Manchester. Here’s the trailer from the official website:
Recognising the difficulties in distributing a film in a multi-lingual market, the Lux Film Prize is awarded by the European Parliament, and covers the cost of subtitling its winning film in each of the 23 EU official languages, and of supplying a copy of the film to each of the 27 EU member states. The film is then shown to invited audiences during the month of May in each of the countries, and the UK venue was Manchester.
What I found interesting about this film was the subject matter – a Turkish-German woman’s search for self-fulfilment, and the conflict this produces for her among her family and community, where the men traditionally have authority. Touching on issues of forced marriage and domestic violence, the film also has some scenes of real happiness and love, along with some absolute heartbreak.
Although not officially released in the UK yet, I would highly recommend taking a look when the opportunity arises. It’s a story which is highly relevant, not just in Germany or among the Turkish community, and raises lots of questions.
