This Blog is about sharing good practice and my own Teaching and Learning reflections.
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1. Use a platform to share your resources, mine is Onenote, but it could be Google Classroom, Canvas, Sway, your School Website or even Padlet and stick to it! Padlet is a great alternative as it allows you to embed content nicely!
2. If using Onenote (I thoroughly recommend it), create a template of your lesson/lessons (a Onenote page) and copy and paste it for subsequent ones. In my case I always have a picture of my virtual classroom and a description of what we will be covering that week.
3. Plan activities for a week's worth of lessons, it saves time! Distribute the work at the beginning of the week.
4. Combine the work on Onenote, or any other platform, with Teams so that you can give instructions at the beginning of the lessons and do a whole class fast Starter/ Plenary activity.
5. Reuse resources you already have! Your word worksheet can work fantastically well with Onenote, for example. If you insert any Word Document as a Printout on Onenote, and make the image background, students can just write on top of it: with a digital pen or typing! Also you can just use PPT and record a voice over or just use your PPT with different hyperlinks to your activities, which you can share with your students directly. In that way your PPT be becomes your platform (Virtual Classroom) Start small!!! If going for the PPT route, check slidesmania as it offers many great FREE PPT templates which will make your content stand out!
6. Use Snipping Tool! (IT IS PART OF WINDOWS 10) With this app, you can screenshot any section of your digital textbook, worksheet, PDF past paper and save it as an image which you can then paste into Onenote or any other tool, such as PPT, word, Canva etc...
6. Think of ways to practice the language in an interactive way to engage students: Quizizz, LearningApps, Flippity, Wheel of names, MS Forms/Google Forms, Deck Toys, Genially, Padlet, Screen Casting and Flipgrid are brilliant options for that and just add the links.
7. Do not reinvent the wheel!:SHARE THE ABOVE RESOURCES WITH YOUR DEPARTMENT. Teams or a Departmental Onenote with resources for each Year group is great for this. Also, make sure all teachers in your department do have access to each other's Onenotes so that they can copy and paste ideas and resources from each other.
8. Use as many platforms as possible that would help with your marking: Google/MS Forms, Quizizz, Quizlet, Deck Toys and LearningApps are fantastic for this! So they are a great alternative for H/W tasks. Also, why not giving students the answers and they mark it themselves in another lesson? Carousel Learning is also fantastic for that.
Remember, you are creating lessons that you will be able to reuse in consecutive years in a blended learning environment! IT IS A DEPARTMENTAL INVESTEMENT! YOU WILL SAVE A FORTUNE ON PHOTOCOPYING WHEN YOU ARE BACK TO FACE TO FACE TEACHING!
I am a passionate MFL teacher and I love teaching my native language, Spanish, but most, importantly, I am an educator. I influence lives and MFL is a wonderful vehicle to instil tolerance, cultural awareness and break barriers among my students. MFL helps to educate global, tolerant citizens.
I see my job as a sport coach, say football: my lessons are the training sessions leading to the big football match. What is the big match? Real life experiences that allow students to put what they learn in lessons into practice. My job is to create these experiences! Why? Because we do not tend to remember our training/ coaching sessions, we remember the big real event: the football MATCH.
I believe that my students' big matches are real life situations when they will be required to put their linguistic skills to the test and learn from the experience! How do I create these experiences in the educational context?How to create experiences that are 100% memorable? Via ERASMUS Plus supported by eTWINNING.
I have been involved in several eTwinning projects over the last 20 years and every single one of them has made a difference in my students AND my teaching.
In 2018, my school and two of our partners in Spain and La Réunion decided to apply for an Erasmus project. It was a one-year project, based on the heritage of our three countries and the teaching of MFL (French, English and Spanish). THE PROJECT WAS OUR SCHOOLS' BIG MATCH AT THE TIME. We did not only learn MFL in our language lessons, but we embedded our project, United in Diversity, in the delivery of such lessons. As a consequence the learning curve, motivation and impact in our students, teachers and parents were phenomenal. WE CREATED MEMORIES, FORGED FRIENDSHIPS, OPENED HORIZONS AND BROKE MISCONCEPTIONS AND BARRIERS!
The experience was so positive that we applied for a second project: The Village, which was approved for funding in September. This time a two-year project involving the teaching of the SDGs via MFL.
That's why I was in shock when I heard from our Prime Minister on Xmas Eve that Britain had willingly decided not to take part in the Erasmus scheme anymore as it is too expensive to run for the UK. Instead, he confirmed plans to launch a domestic scheme, the Turing Programme, to help British students to visit universities around the world.
In my view, this is catastrophic news! We surely cannot duplicate a 34 year old scheme from scratch, on our own, and expect it to be cheaper and at least of the same high calibre that Erasmus is. Referring to the Turing Programme, Boris Johnson was talking about University students, benefiting from visiting the best universities around the world, not just Europe, but let's not forget that Erasmus Plus offers funding for projects involving not only higher education but also vocational education and training, schools, adult education and youth, while providing extra funding for those with disabilities.
Erasmus Plus also offers funding for activities and projects under three Key Actions: Mobility of individuals, Cooperation for innovation and exchange of good practices and Support for Policy Reform. That is a big umbrella and a lot of projects and actions to benefit from! To emulate this, as effectively, sorry Mr Johnson, would require a monumental effort and capital injection and still we will be 35 years behind what we have achieved so far.
Having the Turing scheme involving, potentially, projects with the whole world, not just Europe, as attractive as it may sound, could not possible deliver the same highly wide range of activities, currently available under the three Key Actions. It seems that Boris Johnson is just focussing on Key Action 1: mobility of individuals and only under the context of higher education.
The concerns raised from a potential British scheme to substitute Erasmus were presented to the Lords Committee back in 2018. This was the summary. Such summary concluded that Erasmus presented good value for money and its strong brand, trusted reputation, and common rulebook for partnership agreements could not be fully replicated by a UK-only programme.
It is a huge loss! Our British students, who overwhelmingly voted for Remain, are being punished by the system. School aged students will be the biggest victims. The Turing Programme may well, eventually, reach the standards of Erasmus Plus, but it will take years and years to do so. We will be failing our students in the process. We are taking the experience of the big MATCHES OUT OF OUR BRITISH SCHOOLS, especially those schools in the most deprived areas, which depend on the big MATCHES to turn lives around.
Let's act on this. We must spread the word and make a big deal of the situation: WE MUST NOT FAIL OUR SCHOOL STUDENTS, WE MUST TEACH FOR THE BIG MATCH, WHICH IS ALREADY HERE: ERASMUS.
Let's take action: share your Erasmus experience, contact your local paper and MP. Let's fight for the big match!
I believe in gamification, especially in MFL as the subject relies in constant drilling and practice of structures and vocabulary until these are embedded in our linguistic corpus. It is not easy, especially in the UK with limited curriculum time. Languages can be perceived as challenging and, worst of all, boring!
Structured and careful planned game activities can be key to engage students, practice the language from different angles and help students to transfer information into their long term memories!
Gamification can occur in many ways and shapes! Any element of competition, even in zero preparation activities involving oral input can be a game changer!
I play games all the time! From the modelling stage, to controlled practice to spontaneous production! However, in this post I would like to talk about Deck Toys.
This lovely tool was introduced to me by Jimena Licitra a few weeks ago! The concept is that teachers create a learning path or deck. The deck is full of different challenges or online activities that students must complete while they advance through their path, normally simulating moving around some idyllic landscape or boardgame!
But this is not all, the app is very powerful as it allows you to create two types of activities:
Study set games, based on some vocabulary/structures input (you can transfer your Quizlet courses for this) or
Slide Activities which allows you to upload any word, PPT, PDF or worksheet/presentation and make it interactive by adding different functions to it for students to interact with: polls, text input from students, drawing input, photo, oral input or multiple choice questions.
The app also allows you to add some cool elements such as a treasure keys collection function, which allows students to collect different hidden keys along their learning path, which will open certain locks at the end of the end of the learning path; locks to enter different activities, timers, web links etc...
You can also embed your own activities from sites such as LearningApps, WordWall, Flippity or Wheel of Names to include listening, filling gaps etc.. as part of your learning tasks challenges! This feature is super important as it allows me to recycle other activities in a different setting, saving me time!
Once created, you need to make sure you create a class and assign your deck to this class. The app generates a unique class url that you share with your students. When students click on it, they join the activity signing in with their Google/Microsoft accounts, or just as guests.
The app also allows you to interact in real time with your students if working remotely!
You have access from your class, to the answers that your students submitted as part of their deck, which you can review and check for understanding.
You can do three decks for free before going pro, paying around £8 per month. This would be great for a department to generate, end of unit practice!
How do I use it?
Creating a meaningful Deck!!! Students start by practising the language we are working on via the Study Set Games (flashcards, matching, memory game, multiple choice, jigsaw etc..), whose content I just copied and pasted from my quizlet courses!!! to move quickly to activities including Reading, Translation and Listening using LearningApps, Wordwall or Flippity which allows students to practice the studied language within context in a controlled way!
I like the feature of collecting keys! You can put these keys at the end of any activity as a reward! Once collected, students can enter them into specific treasure boxes, giving a motivation to your activity, a little bit like a Escape Room! Students get points too as they advance through the deck!
If you add Locks to your activities, then you have a Escape Room, as you cannot enter the following activity until a code is entered (I use Verbs in different tenses).
The final activity of my deck would be a freely produced oral or written activity, using all the structures and verbs practised via the reading, listening and translation activities of the deck. This does not need to be part of the learning path, but the subsequent activity and the purpose of the deck!
Look at this example for the topic of School in Y10:
I like it. I like it a lot! but it can take some time to set up if you go for a complex Deck from scratch! However, if shared among the department, it is fine! Three Decks is not a lot! so if you like it, you will need to go pro! It takes some time to get used to the way it works but it is not difficult at all, just some time consuming for the first time, but the same issue I find with Genially!
You can use Decks from other educators and modify them or just use them!
Overall, this is a great app that can really enhance the learning experience of the students but you need to plan carefully all the activities that you will use in your deck and to maximise its use, reuse those old worksheets or those great activities in other apps!!!
You may think I am obsessed with retrieval practice but it is so important in order to keep students motivated and make progress that a big percentage of my lesson time is dedicated to this.
A few weeks ago I read an article by Marc Enser on some research on retrieval practice. In the article Marc explained how two departments in their school (History and Geography) wanted to see the impact of retrieval practice in their students’ results. They used quizzes in their lessons for this. Both departments got an improvement in their test results but Geography’s were much higher. When they analysed the data and tried to explain this discrepancy, they discovered that History used to do a quiz in each lesson from previous knowledge but not related to the content of the actual lesson. Geography, on the other hand, did also a quiz but this was embedded in what students were learning in the lesson, hence, helping students to consolidate and embed learning in this long-term memory more successfully than the History department. This is powerful and it relates to my own practice.
Retrieval practice must be embedded with new content constantly so language becomes automatized and students can transfer structures freely from different contexts!
All activities done in lessons with new material should include structures from old topics applied to these new contexts while also making reference to the content from past topics. Planned activities and homework tasks should give students opportunities to practise past content as a matter of fact: When asking students to practice sentences on school topic, why not including sentences from holidays and, most importantly, adapting those structures from holidays into the new topic of school? When planning activities for Y11 students on the topic of festivals, why not including also content from work, free time and holidays? why not applying structures seen in the topic of free time "juego al fútbol desde hace 3 años" in this new topic "trabajo de canguro desde hace 3 meses"?
Digital tools for embedded retrieval practice
In this post I wrote, extensively, about different apps that I use for retrieval practice but I would like to add a few which I have used since while still mentioning the old ones!
This is the new kid on the block in my teaching! Introduced to me by Laura Causer during the Show and Tell Webinar of the Language Show, this tool has revolutionised my retrieval practice strategy and saved me time!!!!
Spiral is basically, like Wooclap or Mentimeter, an interactive response tool. What’s the difference with the two previous apps?You need zero preparation if you use the QuickFire light option!
Basically, you open an account, create a class (you don’t need names), select the QuickFire light option from the home menu, select your class and share a special URL and code with your students (these will also be the same for that class every time you launch the QuickFire, so my students have bookmarked it). Similar to Kahoot, Mentimeter etc....
Pupils log in with that special code (not additional login required) and you will start seeing their names appearing on your screen. When you are ready to ask questions to consolidate and retrieval previous knowledge, you just press the green go button!
Students then start writing their answers to your question, which will appear on the screen, only when you click on “reveal answers”. This option is great as students cannot copy each other and you can wait to reveal answers once everyone has submitted their input. To increase pace, I encourage early birds, either to check their answers or to extend them so they do not sit down doing nothing while partners submit answers, great for differentiation too!
At this point you may select “show names” too or “hide the names”: I find this little action powerful as sometimes you may want to give confidence to students who tend to make mistakes and you may decide not to show their names until a later stage.
However, when you decide to do so, the students’ names will appear with their answers on the screen! Big plus from Mentimeter or Wooclap and students can also modify/ improve their answer if you prompt them to do so. Great tool for feedback too.
Spiral is basically an interactive mini whiteboard and it is ideal for hybrid situations when you have students online and students in the classroom! Also no need to sanitise mini whiteboards after single use! In action it looks like the pictures below:
LearningApps
In my previous post I explained in lots of detail all the activities that can be achieved with this tool. The golden rule is to use these activities blended in the learning experience and incorporating structures and vocabulary from previous studied topics! Below there’s a how to video guiding you how to use the tool.
Another great free tool for Retrieval Practice! The randomiser and Random Name picker are great tools for retrieval practice! Instructions are straightforward and you will need a Google account.
This tool allows you to create personalised interactive quizzes, incorporating sound too so great to revise oral questions while also checking listening comprehension!
This is another of the new tools I have started to use in the last month. Designed by Adam Boxer, creator of Retrieval Roulettes, which Julia Morris talked about during the Show and Tell Webinar in the Language Show, Carousel Learning is also a free tool which allows you to upload a spreadsheet with as many items (Qs) as you want to include, and topics. As my input, I use short sentences that students need to translate into Spanish.
In your spreadsheet you must include your question (English sentence for me), the answer (Spanish translation) and the topic it refers to. There is a template in the site to get the setting right! Once this spreadsheet is uploaded, Carousel Learning allows you to create specific quizzes on particular topics, which you can rotate and assign to different classes. There are also many quizzes questions from the learning community for you to use too!
Why do I love Carousel learning? Because students do not get immediate feedback but they are presented with the right answers at the end of their quiz. Students then must decide if they were correct or not. I think this feature is extremely powerful for independent learning and making students take ownership for their own mistakes and improvement!!! What did I get right? What did I get wrong? Why? And look for help! Although it needs training!
Jane Basnett has created this súper video on how to set up a quiz on Carousel learning. It is extremely informative and well explained so a must watch!
Genially
I love this tool!! There are many talented Genially people in the UK such as Marie Allirot or Julia Morris who actually make their own genially activities from scratch!
However, I am lazy, so I use the templates provided in the gamification section! You have many interactive free games such as Snakes and Ladders or Escape Rooms, which you only need to modify to fit your retrieval practice input! I love genially because through games students reinforce those key structures! Genially also embeds smoothly into Onenote, which I use for my lessons, although you can just share your genially game with your classes the way you want to!
You can also embed your LearningApps to the genially game questions! How cool is this?
Let’s not forget the basics! This is not free but it is brilliant for retrieval practice! I love every feature of it! It is very affordable. It is an improved online version of Taskmagic: same creator Martin Lapworth.
This is a tool which allows you to create your own little games, which you then share with students. Students get tokens and rewards for completing the games. In my opinion, more suitable for KS3. My only reservation is that the games are based on multiple choice, which, I, particularly, am not keen on. However, still a great tool to revise those key structures, especially similar ones in different tenses!
Similar to LearningApps but you can only create a limit of activities unless you go premium! You do not have the embedded audio facility, which is a shame! However, the activities are very eye-catching and attractive for young learners!
Many people are using this! It is not free and I have not used it myself yet! The Intruders game seems like a hit on twitter and many people have recommend it to me. I need to explore this one!
This was introduced to me only a few weeks ago by the amazing Jimena Licitra and it has lots of potential! However, it will require some time to create your resources. This app allows you to create interactive learning paths for your students! It looks very, very powerful and engaging but you will need to dedicate some time to it! You can have some free decks, or learning paths for free but after that there is a premium to pay. You can also use decks created by others! If structured well, this should be an extremely engaging tool for topic revision and retrieval practice of key structures. Watch this space!
So, retrieval practice is important, very important. So important that it should be present in every lesson you do by embedding content and structures from all topics all the time. Using these tools allows me to do so in a motivating and engaging way! However, do not get me wrong, retrieval practice can be done without technology.
Embedded Retrieval Practice must take place at all stages of learning, ALL THE TIME and it must be planned thoroughly via meaningful activities, especially in the Practice Stage of learning!
In this post I would like to discuss my approach to teaching literature at ALevel. As a department we decided to teach a film in Y12, in our case, El Laberinto del Fauno and a text in Y13, La Casa de Bernarda Alba. We chose this text because the themes portrayed in it are easy to understand and still relevant nowadays, so it is easy for students to relate to.
When choosing a text it is important to choose something that you feel comfortable with but, a text that has quite a lot of resources available for you to cover it, confidently, and which is not too long for students to read!
Similarly, reading the text in class, aloud, is extremely powerful! As we chose a play, students play the different roles while reading during the lesson, which makes the reading interactive, while getting lots of oral practice!
I also advocate for a bilingual edition, if available. When tackling a literary text, there will be lots of new vocabulary and having a page, translated into English by the side, saves valuable time while empowering students to learn new vocabulary.
A holistic approach versus a linear approach
In a linear, traditional approach, students would read the text and then, the teacher will teach, via key passages, worksheets featuring short summaries and reading comprehension tasks, the different aspects of the play. In a normal sequence that would be: Historical Context, Main themes, Literary Figures, Characters, Structure, Style, Message etc.. Although this approach is perfectly valid, I like to use it, only, at the end of the learning process.
At the beginning, I want my students to have a holistic approach to the text, which I believe, makes them understand the literary work much more thoroughly and puts them right in the centre of the learning process!
In a holistic approach, students would also read the text in the classroom and prompted by the teacher, they will analyse the play, page by page, orally, in a class discussion.
For this to happen, these are the type of questions I would ask them:
What do you think this means? What does this represent? Why is this written the way it is? Which theme can we see here? What does this say about this character? How is the tension achieved? etc..
Students will take notes, highlight their text, look at the translation by the side, if needed, and will start creating Flashcards with our class discussions, incorporating key quotes/references to the text to back up their ideas.
Why is this holistic?
Because we study many themes at once as they keep appearing throughout the play. Students start creating a corpus of flashcards for the different elements of the play, which may appear at once and certainly not in a linear way! From lesson one, students create their own study guide in the shape of flashcards.Students tend to make these flashcards for homework after key ideas have been discussed during lessons. By the time we finish reading and analysing the book, students have created themselves, a valuable, learning document full of thorough analysis and quotes! These lessons are carried out mainly in Spanish with the support of English, when needed. We also use mini whiteboards to put difficult ideas into Spanish. Students take photos of the ideas in their mini whiteboards, and will incorporate such information to their flashcards as necessary. Up to this point, we do not make use of any specific resources, just the book!
After this process, we study the text again, in the linear more traditional way! At this point, students bring their flashcards to lessons and using these, they lead the linear discussions: talking about and analysing the different traditional topics, guided by me, of course! At this stage we start using other external resources, such as the Zig-Zag series or the Hodder/Oxford Literature Guides as well any materials online.
It is at this point that students start writing essays.
This approach allows students to be the centre of the learning process, and be an active part of the lessons:
They read the text
They come with the ideas through discussions and my support, of course!
They create their own study guide, through flashcards!
They can, quite successfully, analyse the different themes of the play, which we study in the traditional approach to literature in a second round! By this point, students have become the experts!
It takes me nearly a whole term, three lessons per week, to study the text, holistically and linearly. We always do this in the Autumn Term and we use the Lent Term to carry out timed writing sessions every other week.
Thank you so much for the feedback I received today from both of my webinars in the Language Show. It has been amazing to read your comments, contributions and ideas! We learn from each other.
As promised the Webinars presentations and Videos are below.
Motivation and engagement in the MFL classroom: let's play, let's speak!
Blended learning, we have definitely heard this term over and over again since the first lockdown when schools were shut, as the future of education.
What is Blended Learning?
The way I see it, Blended Learning means that students learn through the combination of face-to-face and on-line teaching methods, all blended into one, to maximise their learning experience. In other words, learning occurs via traditional methods, such as worksheets, Question and Answer sessions, activities via a textbook or a worksheet, combined with the use of IT tools which, via careful planning, help students in their learning journey.
When I think about Blended Learning, I think about the different spaces where learning takes place and the different ways in which such learning can occur.
Why different places for learning?
Students do not just learn in the classroom, they may learn on the bus, at home in their bedroom or during a school trip. They can access knowledge from any space, as long as they are doing a learning activity, like the school trip example, or, most importantly, have a device from which to carry out learning! That's why when blending learning, I think carefully, where students can access different activities.
Why different ways of learning?
Practice is key in learning and making progress. However it can be tedious to do such practice in just one way, say via worksheets using paper and a pen. This can be the case for young learners, who are bombarded with stimuli and immediate feedback experiences via technology at all times: you like a series, you binge it and watch it all! Accessing information and learning via videos, online images or collaborative tools can be extremely engaging and productive.
Blended Learning, allows me to take the learning experience outside the classroom if and when students or I choose to do so and teach in many different ways, which in the process, allows me to revisit content over and over again from different angles, without a feeling of repetition or dejá vu. This experience, in exchange, engages my students, makes them more independent, more involved in their learning process and, ultimately, makes their learning more in tune with their 21st century experience.
How to Blend Learning?
Planning a sequence of lessons:
First of all, I would advise to have a vision of what you would like your students to achieve by the end of series of lessons and move backwards from there. For example, to be able to talk about their holidays last year.
Secondly, think about what elements do your learners need to get there? This means structures, including vocabulary and grammar. A Sentence Builder with the potential sentences that students should be producing/understanding by the end of your sequence of lessons can be extremely powerful or just a model text.
Finally, think about how are we going to take them there?What steps do we need to plan for the students to practise and embed our planned structures? It is, in this final step where we can blend learning!
Elements for blending learning
Use an online platform with your students so that you can share your planned activities, aka, learning steps, with them: Google Classroom, Firefly, Onenote/Classnote, Teams are the most common platforms, I believe, schools are using.
Plan the activities for your lessons and think, at each stage, which and how IT tools can assist you and your students to enhance the learning experience.For this I have a list of potential IT tools that I could use at any stage. You do not need to use them all but it is important that you are aware of them.
In my case my Blended Learning IT tools ready at my disposal are these:
In the centre I have Microsoft 365 as the core of my blended learning classroom:
Onenote
Teams (for remote teaching)
Onedrive
Flipgrid
Forms
Sway
Word/PPT
These main apps are supported by Firefly (our School Virtual Learning Platform) which I use for online libraries for my students, not class specific, and Smartboard Software for the delivery of in-class lessons.
Finally there is a wide range of apps and tools that I can use for my teaching and students' learning:
LearningApps, Quizlet, Wheel of Names, Flippity, Loom, Peardeck, Memrise, Genially, Quizizz, Edpuzzle, Padlet, Canva, Mentimeter, Wooclap, ClassroomScreen,Thinglink or Wordwall.
For ideas on how the different tools can support Sentence Builders and the learning experience, click on the following post.
I use, Onenote (Class Notebook) to share the links to these online activities with my students, who need to bring their own device to my lessons. I share my lessons with students weekly. Consequently, students have access, via Onenote, to all worksheets we work with during lessons and to links which will take them to different interactive activities which need to be carried out during lessons or at home, for reinforcement, or as part of homework.
A normal set of lessons (3 in this case) looks like the example below on Onenote. As you can see there are classic activities such as Battleships (which I could photocopy if I want to) but also links to other interactive activities like Flippity or Wheel of names, to be carried out orally in pairs, or in writing. Reference materials, such as the formation of the past tense in Spanish, are easily shared this way too:
I teach normally, using my Smartboard, and when prompted by me, students access their Onenote and carry out the online activities with blue links. If using Microsoft apps, such as Word, Forms, Flipgrid, or Genially and Youtube videos, the apps appear automatically embedded on my onenote, which is visually nice! Depending on the activity, students may work on their own, but also in pairs, like in the case below, where Y9 students accessed a Genially interactive game and played in pairs:
Students can also work collaboratively via the Collaboration space on Onenote or a Padlet or Google Document. This is great for brainstorming of ideas on a given topic.
Homework, may include a video, which can be embedded into Onenote, which I have previously recorded with Loom (screencasting) where students need to follow instructions and complete a series of activities directly on Onenote in the box supplied:
Homework can be oral practice, via the Insert Audio function on Onenote, which allows me to carry out a dictation, ask questions which students need to answer, or just repeat after me for pronunciation work. In the example below, students had to click on the Quizizz activity for practice, before listening to my questions which they had to answer using the audio insert on onenote:
By blending learning and having a platform (Onenote) to share my online activities, as well as worksheets, with my students, I can create Learning Libraries, with resources for specific classes to which students have access at all times, in all spaces. The resources will also include a wide range of activities using different tools. They are all under Content Library and are classified in different Tabs. See the example below from my Y11 Onenote:
The way I blend learning is by maximising the use of a wide range of online resources in the classroom, via Onenote.
Students can access their Onenote, and their interactive personalised activities in lessons but also in any other space (bus, home, library). The online, interactive tasks allow learners to practise key vocabulary and structures (sentence builders) in many different ways and shapes, making the learning experience innovative, catchy, memorable and sticky, just like the different social media platforms, so embedded in our students' lives, do! The difference is, that I use technology not just for entertaining the kids but to enhance their learning experience in all different ways and spaces!
Although currently at half-term, I have been inspired, by many social media contributions, to write about motivation in the MFL classroom, a major issue, I believe, for many of us! How can we motivate our students to do well, to become independent learners and embrace the learning of MFL? Specially, at KS4 level leading to KS5? The constrictions of the GCSE syllabus, exam pressures, and harsh marking of papers for languages has, definitely, taken its toll but not everything is grim looking!
At a basic level, there's a lot that MFL teachers can do in everyday lessons, which we may take for granted, that can have a big impact in motivating most of our students. Of course, at a high level, doing project based learning, collaborative work with partner schools, a rich extra-curricular activity programme and opportunities to take languages outside the classroom and raise the profile of MFL, are also important factors. However, in this post I would like to concentrate on the basics: the ingredients for great teaching that help motivate students and take responsibility for their learning.
What motivates students?
In my opinion, is as simple as feeling that they are making progress, which consequently increases their confidence and as a result motivates them to continue doing well to make even more progress.
As teachers, we have the power to plan and carry out activities aimed to help students to make this progress. For that, we do not need to become over complicated in our teaching, but just reflect on the ingredients of what makes great teaching. Why?
Because great teaching, where activities are not too easy, neither too high, just right, will spontaneously make our students make progress, hence, motivating them to do well, to take pride in their learning and to become, ultimately, independent learners (some with big help from us). This takes me directly to reflect on Rosenshine's Principles of Instruction for great teaching. Principles that we all use, exploit, sometimes, unconsciously, in our lessons.
What makes great teaching?: Rosenshine's Principles of Instruction applied to MFL
1. Modelling
At its most basic level, in MFL this means modelling the structures we want students to master after a sequence of lessons, or a lesson! I do this via Sentence Builders. At a more complex level, this means providing worked out examples of good answers, for example for writing and speaking tasks at GCSE level or Alevel and narrating to students our thought process. Activities that work well at this level and will motivate students from the basics are any Teacher or Student based Reading/ Listening activities based on a give Sentence Builder or Key structures:
Put sentences in the right order, read by the teacher (Sentences can be in English or TL on the board)
Dictation activities or Delayed Dictation tasks
Trapdoor reading activities
Reading a sentence, stop and students finish it, this can be done as a whole class, in pairs, with mini whiteboards or orally. Jane Basnett offers an example on how this can be achieved by working with a model paragraph in this post here . A great example of low preparation, high impact activities for students to make progress just in a lesson.
Battleships listening/ Reading game activities.
Bad listening: Teacher reads a paragraph of which students have a copy but with key differences that students need to spot.
Filling the gaps in response to a paragraph read by the teacher but without gaps! So students need to really listen for detail while listening to and reading their text as they do not have the gaps to write the missing words.
Narrow reading/listening type of activities: Spot the difference, completing boxes with key information.
Providing example of written or oral tasks and analysing these with students, having a mark scheme with them, to find out why they are good, not so good or outstanding answers: what are the ingredients of a great response?
2. Structured/Guided Practice
This involves, extensive practice of structures, controlled by the teacher, with scaffolds for difficult tasks until these are mastered: the power of overlearning!!! which will increase confidence and will help students make rapid progress, hence, enhancing motivation. If we add a real communication element to the practice process and a game or competitive element, motivation is pretty much guaranteed!
Similarly, having high expectations is key here too. When I tell my Y8 bottom set students: "this is a GCSE expression that I am confident you can use at this stage now", such as Me gustaría que mi casa tuviera ( I would like that my house had (subjunctive)), 90% of my students learn the structure and use it systematically!
Always aim a little bit higher! Students, even those in low sets, will make progress as long as they have enough practice to master the content and this is practised periodically and they are not bombarded with many challenging expressions that can result in cognitive overload. Do not make the language over easy, as that can be as much a demotivating factor, as being too difficult and moving too fast! Some students will think, what is the point?, to too easy as well as to too difficult input!
High impact activities at this stage can include:
Translating key sentences based on Sentence Builders from English into TL. This can be done in many different ways: via mini-whiteboards led by teacher using any IT tool to provide prompts if wanted, although teachers can just make up sentences on the spot! If IT tools are used, TaskMagic, Wheel of Names and Flippity can be excellent at this stage! Click on a previous post here on how IT tools can assist Sentence Builders practice. If the links of our activities are shared with students, then, they can practice translating sentences in pairs after a whole class practice.
One dice, Speak! Based on the popular game One pen, One dice, this is an idea from Vincent Everett: Students work in pairs and are given a dice, student A rolls the dice until they get a 6. Students B needs to make as many sentences from their Sentence Builder as possible until their partner gets the 6 and they swap roles.
Any board game based on translating elements, focussing on a given Sentence Builder or key structures. Genially digital games are brilliant for this at the current situation!
Jenga Games where students need to create a sentence before allowed to move a piece.
Any information gap activity! where students need to exchange information with a partner. The information would, of course, be based on those key structures we want to practice!
Stealing Sentences, a classic from Gianfranco Conti. I like doing it in three levels, so at level three students need to translate the sentences, with support of initials rather than just read them!
Translating Pyramids, another classic from Gianfranco Conti.
Ping-Pong Translation, as outlined by Gianfranco Conti.
Dictogloss, which would include listening, reading, oral and writing on a given text!
3. Checking for understanding: the use of Questions
Questioning is key! and it will help for retrieval practice too while keeping students motivated and alert! A good session of questioning after key, structured practice, or as part of this, is extremely powerful. In other words, questions should be the centre of lessons! Make sure you always reward accurate, correct answers!
Some Questioning techniques that helps students make progress and keep them alert are:
Cold calling, not just volunteers! so no student can relax!
No opt-out, if a student does not know the answers, I move to another student and then I come back to student A again.
Say it again, better, after a few rounds of questioning: Where do you go on holidays? I come back to the same students and ask them to say again but better, after having heard answers from fellow students!
Think, pair, share! This is great for more open general conversation questions or to practice the photocard part of the exam.
Whole class response: Whiteboards! Many activities of the activities in structured practice can be done this way!
Ask all students: What have you understood? versus Have you understood? Ask students to tell you exactly what they got from the lesson and reteach if necessary any gaps in subsequent lessons. This is great as a plenary!
4. Retrieval Practice: Interleaving and reviewing material
This is extremely important in languages! Students must be given opportunities to revisit the material over and over again, this is critical in the case of grammatical structures but also with high impact expressions that can be used in many different topics and which should be embedded quickly in the students' mastered lexicon corpus. Make sure that students obtain a high success rate before moving to another concept! Techniques for retrieval practice:
Daily, weekly, monthly review. Great as a starter activity! Ask students to translate sentences from last lesson, last week's lesson but also from last month! As time progresses, from last half-term or even last year. Reward students who succeed in this. To do this, the activities from Structured Practice are great as we can always incorporate content from last week, last month etc.. mixed up with new topics. Interleaving is key here.
Involve everyone! Whiteboards are ideal for this but also LearningApps activities and Quizizz quizes.
Vary the way retrieval practice is carried out: Teacher led, but also via self-quizzing (quizizz , LearningApss and Quizlet are great for this). Use simple translation tasks, but also open responses tests (Quizizz allows you to do this).
Creating a knowledge map starting from some key words.
Train students to be proactive at this! Self-testing. If you have a bank of resources available to students for each topic, say, Quizizz activities, LearningApss or Quizlet courses, you can prepare revision schedules for students to start with and encourage them to modify your schedule or create their own one based on their own needs. Click here for a post on how Padlet can assist you to create such schedules!
5. Gradual Mastery of concepts: development of Fluency
Gradually, the scaffolding and support that we give students via the structured practice can be removed so students start producing language fluently, on their own, without having the Sentence Builders in front of them or having to be given model answers to be translated from English to TL. For students to be successful at this stage, they need to be engaged in the independent practice of structures: having a bank of self-quizzes for students to work independently, as explained above is crucial. When students manage to reach this stage, even at a basic level, their confidence suddenly plummets, and, with that, their motivation too. Good activities at this stage are:
Speed dating activities where students formulate questions to each other for 5 minutes to move to another couple.
Piedra, papel, tijera (stone, paper, scissors). Two students play together and whoever wins asks a question to their partner who needs to answer in the TL. Another variant: the winner speaks for a given time on a particular topic, using key words, as support, from the board.
The Flippity Random Picker option, with key vocabulary instead of names! can be very useful here. The groups of 2,3,4 etc. (increasing difficulty as the number goes up) will generate groups of 2,3,4 etc.. words. Students can be asked to say or write a sentence incorporating all the vocabulary in each group. Below there is an example with 4 groups of 2 words each. Students would have to say or write 4 sentences using the words in each group.
Creative written tasks via Padlet, so students can see each other's contributions and learn from one another.
Creative oral tasks via videos, short films, short stories, comics created by students
All board games discussed above but now, with an open ended response. This is great to practice the General Conversation questions.
I believe that by creating memorable, sticking lessons, with high expectations and lots of retrieval practice to allow student to master content, students make natural progress, which in return will make them feel confident, which contributes to becoming motivated!
How do we motivate students? By delivering great lessons, having high expectations, even for low ability groups, providing learners with all the ingredients they need to make progress, so they believe in themselves and find MFL achievable! Creating the right balance of not too difficult neither too easy! JUST RIGHT.
As we approach the half-term and the Christmas break will be soon under the corner, I have decided to write about a great use of Padlet to help students, especially Y11s, to revise content. Padlet is a great tool! It is free up to three Padlets but I think it is worth getting an account for a whole department to use. Padlet will become our students' personal digital assistant for their GCSE course revision!
I use Padlet quite a lot at three levels:
1. For collaborative work with our international links. If you want students to introduce themselves, produce any presentation for their partners, or just show the results of a common project you have been working on, Padlet is brilliant! You set up the Padlet and students from different countries can contribute and comment on each other's work easily and via any format: video, text, audio, presentation or link to anything really! See example below from our Erasmus project and how we used Padlet for students to identify something about their heritage that made them who they were.
2.For collaborative work among students in my class. Students can use Padlet to display their work, again in any format. This is particularly useful in the last stage of learning, when students have really embedded their linguistic knowledge and can use it creatively to produce something of their own.
3.As a virtual assistant Schedule. This is the use, I believe, that can be extremely powerful to develop independent learning skills in the students.
PADLET AS A VIRTUAL REVISON ASSISTANT: My Journey!
Retrieval practice is essential for language acquisition but many of my students, especially those in lower sets, find it extremely difficult to create their own revision schedule when exams approach. Most of them will create a revision timetable for all subjects. They would allocate an hour or two to MFL but they often get overwhelmed with what and how to revise, after all for the GCSE exam there are four skills to practise!
To help them with this task, three years ago, after being inspired by Ceri Anwen in the TILT London Conference, I created two Revision Schedules for my Y11s using Padlet: One in preparation for the mocks after Christmas and a second one for the Easter vacation in preparation for their oral examination. Students did not have to stick to the schedule 100% but it gave them something concrete and realistic on what to start their revision work.
I am not going to lie some students did not use it at all! But many did and with some tweaks, as they thought my programme had been quite unrealistic, they stuck to this revision programme. They and their parents found it extremely useful, especially the weakest ones.
These are the schedules:
I repeated the process the following two years, with similar results. Nevertheless, the schedule was ambitious and I could understand that could put some of my learners off, who may find the whole experience unachievable and impossible!
However, the GCSE content is the content! At this stage I had already started using Sentence Builders with low ability students at KS4 and had created my own Quizlets, to which they had direct access to. So, I thought that rather than waiting to Christmas and Easter, when students had to revise for 10 more subjects and thinking of the Retrieval Practice concept, I would start the official revision at the October Half-Term with my Y11s.
The programme would consist of 4 weeks:
2 weeks of scheduled 30 minutes vocabulary learning during our 2 weeks' break, we are lucky to have a two weeks' half term in October.
2 weeks of own time, when students would dedicate 20 minutes to revise the topics covered since Y10, making the whole retrieval practice process 4 weeks long.
This is the schedule which will be released to them next week:
This schedule focuses mainly on productive skills: knowing the different Sentence Builders studied since Y10 extremely well, so that students can carry out the writing tasks at the GCSE exam.
MOVING FORWARD
I will prepare another Christmas revision schedule but because we have started the revision earlier, I hope the Sentence Builders knowledge will be much better embedded in the students' brains by then!
I hope this will be the case, as this schedule will be supported by a timed writing task, where students will need to put the Sentence Builders into practice, every two weeks.
I will tweak the Christmas Padlet schedule above, which I have used for the last three years, so it is not so overwhelming and will include more receptive vocabulary practice, linked to the GCSE AQA syllabus in Quizlet, supported by periodical practice question papers created by Theme, using Exampro. Exampro is great for this, because it allows you to create tests to be carried out online, with immediate feedback for students, so perfect combination with Padlet and marking free!
I also think this model can be transferred to Y10 as from Christmas. In fact, I will create another schedule for them, very light as the topics covered by Christmas in Y10 will be only 2! but which will reinforce the idea of retrieval practice and, hopefully, will create a strong foundation step for students' language learning as they progress in their GCSE course.
This is my plan for GCSE, starting this Y10
Padlet revision schedule for Christmas, based on Tourism and School/Studies (including productive Sentence Builders Quizlet courses)
Padlet revision schedule for Easter, based on Tourism, School/Studies, Relationships and Technology (including productive Sentence Builders, AQA receptive vocabulary Quizlet courses and practice Exampro tasks)
Padlet revision schedule for Summer, based on Tourism, School/Studies, Relationships, Technology and Free Time (including productive and receptive skills)
Padlet revision schedule for October Half-term in Y11, based on Tourism, School/studies, Relationships, Technology, Free time and Work. (Like the one above)
Padlet revision schedule for Christmas in Y11, based on Tourism, School/studies, Relationships, Technology, Free Time, Work, Area where I live and Festivals (including some productive but mainly receptive vocabulary and practice Exampro tasks)
Padlet revision schedule for Easter in Y11, based on all GCSE topics (including, mainly productive skills as orals would normally take place after Easter, but some receptive vocabulary and practice Exampro tasks too)
These 6 revision schedules together with work in lessons and time writing opportunities as from October in Y11, I hope will form a robust foundation for students to succeed at GCSE!!!
