You all know how much I love technology in the classroom, not because it is a gimmick but because it genuinely spices up my teaching, saves me lots of time and most importantly, it is a great tool to practise key structures, in many different ways, which equals to lots of retrieval practice and stickability, in all the stages of the learning journey. Finally, it allows me to take languages outside the classroom and make my lessons accessible to my students once they leave the classroom, in other words, it can give students Super Powers or like the old Red Bull advert says, it gives my students wings!
However, for Digital tools to have a positive impact in our students' learning, it is important to plan and make its use clear in the curriculum. In order to do that, as I mentioned in my previous blogpost on achieving Fluency, it is important to decide a platform to share with students and think backwards: What do we want our students to achieve by the end of each unit? How are we going to get there? and finally, which tools can we use at each stage of the process?
This is the journey:
a these are some of the tools I use at each stage:
MODELLING STAGE
Spiral and Mentimeter
I use both tools as an alternative to Mini Whiteboards in the classroom: I do translations both ways, dictations, delayed dictation, finishing the sentence or write a sentence with the given word (great for retrieval practice). A tutorial video on how to use Spiral can be found here
Screencasting
Bitmojis
Ths site is amazing for Modelling!!! It was created by the talented Marting Lapworth, creator of TaskMagic and Textivate and it is based on Gianfranco Conti's MARS EARS type of activities with Sentence Builders. You can create your own activities or use the premium ones based on prepopulated Sentence Builders on the site. I use the site for face to face teaching with my students, but especially to help pupils memorise our Sentence Builders in a engaging way. For more information on this site, visit its Blog
AWARENESS-RISING AND CONTROLLED PRACTICE
Flippity
I love Flippity for fun drilling practice of my Sentence Builders with elements of Fluency as I demonstrate on this video tutorial
I also use Flippity with Manipulatives and as a listening activity, you can even insert your Bitmoji video there too! Check out this example. Overall, it is a great way to have a Blended Learning experience!
LearningApps
One of my absolutely favourites! This tool will allow you to create many different type of online activities which will help students memorise those important Sentence Builders and practise the language in a controlled and fun way! Here there's a tutorial video on how to exploit this free tool in the classroom.
All my LearningApps activities can be found here
Wheel of Names
Another of my classic activities for Blended Learning. I explain how I exploit and milk this tool in this Video Tutorial.
Quizlet, Memrise, Blooket and Carousel Learning.
These vocab learning platforms are great tools to practise the language and help students memorise Sentence Builders. I use Memrise with KS3 and Quizlet with KS4. I always link each of my Sentence Builders to at least 3 Quizlet or Memrise courses with around 10 chunks in them. Carousel Learning is also a great way to practise translations and carry out Retrieval Practice. I love Blooket as it allows me to upload my Quizlet courses so, from one activity a get two interactive tasks!
Quizizz
A quiz tool which I maximise by asking students to produce long answers to oral questions before we carry out oral practice in class. A type of warming up task! I also use it as an alternative tool for listening practice. I explain how in this video Tutorial.
SPONTANEITY/ROUTANISATION/AUTONOMY STAGE
Genially
Great for Escape Rooms and especially, BoardGames to practise open ended questions or specific structures.
Tip: Plan in advance with your team how you can exploit Genially and divide the work by deciding, within your team, who could create which activities on different topics. I also love using Genially to practise Exam skills in a relaxed way, even with ALevels! An example can be found here.
Deck Toys
Deck toys is the not so known app and it is fantastic! I use it to create Scape Rooms with all levels, including Y13/Y11 and exam skills. I love it, because I can also include Quizlet courses here. For a blogpost on how to exploit Deck Toys use in the classroom, click here.
All my DeckToys activities can be found here.
Flipgrid
Great for oral presentations! I love this app as students can cover their face or even do screencasting. I also like the fact that I can enter some rubrics to mark their work.
Padlet
Another classic! I use it for collaborative work but also to showcase what students can write about from memory at the end of the learning journey, so the whole class can see each other's entries and learn from each other. I also use Padlet as a revision guide at GCSE. A post on how to do that can be found here.
Of course there are more tools! This is just a summary of my favourite mainly FREE ones! This is language, The Language Gym, Textivate and Languagenut are also some of my favourite ones at the Practice Stage too.
The key point is to plan, when designing the curriculum, how and where these tools could be used in the classroom to give students WINGS!
A presentation on these ideas, which I carried out for Languagenut can be found here
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