Anchor in Challenge
I have experienced the opposite. ALL my students, including highly motivated students with an aptitude to language learning, can actually fly using this approach. The reason why is that from a very early stage we plant the seed for more sophisticated structures, which nurtures my students' curiosity and makes them explore grammatical concepts earlier and start being creative with the language. Sentence Builders allows me to Anchor in Challenge.
How to stretch students
Curriculum Design
Make sure you design a good curriculum which allows for creativity and the exploration of grammatical concepts early on.
On one hand, your students will feel special, clever as you point out that some of the structures they are learning are 7-9 grade structures, you are telling them that you BELIEVE IN THEM and they CAN ACHIEVE.
On the other, High achievers tend to love finding out how the language works and planting the seed to interesting grammatical structures is key to make them expore!
For example, our Sentence Builders in Y7 incorporates the structure me gustaría que mi madre fuera + personality adjective (I would like my mother to be), which in Spanish would require the use of the Imperfect Subjunctive.
ALL our students, independently of ability, can recognise and/or use this structure and they feel good! On top of that, high achievers are prompted to work out how we would say I would like my parents to be which would require them to use fueran (3rd person plural), which they often decode after applying the pattern from “tienen” (they have= adding -n to the 3rd person singular tiene), so applying that pattern they add “n” to “fuera”. When I carry out this metalanguage thinking skills session, I do it for the whole class: having high expectations.
Later in the curriculum, in Y8, the same structure reappears now under the topic of Where I live: Me gustaría que mi casa fuera and we introduce tuviera. It will be repeated in Y9 too in the topic of tourism: me gustaría que mi ciudad fuera/tuviera”
Our curriculum, based on Sentence Builders, is very well thought out and is full of high impact expressions like this, which are analysed in lessons, engaging high achievers and making ALL students feel clever!
Such structures are introduced and practised extensively, with more simplistic structures. However they are not introduced all at once. Remember less is more, and at KS3 we can spend weeks with a single sentence builder until students are fluent with it.
These are a few of the structures spread over our Sentence Builders at KS3 and recycled at KS4:
Le gusta/nos gusta/les gusta, instead of just me gusta
Me gustaba, so students work out les/nos gustaba, as they have been introduced to les/nos gusta: IDENTIFYING PATTERNS
Me gustaría + infinitive
Me habría gustado + infinitive pero no pude As with Me gustaba, they soon work out le/les/nos habría gustado
Se me da bien, so students start working out se le/nos/les da bien
Puedo/podemos + infinitive
Suelo + infinitive
Solía + infinitive, so students work out solíamos/ solían
Siempre he querido hacerlo, so students start modifying it to siempre he querido + any infinitive
Me hace sentir bien
Me hizo sentir bien, so students can modify it to me hace/hizo reir/tener miedo/estar contento
Si pudiera me gustaría, so students start analysing pudiera and take risks to say, si pudiéramos.
Si tuviera la oportunidad me gustaría+ infinitive
Me ayuda a /me permite + infinitive
All these are complex but extremely frequent expressions in spoken Spanish which students naturally use to express themselves and if following a textbook, would only encounter in Y11 or Alevel, recurring to Google Translate in the meantime!
Using a random personal Quizlet
All our sentence builders are linked to our departmental Quizlets. However, at some point in the learning journey, we carry out extra listening and reading activities moving away from the structures in the sentence builders, once students are fluent in a particular topic.
Students always collect this vocabulary, which we nominate receptive, in their Random personal Quizlet courses. They have a Random Quizlet course per topic. Student learn this vocabulary, so that they can recognise it in listening or reading tasks. However, I also encourage pupils to use it in creative responses to substitute vocabulary from the official Sentence Builders.
Could you?
When carrying out retrieval practice activities or structured practice tasks, mainly with mini whiteboards, but also in oral tasks, I always encourage, by modelling myself, students to extend their answers, using some of the high impact expressions above in new contexts: INTERLEAVING.
That is great, could you use "me hizo + infinitive" to extend your answer?
I also encourage them to use the receptive vocabulary which we encountered in listening and reading tasks, from textbooks or Exampro and away from our Sentence Builders.
Many do it instinctively after a few lessons! In these video tutorials I demonstrate how I do this with Wheel of names and Flippity:
Have a repertoire of enrichment activities
These activities are not just for high achievers but, for anyone who would like to stretch themselves and enrich their MFL experience.
I used to keep folders in my classroom with reading activities, such as graders or the lovely Authentik Magazines. I still do! But I have now a lovely repertoire of enrichment and extension tasks on OneNote, under the content library, to be done during lessons, as decided by students if a whole class tasks is finished or as extra learning at home.
My repertoire include:
Independent work in the Verb Trainer of the Language Gym. What about learning about a new tense?
Independent work using This is Language and Languagenut
Extra videos + worksheets
Short films in Spanish
Netflix Series
Zig-zag listening activities
Zig-zag reading stories
The Language Gym Extranjeros book.
Cooking recipe book/you tube videos for students to create their own dish
Learning Spanish with songs with a link to Lyricstraining.
Anchor in Challenge
I have high expectations and expect from ALL students a level higher than that expected by National Curriculum standards: at KS3, I expect some work at GCSE level and at GCSE level some work at ALevel.
This principle is particularly important in the case of stretching the high achievers. So I give them websites aimed at higher levels and they love it! Languagenut and This is Language is brilliant for this, although not free, as you can assign special assignments to specific pupils within the same class, or have a challenge assignment for the whole class.
In the case of Spanish these two free websites are invaluable for KS4 students:
The use of Golden Expressions (Idioms)
Apart from the High impact expressions, which normally include idioms, blended within our Sentence Builders, we give students from Y7 to Y11 our Golden Expressions sheet. I challenge students to learn two idioms from the Golden Expressions sheet every half term and use them within oral or written activities. When done, I use my famous Scratch cards with Bitmojis. See this Blogpost here.
Planning a rich curriculum
This means any extra curricular and cultural activity which will inspire students. The key is to offer it to ALL the students.
We use Poetry in lessons: the Gloria Fuertes poems are brilliant for this, as they are authentic but easy to understand for all students. They also provide a perfect opportunity for high achievers to expand their repertoire of vocabulary and be creative with the language.
Encouraging creative writing following models from Stories and Poems can be extremely powerful!
Organising a speaking/debating/board games in MFL club
Theatre Viewings etc.. are also excellent opportunities to stretch your students. A wrote a blogpost, on extracurricular activities to enrich your curriculum some time ago, with many ideas to try!
Project Based Learning
As I explain on this blogpost, the importance and the power of Project Based Learning in MFL to stretch students and open the door to cultural understanding.
Our MFL curriculum includes a little project every year during KS3: Picasso Project for Y7, La leyenda del Espantapájaros (short film) for Y8 and Coco the film for Y9. These projects are embedded within our curriculum and are carried out by all students with scaffolding and specific Sentence Builders, so all students are enriched. Higher achievers, particularly enjoy Projects, and very quickly start manipulating the language, if a solid foundation to the structures expected throughout the project, has been set up.
My experience is that Sentence Builders are a great source to stretch ALL students as it provides a solid structure and foundation on what to excel, plants the seeds for more sophisticated grammatical structures and creative language, avoiding the use of Google Translate and focussing on communication and fluency.
Example of Work, in exam conditions, from a Y11 High Achiever using Sentence Builders and a Rich Curriculum: How you prepare for exams and problems in your school.
Example of Work, in exam conditions, from a Y11 middle range student using Sentence Builders and a Rich Curriculum: How you prepare for exams and problems in your school. Careless mistakes are highlighted but not corrected. Student needs to correct them.
