Embedded grammar: The Eureka Effect!

As you probably know, I have been working with the talented Dr Gianfranco Conti and Dylan Viñales on a new Spanish Grammar book aimed at foundation level, underpinned by EPI methodology and a lexicogrammar approach to teaching MFL. The book is called  Spanish Verb Pivots, title which reflects the core of the EPI methodology and which, Gianfranco has explained really well in social media and in the book itself. 

I thoroughly enjoyed co-writing this book with such gifted practitioners but what I enjoyed the most was the opportunity to implement in a systematic way, how I have been approaching grammar in my lessons for years. 

I don’t teach grammar in isolation, I did at some point, and I quickly realised it was useless, as practising a set of rules over and over again could lead to excellent choral conjugation of verb paradigms but made no difference in reaching  fluency, hence leading to frustration! 

Instead, I soon realised that grammar should be taught embedded in the lexicon we teach via chunks. For that I use my own sentence builders. We practise those chunks constantly during lessons, we analyse patterns, I plant the seed, quoting Dr Conti, on grammar to come, students become fluent on a particular topic, and then, only then, I teach grammar explicitly. At that point grammar becomes a dejá vu feeling and most likely to be automatised. 

Grammar is embedded in the language, so let’s deconstruct it, yes, but only once students have internalised target structures/vocab, so that they can develop creativity. 

An example: The past tense in Y8

This is how I teach the topic of holidays in the past in Y8, always after having learned to talk about holidays in the present, which will lead to the learning of the Past tense in Spanish.

Modelling stage

At this stage I introduce the following Sentence Builder via choral repetition and showing the Spanish written graphemes and the English, so there's no confusion whatsoever on what structures mean! Thinking about the new GCSE, this Sentence Builder, already incorporates High Frequency words: such as the verbs intentar and encontrar. The Sentence Builder aims for students to learnn the I form of the past tense, including irregular verbs and be fluent with them.

We carry out lots of modelling activities as outlined in this blogpost here. At this stage I work mainly with MWBs to check for understanding. I also allow students to have their Sentence Builders with them: scaffolding. Lots of input activities take place throughout the Modelling stage, which will last a couple of lessons. 

By the way, I only teach, depending on ability, a row at a time in the Sentence Builder above. For example, I would not teach opinions and reasons, at the same time as all those verbs in the Past Tense to avoid cognitive overload.  

Similarly, when doing listening/translations/dictations, I always make sure I interleave past structures and vocabulary: embedded retrieval practice! This stage finishes with the explicit learning of the chunks for a spelling test. Quizlet, Memrise and even better, the Sentence Builder site are great tools to assist students in this learning, which I do as homework tasks.

Structured Practice Stage

Following the MARS EARS approach to lexicogrammar teaching, after 2 modelling lessons per row, I would expect students to start producing some sentences with guidance. I always do this as a whole class to start with with MWBs and orally. 

Digital tools are great at this stage, such as Flippity, Wheel of names, or Sentence Builsders site, as well as some old classics, like any Battleships, Oral Ping-Pong, pyramid translations, board games or just any information gap activity! Have a look at this blogpost for ideas. 

At this stage, we can start looking at grammatical patterns in the sentence builders! Homework tasks may include more extensive reading, as well as guided written practice: tangled translations for example. In this blogpost I give some ideas on how to revamp and maximise the digital activities we use in lessons as homework tasks, saving lots of time. 

Fluency stage

The hardest stage! Which, paradoxically, seems to be ignored. This will take three/four lessons and it is similar to the previous stage but I expect students to come up with their own answers to specific questions under time constrictions! 

Speed dating, stealing sentences with initials, board games with questions or the beginning of a sentence, flippity with a question and a expression to be used in the answer are some of my favourite activities here! A summary of the activities at each stage can be seen below:

Somewhere in the fluency stage I teach grammar! 

Inductive grammar: The Eureka Effect!

As students have had so much practice with the structures I want them to learn, I expect my pupils to work out the rule of the past tense for all persons from a text that we analyse. Remember, they already know the present and the I form of the past tense extremely well! This is the Eureka effect of this approach!

Students work in pairs to come up with a rule, we check it, we agree on it and then I explain it, explicitly, again. They take notes and then, as if it was a sentence builder, I follow the same process of modelling, structured practice, fluency tasks, again but referring to Grammar. 

Modelling Grammar

This involves carrying out the same tasks done at the Modelling Stage, when learning our sentence builder,  but now using the we, he/she, you, they persons of the past tense: dictations, reading activities, listening tasks, translations. At this stage a homework task will involve to learn the six verb endings for -ar and -er/-ir verbs in Spanish and a test, which just will inform me if students understood this grammar point but which is not a reflection of student success in Spanish! 

Practising Grammar

Again, we carry out the same tasks as in the structured practice stage, but now focussing on the grammar point we are studying: the past tense. 

This is where learning grammar can be great as there are lots of games I can incorporate at this point! Basically, any game like connect four, snakes and ladders, stone/paper/scissors, Jenga, four in a box, you name it, works here! My students love grammar because it is fun and they experimented a Eureka feeling, which leads to motivation and "a can do" attitude. Remember, we don’t just conjugate verbs but we embed the past tense into communicative utterances! More traditional worksheets work very well here too, with an element of competition! 

Being fluent with Grammar

This is the Holy Grail of MFL! If students  are fluent in grammar, by default if taught via a lexicogrammar methodology, students should be fluent in the target language! Easier said that done! 

This will involve a few lessons and lots of interleaving over the years! But at this stage, I expect students to be able to narrate, in a simple way and quickly, what they and other members of their family did during the holidays! All the fun activities from the previous stage work, but with a time limit. 

This stage must be reinforced by carefully planned homework tasks that will allow students to be creative, while still having time to think about grammatical rules: Creative Writing tasks are ideal at this stage. 

So, grammar is clearly embedded in the learning process and it leads itself to have a Eureka effect. 

It can be explicitly taught but not at the beginning of the learning journey but towards the end and not as end on its own, but as a tool to be able to communicate fluently in the target language. 

Similarly, any grammar point will neeed to be revised many times and in different contexts to be fully assimilated: free time by saying what students did yesterday or what happened in a film; school by saying what students studied yesterday etc… 

I would like openly to thank Dr Gianfranco Conti and Dylan Viñales for the opportunity to allow me to work and learn from them during the creation of Spanish Verb Pivots. It’s been such a pleasure.  

Coco: A sequence of lessons, anchoring in challenge!

In this blogpost I am focussing on project based learning and how we spent 6 weeks in Y9 studying the film Coco. We did this right after the Easter Holidays leading up to the May half-Term. Previously, we had studied the topic of TV learning to describe different types of TV programmes, comparing them, saying why students like/ liked some and not others. The idea was to link such vocabulary to a real film, while learning about South-American culture, Mexico and the Day of the dead. Students have two lessons per week in Y9 and this sequence of lessons was intended for a top set but it was slightly updated for all abilities. 

We started by watching the film Coco in Spanish with English subtitles. For that, we payed for the film in Youtube. 

We created two sentence builders. Sentence Builder 1 is what we called Levels 1 and 2 and focusses on what is the film about and how to describe the plot. 

Sentence Builder 2, was a short one and we called it Level 10 and focussed on giving an opinion about the film.  ( Levels 3-9 were not covered in the 6 weeks of teaching, due to lack of time, but it included descriptions of clothes and relationships among members of the film).

We also created a Memrise course to go with the unit for students to learn the chunks that we were covering in lessons.  For Memrise Course, click here. 

The sequence of lessons can be found in this Genially below:

 

The film and all the activities presented in this Genially were carried out within 12 lessons and involved tasks following the EPI/Lexicogrammar approach by Dr Gianfranco Conti, with my own variations and use of digital tasks. 

The sequence starts with modelling activities when a Sentence Builder is introduced, including repetition, dictation, delayed dictation, finishing the sentence after me etc.. with the use of MWBs and lots of praise and merits for every 3 correct answers (my students always keep a tally in their MWBs and at the end they collect their merits). This motivates all students as they want to do well to get their merits at the end of the lesson.

The planned sequence, involves students learning the vocabulary, little by little, using the Memrise courses, in a Flipped Classroom scenario, so when the Sentence Builder was introduced for the first time, students were very familiar with the vocabulary. Spanish being a phonetic language is great for this!

For many lessons, after modelling, we practised the vocabulary in many different ways, until students mastered the Sentence Builders, and believe me they did!!! We carried out, translations via LearningApps, Textivate, Oral Ping-Pong, Battleships and more traditional translations where students were working in Pairs and competing with each other!

I recycled the Wheel of Names activities as starter/plenaries and whole class oral/written activities as needed! By the end of the 12 week period, students could carry out the final writing task from memory and talk for around 2 minutes on Coco. 

The sequence also includes a cute listening activity which I created with Snapchat, inspired by Naziha de Londres. I love this type of video, listening activities because I can vary my vocabulary, speed etc and personalise the learning experience!

Finally, students learned about Day of the Dead in Mexico and carried out a Poster using Spanish and English where they wrote about Coco but also what they had learned about the Day of the Dead.

Why I love it!

The sentence builders are, deliberately, quite complex as they allow me to introduce Direct Object pronouns easily: "su tatarabuelo los abandonó" or "su familia lo obliga a ser zapatero". We dedicated a lesson towards the end analysing these Object Pronouns and comparing the two sentences above with "merece la pena verla"  Why lo/los/la? why in the case of "verla" the pronoun appears after the verb? What is the rule? This grammatical point will be reinforced after half term when we introduce our last topic: food and we learn "lo comí" etc.. Similarly, we revised the past tense, which students had already learned, and I introduced the future "si promete que no será músico".  

Furthermore, students learned about Mexican culture, watched a real film with a purpose and learned sophisticated vocabulary at GCSE level! They loved that as they felt "clever": anchoring in challenge! The sequence also allowed students manipulate the language and conjugate verbs in different tenses while giving their real opinion on something relatable to them!