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How to set up the foundations for a great MFL Year!
I am aware the new term started last week or even earlier in the case of Scotland, however, I thought I would write about my 6 best tips to make sure that we set up the best foundation for a very successful MFL teaching and learning experience at any Key Stage and level!
These are the elements I always dedicate time to think about when planning my lessons. As I have mentioned on my posts before, I never think of lessons as individual units but a string of little units to get my students to be fluent with the language.
Anchoring in Challenge
I always like anchoring in challenge!It doesn't matter the level, the ability or the key stage. I always have high expectations for all my students and I pitch high, then, I provide scaffolding strategies, Sentence Builders are a brilliant tool for this, to support those who may need the extra practice to get to my expectations.
This is something I always make clear during my first lesson: everyone here can learn a language well and that is my expectation. I will give you all the ingredients to be successful but, you will need to commit. I believe in you but you need to believe in yourselves.
I write extensively on how to stretch ALL attainer level students in this post and on this one I explore how to reach those lower attainer students.
To make the message clear, I started creating these amateur videos, one for KS3 and another for KS4, inspired by Danielle Warren. In them, I demonstrate the ingredients to be successful, as a recipe, and what I expect from my students:
Both videos focus on how to use our exercise book, for us OneNote, how to use our Sentence Builders and the independent work I will expect my students to carry out, guided by me, via Memrise, Quizlet, the Sentencebuilders site or the The Language Gym. These are my non negotiables! The videos are also shared with parents so they will know how to support their child with their language learning journey.
I am of the belief that there cannot be too much praise for anyone. Once the students have clear expectations and are guided nicely on how to navigate throughout the different success ingredients set up in our video, it is important to praise them when they do this successfully, independently and willingly.This must be the case even when things are not perfect but there has been a clear attempt at doing something. There are different ways to do so, via Merits, Alphas etc.. but a big winner for me has been the use of Scratching Cards with my Bitmoji!
I got the idea from a lovely person from Face Book but I cannot remember her name, apologies! This is the template. The only thing needed is to print out the template, cut the cards and stick a scratch sticker, bought in Amazon for around £3 on top of the prize statement. My students, even the most reluctant, die for these cards! I give them around for good answers, behaviour etc..
Listening for Learning
This is a must I always contemplate in my planning, which is embedded in the notion that we acquire language via what we listen and read (input), following a lexicogrammar/EPI approach inspired by Gianfranco Conti. This means I must carefully plan listening tasks NOT as testing opportunities but as learning activities, which will allow students to internally process the Sentence Builders with the lexical material and grammar (together not separated) and be transferred in students' long term memory so that they, at some point in the language learning journey, are able to put it into practice via output tasks.
This is a must in all my lessons. Second language acquisition research such as that explained by Florencia Henshaw in her latest book Common Ground, advocates for the use of tasks in the MFL classroom.
As Steve Smith clearly states in a post today, a task is an activity which primary focus is meaning, not a linguistic form; an information gap somehow, is needed, so there's a purpose to communicate; there's a clear goal to be achieved and students must use existing embedded language, as well as new one throughout the task material. Games are, therefore, by definition, tasks, and make the language purposeful and fun to learn as controlled and/or creative output activities and I plan them carefully in my lessons.
By game I understand any information gap task and this can take place from day one of the language learning journey:
In a first lesson learning to say what your name is in a target language, students work in pairs. I give them a card A and a card B with names and gaps in them so that students need to ask each other "What is your name?" and complete the names they have missing in their card. The missing names in card A are in card B and vice versa.
Thinking about the structure of the lessons and a sequence of lessons is vital. It is what I call thinking backwards:
I have in mind a text/ content on a given topic that I want students to master/be fluent in by the end of a unit and I think backwards on what tasks I will need to devise to get them there, using a lexicogrammar approach, from Modelling the language to Fluency. What tasks I will need to model the language (listening for learning via input tasks), how I will check for understanding and what meaningful tasks I will devise for structured output and finally for creative/fluent activities.
This is very important to me. How can we embed a cultural dimension to our lessons taking into account that students will have limited access to the language while avoiding the use of Google Translate? How to do this in a time restricted curriculum? This goal can be achieved with simple cultural elements planned along the way, embedded in lessons, but also, via cultural topics being taught in our curriculum
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