The new GCSE, it's all RETRIEVAL. PART 2: Retrieval in Modelling

Following my post in part one and this week's Language Show, this second post is all about Modelling activities and how we can ensure that students start learning the vocabulary/structures/chunks they need, to start communicating. This stage is extremely important and traditionally rushed by practitioners as the perfect lesson, in the past, had to include Presentation (similar to modelling), Practice (structured practice) and Production (fluency activities) ALL happening in the same lesson!  As if it was that easy.

By modelling I understand, following, Rosenshine's principles, to introduce the language in small steps/chunks, orally, so we set good pronunciation patterns, choral repetition from students, I still believe this is so important and fun and, finally, lots of activities, based on receptive skills: listening/reading to help students to start embedding the language into their long-term memories. 

This stage, in my lessons, last roughly, two lessons. I personally introduce the language with my interactive Sentence Builder, created in Sentence Builders.com. I like it this way as students can see the written form while listening to the Spanish pronunciation (dual coding) AND the English translation, so it is absolutely clear what each chunk/expression means. I also like using pictures for games, but not initially when I introduce the vocabulary so I don't get interrupted with the typical: what does that suppose to mean?

Modelling is about, what I like calling, passive retrieval, meaning that students get lots of exposure to the language but they don't need to produce anything themselves, yet. It is all about recognition of sounds, meanings, phonics, grapheme-sound correspondence and good pronunciation habits. 

My typical Modelling activities are DICTATION and READING ALOUD, taking into account that dictation will be intrinsically linked to LISTENING FOR LEARNING NOT TESTING activities. These are my favourite activities.

SOME DICTATION ACTIVITIES FOR PASSIVE RETRIEVAL PRACTICE

Classic dictation

This involves the dictation of small sentences/paragraphs after language has been introduced to students via chorus repetition. I start slowly, making clear pauses between words, to quickly increase speed and start joining words via liaison. Students just write in the TL what they hear and show me after I count 1,2,3. I use Mini Whiteboards when I do this as I can check for understanding immediately, which also allows me to adapt my dictations to the students' responses.

Filling the gaps or Fill in the no gaps dictation

This is a classical fill in the gaps activity where a short paragraph or sentences are presented to students with gaps. I then dictate the sentences and students just need to write the words which are missing in the gaps. This is a nice activity to do before a full on Dictation activity. To make the activity more challenging, as suggested by Dylan Viñales, I like presenting the sentences with the missing words but without the gaps. Students now really have to listen hard to identify first, where the missing word is located and then transcribe the word. I love this activity as, before we do the listening activity, students can actually predict where the missing words will be, leading to nice retrieval practice itself!

Mistaken dictation

This is a classical dictation activity but with deliberate grammatical or phonetic mistakes which the students must spot. This is a great activity, again, to test whether students have assimilated a particular grammatical/phonetic rule.

Delayed dictation

This type of dictation which I heard first from Gianfranco Conti, is great for students with processing difficulties and poor working memory. The idea is to dictate an utterance, like in the classic dictation, but students are not allowed to write the heard material until after 7-10 seconds. During these seconds, students need to try to memorise the heard utterance by mentally repeating it to themselves in their heads. Students keep their hands in their heads while they do this and when I say "now", they write the sentence. 

Random dictation

This involves dictating random sentences that if put in order will make up a paragraph. After dictating the sentences, students, in pairs, rearrange the sentences in order to form the original paragraph. I love this activity because it can lead to translating the paragraph, improving it or just using as a model to create a new one.

Running dictation

A classic that works every time! Students work in pairs. Several texts are displayed around the room, one for each pair. One student, the scriber, remains sitting while their partner runs to one of the texts, memorises a sentence, runs back to their partner and dictates the memorised sentence, which the scriber writes down. The fastest couple to rewrite the text on the wall, is the winner! After they dictate the text, students can then translate it into English, improve it, use it as a model etc..

Dictogloss

Dictogloss is a dictation activity where learners are required to reconstruct a short text by listening and noting down key words, which are then used as a base for reconstruction. I love this activity because it is a multiple skills and systems activity. Learners practise listening, writing and speaking (by working in groups) and use vocabulary, grammar and discourse systems in order to complete the task.

I sometimes carry out the activity doing the dictation myself but my favourite mode is when students work in small groups or pairs as follows:

1. One student reads a text prepared by me based on the Sentence Builders we are working on and will take notes in English (not literal translation)

2. Working in pairs, student one, using their English notes, will reconstruct/dictate the text in Spanish to student two. Student two will  write in Spanish the text they hear. As a final task, both students will look at the original text and compare both versions.  

I do use this at all levels by adapting a given text. An example on the topic of Jobs is below for a Y11 class. I tend to prepare two texts so all students have the chance to be speakers! Students then exchange information, this way Dictogloss becomes an information gap activity.

Buzzed dictation

You will need a buzzer for this activity.  The teacher dictates sentences or a paragraph to the students, which they write in MWBs, every so often the teacher presses the buzzer (or claps) and the students need to write a word that makes sense in the given context, to replace the buzz. At the end of the activity, we look at the different options that students have written. 

Information Gap dictation in pairs

This dictation is to be done by the students in pairs. Students have a list of 10 sentences. However, student A, has sentences 1,3,5,7,9 while student B has sentences 2,4,6,8,10. student A starts by dictating sentence 1 while student B listens and writes down the sentence. Then student B reads sentence 2 while student A listens and writes down the sentence. Then student A will read sentence 2 etc.. Basically the classical Information Gap activity turned into a dictation and read aloud task!

SOME READING ALOUD ACTIVITIES FOR PASSIVE RETRIEVAL PRACTICE

Reading aloud Group Ping Pong

I carry out this activity using Flippity or Wheel of Names. See an example here. In Flippity, I go to the Single Name option and a sentence comes up. I divide the the class in group A and group B. Everyone in group A starts by reading the sentence together aloud, then someone in group B has to translate it accurately to get a point. At this stage, another person in group B can extend the sentence with something that makes sense so they get an extra point. I click on Flippity again and another sentence appears. Now is the turn of group B, all together, to read the sentence aloud and someone in group A to translate it and even extend it. 

Reading aloud: Piedra, Papel, Tijera, evolución

I tend to do this activity after the previous one, using the link from Flippity. Students now, play in pairs the popular game stone, paper, scissors. Whoever is the winner, clicks on Flippity and reads the sentence, for an extension, again, they have to translate the sentence or even extend it. For a twist to the game, I love Rachel Hawes' suggestion to play, stone, paper, scissors, evolution. This means that the first time a student wins, they are an egg, the second time, a chick, then a bird, followed by an elephant and finally superman. The player who manages to get to superman first, is the overall winner.  The typical slide for this activity in my lessons, looks like this. 

Battleships Reading

This is also one of my favourite activities! I tend to do it as a listening activity first, where I read the sentences and students write the coordinates, followed by the Battleships game, played in pairs. Basically, students choose 8 boxes in the grid and must find out the ships/boxes chosen by the partner by reading the sentences, which will lead to a particular coordinate/ship/box. This activity is always a winner! Students, again, can not only read the sentence but also translate it and extend it. 

Don't be the last one

Another lovely reading aloud activity. Students play in pairs. A list of sentences in the target language, normally I include 11, are shown on the screen. Students take turns to read the sentences. They can read up to 3 sentences in a row BUT the student who reads sentence 11 is the loser. The idea is to be strategic and make your partner read sentence 11. This is always a winner in my lessons!

Trap Door

This is a classic activity too. A text is displayed on the board where gaps are presented with different options. Students play in pairs. Each student, chooses an option for each gap. Students try to guess which options their partner has chosen by reading the passage. However, if they get it wrong at some point, they exchange roles and when it is their turn again, they need to start reading the text from the beginning again. I normally play this game with the whole class, first. I select my choices and students need to guess which these are.

High Five (Chócala) game

This activity is a mix between the classic Quiz & Trade and Find your partner. I display 20 sentences on the board and give a little piece of paper to each student. Students write a number from 1 to 20 in their piece of paper. They get up and move around the classroom reading to people the sentence attached to their number. After doing this with a person, they exchange the paper and they go to someone else. However, if they encounter someone with the same number as them on their piece of paper, they say chócala (high five) and get a point. The idea is to find as many chócalas as possible to win. 

These are just some of my favourite activities to do when I introduce new language to my students, all based on the concept of modelling sentences that eventually, I expect that students can produce freely themselves.  For h/w my students need to learn the vocabulary/chunks for a vocabulary test. However, my experience is that after two lessons carrying out these activities, and some other listening tasks, students end up memorising most of the vocabulary/structures naturally in lessons, giving them a sense of achievement, which they so desperately need!  

The new GCSE, It's all RETRIEVAL. PART 1: The 5 Magical Powers and the GCSE Vocabulary lists

After 7 weeks teaching the new GCSE for MFL, I would like to write a series of posts analysing my approach to teaching and my thoughts on the whole new qualification.  After teaching the new syllabus for 7 weeks, the good news is that there's not much difference from the old syllabus in relation to teaching and learning.  This is great, as whatever worked for us before should work now too!

Having said that, there are some fundamental changes:

1. The use of specific vocabulary 
2. A dictation task as part of the listening exam
3. A reading aloud task as part of the speaking exam

After all the controversy regarding the specific vocabulary lists, the topics under which the vocab is taught, are very similar to the old GCSE, not surprise here as there's only a limit of topics to talk about at GCSE level! However, whatever your thoughts about specific vocabulary lists, I think this is a great opportunity to really boost languages in schools.  It is a great selling point to tell students and parents that if you learn this vocabulary, in theory, students can access the listening/reading exams without any issues.  

Having this fixed list also allows us, as departments, to start teaching it as early as Year 7 and always have it in mind when we create our SoWs at KS3: how many of these words can we actually teach from day one as from Y7?  According to cognitive science, it takes considerable time to take information from our working memory to our long-term memory, which is a prerequisite to be fluent in the target language.  This means that the earlier our students have exposure to the established vocabulary and structures, the easier it will be to store such vocabulary into the long term memory, so, why not start at Year 7? Let's retrieve this key vocabulary and structures over and over again. Our goal is to lead our students to automatise the use of this key vocabulary in a given context, topics, with the application of grammatical rules so that they can communicate in the target language and get a good grade in their GCSE exam, of course. 

It is a long process to achieve this goal: FLUENT COMMUNICATION, especially given the curriculum time UK schools give to languages and the different contexts and backgrounds surrounding our pupils. That's why what we do in that precious curriculum time should be extremely well thought out and crafted to reach automatization and fluency. The only way to do this, following Rosenshine's Principles of instruction, is via Meaningful Modelling, breaking content in small steps, purposed structured practice, purposed independent/fluency practice, timely and purposeful feedback and RETRIEVAL, RETRIEVAL, RETRIEVAL hand in hand with checking for understanding. 

The 5 Magical Powers

 At Princes Risborough School, when we looked at the GCSE vocabulary list, analysed the new AQA mark scheme and the elements that allow students to achieve fluency, we came out with the 5 Magical Powers, which I personally have used in the past very successfully.  The 5 Magical Powers, are the ingredients that will allow our students both, sound fluent in the target language and acquire the best marks/grades in their GCSE exam. The powers are:

Using three time tenses as from Y7 by using what we called the nuggets: modal verbs followed by infinitives to tackle different tenses.  Suelo/solía/voy a/ me gustaría/ empecé a/ decidimos + infinitive.  The use of the nuggets to tackle different tenses is key to achieving fluency, making students feel clever and dealing with cognitive overload. We do grammar, of course, but our aim is for students to be able to express ideas in different tenses quickly and mechanically as from Y7 using the nuggets and it works!

Giving opinions, again in different tenses: Me gusta, Me gustaba, lo que más me gusta, lo que más me gustaba.

Giving reasons with key structures and chunks that can be applied to any topic/ context and which will help students achieve fluency: porque siempre he querido hacerlo (because I have always wanted to do it) porque me ayuda a relajarme (because it helps me relax) dado que se me da bien (given that I am good at it) ya que puede ser + adjective (since it can be, instead of "is" + adjective)

Reported speech or talking about someone else. This is crucial in everyday communication and also an element that translates into extra marks in the oral and written examination. That's why, as from Y7, students learn mi madre/amigo dice que (my mother/friend says that) a mi madre/amigo le gusta (my mother/friends likes)  mi amigo suele + infinitive (my friend tends to)

High Impact expressions. These include high frequent  expressions and chunks such as  cuando sea mayor, puede ser, si tuviera la oportunidad and a variety of fun idioms! Some of the reasons and nuggets are actually part of our High Impact expressions.

Once we established our 5 Magical Powers, we made sure that these are present in any topic we teach and surrounding all the topical vocabulary prescribed by the new GCSE syllabus. We use Sentence Builders to deliver our lessons following a lexicogrammar approach, rooted in Rosenshine's Principles and, as part of our commitment to achieve fluent communication, these 5 Magical Powers are present in every topic and sentence builder we teach, so that these 5 common elements get embedded in our students long-term memories together with the GCSE key vocabulary. For an example of Sentence Builder in Y10, topic of Free Time, click here. 

To create our Sentence Builders, we use the site Sentence Builders.com which has proved to be great value for money, not only to create professional looking, interactive Sentence Builders, but also as a key tool to help students memorise the language we teach through the sentence builders.  

So retrieval, will not only be part of the language learning/teaching journey in a traditional way, but it is also the core of how we have grouped the themed vocabulary around the 5 Magical Powers, as from Y7.  We believe so much in the 5 Magical Powers that our Mark Scheme for key written tasks at KS3, evolve around them. Click here to view our Writing KS3 Mark Scheme based on the 5 Magical Powers.

In Part 2, I will tackle Retrieval at the Modelling Stage of the learning journey at KS4.