SOS: So after the Y11 mocks, what?

We just completed our second set of mock exams for Y11 before the February half-term and after analysing results, most students missed the next grade up just for two or three marks. This shows me that the next three of months will be key for my classes. How to maximise our time with our Y11 classes from now up to their exams to improve grades a grade or more?  I wrote a post on this topic in 2021 and my approach has not changed much!

This is my straight-forward line of action, which I have followed for many years, to make sure that students improve their Mock results for at least one grade.  In fact, although a SOS guideline, these are strategies we apply to all our KS4 lessons, including the new GCSE course. 

Maximising Listening skills

This is the skill our students tended to underperform in the trial and in the real GCSE exams, the wrongly called the passive skill!  Nevertheless, listening is the foundation of the learning journey to achieve fluency and get students using the language.  In our department believe so strongly in the fundamental need to develop listening skills, linked to phonics, that we start tackling this skill at KS3 with a dedicated lesson every two weeks where students carry out listening personalised tasks, independently, with their headphones in Google Classroom. I wrote extensively about listening at KS3, how to exploit textbook audio material and how to create a virtual language lab in this blog. 

Focussing on GCSE,  these are the strategies we adopt as from Y10:

• We dedicate a lesson every two weeks, exclusively, to practise listening skills. We have three lessons per week so, one of those 6 lessons, in a fortnight, is exclusively a listening lesson. During that lesson, we prepare listening material + transcripts, based on the topics we teach in the curriculum and students carry the activities individually with their headphones.  
• During the first lessons we do independent listening practice, we record ourselves and create classic activities such as "dictation with gaps" "putting sentences into order" "fill in the gaps without gaps" or "finishing the sentence", using 100% vocabulary that we have covered in lessons, so it is 95% understandable material, this is an example of a Y10 Independently Listening session. The idea is to treat listening for learning and retrieve vocab in a listening format.
• As we carry out these lessons, and definitely at this stage of the GCSE course in Y11, we use mainly past paper listening questions,  for that use Exampro activities for AQA. Examwizard is the equivalent for Edexcel Pearson. We choose tasks, on a given theme/topic, so we concentrate on specific vocabulary at a time. When we create the tasks using Exampro, we use a variety of questions: Foundation, Overlapping and Higher. Students work with at their own pace individually, using headphones, so we also develop independent learning skills: Students learn how to revise for the listening exam, once they are at home. 
• Use the transcripts wisely. Share them, with your students, at all times, but especially when carrying out exam style questions. We always include the transcripts and the mark schemes. Remember this is listening for learning not testing!  Use the transcripts to create pre-listening tasks, so there is an opportunity to look up vocabulary and do translation activities.  Ideally, this can be done in previous lessons, or as a homework task. During our listening independent lesson, students always listen to the audio while reading the transcript and then complete the task. Students work at their own pace and some may do only 2/3 tasks this way. On a second listening lesson, they can attempt some of the same tasks, again, interleaved with previous topic tasks, without  using the transcript, although this is always accessible to them. This is a powerful listening technique: Listening while reading the transcript. This practice has become more valuable now with the new GCSE and the reading aloud task, as this will provide excellent modelling practice for students as well as developing their phonological recognition and develop listening processing skills.
• At some point in the process, we also carry out an exam style question together: we look at the transcript first and highlight key vocabulary. We read the exam question and make sure we understand it, emphasising key words which may act as distractors in the exam: a sentence may start with something someone likes but later will say what they love, which is what is needed for the actual task. We pay attention to key, high frequency words that can be key for the listening exam, especially negatives and superlatives and opinion key words. We analyse why a particular question is challenging and what is key in the transcript to make it accessible: metacognitive skills as we go through the thinking process of tackling a listening exam question.
• We look up random vocabulary in transcripts and reading past papers: vocabulary that has appeared in previous years and we know we have not taught explicitly, and we create Quizlet courses. This is one of mine, I have two of these courses. Students learn this vocabulary over several homework tasks. It is amazing to see how some of the most random vocabulary keeps appearing in exams, year after year like: falta, ancianos, sopa de marisco, productos lácteos or me enteré/me decepcionó/ me di cuenta in AQA!
• Students must add, any unknown vocabulary appearing in the transcript to their own random Quizlet courses: the more vocabulary they know, the better they will be at recognising it in a listening but also a reading task!

We keep doing this routine every two weeks, starting in Y10. During our normal lessons, we continue emphasising listening skills via Modelling activities such as Dictation, listening Battleships, Finishing the sentence, Spotting the listening mistake etc.. Over time, start mixing up topics and themes and set up listening tasks for homework too.  

Maximising Reading Skills

Students tend to do better in this skill. Learning  high frequency words and random general vocabulary, as done per listening, and all topic vocabulary is key for success! 

I normally tackle this skill via homework tasks, as I personally like using lesson time for oral/listening activities mainly. The use of Exampro or Examwizard can prove invaluable here too!

The key for success for this skill is to treat it, like the listening component, as an opportunity to learn the language!  So, students are encouraged to add any unknown vocabulary to their Random Vocabulary Quizlet, when carrying out the activities. In fact doing this is part of the homework task!

It is important that students don't see this practice as a test/assessment but as a learning opportunity!  Going through the reading tasks/answers with students and stop, to model, as a whole class, the thinking process to tackle those tricky questions, it is vital and super important. 

Don't just ask students to complete a task: reflect on the process of how students came to a particular answer and why it was not another. The exam is full of "catchy" bits, so training students to recognise these and look up for intensifiers, synonyms, negative words etc.. in a text are crucial skills!

Tackling  the Writing paper 

To get better at this, students need models of what a good writing task looks like and must know the structures/vocabulary/grammar extremely well! This is why using Sentence Builders throughout the GCSE course, not just at KS3, is so important: as these provide a wonderful framework to work with and manipulate the language as needed. 

All our Sentence Builders for GCSE can be found here . Of course, interleaving, retrieval practice and carrying out key activities throughout the GCSE course to help students learn these Sentence Builders and transfer them to their Long Term Memory, are essential.  To get ideas on Writing Tasks in general, as from KS3, visit this blogpost. 

• Present students with a model of a writing task. This is my model video on how to tackle the 150 word question in AQA, modelling with students they thinking process they have to through when tackling a writing task question/bullet points.

• We also dedicate a lesson every two weeks, to carry out a timed writing task in Y11, as we do with listening as from Y10.  For the tasks, again, we use Exampro past paper questions. We always prepare two tasks:  one aimed at Foundation level, including Description of a photocard, 40 words task a d 90 word task, and another at Higher level, 90 word task and 150 word task. Every two weeks, students for homework, prepare one of the tasks (Foundation or Higher), taking into account the 5 Magic Powers. 
• To be successful in the previous task and to do really well in the oral exam, especially the General Conversation, students need to fulfil certain criteria.  This is what I call the 5 Magical Powers:
  • Use of different tenses (at least three)
  • Giving opinions 
  • Giving Reasons
  • Talking about someone else, in its simple form, the use of reported speech mi madre/amigo dice/dijo que..
  • High Impact expressions

  We embed these Magical Powers in our SoW as from Y7! In fact our mark scheme at KS3 is based on how well these powers have been achieved in a written/oral task. Click here for a Blogpost on this. Looking at the new GCSE, still these criteria are present so it makes sense to get students familiar with them as from Y7! The idea is that when preparing their writing task for a timed writing lesson, they must make reference to these powers. 
  
  
  To help students to use the Magical Powers, we created the following document, with examples of the Powers to practise as from Y10. This document has been printed in A3, laminated and displayed in the students' desk.  Click here for a copy.  Students also have their own laminated copy for their bedrooms! 
  
  
  I have talked extensively about the Powers before, but one of the elements I developed recently is the use of LINKS or NUGGETS.  
  
  
  What are the NUGGETS?
  
  
  My Y11 students were really struggling with verb endings so I thought of using LINKS or NUGGETS, basically expressions acting as shortcuts,  which can be used for different tenses, without having to conjugate a verb.  I still expect most of my students to use verb endings but, if they struggle, in a moment of panic, the nuggets work wonders. Similarly, those students who can conjugate well and easily can alternate traditional conjugation with the NUGGETS, as these are also examples of High Impact expressions (a Magical Power), widening their use of vocabulary!
  
  
  

  
  

  How do they work? If students do not remember the endings for the present tense, especially for irregular verbs, they may use Suelo/Suele/ Me gusta/ Podemos/Se puede. In the Preterite, Decidí/empecé a, in the Imperfect, Solía, in the future Voy a and in the Conditional Me gustaría. The NUGGETS or LINKS are very popular because once you use them, you just need to use the Infinitive after them!!

  
  

  They also help weaker students to understand that an infinitive can never be used without the support of a NUGGET or LINK.  When we practise sentences, for example, we always do it using a verb ending but also a LINK/NUGGET if it is possible.  This has helped my students a LOT to avoid grammatical mistakes regarding verb endings. 

  
  

  The nuggets or links work so well that these are introduced as from KS3, so they become a second nature for students when they reach KS4.

 During our Writing Timed lesson, students carry out their Foundation/Higher task in exam conditions, which will be marked by the teacher, using the AQA Mark Scheme, so we can give give students specific feedback.

This technique, has dramatically improved the writing grades of our students in exams. As a matter of fact, we start using Timed Writing lessons in Y11 as from October Half-term up to their Study leave.

• We retrieve, constantly in lessons, the 5 Magic Powers that students need,  to get the highest grades in the writing and oral papers.
• During lesson time, we carry out Translation activities in a game environment using MWBs.

Maximising Speaking skills 

As with the Writing skills, it is important to model how to tackle the different components of the Speaking exam. In the case of AQA, knowing how to do well in the Roleplay and the Photocard is essential, as these two components will provide 50% of the marks for the whole oral and they just require exam technique! To prepare students well for this, we created this Oral booklet, based on past paper Roleplays and Photocards, as well as, example oral questions. 

• We try to spend as much lesson time as possible on oral skills and scaffolding activities leading to fluency. This is the only skill which is very difficult for students to master on their own! Similarly, it is the skill that will motivate them the most to study a language at GCSE and beyond!!! If they feel they cannot speak, they will give up on the subject. For that, you can use, some of the activities proposed on this blog, preferably from KS3.
• Using the Oral Booklet, model and practise, first in writing using MWBs, the Roleplay and Photocards. In Y11, these present great starter activities for a lesson! After practising as a whole class with MWBs, Students can practise the tasks, easily, with their partners as the oral booklet has on one side the student card and on the other the teacher's version. 
• To practise the General Conversation part of the exam, 50% of the whole speaking mark, we give them model questions which students can start preparing in flashcards, little by little as from Y10, as the course progresses. I make it clear they cannot learn by heart all these questions! but having them in writing, gives them some confidence for their own revision on what a good model answer looks like! We are also continuing with this practice with the current Y10 cohort in preparation for the new GCSE. On this occasion, the model questions will be in preparation for the conversation to take place after talking about two photocards in the last part of the oral paper and the questions that will be asked after the reading aloud task (AQA)

Make the link between the General Conversation in the Speaking exam and the Writing exam

• We help students practise these questions via home work tasks and we connect the oral to the writing: for example, we link the next timed writing, as explained above, to the same theme/topic covered in a previous oral homework task. There’s a clear link between both exams and students need to understand such link!

  Students must realise that by revising potential oral questions for the general conversation they are, in fact, learning potential content for the writing tasks. Understanding this link breaks down the gigantic task of tackling four different exams for GCSE. Such concept is also reinforced by using multi skilled activities and the same type of tasks to practise different skills, for example Battleships for listening, oral and writing. Students must understand that all skills are interwoven and must be practised interlinked with each other. Using our 5 Magic Powers has certainly helped us with this link, as the powers are valid for both productive skills.

• During lessons, dedicate time to practise the general conversation questions in a game format. This is an example with Flippity: students click on the randomiser, play, Piedra, Papel, Tijera and must answer a question as it spins. To make the task more challenging, ask them to include a high impact expression, from the second column, in their answer. We tend to do this in writing with MWBs too. It works wonders as it reinforces the link between the speaking and writing paper and gives confidence to students before tackling purely oral tasks.

• We dedicate our lessons two weeks leading to the Mock and real MFL orals to just to practise oral skills. 

• As with writing, we retrieve, during our lessons, key verbs in different tenses and high impact expressions: basically our 5 Magic Powers.

These techniques have made a big difference for me year after year and have helped my students maximise their grade! I hope it is useful for you. For a blog just on maximising Speaking and Writing skills at Y11, look at this blogpost.  I would be super happy to hear what other techniques you use which are successful for you and your students!

Skilful Questioning in the MFL mixed ability classroom: adaptive and responsive teaching

 As I am recovering from an operation at home, I have been thinking a lot about adaptive and responsive teaching, what I call Spinning the Plates, meaning that teachers start assessing students' answers in the classroom and start responding to students' needs, encouraging students to work at different speeds/levels within the classroom. 

I wrote a very thoughtful blogpost on adaptive and responsive teaching three years ago and I still stick to each strategy detailed and explained there. To have a look at that post, click here. 

However, what happens when most students in our MFL mixed ability classroom are disengaged students as they find learning languages extremely challenging and have multiple special needs?  What happens when students' working memory is particularly weak and they have processing difficulties?  How do we get those students to produce language after the modelling stage and numerous listening/dictation activities?

The answer is RETRIEVAL PRACTICE and CHECKING FOR UNDERSTANDING in every single lesson, via SKILFUL QUESTIONING.

This morning, I read a great blogpost by Ross McGill in the teacher toolkit website on  The art of asking good questions in the Classroom you can find the article here.  In the article, Ross McGill talks about Monological, Declarative, Dialogical and Metacognitive questions. This made me think  of my own practice and how I use questions in the classroom to scaffold the production learning stage from word to paragraph level.  

Scenario with a mixed ability Y8 class with multiple students with SEN and high level of disengagement: scaffolding the production process 

In this scenario, retrieval practice is key. Imagine we are studying the topic of Free Time and we have been doing so for some weeks, so students should be ready for some structured, guided practice of the language in small paragraphs.  How do we move them from word to paragraph level?

This is what works for me.  Using MWBs, I start scaffolding their practice.  All students have access to our Sentence Builders via Google Classroom and these must be opened in their laptops, so they can be easily accessed if needed, although I will encourage the most able to work from memory. The sequence of questioning will be something like this:

OK, how do you say "I like" in Spanish?" Please, write it in your MWB, 3,2,1 show up your boards"  I am confident that nearly everyone will have written Me gusta. 

That's brilliant, so, let's use our Magical Powers and let's use some other vocab and tenses. How do you say "I tend to"?  Again, we are working at word level and most of my students will be able to write suelo in their MWBs, because they know it or in some cases, because it is in the Sentence Builder hand out.  

Fantastic, what about "I liked"?  and "I used to"? Great, do you know, these are now GCSE structures and you can do it! By making this comment, I am telling them that I believe in them and they are clever as they can do GCSE work!

Well, what about "I like to listen to music"? At this stage, I will start revising the free time verbs so we can move to writing in sentence level. Remember, force your brain to remember how you say listen to music, a clue, starts with E M.  However, if you really cannot remember, use your SB!  3,2,1 show up your boards.  Great.  I like doing this, as I like to share the learning process with them so that they can start owning it. This is how we learn and we are doing this to help you remember the vocabulary. 

Can you think and share other activities that you remember from your free time? such as to go to the swimming pool, to play football, to read?  Do this with a partner. You have 2 minutes to think and write as many verbs as you remember in your MWBs.  This is  the classic, think, pair and share strategy.  OK, 2 minutes have gone by, 3, 2, 1 boards up!  At this point students will have written different verbs in the infinitive form.  

My experience tells me that someone, may have written the "I form" of the verb, instead of the infinitive. If this happens, I can stop the class and say: Ok, someone has written "juego al fúltbol", that is a great verb, but what does it mean? pause 2 seconds, Maya? (cold-calling someone that I know will know the answer to move to the explanation). That's right "I play football" but I want structures with the infinitive, basically with "to in front of the verb, to sing, to play" so how do you say to play football? pause 2 seconds, Tyler? (cold-calling the person who wrote "juego al fútbol" in the first place) You can check your SB, Tyler.  That's right "jugar". Why am I making a fuss of this? Why do we need "jugar, tocar" and not "juego, toco" etc...? pause 2 seconds, Seb? (Cold calling and probing questions now). If students  are insecure, I can proceed with something like this to scaffold their thinking process to get them to the answer I need to: well, How do we say "I like"? Can I say "I like I play" in English? Does this make sense? what does "Me gusta juego" mean?, pause 2 seconds, Trish? (cold calling again).  Well done, "I like I play" and that is wrong, so I need " I like to play"? How do you say "I like" again? how do you say "to play"? How do you say "I like to play" then? write it down in your MWBs, 3,2,1  show me boards!   

Excellent, what about "I liked to play football"?  Remember that you must force your brain to give you the answer, but if your brain is not working today for you, use your SB!  By doing this, I am allowing students to use their SB if they cannot remember and I am telling them is not them the issue but their brains that need more exercise!!

Maya, that's great ( she wrote the answer in a few seconds, while everyone is still writing, so I approach her and say: Maya, can you extend your answer? can you say what other things you liked to do and when?  There may be other students like Maya, working at a different level now: adaptive teaching).  Ok, 3,2,1 boards up!  Brilliant, now, can you write something you like or tend to do and something you liked or used to do in the past?  Check your spellings! Remember that we are using the infinitive. After several examples with this, we can move to the next level.

What about reasons? how do you say "because"?  how do you say "because it can be fun"? "because it can be cool?" Excellent. Use your MWBs, 3,2,1, boards up. Ok let's do it orally now,  "how do you say because it is cheap", Tom? (cold calling, if he doesn't know I will go to someone else and then come back to him, so he cannot opt out). 

Brilliant, you are working hard and you are really helping transfer all these expressions to your long term memory!  

So how do you say "I like to listen to music because it can be fun"? thinking time, 3, 2, 1 boards up. Excellent,  how do you say "I used to play football with my brother"?  Thinking time, 3,2, 1 boards up.  Excellent, how do you say "I like to listen to music because it can be fun but I used to play football with my brother"?  This is now more challenging so the thinking time is longer.  When doing this,  try to work from memory, but the SB is there to help you as your safety net. I can then approach some of my weak students and say: I can see you are stuck, open your SB and look for "I like" and "to listen to music", that's right, can you find the other vocab?  Maya, you finished, excellent, can you add more information by saying other activities you like and liked?  Again, I am spinning the plates, approaching different students who will be working at different levels. We do these with several sentences.

Excellent, so now, using your MWB, can you write a small paragraph saying two activities you like to do in your free time and a reasons and two activities you liked/used to do before? Can you do it from memory? Tris, don't worry if you need to use your SB but make your brain work before you look at it.  You have 2 minutes to write your answer. If this is easy for you, can you make your paragraph as long as possible? OK, time is up 3,2,1  boards up!  We are moving now to paragraph level, while reassuring some  students and making sure I stretch others. 

Who would like to read their little paragraph loud for 3 Achievement Points?  Someone reads their paragraph. Excellent reading, remember how we pronounce "JU" in Spanish.  Ok, what does Maya like to do in her spare time? now, I will ask for volunteers, why does she like it?  Maya can you read it again? We now do some impromptu listening with the students' information. 

Let's have a look at your paragraphs, why is your paragraph good? Think about the 5 magical powers! Does it have more than one tense? does it have reasons? Does it have high impact expressions? Have you used "because I have always wanted to do it" or "because I am good at it" or "because it helps me relax"?  Check with your partner.  We have now moved to the metacognition self-reflection, self-monitoring sphere. 

Can you now write another paragraph in Google Classroom? Try to do  it from memory! Does  it have all the ingredients for a great paragraph? Reflect on it. Remember to use the infinitive! (Metacognitive skills). If you need to, use your SB. Trish, can you write at least 3 sentences like the ones you did with your MWB?  I am moving around (spinning the plates) and I will be giving a scratch card to those who are writing a great paragraph!

This will take the whole lesson but the idea here is that students can move from writing one word to writing a whole paragraph in different tenses, using opinions. Weaker students always have the support of their SB and are not punished or made feel less good for using these, while more able students are encouraged to write longer sentences, paragraphs from memory.  Students get constant feedback and get rewarded with Achievement Points.

Finally, I moved from monological, right-wrong questions to more metacognitive questions that make students think about their own thought process.  The beauty of this process is that it can be adapted to any level from Y7 to Y11.