Giving Students Wings: A series of 6 Webinars

I am delighted to announce that Joe Dale and I will be delivering again this term, our popular series of webinars exploring the the role of listening, reading, writing and speaking with two new additions to the series: GCSE exam preparation and gamification in the MFL classroom, as a tool to motivate students and putting language to the test!  

The six webinars will be full of practical activities involving both, the latest digital tools as well as more traditional methods underpinned by cognitive science and research. Tutorials on how to create your own personalised material are part of the webinars. You can sign up for each webinar individually or for the six of them at a discounted price. The six webinars will be recorded and the recording links shared with registrants. Recordings of the first four webinars which took place in 2022 can be purchased too.

Giving Students Wings: Listening for Learning. 18th January 2023

This first session delivered by Esmeralda Salgado and Joe Dale as part of a four part series will explore the role of listening in second language acquisition. It will demonstrate practical high impact activities to teach languages through listening, including designing innovative tasks via the latest digital tools. The session will also include tutorials on how to create some of the digital listening activities from scratch to personalise the learning of your students.

Outline:

• The role of working memory in listening
• Listening as modelling versus testing
• How screencasting can be used for flipped learning and developing independent learning skills
• How to create speaking avatars to personalise listening activities at all levels
• Embedding low stakes testing and retrieval practice tasks to check for understanding
• Exploiting songs and textbook listening material
• A guide to tackle the GCSE listening exam
• How to create a virtual language lab in the MFL classroom

By attending this webinar, attendees will come away with lots of practical and researched driven ideas to support their learners' listening skills, boost their confidence and encourage their independence.

You can sign up for the event in this link

Giving Students Wings: Reading for Learning. 1st February 2023

This second session delivered by Esmeralda Salgado and Joe Dale as part of a four part series will explore the role of reading in second language acquisition. It will demonstrate practical high impact activities to teach languages through reading, including designing innovative tasks via the latest digital tools. The session will also include tutorials on how to create some of the digital reading activities from scratch to personalise the learning of your students.

Outline:

• Your memory and the forgetting curve
• A model of information processing
• The learning journey: reading as modelling
• The reading process from bottom to top
• Reading as modelling: creating foundations for fluency
• Exploiting apps for reading
• Spicing up the reading process
• Vocab learning = vocab sticking

By attending this webinar, attendees will come away with lots of practical and researched driven ideas to support their learners' reading skills, boost their confidence and encourage their independence.

You can sign up for this event in this link.

Giving Students Wings: Writing, the Interwoven Skill. 8th February 2023

This third session delivered by Esmeralda Salgado and Joe Dale as part of a four part series will explore how writing can support input to reach language acquisition. It will demonstrate practical high impact activities to tackle writing skills from scaffolded practice to creativity, including the use of the latest digital tools to promote creative and collaborative writing in the classroom. The session will also include tutorials on how to use some of the digital tools from scratch to motivate students through writing.

Outline:

• Your memory and the forgetting curve
• A model of information processing
• The learning journey: writing as the interwoven tool to reach oral fluency
• Scaffolded writing activities
• The role of modelling writing and Metacognition
• Activities to spark creativity and promote authentic writing scenarios
• A range of digital tools to support the development of writing skills and promote collaboration

By attending this webinar, attendees will come away with lots of practical and researched driven ideas to support their learners' writing skills, boost their confidence and encourage their independence and collaboration with other students.

You can sign up for this event in this link.

Giving Students Wings: Speaking, the Core. 22nd February 2023

This fourth session delivered by Esmeralda Salgado and Joe Dale as part of a four part series will focus on oral fluency, the biggest motivating factor for students and the core of their language learning journey. The webinar will demonstrate practical high impact activities to practise oral skills from scaffolded support to creativity, including the use of the latest digital tools to promote creative oral tasks in the classroom. The session will also include tutorials on how to use some of these tools from scratch to maximise the oral skill and increase motivation in our students .

Outline:

• The ingredients of motivation
• A model of information processing
• The learning journey: reaching oral spontaneity
• Interactional Language
• Scaffolded oral practice
• Activities to start manipulating the language via oral tasks and reach spontaneity
• A range of digital tools to support speaking in and outside the classroom

You can sign up for this event in this link.

Giving Students Wings: GCSE SOS, Maximising Exam Performance.        8th March 2023

This fifth session delivered by Esmeralda Salgado and Joe Dale will focus on practical strategies to implement in the MFL classroom in order to maximise students' performance in the GCSE exam in the four different papers of listening, reading, writing and speaking. As in other sessions, it will demonstrate high impact activities to train students to access the top marks in an engaging and fun way. The session will also include tutorials on how to create some of the digital activities that will be shown in the webinar.

Outline:

• 6 Magic Powers to master in order to access the top marks in the productive skills
• The Role of knowing vocabulary for exam success
• Making the General Conversation the core of the GCSE exam: the link between the Writing and Speaking exams
• Tackling the Writing exam: practical strategies, including mastering key verbs.
• A strategy to maximise the performance in the Role Play and Photocard
• Tackling the Reading and Listening exams: a step guide that works!
• Developing revision strategies in our students

By attending this webinar, attendees will come away with lots of practical and researched driven ideas to support their learners' exam preparation skills, boost their confidence and encourage their independence.

You can sign up for this event in this link.

Giving Students Wings: Game on, Gamification in the MFL Classroom. 22nd March 2023

This sixth session delivered  will focus on the benefits of gamification in the MFL classroom at all levels to enhance motivation and create real opportunities to use the target language. The session will include live tutorials, step by step, showing how to create some quick games and how to exploit them in different ways in the MFL classroom from KS3 to A Level. '

Outline:

• Creating and exploiting Wheel of Names in innovative ways, including to practise oral and translating skills at A Level
• Creating simple and high impact games in Genially: appsmashing
• Creating and exploiting games in Flippity from KS3 to A Level
• DeckToys: taking exam skill practice to the next level
• Playing traditional games with Jamboard
• Gamifying lessons with Blooket
• Using ClassroomScreen to play simple games

By attending this webinar, attendees will come away with lots of practical and researched driven ideas to support their learners' exam preparation skills, boost their confidence and encourage their independence.

You can sign up for this event in this link.

We look forward to meeting you online!