How to survive OFSTED under the new Framework

Last Monday we got the call. Ofsted was coming home for our routine inspection, which was due. My school, Princes Risborough School, an Upper School or All-Ability School inside a selective area with Grammar Schools, had been awarded a grade 2 (Good) under the old Ofsted framework.

Since then, we have been working extremely hard to improve all aspects of the school: Behaviour and Attendance, Curriculum and Teaching, Achievement, Inclusion and Personal Development & Well-being, the five areas judged on a 5-tier scale by the new framework, goodbye to single overall grades!

The 5 grades that can be awarded for each focus area are: Exceptional (blue), Strong Standard (Dark Green), Expected Standard (Bright Green), Needs Attention (Orange), and Urgent Improvement (Red). 

Although I cannot comment yet on the results of our inspection it was very positive and we are extremely proud of what we have achieved. I thought I would share my experience of the process under the new Framework from the point of view of MFL.

Goodbye to Deep Dives

Subject Deep Dives are part of the past. Although, some Middle Leaders had a meeting with the inspectors, this was as a group, and not subject specific and without the depth expected in the old subject Deep Dive. The pressure has now shifted to the SLT who must provide evidence of achievement and curriculum for your subject, under the area of Curriculum & Teaching and Achievement. As a Middle leader in the past, part of me missed the deep dive, after all, who best knows a subject than the Head of Department? However, this has taken an enormous pressure off the shoulders for teachers. 

It is then vital that the SLT know the school curriculum well for all subjects. In preparation for this task, all middle leaders at my school worked on One Page Subject Summaries. What is that you want SLT and ultimately Ofsted know about your subject?  The Subject summary include:

• Three KEY things I want people to know and say about my subject area
• Our Current Wildly Important Goal
• Our Big Intent and Curriculum, including how the latter builds up throughout KS3 up to KS5 and our rationale behind what we choose to do in the classroom
• Implementation of the curriculum: how is this implemented? which pedagogical framework is implemented under? Why?
• Historical data and 3 year trends for KS4 and KS5.
• Impact:Most recent data 
• Narrative: What's your story? My favourite part, what has your journey been like? Why? What is your vision and your goals? Where is the deparment in the journey? 

In preparation for OFSTED

From my experience these are elements that Middle Leaders need to make sure it is happening in preparation for the "any time phone call"

• Expected and consistent set of routines within the whole MFL department and the whole school to ensure a good learning environment: How do all teachers greet students? how do all teachers secure attention in the classroom? do all students do a Do Now task and an exit ticket task in all lessons/subjects? In which format? Do student use chromebooks for your subject? When are students expected to open their chromebooks?  If students do not respond to the tasks as expected, are all teachers consistently applying the school behaviour management protocol? (In our case this is Warn, Move, Remove). These routines need to be embedded in all lessons showing clear consistency for our visitors.
• The one page Subject Summary (explained above).
• Consistency of teaching and pedagogical approach among all members of the MFL department. In our case this is a Lexicogrammar approach embedded in Rosenshine's Principles of Instruction and our school PRS CORE.  Are all teachers teaching roughly the same topic within the curriculum for a given year? What does a typical MFL lesson look like at KS3/ KS4/ KS5 at the different stages of the learning journey? Does assessment take place both, as low stakes tests and as summative assessments in all languages and in all year groups? In which shape and form?

During the visit (two days)

As a Lead Practitioner in my trust I was in charge of a Learning Walk with two inspectors visiting a wide range of English and MFL lessons. In my experience of this learning walk and observation of my own lessons, these are the elements that inspectors wanted to see in all the observed lessons:

• Detailed, annotated sitting plans. In fact they would ask me to provide these for each lesson they visited during our learning walk. So, these need to be embedded as part of the school "good practice" routine and be ready to share with the inspectors as they walk in your classroom.  They need to include information of who is a PP student or a student with SEN, specifying what type of special need, who is an EAL student or Higher Prior Achievers and a brief summary of which strategies are used in the lesson to support each of these students.  This does not need to be in detail but something like: scaffold, use small chunks, checking with name, needs prompting, avoid cold calling etc.. The inspectors will want to see inclusion in every lesson they observe and how well your students' needs are met to ensure a safe, secure and belonging  classroom environment where every child can thrive. I would suggest having corridors of PP/ students with SEN in your sitting plans so that you can access your most vulnerable students effectively. 
• The big one: CHECKING FOR UNDERSTANDING constantly throughout the lesson, taking into account the needs of all your students and in particular your most vulnerable pupils, as stated by your sitting plan. This is the big element to make sure it is happening in all lessons; and considering that our visitors may only come to a lesson for a few minutes, it has to be skillfully planned so that you can demonstrate this happens within the time they are in your lesson.   Plan questions skilfully before the lesson. These can be in the target language, or in English, regarding vocabulary, grammatical concepts or regarding an exam skill feature. You can check for understanding in different ways.
• Cold calling, not just taking answers from volunteers, although accepting a few answers from your eager students is also good practice! 
• Think, pair, share, even for very short periods like 10 or 20 seconds.
• Using a quick Google Form in a particular section of your lesson, showing statistic results in real time. Mentimeter or Padlet could also be a good way to do this.
• Exit tickets
• Mini White Boards, my favourite way in conjunction with Flippity or Wheel of Names. You can use use physical small MWBs or if using chromebooks/ laptops, you can use Canva!
• When I was observed with my Y11 class, my lesson consisted of retrieving vocabulary/ structures learned in a previous first lesson on the topic of School with MWBs and Flippity. I had skilfully prepared, in Flippity, a wide range of entries showing the beginning of a sentence that students had to translate (retrieval practice). Student also had access to  their digital version of their Sentence Builders in case my most vulnerable pupils needed to use it, although the expectation was they wouldn't. The entries included expressions like: "lessons start/ lessons finish/ for lunch I bring/ Break is at etc.." and after translate these, students had to extend the sentence applying our Rule of 3 (using at least 3 sentences/ verbs, applying our 5 Magic Powers, nicely displayed in my classroom). 
• The second big one: ADAPTIVE/ RESPONSIVE TEACHING and HAVING HIGH EXPECTATIONS FOR ALL STUDENTS by EXPECTING STUDENTS TO THINK HARD. Inspectors wanted to see examples of this happening in all lessons, paired with checking for understanding.  How do you carry out adaptive teaching?  When you check for understanding with all your students, what patterns can you notice? Which are the misconceptions? Spot these, then STOP the lesson. Ask students about the patterns you noticed: "Excellent answers, but I have noticed that some of you wrote "Ayer termino el colegio", (write it on the board), what is the issue with this sentence?" Use cold calling after allowing students to think about the answer and continue checking for understanding and making them think hard: " how should it be? What is the past tense ending for -ar verbs in Spanish? what is the past tense ending for -er/ir verbs?, let's practise with another sentence so that you can show me you can remember the concept". In other words: LOOK FOR PATTERNS/MISCONCEPTIONS, STOP, RETEACH, CHECK FOR UNDERSTANDING AGAIN and MAKE STUDENTS THINK HARD. REFRAIN YOURSELF FROM GIVING THEM THE ANSWER STRAIGH AWAY, GUIDE THEM SO THEY GIVE IT TO YOU!  Finally, have high expectations: "Ok the sentence says, "lessons start at" I need you to translate the sentence and then to extend it using our rule of 3 and using three tenses"
• High levels of engagement from the students so that your lesson demonstrates inclusion for all students. If all the above takes place in the lesson, you are providing all the ingredients for students to feel safe, motivated and supported, therefore they should be engaged. However, some classes are more challenging than others so, reward your students to boost their external motivation and engagement in order to help them, ultimately, develop intrinsic motivation.  Make sure students experience success via scaffolded, guided practice with support and reward them when they align with you. When I was observed, I asked my students to keep a tally of their correct answers in their MWB as three correct answers would get them an Achievement Point. I do this in every lesson and I religiously enter my APs in Arbor every day! MFL teachers are consistently within the group of teachers giving the biggest amount of APs in my school! and that is effective!!

Although stressful, I had a very positive experience of Ofsted and I enjoyed it, somehow. These are strategies that should be embedded in all lessons at all times but really stood out as game changers from my own Ofsted experience. Good news is: THIS IS WHAT WE NORMALLY DO AS MFL TEACHERS!!  Good luck if you receive the call!!

From 9 to 1: Teaching the mixed ability class at GCSE

After a relaxing summer, away from social media, I am back just for the release of the GCSE exam results. I am generally very pleased with our results as they exceeded by around 10% our last predictions based on our Mock Exams, with 62.8% 4+ in Spanish and 60% in French. Although this result may seem poor for some, I feel it is actually a great achievement considering many of our students were PP or students with SEN and entered the Foundation paper, with only 18 students going for the Higher Tier in Spanish and 8 in French! For some students achieving a grade 3 in languages is a big achievement and something to be proud of!! 

All our GCSE classes are mixed ability so, within the same class, our results range from the 9 to the grade 1!! When I started teaching at Princes Risborough School, a school I am incredibly proud of, our big target was to improve the GCSE uptake in MFL.  

We fulfilled this target three years ago, with more than 400% increase in numbers at Y10. This increase meant that languages became inclusive and chosen by many students who, traditionally would not have picked up a language as one of their choices at GCSE. Suddenly, we had many PP students, students with SEN and pupils who just found languages challenging but enjoyed them, understood the importance of learning them and gave them a go! This meant that we had many different attainment levels in the same classroom and also meant the acceptance that our GCSE results would not be nearly 100% 4+ as when we only had 15 students doing French and Spanish!! A price that I am more than happy to pay!!

How to cope with the GCSE mixed ability classroom? 

Via ADAPTIVE TEACHING and HAVING HIGH EXPECTTIONS FOR ALL. We decided we would pitch for the Higher Tier, covering the grammar and vocabulary for higher but we would provide lots of SCAFFOLDING and SHORTCUTS or what we call NUGGETS to help students achieve their best personal grades, without having to create different worksheets tasks for different attainers. 

These are the 7 strategies we adopted to tackle the GCSE syllabus for all:

1. Having a Sentence Builder Booklet for all the topics/ themes at GCSE with predetermined vocabulary, covering what we call the 5 MAGIC POWERS: the 5 elements that if covered in the exam for the writing and speaking components, we will guarantee a good grade.  The 5 MAGIC POWERS are:

•    Using 3 time phrases
•    Giving opinions
•    Giving reasons
•    Talking about someone else, or in its simplest form, using Reported Speech "My friend says that..."
•     Using High Impact expressions

Our Sentence Builders booklet covers these 5 MAGIC POWERS and revisits key vocabulary throughout all topics, creating lots of opportunities for retrieval practice helping students to transfer vocabulary/structures to their long-term memories.

See our Sentence Builder Booklet for all GCSE topics, here.

2. Teaching the curriculum based on our Sentence Builder booklet, using a lexicogrammar approach, rooted into Rosenshine's Principles of Instruction.  This means modelling the language (as it appears on the Sentence Builder Booklet)  via lots of repetition in the shape of listening/reading tasks, via games and use of MWBs which allows us to adapt the teaching and learning experience according to students' live responses and scaffold activities to cater for the different abilities. 

When modelling the language, via listening/reading tasks, we will produce output worthy of a 8/9 grade and will allow some students to use their Sentence Builders booklet as support, while taking it away from higher attainers, but expecting all students to work from memory at a given point, decided by the teacher/ SoW and curriculum.

After modelling, following Rosenshine, we will carry out structured production of language, mainly translation of sentences, scaffolding them from less to most challenging, using the 5 Magic Powers. 

Finally, this will lead to fluent practice, mainly via games and orally, when students start producing language from memory and fluently, following the rule of 3: producing language in at least 3 sentences, using the 5 MAGIC POWERS as support tools: talking about holidays by stating a fact and then using an opinion and reasons, saying something in a different tense, or using reported speech.  All these activities will be gamified via little games to give purpose to the language learning experience and increasing motivation. In a very simple form, students will keep a tally of correct answers in their MWBs which will translate to Achievement Points, using our school reward system.

3. Using NUGGETS.   NUGGETS (processed language)  is what we call infinitive structures which will allow students to use different tenses, without, initially, being over reliant on grammatical verb endings.  This is important as may students, including higher attainers, will lose motivation because of cognitive overload, if they need to rely heavily on conjugating verb endings when producing language. Does this mean we do not teach verb grammatical tenses? No, it doesn't. We definitely do for ALL but later, once they are fluent with the vocabulary/structures learned in a topic, feel they are making progress and feel they are fluent. The nuggets are supported tools leading to fluency. Examples of nuggets are:

• Suelo +infinitive
• Empecé a + infinitive
• Decidí/decidimos + infinitive
• Solía + infinitive
• Me gustaría + infinitive
• Me gustaba + infinitive
• Voy a + infinitive

4. Teaching, initially, to master the oral/writing exams: productive skills, using the techniques above and not over loading students with the official vocabulary lists. The Sentence Builders Booklet covers most of this vocab to start with!! So recycling this in different contexts/ topics and make students automatise it is the priority, via scaffolding.

5. Having high expectations for all. Pitching for the high tier at all times, explaining grammar, covering verb endings for different tenses accordingly, but always applying our golden rule: SCAFFOLDING THE PROCESS. Using the Sentence Builder booklet will be key for this, as the booklet itself is a fantastic scaffolded tool but also being conscious in all lessons of all our students' needs and CHECKING FOR UNDERSTANDING constantly, to make sure we can move on to the next scaffold level. 

MWBs as mentioned above are great for this.  What happens with the students who flies through the process?  Because we are checking for understanding constantly, we can spot, at a glance via MWBs, the students who find the tasks easy and we can stretch them by asking them to extend a particular sentence conjugating  a verb, using a different tense, using a particular Magic Power, removing any help and working from memory, in other words, allowing students to skip the scaffold and use a lift!!!

6. Independent Listening/ Reading exam sessions. These are key. One lesson every two weeks students carry out listening and reading tasks taken from past papers, for this we use Exampro, as we follow AQA.  These exam questions will be scaffolded from Foundation to Higher tier and will include transcripts and mark schemes so that student can work at their own pace, using headphones, look at transcripts, mark their work while making note of new vocab in their own Quizlet courses. 

This is essential because, higher attainers will have contact with new vocabulary, from the official vocab list, in context, which they will use in their own productive tasks, together with the vocab learned via the sentence builder booklet, with our guide.  On the other hand, lower attainers will have the chance to develop reading/listening skills and become familiar with the famous list, so that they can recognise this vocab in future tasks, although they may not be able to produce it themselves.

7. Targeted oral, scaffolded practice at least 4 weeks before their oral exam.  Our strongest skill performance are the Oral and the Writing components. We aim to finish the whole syllabus by March so that we have between 4-5 weeks of oral (and written) practice before the actual speaking exams.  

During these weeks, we just carry out oral tasks, ranging from the role-play, reading aloud + surprise potential questions and the Photocard. However, the way we do it is via MWB use, so that we can check for understanding instantly and can encourage students to use their "lifts" or we can support others by offering extra scaffolds by providing model answers in English, which they can translate into Spanish/French and elaborate. We still do oral practice in groups/ pairs/ one to one but only in a limited way. 

If you want to have a look at the resources we have created based on these strategies/ pedagogical pathway, click here. 

Teaching mixed ability classes is challenging!! The main take away is to have HIGH EXPECTATIONS FOR ALL via ADAPTIVE TEACHING and CHECKING FOR UNDERSTANDING, rather than using different tasks all the time for specific tiers/abilities. 

Creating a language lab for KS3 students without a language lab room: INDEPENDENT LISTENING PRACTICE

Tomorrow, 1st June,  the last 6-7 weeks of the summer term start. This year, my trust has implemented a new system where the September timetable will become effective as from tomorrow.  The rationale is to have 7 weeks to getting used to new classes and syllabi so that in September we avoid cognitive overload in both students and teachers.  This means that our Y7 students will become Y8, Y8 will become Y9 and so on.  

In languages, this also means that our Y9 students (Y8 until half term) will have an independent listening lesson every two weeks, one out of their four lessons a fortnight.  This lesson, introduced in Y9 and continuing up to Y11, has ben instrumental in our school big uptake of languages at GCSE.  It consists of a lesson, where students work independently through a set of skilful and scaffolded listening tasks, with their Chromebook and a set of headphones, which we get in Amazon.  

Why an independent listening session at KS3?

Second language acquisition takes place through comprehensive input, in fact, research states that in order for students to understand listening tasks, these need to integrate 95%  of comprehensive input. Such input, after conscious and skilful flooded modelling, will start turning into output or production, once vocabulary and grammatical processes become fully embedded into the long term memory, with the help of retrieval and deliberate practice.

In this process, to dedicate meaningful time to flood students with 95% comprehensive vocabulary and structures, will be key to help students "learn" and embed such input into their long term memories and to start producing language, in time, via structured and deliberate practice. In this context, listening is for learning not for testing and a tool to focus on phonics, segmentation of words, meaning and grammatical practice of structures.

Similarly, students love these independent listening lessons. 

Students like using headphones and work at their own pace, through achievable tasks (95% comprehension input) which motivates them, specially those students with SEN as it scaffolds the learning process in a relaxed and self-directed way.  

These lessons are a fantastic example of ADAPTIVE TEACHING at its best, as the tasks created by us become a response to the gaps that we identified in previous lessons and allows us to scaffold the process of listening throughout the session. The sessions tend to work really well during periods 4 and 5, in particular, when students may be more excitable as the nature of the sessions, working in silence, will calm students and help them to focus on their learning.

How to create an independent listening session: What tasks work well?

We are a Google school so we use Slides and Google Classroom as the main tool to deliver these lessons.  

We create different listening tasks, one per slide, attached to an audio file, previously recorded by us with Vocaroo or created using AI via the Google AI suite and the text to speech feature. 

The tasks are scaffolded and there is always an available link in each slide, to key vocabulary, for example,  our Sentence Builders via Sentencebuilders.com. Similarly, platforms such as Sanako (online language lab solution), which we also use, are a fantastic way to create and share the tasks with your classes, allowing you not only to practise listening skills but also oral production.

These are some of the listening tasks we use in the classroom:

1. Filling the gaps, focussing on specific grapheme-phoneme correspondence, or specific grammatical input (auxiliary verbs or verb endings), which students find it difficult to spot. When designing the tasks, there may be several filling the gaps activities, going from only a gap in a sentence to several gaps. These can also be supported by giving the initial letter of the missing word or a list of words by the side. When scaffolding, we provide a different slide for each level.

2. Divide the words. This may seem simple but it can be challenging for many students as they tend to not be able to distinguish the gaps between words in a listening sequence.  In this task, students listen to sentences, which are written without gaps as mega long sentences in slides, and students need to separate the gaps between the words. This is excellent to train students to identify "liason" or "sinalefa".  The activity can easily lead to a translation task and it can be scaffolded from shorter to longer sentences.

3. Spot the mistake. In this task, students listen to the different sentences and just highlight any words that are different in the written version on the slide. This is great to practise pair of words that are similar, for example "pero" versus "perro" or "toco" "tocó". At a different level, students need to identify the mistake and correct it. 

4. Dictation tasks, which can be scaffolded from simpler to longer sentences or by providing initials of words in the dictation task.

5. Putting sentences in order. Students are provided with a list of sentences in slides, and they just need to write the order in which they listen to them. The sentences can be in target language or, in a subsequent slide, in English. They may contain very short sentences or longer input . This task works best when sentences are very similar, so that students need to listen to the detail: "Toco el piano por las tardes porque es divertido" "Tocó el piano por la tarde porque es divertido". 

6. Listen and finish the sentence. This is a scaffolded variation of dictation tasks as students need to write what they understand but we provide them with the beginning of the sentence or word. This can be done in target language, as a dictation, or in English, transcribing what has been heard.

7. Matching half sentences. 

8. Fill in the gaps with a grammatical focus and then listening to the audio to check choices. 

Using Technology and AI to speed up and spice up the process

We use AI tools to help us create the different tasks and the audio material. This can be done via ChatGpt or Gemini, where a list of key words can be introduced and ask the AI tools to create all the above tasks, which you can just then copy and paste into your Slides.  Once tasks and scripts have been created, AI Gemini Suite, will allow you to create the audio material using the text to speech function, which includes dialogues too!!

We use Vidnoz and the students love it!! 

Vidnoz allows us to create, for free, one minute video avatars talking on a particular topic, which can be easily downloaded as MP4s. 

In a scaffolded independent listening session, we use these videos as the last or more challenging task, as students will be working, not a sentence level, but paragraph level. 

Students watch and listen to the avatar talking and they carry out many of the activities described above but at paragraph level: fill in the gaps, at different levels, spotting the mistakes in the written version of  the audio, arranging the order of the written version of the audio according to the video etc.  

 Vidnoz also works brilliantly to help students to read aloud. Students can listen/watch the avatar while they read the text in their heads, then, they can read the text aloud themselves.  This video/audio material also leads nicely to writing tasks by providing a model, which can be exploited in a subsequent "normal" lesson: dissecting the text by translating it, asking key questions on the text and finally asking students to provide their own version of the paragraph. 

Suno is a personal favourite. Suno will create very catchy songs based on your own transcript, focussed on the important 95% comprehensive input. 

I use the songs in many of my lessons to promote speaking and focus on pronunciation, however, the songs are also recycled as listening tasks during our independent listening sessions. Students listen to the songs and fill in the gaps, again, scaffolded in different levels, spot the mistakes in the lyrics according to the audio version or translate the song.

You can find an example of a Suno song on Barcelona and descriptive vocab to describe a town here

An example of a listening independent lesson with specific activities via slides, can be found here. 

 

Beyond the Red Pen: Adaptive teaching in MFL as a tool to reduce "formal" marking

Happy belated Easter! As the end of the Easter holidays approaches, I want to reflect on the power of adaptive teaching and how, when it is applied skilfully, it can reduce the time we need to spend on more formal marking, because, adaptive teaching is all about constant formative assessment of students' performance, is all about constant checking for understanding and how we react to this in order to close gaps, tackle misconceptions and stretch all students, via skilful scaffolding. 

Adaptive teaching should take place at all stages of the language learning journey. Following Rosenshine's Principles of Instruction and the foundations of a lexicogrammar approach, this language journey can be divided in 4 stages: Modelling, Structured Practice, Expansion (via the study of grammatical rules) and Independent Practice, to lead to Fluency under a communicative framework. 

Adaptive teaching, should take place at all these four stages of learning and, because we react to students' outcomes, then and there, the feedback is immediate: the reaction to these outcomes. This means that that marking books can become obsolete and unnecessary. Of course, personal comments on pupils' work can still take place, but this will become more of a encouraging tool rather than the main means to close gaps.  Formal marking of work, using specific rubrics, normally rooted in exam boards criteria, will still be needed; but this will be more sporadic and comments on these more tactical, which will also be the source of future teaching based on common errors spotted by us.  This formal marking can also be assisted by AI generative tools, for example, the new "Help me Write Feature" in GoogleClassroom will write a review on students' work based on specific rubrics which we can then modify accordingly to help us save precious time!

How does Adaptive teaching looks in practice?

Through Modelling

In the modelling stage, adaptive teaching can be achieved with the help of MWBs. After choral repetition of vocabulary/ key structures, to which we can react straight away from a phonics and pronunciation point of view, carrying out Dictation tasks using MWBs can be extremely powerful. 

We can scaffold the process by providing students with with key vocab handouts of sentence builders to be used if needed, or displaying these on the board for support. We can then carry out different dictation tasks, scaffolding the process: starting with simple sentences leading to more complex utterances, carrying out the dictation tasks in a slower or faster pace, repeating several times as needed, basically, responding 100% to students' performance on the MWBs.  

At this stage, having a seating plan where we can clearly identify Premium Pupil students, students with SEN and Gifted and Talented pupils, will be essential, as we navigate the classroom encouraging these students and giving them quick guidance ( pointing them out to the use of our Sentence Builder or just telling them not to use these and extend answers).

 As we are responding to students' work, we can spot specific common gaps, for example, on links between phonemes and graphemes and reinforce these. We can also stretch the students by asking them to translate sentences/ key vocab on the spot or explain a particular grammatical rule which can inform us on how well our students know specific material and act upon it. 

At this point, we are marking students' work and nothing can be more interactive and powerful than our reaction to this on the spot, instead of wating for a worksheet to be marked in a couple of weeks!!

Through Structured Practice

At this stage, students will be carrying out more oral, communicative tasks, in pairs or small groups, for example via information gap activities, board games where students have to translate given sentences, battleships  or connect four games etc.. 

When students are carrying out these more independent tasks, we should be moving around the classroom, again, spotting mistakes, encouraging key students to extend answers and helping those students who need it by guiding them to use a sentence builder or oral mat. 

Structured Practice although should involve oral practice, can be preceded by whole group work, again, via MWBs. For this, I am a big fan of Flippity or Wheel of Names, where key structures come out and students need to translate them into the target language and pupils be encouraged to extend their answers using the Rule of 3 (using 3 sentences for each answer) or our 5 Magic Powers, linked to the Rule of 3. 

This way, we can spot gaps, reteach misconceptions, revise key vocabulary and stretch pupils by asking them to use different tenses or vocabulary from previous topics and react to students' answers. Again, feedback is carried out interactively and effectively while carrying out these activities.

Through Independent Practice

At this stage students will be practising communicative tasks, where they will need to think on the spot for specific answers to given questions or situations.  At this point, scaffolding the process and reacting to students' performance before they need to be fully independent will be key. 

To do this, we can show any oral questions we want students to answer in a Flippity format or Wheel of Names and expect students to write model answers before embarking on oral tasks to develop confidence and allowing them to reflect on their own knowledge, making the link between productive skills. 

This can be done via MWBs again, so that we can guide and stretch students as needed while checking for understanding for the use of specific grammatical structures or tenses. This can be extremely useful to develop fluency. 

After a few minutes answering key questions in writing, we can then carry out oral work in pairs or groups, for example via games such as this Monopoly Game to practise potential questions for the new GCSE exam. 

Once students are carrying out these oral activities independently, as with the previous stage, moving around, spotting mistakes, talking to students to give guidance or encouraging them to extend answers is our way to adapt our teaching. At some point, we may need to stop an oral activity to give feedback to the whole class on a specific common error or we may need to reteach or revise a specific grammatical point or tense. 

Adaptive teaching and Metacognition

Another big asset of using adaptive teaching via interactive techniques is that we also develop metacognition skills with our students. As we drive students through their learning journey via the use of key questions and by scaffolding the process, we can add more reflection moments which will help students to identify and self-assess what they command. 

Doing Brain Dumps, which I call In my own words, can be a wonderful strategy here, for example, by asking students to write down all the vocabulary they remember from the previous lesson or write down a paragraph as long as possible, using the structures and vocabulary practised throughout a lesson or previous lessons. Similarly, using quick, low stake tests or self- quizzes via Flippity or Forms, will help students to retrieve vocab, structures and self-assess their own progress. 

Carrying out learning schedules to encourage guided independent practice at GCSE level, can also be a powerful tool which will help students to develop ownership for their own learning journey. I use learning schedules via Padlet, an example can be found here.

By adapting our teaching to students' responses in situ, what I call, spinning the plates, we are providing valuable and face to face feedback to all our students, which is more powerful than a written comment in an exercise book, Onenote book or Google Classroom Assignment. 

To embed this in our department procedures, a clear mark scheme where specific reference to how we provide specific feedback to students in our MFL department is essential. Key pieces of written and oral work will still be needed to be marked and collated, however, the routinary and time consuming process of marking books can be fully avoided or minimised if adaptive teaching is fully embedded in all lessons by all members of the MFL department.

After the MOCK exams: THE LEARNING SCHEDULE STRATEGY

Like most teachers in the country, we have just finished our Mock Exams. For our school, this is the second set of trial exams carried out by our Year 11 classes.  The data that comes from these exams is invaluable in deciding a course of action for the next few weeks, leading to the actual exams in May and June. 

To help students analyse the data, we use the following KS4 Self-Reflection Exam analysis form, which breaks up students' performance by skill and helps them see how many marks away they are from the next grade.

There are several elements to consider, when we analyse the data of our Y11 classes:

• Which skill was the worst performed by our students?
• Within that skill, which question or section was the most challenging?
• Which skill was the best performed? Why? 
• How many marks are students away from the next grade?

Exactly a year ago, I wrote a blog post "SOS: After the mock exams, what?" describing a strategy to follow in order to maximise, listening, reading, writing and speaking skills in the last few weeks of the course. Although this was meant for the old languages GCSE qualification, the strategies and techniques are the same. You can access the blogpost here.

In this short post, I want to focus on creating a learning schedule for the students.

I see, year after year, that students perform in lessons and generally can do the work well but once they are at home, a part from specific homework tasks, they do not know how to revise. 

In the case of the languages exams, this task becomes harder, as students have 4 different papers to prepare for requiring specific skills and within the papers, different exam questions, such as the translation or dictation tasks, all underpinned by a strong vocabulary and grammar command and knowledge. 

Even the best students can become overwhelmed with the languages revision demands and many reduce this revision task to learning some random quizlets, with disjointed vocabulary, with a few carrying out some past papers, in the best of cases, normally, a day or two before the actual GCSE exams. 

To help students with their revision, we have created The Learning Schedules.

We have created two learning schedules: One to be carried out, specifically during the Easter holiday period, focussed, entirely on the Oral exam and a second one, spread over three weeks, to be started mid May, leading to the actual Listening, Reading and Writing exams. 

The schedules tell students what to revise and for how long, on each day, during a given week. Ours is based on 5 days of learning revising 45 minutes on each day.  We have used Padlet to create the schedules so that these are fully accessible and interactive, with direct links to specific, quizlet, Mizou courses, past papers or Exampro tasks.

The Oral exam Learning Schedule

You can access the Oral exam learning schedule here.  The idea is to start the schedule during the Easter Holidays. The main focus of the schedule is to prepare students for the unprepared conversation following the description of the two photos and reading aloud tasks, by chunking the revision of different topics throughout different days, with interleaving practice and using Mizou to practise random, potential questions for the exam.  When following the schedule, students will identify gaps and they are encouraged to be proactive, and go back to their own Sentence Builders Booklet to revise any topic which they may find challenging.

The May-June Learning Schedule 

You can access the May-June Learning Schedule here.  This schedule is meant to start once the oral exams are finished. It practises lots of different skills: 

• Writing, using potential questions from the previous schedule and Mizou, now to be carried out in writing.
• Reading and Listening, using past papers from previous years and Exampro tasks
• Official AQA vocabulary learning, via quizlets featuring all official vocabulary.
• The 5 Magic Powers practice, via a quizlet and a technique to maximise the skill: to write a sentence with each key structure.
• Grammar practice, focussed on verb endings via interactive tasks for Higher Students and interactive practice for Foundation Students on Question 3 of the writing paper.
• Dictation and translation, via interactive Exampro tasks.

The schedule breaks up the revision of these elements, day by day, giving students flexibility to assess and evaluate which skills to focus on, depending on the data provided by our Mock exams. Ultimately, we want students to ask themselves:

Which skill do I struggle the most? 

Which particular question do I struggle the most?

How can I practise my verb endings?

How can I practise the 5 Magic Powers and the Verb Nuggets as an alternative to verb endings, if I need to?

How can I practise my listening and reading skills?

How can I practise the vocabulary?

and find something in the schedule to close the gap so that they become independent learners. 

Exploring Gemini Gems in Google Classroom: Study Partner

I hope everyone had a wonderful half-term break! In this post, I would like to share how you can create a Gem Assignment in Google Classroom, which will support your students with their learning. In other words, I will show you step by step, how you can create a Study Partner, fully personalised to your students' needs, using the content that you, as a teacher, want. This could be extremely useful to help Y11 students in their learning for mock exams and for the real exams in the Summer.  This feature, together with Brisk Boost Student Activity function, NotebookLM and Mizou, are in my opinion at the moment, the best students Study Partners for KS4 and KS5 students.

How does it work?

The idea is to create an activity, generated by AI, where a virtual tutor will guide students to learn/memorise/revise key content for their GCSE MFL exam.  To help the process, I based my instructions on the following GCSE AQA New GCSE Sentence Builders booklet, which can be accessed here.   These are the steps to follow:

1. Go to GoogleClassroom, select your class and go to Classwork

2. Click on Create. Here, together with the classic, Assignment and Material, you can now find NotebookLM and Gem. Click on Gem.

3. Click on New and Study Partner. This will create an assignment, with an attached document, which is the new Study Partner gem, where normally you would have found any document to share with students, such as Slides or Docs. It will look something like the picture below. 

4. Click on the document Study partner with the blue Gemini star next to it. This action will open the Study Partner in Gemini. It will look something like the picture below.

5. This is the important part now where you need to personalise your Study Partner Gem for your students. On the left hand side, under Gems, click on your newly created Study Partner and click on the 3 dots. This will open a little menu. Click on Edit. 

6. This action will open open the Instructions  and Knowledge boxes for you to define the Persona of your Study Partner Gem, what the objectives of the app are and what to use as a reference for the guided instruction. There are some templates which I modified to give specific instructions.

Under Knowledge, (you can add documents here) I added my GCSE Sentence Builder Booklet. Under Instructions I made clear reference to the new GCSE AQA syllabus and the importance to guide students to learn the structures in the booklet so that they could create sentences and paragraphs on their own, using different tenses, giving opinions and reasons and where possible, to be encouraged to talk about someone else by adapting the vocabulary found in the attached booklet. On the right, you can see a preview of your Gem to test it. 

7. Close the Gem and you will go back to your GoogleClassroom Assignment/Material box. Click on Post, as you will do with any normal assignment. That's it! 

By the way, when giving instructions, you can also change the name of your Gem. I called mine Study Amigo.

This is the final result, Study Amigo Study Partner to help my Y10 and Y11 students to practise the vocabulary and structures for the new AQA GCSE for Spanish. Apologies if it does not work outside my organisation, that can be the case! 

Overall, a high impressive Study Partner which was generated in minutes, using our specific vocabulary input. 

How to develop fluency in the unprepared conversation for the GCSE ORAL exam.

Yesterday I wrote a blog in respond to AQA new guidance to mark the unprepared conversation. Following the signs of times: u turns a as norm, that guidance has been scrapped. This is great news for the reasons I elaborated on yesterday, mainly, the impact that such guidance would have on less able students. 

I did also create a mark scheme for teachers to use when carrying out the mocks. The sheet, although would need to get rid of the number of questions element, can still be used and it may save time. You can get it here. Click here. Despite this positive change, there is a clear emphasis, and rightly so, to avoid rote learning and extending your answers, without preparing monologues! 

As mentioned in the second part of my blog yesterday, these are the two strategies we have adopted in our department to teach students to think in their feet and not relying on pre learned questions.

The extended element. The rule of three 

                                                    

AQA was always very honest about their definition of  very well extended, good and limited extended answers, which I found very helpful. That’s why in our department we have been teaching students to use the rule of 3, even for foundation students who only need to extend their answers with two clauses (having conjugated verbs).The rule of 3 is simple. For each question you are asked, apart from the roleplay, always give three pieces of information using a verb. To mechanise the process and not pre learn answers, we use, as we used in the previous GCSE syllabus, the 5 Magic Powers, which are embedded in our curriculum and mark schemes since Y7. They are:

Using more than one tense

Giving opinions 

Giving reasons

Talking about someone else or using reported speech

Using high impact expressions

Every single topic we teach, aims to cover the 5 Magic Powers in the productive skills. The rule of 3 is tightly linked to this: every question must have reference to at least 3 Magic Powers:  

¿te gusta el fútbol? Me gusta el fútbol (opinión) porque me ayuda a relajarme (reason + high impact expression) . Antes solía jugar al fútbol también (two tenses used + high impact expression used with solía). That is a well extended answer by AQA definition for Higher tier and I know that many of my Foundation students can produce something like this too.  

Students have many ways to use the Magic Powers, which are transferable to any topic/theme avoiding having to learn answers to questions by heart. We use this 5  Magic Powers Poster for students to stick in their bedrooms and are constantly referred to in lessons, especially, to coach students on using clever ways to avoid conjugating a verb if they forget the endings: using suelo/ solía/ me gustaría/ decidí/ empecé a/ voy a/ + infinitive.  

Follow up Questions Structures 

We created an oral booklet, a copy of which can be found here. In the booklet there are potential questions per topic BUT in lessons, we don’t only practise these questions, we also extensively practise the FOLLOW UP QUESTIONS STRUCTURES. This is a nice FIPPLITY activity to go with it. 

The Follow up Questions Structures are meant to move students from learning answers by heart. They are a set of questions that can be applied to any topic and when used in lessons, especially with MWBs to start with, together with the 5 Magic Powers, not only they help students to achieve fluency in oral and written skills but they are also an excellent tool for retrieval practice. The structures are:

¿Te gusta  el fútbol/ tu colegio/tu ciudad/tu amigo etc… as many possibilities as you want for any topic it can include a noun or an Infinitive ver vídeos de TikTok

¿Antes te gustaba…..?

¿Te gustaría….?

¿Qué opinas de…?

¿Cómo es….?

¿Cómo era..?

¿Cómo sería…?

¿Qué haces….?

¿Qué hiciste…..el año pasado/ayer?

¿Qué te gustaría hacer para….?

¿Cuál es tu……favorito/a?

¿Quién es tu…..favorito/a?

¿Prefieres….o….?

Once you combine the follow up questions structures along all 9 topics, you can ask 100s of questions and impossible to learn by heart each combination, but using the structures is an incredibly powerful tool, if practised enough alongside the 5 Magic Powers, to answer any unprepared question and extend answers, especially for lower strainer students, which contributes to experiencing success.  

By using these tools, I am confident that spontaneity and fluency can be achieved with step by step modelling and practice! 

Have a wonderful half term!

AQA 2026 New Guidance on the Oral Mark Scheme. Thoughts and tools for success

Half term is nearly here for everyone and in kind of typical "last minute", "wait-for-your-busiest time" moment, last week, AQA announced their new guidance to mark the unprepared conversation after the photocards description. The time to announce this guidance, was not the best: by the end of term 1 when teachers feel tired and may be overwhelmed. 

This vital information should have been announced in September or, even better, last year, when all teachers embarked on teaching the new GCSE syllabus. 

The new guidance has created some upheave in the MFL teaching community and I can see why. 

The guidance clearly stipulates the amount of questions that teachers need to ask on the day of the exam and the amount of extension that is required  to award different marks. I can see how AQA wants to be crystal clear about what is required to achieve specific marks and, most importantly, wants to avoid students pre learning answers to questions or rote learning. 

I get it. However, in doing so at this stage, AQA may have created both, stress for the teacher conducting the exam, and for students, specially lower attainers and SEN pupils, who had chosen languages as one of their options, even though, “everyone knows how hard they are”. 

Why is that? 

Let's focus on the MFL teacher. Up to recently, when conducting the oral exam, teachers had to make sure stuck to the stipulated time, asked appropriate questions for a given theme and tried to get the best out of students with skilful question technique. 

Now, the MFL teacher will have to deal with another layer: to count/tick how many questions are actually asked. Basically, minimum of 17 questions for Higher and 12 for Foundation. Although it does not seem much, is another element added to a highly stressful situation: the conduct of the exam. However, it can be easily overcome with a good preparation sheet on the day. 

I have created the following sheet to print for each candidate to help us conduct and mark mock exams, and which can be used/ adapted for the real exam to tick on boxes as we ask students questions for the unprepared conversation after describing the photocards.  Click here.

From the point of view of the student, this new piece of information is not about ticking boxes, but a much more pronounced shift. Based on the guidance, which had been published so far and my own teaching experience, I had been reassuring students not to worry about the amount of questions they will be asked on the day, as it is not about hitting a magic number of questions, but, talking, clearly and confidently for a specific period of time. My focus has always been on increasing confidence in students and minimise panic factors while creating positive attitudes to learning: a "I can do" attitude.  Having a specific number of questions to answer on the day, minimum of 12 for Foundation students, may be a big worry factor for lower attainer students. 

Students, including those with SEN, can, indeed, do very well in the oral exam. However, having to answer 12 questions, in the stipulated time, may prove a little bit too much for some, because SEN and lower attainer students tend to need more time to think due to processing difficulties. This new variable may lead to anxiety and underperforming. 

Under this new guidance, I could ask students 6 questions, not 12, where answers may be well extended, as described by AQA, and students may use a good variety of vocabulary, however, automatically, students won’t qualify for the top marks in AO1, as only 6 questions were asked. 

I was always confident I could get the most out of my students, but specially foundation tier, by asking skilful questions, getting them at ease and promote extended answers, by asking follow up questions such as: why? And what is your opinion on that? If extended answers are not naturally delivered by the pupils. Up to now, it was the whole performance in the general conversation that counted, independently on the number of questions asked. 

There was a choice: some students would benefit from fewer questions, because they needed extra time to process information, and others from more questions to get a particular grade. That choice is not available anymore, as all students will need to ask a set number of questions to reach a certain mark. 

This may have deep consequences on our less able students who need more time to process/produce information. This may, paradoxically lead to more rote learning as students will feel they need to be fast giving their answers and what’s the best way to do so? By learning model answers!! Although I understand the rationale behind AQA's announcement, moving away from-time only based conversations to a specific number of questions + time conversations may not be the best way to avoid rote learning and make GCSE languages accessible to all.

The extended element. The rule of three 

                                                    

AQA was always very honest about their definition of  very well extended, good and limited extended answers, which I found very helpful. That’s why in our department we have been teaching students to use the rule of 3, even for foundation students who only need to extend their answers with two clauses (having conjugated verbs).The rule of 3 is simple. For each question you are asked, apart from the roleplay, always give three pieces of information using a verb. To mechanise the process and not pre learn answers, we use, as we used in the previous GCSE syllabus, the 5 Magic Powers, which are embedded in our curriculum and mark schemes since Y7. They are:

Using more than one tense

Giving opinions 

Giving reasons

Talking about someone else or using reported speech

Using high impact expressions

Every single topic we teach, aims to cover the 5 Magic Powers in the productive skills. The rule of 3 is tightly linked to this: every question must have reference to at least 3 Magic Powers:  

¿te gusta el fútbol? Me gusta el fútbol (opinión) porque me ayuda a relajarme (reason + high impact expression) . Antes solía jugar al fútbol también (two tenses used + high impact expression used with solía). That is a well extended answer by AQA definition for Higher tier and I know that many of my Foundation students can produce something like this too.  

Students have many ways to use the Magic Powers, which are transferable to any topic/theme avoiding having to learn answers to questions by heart. We use this 5  Magic Powers Poster for students to stick in their bedrooms and are constantly referred to in lessons, especially, to coach students on using clever ways to avoid conjugating a verb if they forget the endings: using suelo/ solía/ me gustaría/ decidí/ empecé a/ voy a/ + infinitive.  

Follow up Questions Structures 

We created an oral booklet, a copy of which can be found here. In the booklet there are potential questions per topic BUT in lessons, we don’t only practise these questions, we also extensively practise the FOLLOW UP QUESTIONS STRUCTURES. This is a nice FIPPLITY activity to go with it. 

The Follow up Questions Structures are meant to move students from learning answers by heart. They are a set of questions that can be applied to any topic and when used in lessons, especially with MWBs to start with, together with the 5 Magic Powers, not only they help students to achieve fluency in oral and written skills but they are also an excellent tool for retrieval practice. The structures are:

¿Te gusta  el fútbol/ tu colegio/tu ciudad/tu amigo etc… as many possibilities as you want for any topic it can include a noun or an Infinitive ver vídeos de TikTok

¿Antes te gustaba…..?

¿Te gustaría….?

¿Qué opinas de…?

¿Cómo es….?

¿Cómo era..?

¿Cómo sería…?

¿Qué haces….?

¿Qué hiciste…..el año pasado/ayer?

¿Qué te gustaría hacer para….?

¿Cuál es tu……favorito/a?

¿Quién es tu…..favorito/a?

Once you combine the follow up questions structures along all 9 topics, you can ask 100s of questions and impossible to learn by heart each combination, but using the structures is an incredibly powerful tool, if practised enough alongside the 5 Magic Powers, to answer any unprepared question and extend answers, especially for lower strainer students, which contributes to experiencing success.  

By using these tools, I am confident that our students will be able to cope, in theory, with 12-17 unprepared oral questions, hence this post! However, I also believe that moving from time to number of questions based conversations may, paradoxically lead to rote learning if this aspect of the exam is not tackled efficiently and students feel under pressure to answer a specific number of questions.

Maximising AI: Using Gemini Storybook Gem and Brisk together

Next week we are starting the new academic year and we will be planning first lessons for all our classes. After analysing GCSE exam results, this is exactly what I am doing this week: planning my first lessons in GoogleClassroom. 

In the case of KS3 (Y8 and Y9) I always like starting the first lesson setting the expectations of the class, what is our motto and why "Languages, a life skill to achieve", going through all the apps we will be using and making sure they can log in properly, (Sentence Builders, Languagenut, Quizlet) and a quick revision, about two lessons, on the work carried out last year. What can the students remember?

This year, I have also planned to carry out a reading activity to revise key vocabulary and grammar learned last year. Will my students remember any??? 

For that, I have used the assistance of AI, and inspired by Joe Dale, I created a PhotoStory for my lesson boosted by Brisk. I am planning, first, to read the story as a whole class, asking students to read aloud, asking them key questions on the text and while students use their MWBs to interact with me while reading the text. 

To create my resources, this is the process I followed with links to the final activities, all created within minutes, using Gemini AI and Brisk Teaching.

1. I went to Gemini AI, PhotoStory GEM option. Once I was there, I gave Gemini the following prompt:  "Create a Photostory for Y9 students of Spanish, in Spanish, using the vocabulary in the attached document. Make sure the story is engaging for 13 year old students".

I uploaded my Sentence Builder Booklet in PDF format, containing all the sentence builders learned by my students in Y7 and Y8.  Gemini created the following storybook, "El verano de nuestros sueños"

2. I opened the storybook so it showed on my screen, and opened Brisk from my Chrome Google Extensions bar. Once Brisk was open, I clicked on "Create" and "Forms" and I used the following prompt: "Create a reading comprehension quiz (20 multiple choice questions and two short answer questions) in English about the photostory that is showing on the screen".  

Within seconds, Brisk created this Form. I thought it was pretty good! 

3. As I want to support my students when carrying out the activity, I clicked on "Boost Activity" "Tutoring Option" in Brisk. This option makes the whole difference!! Once clicked, Brisk creates a task, which you can just share with your class, where the students carry out the previous Reading Comprehension Quiz, but now, with the help of a virtual Tutor which will guide them through the process.  

The final activity to share with students, using "Boost Activity" in Brisk, looks like this. 

The whole process took minutes!!! 

Overall, I am very happy with the result: The Storybook is engaging and looks like a book!!  I can exploit the text, traditionally, while sharing the link with my students in GoogleClassroom and then expect students to work independently with Forms and having the Tutoring option for help.  

After GCSE results day: strategic thinking to “feed forward”

Congratulations to all departments for your GCSE results! 

Whatever your students got, remember, not YOU, it is important to analyse the data, to celebrate success, to look at trends, to identify strongholds and weak links. At Princess Risborough we are extremely happy, as students performed above national overage for MFL and they obtained the results we had predicted, which is extremely important, to avoid nasty surprises on results day!!

It is important and fascinating to look at the data provided by the exam boards, for example, using Centre Services in AQA. You can analyse results by skill, but also by question: which part of the writing or oral exams did your students struggle with? Which particular questions in the Listening and Reading papers were challenging or very accessible? Why? 

Although next year our students will sit a different exam format, still this information is extremely valuable to practise skills and make realistic and spot on predictions in your next cohort of Y11 students. 

If your department is lucky enough to have different groups/classes per language, can you spot a trend in performance among classes, which may lead to teaching and learning issues and approach? This can then be addressed in CPD for your department. Can you notice trends in relation to gender and tiers? 

This information will be key for your school departmental results analysis and will help you analyse trends and most importantly, identify an action plan to boost grades and overall performance in all your students. 

Once trends have been identified, think about which skills students performed the best at and why and which skills were the weakest. 

How are you going to tackle the weakest areas in your department? 

Here are some strategies that have worked for me over the years and will help your new Y11 students to prepare for the next exams in June 2026.

Tackling Listening an Reading skills 

In our case, these two skills seem to be the weakest links year after year, mainly because of the mismatch between the language we teach for productive skills and the language students encounter, in very different contexts, in the Reading and Listening papers. This issue is meant to be corrected with the new GCSE for MFL and the introduction of specific vocabulary lists to be revisited within a variety of topics. 

Nevertheless, these papers are all about exam skill and getting used to the type of language that students will encounter in the exam. 

To overcome this issue, dedicate, as a department, one lesson every two weeks to independent listening and reading practice.

To start with, you will need to do this as a whole class. Get past papers questions, for example from the questions that students found the most challenging from your this year analysis. Even though we are dealing with a new GCSE syllabus, model with your class how to tackle the questions, by using the strategy “I do, we do, you do” and progressively expecting students to work independently in class. 

For this, have a set of headphones in your department, or ask students to bring theirs together with their own device so they can carry out listening tasks, independently: going forward, backwards or even manipulating the speed of the audio. 

Give students the transcript of any task,  so that they can read and listen to the audio material. Create your own listening tasks with fill in the gaps, fill in the gaps without gaps, so you make students focus on key words which they normally find difficult to identify.  

Give students the mark scheme so that they can mark their work and reflect on their performance. 

However, the most important thing is for students to make a note of new vocabulary encountered in these questions, add it to their Quizlet lists, or their vocab books. Then ask them to revise the list every so often. It is important to make students aware of how different words appear in different contexts!!!

Tackling writing and oral skills

Dedicate another lesson every two weeks to timed writing tasks to be carried out in exam conditions. These sessions are vital in Y11 and will allow you to start revising Y10 topics as from September. 

I give students a writing question, one for Foundation and one for Higher, based on past topics and students prepare it as h/w, in our case, making sure they use our 5 Magic Powers in their answers. 

This forces students to revise past topics, key vocab, structures and grammar! Then, in exam conditions and for 30 minutes, they carry out the task in class. 

It is important to mark these tasks as soon as possible using the official mark scheme for your board and to give students feedback while sharing the mark scheme with them. 

This will allow students to become familiar with mark schemes and will make them aware of what is needed to achieve a particular grade. 

At this point, it is vital that students see the link between the writing and the oral exams!!! 

When they revise for these writing tasks, strategically set by you, they are also revising and learning potential questions for the oral paper! 

This takes me to how to boost oral performance: 

After spending 30 minutes carrying out the timed writing task, students can use the other 30 minutes to revise oral skills on the same topic as their writing task.  

The way I do this successfully, is by using MWBs.

I show two photocards in the screen and students write in their MWBs what they would say about the photos.  Remember that in the new GCSE, students will have 15 minutes preparation time when they can take notes which they can take to the exam room.  This technique prepares them to make good use of that time, quickly! As I only give them 3 minutes to write possible answers before shouting “Boards up”. 

After that, I ask questions in Spanish on the theme in relation to the photos and students write down what they would say. This really helps students to gain confidence before moving to individual oral practice in pairs! 

Using Mizou has been a revelation for this technique, as students can practise individually their oral skills!  I have crated courses in Mizou for all topics covered so far in Y10 with potential/model questions that students may encounter in the actual oral exam. These are always available in Google Classroom and will form a key element of revision before their oral exam. 

As the year progresses, you may practise the Roleplay and Reading Aloud components of the oral exam, as a whole class or in pairs carrying out different games. 

The important thing is to link the writing question that students prepare for h/w, with the oral practice tasks that you plan for these sessions. 

This means that one lesson every week, is used for students to practise specific skills: either reading with listening or writing with speaking. 

To carry out these tasks you may use external platforms such as Languagenut too but just by using past questions using a platform such as Exampro or ExamWizard is just enough. 

In fact we believe so much in the power of consciously teaching listening, that at KS3, students have a lesson every two weeks dedicated to independent listening practice. 

Finally, think of the power of departmental CPD: what about requesting a recall of papers at different grades to analyse them as a team? 

Does your team need training on the use of AI to boost teaching and learning in your department?

 For example by learning how to use Mizou, Brisk, Diffit, ChatGPT or Gemini for Google. There’s a very interesting tool in Gemini to create photo stories based on given vocabulary which will allow students to practise reading for pleasure using GCSE vocabulary away from the exam context! 

Remember, that we are teachers of languages to communicate and although we teach GCSE courses, the maximum goal should always be reaching Proficiency at the language to Communicate.