Setting up a virtual exchange

The recent lockdowns have really pushed teachers to reinvent the T&L wheel and has forced us to upskill ourselves in many different ways. Unfortunately, one of the big frustrations of this year's restrictions, has been the impossibility to carry out educational visits, especially, abroad, such as exchanges. 

I love exchanges! Although, not vital for the language learning journey of students, per se, they open an invaluable door to the target language culture which can be very difficult to replicate in the classroom, especially given the limited curriculum time that languages generally have in UK schools. 

I have run many successful exchanges over the last 20 years and I can assure you that they have shaped the relationship of my students with languages. 

If you need to find a partner, try to use the application Flipgrid. In there, you have Gridpals, which allows you to find partners around the world, thank you Adeline Mostona nd Jimena Licitra for tío! 

What makes a great exchange? Revamping traditional exchanges!

The most successful exchanges were those where there was a project attach to them.  Students would work collaboratively, before travelling, on a mini project, allowing them to forge friendships and start contact with their partners, thanks to social media, well before they met face to face. In the past, eTwinning was the platform I used for such projects, as they gave us a secure platform to work on and display our work, as well as national and international recognition. Sadly, we cannot use eTwinning anymore... Our eTwinning project would lead itself to an exchange, both ways. During the exchange, we would carry on working on our project, collaboratively, giving a purpose and rational to the whole trip and encouraging partners to work together on a common goal, now face to face, while complementing such work with local outings, excursions and cultural visits.  

Sadly, this year, such exchange format could not take place, as we were forced to scrap the physical visit and eTwinning was not more! 

As we had always worked on a project virtually before travelling, this year we revamped that previous project into a virtual exchange using Google Meet (Zoom and Teams would have worked equally well, here).  We are lucky as we are currently working on an Erasmus project "The Village" so we had a very clear programme disseminated among 6 different Mobilities (Erasmus jargon for exchange), to be carried out in two years, so we decided to do the first two mobilities virtually, instead of travelling to Spain and La Réunion. It was a great success!

10 Steps to set up a virtual exchange

1. Think of a project to carry out as part of your exchange, so that you have a goal to work towards, do not set up an exchange, for the sake of it: there must be a purpose and final outcome. In our case, it is to create a virtual village where the UN Development Goals would have been tackled. Our first virtual exchange focussed on creating, collaboratively, the inhabitants of the this city and exploring a Circular Economy versus a Linear one as the driving force in the Village. The second virtual exchange to La Réunion, focussed on working on Human Rights and how our Village will tackle these. Take this opportunity to establish cross curricular links with other departments and raise the profile of MFL in the school. 

2. Create a simple but collaborative programme of activities to be carried among two or three mornings. We took the students out of lessons as they would have been for a real exchange, so they could work, in block, on the planned activities. Click here for our Spain virtual exchange programme. Click here for our La Reunion virtual exchange programme. 

3. When planning your activities, always plan some simple activities, we call them preliminary activities, to be done, independently by each school, before meeting live. For us, a preliminary activity was to learn, the concept of the development goals and create some videos where students would introduce themselves and talk about what their ideal world would be like in 30 years if such goals were achieved worldwide. We used a Padlet to share the videos and it was a great way to listen to real target language!  We also used Padlet to exchange Xmas greetings!

Similarly, before meeting virtually, we carried a competition to decide the logo of our project, where students designed different logos and voted, via Google Forms for their favourite one, the winning log, became the logo of our whole project/exchange. This is our logo, designed by a boy in La Réunion. 

4. Decide the platform you will use to carry out your virtual exchange: Google Meet/ Zoom/ Teams? and get familiar with the Breakout Rooms in those platforms, as students will need to work with their partners in small groups collaboratively.

5. In order to work collaboratively, and for any activity, use either Google or MS documents which you can share with students via a link and make them editable, so students can write on them in real time. For our first virtual exchange, after watching a video on Circular/Linear economies, not via Google Meet, students came back online and created posters, using a PPT (We gave them a template), collaboratively. 

Each group in a breakout room, created a poster in their designated slides in the PPT. Click here for the original PPT template, taken from Slidesmania.  This is the final document with the posters finished after the activity, all done in Breakout Rooms. 

6. When deciding your programme of activities, always include ice-break tasks to be carried out in small groups virtually, before embarking on the meaty ones! For that, we always suggest a little questionnaire to carry out to partners in the TL or guessing games. 

7. Include at least an activity where students have the opportunity to show their city and local landmarks to their partners. For that, Google Earth is brilliant! For both of our Virtual exchanges, partners showed their cities and famous local landmarks, via Google Earth, in real time, by sharing their screen within our Google Meet sessions. 

8. On the days of the activities, have technical support nearby! Also, make sure all students bring headphones so that you do not get feedback from many students talking at the same time in the same room.

9. Not all activities in the virtual exchange need to be on Google Meet/Teams/Zoom, as this can be very tiring!  Some activities can be carried out independently in each school off line, and then come back online for a  follow-up activity. In our second virtual exchange to La Reunion, students, in each country, created a physical tree where the leaves were the different Human Rights we had previously explored. This took two hours to create. Students then came back online and explained in the TL the rationale of their trees and disposition of the leaves.

10. Start small!  The virtual activities I am sharing on this post, are part of an Erasmus, so the programme is very specific and each virtual exchange related to the next one. However, you can create a very simple standalone virtual exchange programme, as long as it has a specific purpose.  

Although not the same as travelling to the target country, virtual exchanges are great opportunities for international collaboration and they are inclusive, as they are free! It broadens horizons, puts communication skills to the test and forges friendships. 

To have a look at our a previous Erasmus project, United in Diversity, which involved travelling to Spain and La Reunion as part of the project, have a look at this link.

I disagree with the recent Ofsted Report for languages, which stated that language exchanges could be detrimental, as students compare their linguistic ability to those of their partners and the experience may be off-putting. I have not encountered that in my 20 years of teaching experience. The key is to prepare students, linguistically, before travelling physically or virtually, and being realistic about what they can achieve, given the amount of years and time spent learning the target language. If anything, my students always learn lots of vocabulary, albeit swearing words! and their listening skills and fluency generally improve.  Most importantly, they have the opportunity to work with students of a similar age, collaboratively in the TL so nothing but a winning experience!

For me it is like playing the real football match!!! Everyone remembers their big match, but very few people will remember the training sessions. Exchanges is the big match in languages!  What will make memories!

Let's teach for the BIG MATCH: Let's keep ERASMUS!

I am a passionate MFL teacher and I love teaching my native language, Spanish, but most, importantly, I am an educator. I influence lives and MFL is a wonderful vehicle  to instil tolerance, cultural awareness and break barriers among my students. MFL helps to educate global, tolerant citizens.

I see my job as a sport coach, say football: my lessons are the training sessions leading to the big football match. What is the big match? Real life experiences that allow students to put what they learn in lessons into practice. My job is to create these experiences! Why? Because we do not tend to remember our training/ coaching sessions, we remember the big real event: the football MATCH.

I believe that my students' big matches are real life situations when they will be required to put their linguistic skills to the test and learn from the experience! How do I create these experiences in the educational context? How to create experiences that are 100% memorable? Via  ERASMUS Plus supported by eTWINNING.

I have been involved in several eTwinning projects over the last 20 years and every single one of them has made a difference in my students AND my teaching.

In 2018, my school and two of our partners in Spain and La Réunion decided to apply for an Erasmus project. It was a one-year project, based on the heritage of our three countries and the teaching of MFL (French, English and Spanish). THE PROJECT WAS OUR SCHOOLS' BIG MATCH AT THE TIME. We did not only learn MFL in our language lessons, but we embedded our project, United in Diversity, in the delivery of such lessons. As a consequence the learning curve, motivation and impact in our students, teachers and parents were phenomenal. WE CREATED MEMORIES, FORGED FRIENDSHIPS, OPENED HORIZONS AND BROKE MISCONCEPTIONS AND BARRIERS! 

See this video footage to see it by yourselves

Or this one!

Or the parents' response to our project

The experience was so positive that we applied for a second project: The Village, which was approved for funding in September. This time a two-year project involving the teaching of the SDGs via MFL.

That's why I was in shock when I heard from our Prime Minister on Xmas Eve that Britain had willingly decided not to take part in the Erasmus scheme anymore as it is too expensive to run for the UK. Instead, he confirmed plans to launch a domestic scheme, the Turing Programme, to help British students to visit universities around the world. 

In my view, this is catastrophic news! We surely cannot duplicate a 34 year old scheme from scratch, on our own, and expect it to be cheaper and at least of the same high calibre that Erasmus is. Referring to the Turing Programme, Boris Johnson was talking about University students, benefiting from visiting the best universities around the world, not just Europe, but let's not forget that Erasmus Plus offers funding for projects involving not only higher education but also vocational education and training, schools, adult education and youth, while providing extra funding for those with disabilities.

Erasmus Plus also offers funding for activities and projects under three Key Actions: Mobility of individuals, Cooperation for innovation and exchange of good practices and Support for Policy Reform.  That is a big umbrella and a lot of projects and actions to benefit from! To emulate this, as effectively, sorry Mr Johnson, would require a monumental effort and capital injection and still we will be 35 years behind what we have achieved so far.

Having the Turing scheme involving, potentially, projects with the whole world, not just Europe, as attractive as it may sound, could not possible deliver the same highly wide range of activities, currently available under the three Key Actions. It seems that Boris Johnson is just focussing on Key Action 1: mobility of individuals and only under the context of higher education.

The concerns raised from a potential British scheme to substitute Erasmus were presented to the Lords Committee back in 2018. This was the summary. Such summary concluded that Erasmus presented good value for money and its strong brand, trusted reputation, and common rulebook for partnership agreements could not be fully replicated by a UK-only programme.  

It is a huge loss! Our British students, who overwhelmingly voted for Remain, are being punished by the system. School aged students will be the biggest victims. The Turing Programme may well, eventually, reach the standards of Erasmus Plus, but it will take years and years to do so. We will be failing our students in the process. We are taking the experience of the big MATCHES OUT OF OUR BRITISH SCHOOLS, especially those schools in the most deprived areas, which depend on the big MATCHES to turn lives around.

Let's act on this. We must spread the word and make a big deal of the situation: WE MUST NOT FAIL OUR SCHOOL STUDENTS, WE MUST TEACH FOR THE BIG MATCH, WHICH IS ALREADY HERE: ERASMUS.

Let's take action: share your Erasmus experience, contact your local paper and MP. Let's fight for the big match!

Extracurricular activities: Let's take languages outside the classroom!

The MFL motto and ethos at my school is Let's take languages outside the classroom. This is our brand and it is visible in a big banner when you enter the MFL department corridor.  You cannot escape it! We teach a life skill to take it outside the classroom, not just to pass an exam, and we must provide opportunities for  such skill to get tested in real life situations outside the classroom. I believe that the learning that takes place in the classroom is the practice, the weekly training for the real football match: real situations to put the language into practice!

It also deeply worries me that in the current climate where trips and gatherings are not possible for the near future, this aim can easily be neglected. That would be a big mistake! We need to rethink the shape of these real life linguistic situations so they still take place, although with a different format. 

How to take languages outside the classroom?

Exchanges

These are core to our MFL philosophy and we are lucky than when these have been scrapped from some schools because of safety issues, at the end of the day students stay with unknown families away from the teacher's constant vigilance, our school has protected these trips.

How have we overcome the safety questions surrounding exchanges? 

In normal circumstances, how to guarantee the safety of students when they stay with a host family during a school trip can be a big issue for schools, which has resulted in an alarming decrease of language exchanges across the country. 

In my school, we have resolved this issue with the introduction of a Host Family Trust Form. Families from both sides fill in this form, stating information about their household: address, family members, all telephone numbers, siblings, age of siblings, whether their guests will be sharing a room, if that is the case with whom etc.. This information is confidential and is passed to the relevant families privately. It is regarded as an informal contract between families in different countries who commit themselves to look after each other's children during the exchange.

Click here for a copy of this form. On top of that the Heads from both schools vow for their families and their good intentions.

Elements of a successful and stress-free exchange

From a student's point of view it is always nerve-racking to stay with someone they hardly know, or even worse, someone they will know, for the first time, on their arrival  day in Spain, Germany or France!  My experience is that this can result in unpleasant/ homesick situations from part of the guests and it can ruin an exchange. Somehow, homesickness is infectious! Elements to consider to avoid this situation:

1. The key of a successful exchange is to create situations where partners have had the opportunity to get to know each other prior travelling. We do this by creating learning, collaborative opportunities in the classroom. eTwinning projects linked to the MFL curriculum, as explained in my previous blog, are a fantastic opportunity for this! An Erasmus project will take your exchange to the next dimension!

2. Use the technology at your disposal for real, periodical class communication before travelling. This could be part of homework tasks.

3. Use public holidays to communicate with partners via the creation of video messages. Xmas is a perfect opportunity for this!

4. Create a purpose for the visit: an outcome, something tangible that students will have to produce by the end of the exchange. This should be strongly linked to the collaborative tasks/ project initiated by both schools before travelling. In our last Spanish exchange, British students had to complete a workbook which included interviews to the host family and the creation of an online diary in conjunction with their Spanish partners via Padlet. Paired students had to do this together, creating opportunities for them to interact in the evenings. Some times partners are shy, especially the guest so these tasks create an opportunity for the students to get to know each other better face to face. This particularly works well if students have been in frequent contact from day 1 and have been working on a project together prior to the visit.

Example of Spanish exchange activity booklet

5. Have the right balance of school based and outdoor activities when the exchange takes place. Having excursions every day can be exhausting when students have to practise their linguistic skills all day long. Similarly, just following hosts throughout their school for the whole exchange and relying on host families to do the entertaining, can be extremely awkward and frustrating for a teenager! I try to plan a good selection of in-school and out-of-school activities.

Example of an exchange itinerary of activities

6. Use social media while you are in your host country. Opening a Twitter account or using Sway on Microsoft  it is a great way to keep parents informed at all times and it helps not only to raise the profile of your exchange but also to keep anxiety levels down from the parents' point of view which help towards a smooth exchange trip! 

Twitter account for our 2019 Spanish and French exchanges: @united_an

7. Make a big fuss of your visitors at school: organise a school disco, a dinner party, a cream tea party, a Spanish tapas party or a Valentine's French party or why not? taking part in a carnival!

Currently exchanges are simply not possible but what they represent and the collaborative inner element in them can still occur thanks to technology: eTwinning projects. Virtual trips created by partners could be an easy project to embark on, using Sway as shown above! 

Routes into Languages: The Language Leaders Award

This association runs many great competitions and awards involving languages: Spelling Bee, Film and Eurovision competitions are some of their hot activities, to mention a few! My favourite one is the Language Leaders Award.  We run this programme for the whole MFL department for Y10 students. Students need to apply to take part in the programme and the best applications, not necessarily the best linguists, will get selected. 

As language leaders Y10 students are responsible for running some language activities around the school, such as our MFL lunches, explained below. In order to qualify for the award, students need to prepare and deliver two MFL lessons to our Junior School students.

The experience is great and it really helps to raise the profile of languages in the community. The students in the programme commit themselves to attending a weekly Language Leader meeting/workshop during lunch time where they are instructed in the art of teaching a language, in preparation for their lessons to younger learners. 

This activity, in itself, is very powerful, as it allows students to reflect on their own language learning experience and how they are learning  their second language in the first place! Younger students also love being taught by Senior School pupils. This activity would be great to carry out in feeder schools with Y6s!

Documentation to run your own Language Leaders Award

Such an activity will not be affected in the current COVID situation and it would be a great extracurricular activity. 

MFL lunches

We introduced this activity two years ago and we will be hosting more of these throughout this year! So, another COVID safe activity to carry out and organise. 

Basically, our Language Leaders (Y10) run a periodical MFL lunch where we get a table booked in our dinning hall and serve Spanish/French/German food. Selected students get invited to these and the only condition to enjoy the wonderful delights of European food is to speak the target language while they have lunch.

Debating competitions

A local school organises an annual MFL competition for any school in the area for Y10, 11, 12 and 13! Students are given a motion to prepare, well in advance, and will compete against other students in the area. This is a great G&T activity for our most able students. Sadly, I suspect such competition may not take place this year, but it can be organised within our school!  

Why don't you run your own debating competition in school or cluster of schools? 

MFL magazine

This is something we plan to start this year for the first time and completely safe to do! Again, it will be our Language Leaders in Y10 with the help of A Level students who will be responsible for the creation of a MFL magazine with school news in French, German and Spanish and of course interviews! We will publish  just a magazine to start with aiming to create three numbers per year. 

Onatti productions.

Onatti tours around the UK with Spanish, French and German plays.  They are worth every penny and students love them. You get a booklet with the vocabulary which will be used in the play, which allows teachers to cover this during lesson time, putting languages into context and taking them outside the classroom! During lock-down, Onatti has produced some lovely lock-down films in French, German and Spanish which are also, fantastic resources for real linguistic exposure. Have a look in the website above.

Language International week

This is a classic in my school now! At King's Ely, we are lucky to have an International school site with students from all around the world: China, Japan, Thailand, Russia, Italy, France, Spain or South Corea just to mention a few! The MFL department in conjunction with King's Ely International organises an annual International week with a wide range of activities aiming to raise the profile of languages and celebrate diversity, global dimension and tolerance in all our students. The activities take place during break, lunch and after school and include things like:

Cooking sessions: make dumplings, French pancakes, a Spanish paella or Austrian Tafelspitz

Traditional dancing sessions, where our International students showcase traditional dances and/ or songs, this year we want to create an evening International Cabaret, raising money for a chosen charity.

A especial international assembly run by the students

Screening of international films

MFL school debating competition

International photo booth, run by students, where photos with different flags and prompts are taken celebrating diversity.

Language Day for Y9 students, run by our International students. It consists of language workshops where our international students teach a little bit of their language and elements of its culture to all Y9 students, who are off timetable for the event. After these workshops, Y9 students are treated to a mini international concert, again, performed and run by our international students. In the past we have had workshops on Italian, Hindi, Japanese, Russian and even Afrikan! Teachers, outside the MFL department, are also invited to run a workshop: in the past we have had PE lessons in Afrikan conducted by a South-African teacher!

Ideally, we try to get Onatti into school during our International Week, which is the icing on the cake! Although, this is not always possible. I appreciate very few schools have an International School side, most schools have students from different international backgrounds and this is an opportunity for those students to feel proud of their heritage and raise the profile of languages! Another COVID free activity is social distance measures are put into place accordingly.

The Stephen Splender Prize

This is a great, poetry, translation competition open to the whole of the UK at all levels. Translation is a great skill and students tend to love it, believe it or not!  Running a workshop/ club for students on translation is a great asset which can lead to the Stephen Splender Prize entry. There are lots of information in their website about the competition and how to incorporate translation in the MFL classroom. 

The British Film Institute workshops 

The BFI runs  lovely film workshops for all key stages and main languages!  Another great way to take languages outside the classroom! I firmly believe in the power of film when learning a language! Having Netflix, Amazon Prime or just Youtube open a huge opportunity to exploit cinema in the classroom and the BFI has helped me tremendously to develop teaching techniques and materials which incorporate the use of films.  

They run workshops for French, German, Spanish and Mandarin and to KS3/KS4/KS5 level. It is a lovely day out for students and another opportunity to take the languages outside the classroom. I do not take full sets but a selection of students who have worked particularly well throughout a term. I have also run these as a gifted and talented activity.

Given the current climate, the BFI will be launching a blended learning programme instead of its usual face to face study days. Have a look at their website for more information.

 MFL Drama Competitions

Both, The North London Collegiate School and The King Alfred School organise Spanish and French Drama competitions, respectively, for Y11-Y13 students. Students perform up to 10 minutes sketches or short plays in the target language. This is a great opportunity for students who are good a drama to shine in a language!  

Feedback from parents and students alike is fantastic each year. It does require a lot of time to prepare students for these plays so it represents a lovely, periodical, language extra-curricular activity: MFL Drama club. It is a fantastic project for a language assistant to coordinate too. Please, contact both schools for information on the these annual competitions, which this year maybe on the format of short videos. Again technology to the rescue!

 

Where possible, if there is a professional play in French, German, Spanish in London we make it a ALevel MFL outing. These are great! We are lucky enough to be one hour by train from King's Cross in London, so we can do this! Although big cities like Manchester also offer excellent opportunities for international theatre. 

Advertise your programme!

I use Vistaprint to make cheap professional A2 posters advertising our annual MFL extracurricular programme, which is placed around the school. It makes a difference and it emphasises our logo and unique, selling point: taking languages outside the classroom.

Teaching languages is intrinsically linked to teaching culture and preparing our students for their BIG Football Match (real communication in another language)! The more football matches they take part in, the more real practice they will get and the more motivated our learners will become. A rich extracurricular MFL programme allows that to happen: playing the football match of languages until they come face to face with the World Cup!

The power of culture: project based learning in MFL

Two of the criticisms I see on social media about the use of Sentence Builders, is that students just learn chunks of language, without being taught how to manipulate these in preparation for a GCSE exam (parrot effect) and the fact that there is not culture incorporated into the lessons leading to a loss of motivation and disengagement from learners. This last assumption also estates that activities are narrow minded and do not lead to creative project based learning.

On a previous post I explained how Grammar and language manipulation was key for students to become spontaneous and autonomous. The difference in this approach is when the necessary explicit grammatical rules are tackled: after routinalisation of Sentence Builders, not in isolation with single vocabulary items.

On this post I will show how culture and project based learning can also be incorporated in lessons using this methodology. The key is that students need to be trained fully, via Sentence Builders, on how to tackle a creative project involving culture if we do not want them to resort to Google Translate! Let's face it, with the little curriculum time dedicated to MFL, the learning process is slow and students, especially at KS3, do not have proficiency required to carry out creative projects which rely on sophisticated use of language, unless we explicitly teach it!  In fact this ability does not occur naturally until the end of KS4 and throughout KS5 for the most able learners. 

Does this mean we cannot use culture and project based learning in MFL? Of course not! The beauty of learning a language is learning about the culture and project based learning is perfect for this. The key is how we plan and structured this task. 

This is our structure for cultural and project based learning in Spanish:

Year 7 

At the end of term 1, under the topic of family and descriptions we do teach a module on Picasso and Miró. We teach students more sophisticated vocab such as figura estrellada or the present tense continuous to describe what is happening in an image. Students use this new Sentence Builders to describe real Picasso and Miró pictures. They do this, first in writing, and secondly orally, using Flipgrid, Thinglink or Onenote to insert audio on a particular picture. Finally, students, in conjunction with the art department, will create their own Miró/Picasso drawing which they describe orally and in writing using the previous apps. QR codes are finally created on their outcomes, which we display in our talking wall. This module also allows teachers to introduce Spanish art to students.

Smartboard materials to teach a Miró and Picasso module

Powerpoint Sentence Builders on Miró shared by J Santos on our MFLtwitterati Padlet

Powerpoint Sentence Builders on Matisse shared by Ruth Hedley 

Year 8

Y8 traditionally take part in a eTwinning project with our partners schools in Spain and France. Our last project consisted in the collaborative creation of a touristic guide which included emblematic cities in the UK, Spain and France. Students prepared presentations, using Google Slides on different cities in the target language and would work collaborative, via Google Slides with students in all involved countries. The language was definitely more challenging here, but, still was studied via Sentence Builders during lessons prior the project. The beauty of this project, as you can see in the link below, is that we carried out many other activities involving real language exchange with our partners: real communication in the MFL classroom.

Rutas Molonas eTwinning project with Spain and France

eTwinning is a great tool run by the British Council which allows teachers to look for partners and/or register a project for which you get an online space/platform (your twinspace) making your project look super professional! See the example above. Most interestingly, projects get recognised by the BC with certificates (great CPD opportunity). There's also the possibility to be awarded a Quality Label for outstanding projects! Finally, from all the projects obtaining a Quality Label, 10 will get a National Prize, which is a great achievement and wonderful recognition for the MFL department and students alike!

How to plan a successful eTwinning project?

Keep it simple!  You can develop simple projects linked to your SoWs so that when a topic is covered, students have the opportunity to do something meaningful and creative with a real audience!  Describing each partners' schools, cities, families in the target language and create a collaborative ebook, via Thinglink or just Padlet, has proven very successful in the past.  These activities do not require a lot of planning and the impact is great! 

Another simple project I conducted was based on the creation of real listening and reading materials from both schools, ours in English and our partner school in Spanish, which we would exploit as authentic resources in the classroom. To plan this, we created resources on the topic covered by each partner school. It was great to receive videos from our partners talking about their family members, when doing this topic, which we could exploit as listening activities and followed up with videos my students' own Spanish videos!  So keep it simple! A pen-pal structure to your project is also a good idea so for Xmas, independently of the project, students would get/write Xmas cards, for example  I always pair (different nationality) students taking part in the project so that these do keep real communication throughout! If you do a project linked to a physical exchange, then, the whole project and the forged relationships take shape and it all becomes something really special. 

eTwinning also has project tool kits to get you inspired!

Year 9

Y9 students study the topic of Media during the second term so in the past we have carried out a project on the film Voces Inocentes. We dedicated around 5/6 weeks to do this in lesson time: after watching the film in two lessons, specific vocabulary to talk about the film was taught via SBs and throughout our normal range of activities. Students carried out translation activities leading to oral/written practice and a creative project where they needed to describe the film and write a review. We got inspiration from Rachel Hawkes' resources on the use of film for this one!

Smartboard Voces inocentes teaching materials

This year, we are changing the film to Coco. Watch this space for resources!

Less able pupils, instead of carrying out a specific film project, completed a booklet based on different Spanish short films. This was a success! 

Short Film Booklet 

In the summer term, Y9 students study the topic of healthy living and food. This is a brilliant opportunity for students to cook some Spanish food. 

This year, during lock down we run a Masterchef cooking competition on making Palmeritas. Students first learned specific Sentence Builders on giving cooking instructions and practised the vocabulary via a demonstration video filmed by me cooking Palmeritas. After some practice, students needed to cook their own Palmeritas while giving oral instructions and filming the process. Finally videos got shared on a Padlet and winners were chosen. 

The Language Challenge embedded in the curriculum

Single linguists in Year 9, dedicate a MFL lesson out of four, to complete the Language Challenge.  This is an award run by Routes into Languages which encourages students to research and learn about the culture of the language they study. Most of this independent research, guided by their teacher, will be done in English. Students need to complete a series of tasks which translate into points aiming to reach 100 points, when they get awarded the Language Challenge. In practice, single linguists dedicate 3 lessons to language learning and one lesson to research based culture learning. The benefits are great: independent, self-motivated students who take ownership for their learning and become more motivated to learn the language.

Year 10

Y10 students and some able Y9s also take part in our Erasmus language programmes every other year. Erasmus, despite requiring a lot of work via the application process, management of grants etc, is a fantastic way to promote languages and embed project based learning in the curriculum. Students work collaboratively with partners in La Reunion and Spain on a particular project using e-Twinning as our working platform. Erasmus also include mobilities, which in Erasmus jargon just means an exchange funded by the Erasmus grant! 

Our last Erasmus project,United in diversity,  based on heritage and festivals in Spain, La Reunion and the UK involved 78 students working collaboratively and was such a huge success!  Students worked in multinational teams throughout a year, which allowed them to develop real relationships!  They even participated, as part of our project into the Spanish carnival (those were the times!). Linguistically, all students improved massively and culturally the project was a blast! We even won a National Prize for our etwinning/Erasmus platform.

United in Diversity: an erasmus project

Viva el Carnaval! footage

Forging relationships!

Feedback from parents on our Erasmus project

Teaching via Sentence Builders and teaching culture via project based learning are not incompatible, rather they complement each other. The MFL teacher must teach experiences not just the language!