5 Magic Powers for GCSE productivity and high grades

As a new GCSE is coming home soon, I am still thinking about the current one and what to do to make sure that students can and will manipulate the language, while scoring the highest grades in the productive skills of Writing and Speaking in the GCSE exam. 

In other words, how can we make sure that students use the vocabulary and structures they know to express opinions on any topic, spontaneously and fluently?  Uhmmm that's what the new GCSE is trying to sort out! I believe the current GCSE, already does that, but anyway... 

These are the techniques we use as from Y7, the beginning of the learning journey, to make sure students become spontaneous with the language and get the highest grades at GCSE in the process, a default nice outcome!

To do so, we introduce  5 magic powers as early as possible, from Y7, little by little!

The 5 magic powers, based on the GCSE AQA Mark Scheme, are:

1. Using more than one tense
2. Giving opinions
3. Giving reasons 
4. Reported Speech
5. High impact expressions and Idioms

These powers are practised inside out, via retrieval practice, throughout KS3 so, when students start the official GCSE course in Y10, they are a second nature to them! 

Then as from Y10, the GCSE specific topic vocabulary is taught, but always subordinated to these 5 magic powers, whose use is needed to score the highest grade in Writing/Speaking at GCSE. Topical vocabulary is constantly revisited via Retrieval Practice and our Sentence Builders. We also work hard to make sure that as much vocabulary as possible from the different topics is recycled in new ones. This is a necessity to tackle the Writing Task 2 in the Higher Paper or the Translation exercise.

As a department, we decide the language we are going to include for each magic power, which will be used, over and over again, throughout the learning journey, by the teachers and students alike: via modelling listening and reading activities and structured practice, creative and, finally, fluency tasks, following a lexicogrammar approach to teaching and learning languages.

We also use the following strategies:

Planning Writing Frames

We use these when students attempt any writing task as from Y10. 

Remember that most of the expressions in the Magic Powers, have already been introduced and fully practised as from Y7! so now we have two more years to make sure these powers are even more embedded with the new GCSE topical vocabulary, which we simplify for the Writing and Speaking exams in our GCSE AQA Sentence Builder Booklet. 

Self-Evaluation and Marking Frames

To develop independence and metacognition in our students, we also try to develop evaluating skills in our learners. For that, once they have produced a written task, they will also use the following Green Sheet/Card to proof-read their work. 

It is very similar to the Planning Writing Frame, but the green card is meant to be a checking point  for the students to notice and avoid careless mistakes, all taken from the AQA mark scheme. Students are welcome to tick the boxes they think they have covered well. Students will get this card and their planning time frame, with every piece of writing they have to produce.

Teachers also use the green card to mark students' work. This saves lot of time for us and it makes it clear to the students what the expectations from the exam and the teachers are. We highlight in green what was great in a given piece of writing, and in pink what could be improved, according to the check list in the card, with a general comment, if applicable, written in the card. The good news is that most of the time this is not needed! 

We also tick the boxes, with a green pen, to make it visually clear, what students did include and could have included!  When a piece of writing is given back to students, they have some reflection time to look at their green card and make improvements, where applicable, while they have the opportunity to ask a friend or teacher if unsure about something. 

These 5 magical powers are reinstated in oral activities too! 

To develop automaticity, spontaneity and fluency, we use Flippity, with potential questions and expressions from this 5 magic powers. We don't want students to learn by heart answers, but, instead, to try to answer these questions with bits they can retrieve spontaneously, using the magic powers column. The answers will be different every time they practise the questions, although, some nice phrases will be learned for specific questions and this is fine! 

Of course, these 5 magic powers are practised via many other activities all the time! and of course, there has been a lot of thinking, as a department, about what expressions/ structures to teach as from Y7 to maximise the students' grades, for example, teaching SUELO + infinitive or Me gustaría que mi madre tuviera. Then in Y8 students will say Me gustaría que mi casa tuviera.

The approach, supported by our Sentence Builders and our repertoire of activities works!

Maximising resources: minimum preparation, high impact tasks

On this post I am focussing on how to reduce workload  by exploiting minimum preparation tasks to be used in many different ways within a lesson or a series of lessons.   

When planning my activities, I always try to create tasks which require minimum preparation time but which have high impact, so students see measurable results. 

These are 5 of my favourite tasks and how I exploit them to be used for many different activities. More activities, which can follow the following pattern, can be found in Simona Gravina's Padlet here .

Battleships

This classic activity can be exploited in many different ways just with a single grid. This is my sequence which gives me materials to last a whole lesson or even two!

• Listening Battleships: I say a sentence students write the coordinate according to the grid. I tend to do this for 10 or 20 sentences. Sentences are very similar, so students really need to listen to specific verb endings and structures. 

• Translation codes: I give students coordinates BC, A2, D5 etc.. and they translate the sentences, the codes correspond to. To spice up the activity, I turn the activity into a little competition with a merit given to the first 10/12 students completing the task. We then go through the translations together to check out accuracy with many strategic questions based on grammar which help me to check for understanding. I use this question session in conjunction with mini whiteboards. This allows me to revise specific grammar in context. 

• Oral Battleships: Students play classic battleships orally in pairs. Normally they tick 8/9 boxes. They need to sink their partner's ships by translating orally, the sentence corresponding to a specific coordinate.

• Extensive writing: Using their oral battleships choices and those of their partners, students write, collaboratively, an extensive piece of writing using linking words and adding extra information. Students can start planning their writing during the lesson and finish it as a homework task. 

• Mini Whiteboard work based on the grid and beyond: to finish the lesson, or in a second lesson, I check for understanding by asking students to write down, in mini WB, sentences from the grid, which by this stage they are super familiar with, so the success rate is high, which is important to promote intrinsic motivation. I then start asking students to write sentences moving away from the grid as I incorporate content from previous topics: retrieval practice. We finish the sessions doing this orally, for those who feel more confident.

Stealing Sentences

This Gianfranco Conti's classic can also be exploited to fit many activities:

• Level 1: just as a reading activity to focus on phonics and pronunciation and help memorisation of chuncks. Students take 4 pieces of paper and write a number from 1 to 7 (or as many as shown on the board) on each piece. Students move around the room and read a sentence from the board to each other. Students steal sentences, pieces of paper, if the person they read the sentence to, has the number corresponding to their read sentence, written on one of the pieces of paper. The student with more pieces of paper at the end of the activity is the winner.

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• Level 2: Same activity but with gaps, encouraging retrieval of key structures.

• Level 3: After carrying out levels 1 and 2, students play the game again, but this time, they need to translate, orally, the sentences, using the initials as help.

• Writing activity: After doing the oral activities in the different levels, students write down the sentences in pairs, unaided as a self-test task. How many can they remember accurately? As in the example with Battleships, we go through the sentences focusing on key questioning on grammar in conjunction with mini whiteboards. 

• Read my mind: Level 1/2/3 of this activity can be used to carry out this classic activity from Gianfranco Conti too, to be done against the teacher or in pairs. I think of a number, which I write in a piece of paper, and students try to guess the number by saying the sentence in the grid. 

Rock Climbing 

Another Gianfranco Conti activity which leads itself to be exploited easily. I follow this sequence:

• Listening activity: This is led by the teacher. I say a full sentence in the Target Language and students write down the numbers of the different components of the sentence. This listening activity can also be carried out in pairs, where a student says the sentences and their partner identifies the chunks.

• Writing activity: Next, students write sentences based on my combinations. See example below.

• Oral activity: Finally, students work in pairs. They write their own combinations in numbers (sentence a: 1,8,14,24)  and their partners, orally, must guess the correct combination by saying the sentence in the target language. Students love this challenge. 

Wheel of Names

I have written many posts on how to exploit this Digital Tool. See this Video here. I follow this sequence:

• Retrieval practice: I use the wheel of names with sentences in English with key structures, to be translated to the Target Language, for retrieval practice, in conjunction with mini whiteboards and/or orally.

• Oral practice: I share the wheel of names link with students, and they test each other orally. They need to translate a given sentence, answer a question, conjugate a verb etc.. Students normally do this while playing, Piedra, Papel, Tijera (Stone, Paper, Scissors) so the winner of each round takes a turn to carry out a task. 

• Writing practice: Students, individually or in pairs, spin the wheel and write down a given sentence in their books or OneNote. For differentiation purposes, some students may need to translate a sentence and extend it or translate the sentence and change it to a different tense etc.. As in the case of battleships, I may add a competition element! Students love this type of activities versus an old fashioned worksheet!

• Homework task: Students record the sentences orally using the insert audio in Onenote or Flipgrid. Confident students are encouraged to extend their sentences.

• Appsmashing with Genially: Once created, Wheel of Names can be embedded within Genially to create oral board games.

Flippity 

This is another digital tool providing activities, which take only 5-10 minutes to create and can generate tasks for a whole lesson or even more. For a video on how to do so click here. 

• Retrieval practice: I use the Flippity Random Name Picker to write key words and verbs that students must know well. After 5 minutes doing this, I ask students to write a sentence with the given key word/structure using mini whiteboards. 

• Extensive writing: I use the Groups of 2/3/4/5 in Flippity, within Random Name Picker, (increasing the difficulty), so the application will group my key structures into small groups. I set up the timer and students need to write a full paragraph using all the structures in each group in the time given. Rewards are given to those who manage to write a very good paragraph within the limit. At this point, like in previous activities, key questioning on accuracy to check for understanding and consolidating grammar is extremely valuable. The activity can then be followed up as a homework task.

• Oral work: I share the link with students, who carry out this activity orally in pairs within a given time using the timer in the app. For homework, they can also carry out this oral activity recording themselves using the Insert Voice feature in OneNote or Flipgrid.

These five tasks, which do not take long to prepare and are not fancy, although I love beautiful created resources, provide me with a whole lesson worth of tasks + homework. All tasks are engaging but also allow students to learn successfully. As they are easy to prepare, these allow for personalisation of the learning to specific classes. It is what I call minimum preparation time and high impact, sticky tasks.

Planning a "Blended" curriculum: Give students wings!

You all know how much I love technology in the classroom, not because it is a gimmick but because it genuinely spices up my teaching, saves me lots of time and most importantly, it is a great tool to practise key structures, in many different ways, which equals to lots of retrieval practice and stickability, in all the stages of the learning journey. Finally, it allows me to take languages outside the classroom and make my lessons accessible to my students once they leave the classroom, in other words, it can give students Super Powers or like the old Red Bull advert says, it gives my students wings!

However, for Digital tools to have a positive impact in our students' learning,  it is important to plan and make its use clear in the curriculum. In order to do that, as I mentioned in my previous blogpost on achieving Fluency, it is important to decide a platform to share with students and think backwards: What do we want our students to achieve by the end of each unit? How are we going to get there? and finally, which tools can we use at each stage of the process? 

This is the journey:

a these are some of the tools I use at each stage:

MODELLING STAGE

Spiral and Mentimeter

I use both tools as an alternative to Mini Whiteboards in the classroom: I do translations both ways, dictations, delayed dictation, finishing the sentence or write a sentence with the given word (great for retrieval practice). A tutorial video on how to use Spiral can be found here 

Screencasting 

Screencasting, I use Loom, your modelling activities, and upload them into your own very Youtube channel, is a great way to practise Modelling. Of course, I do modelling in face to face lessons with my students, however, I love the possibility of using my own Youtube videos as listenings, dictations and translation as homework tasks. This is a clear example of how technology allows you take your lesson outside the classroom! Modelling and listening/practise pronunciation has never been easier! This is an example video 

Bitmojis

Bitmojis are a great way to carry out modelling activities! I can make my Bitmoji talk and create multiple listening comprehension activities based on this: Fill in the gaps, Questions/Answer, full transcriptions etc.. I use PhotoSpeak on my iPhone to create the talking effect. Once the video is created and uploaded unto my Youtube channel, I can create a MS Forms task with it, add it to a LearningApps activity or just embed it into my OneNote with the activities I want my students to carry out. I love creating my own Speaking Bitmoji as a listening activity as I can speak faster, slower etc.. to meet the needs of my students.

For a post on how to use Bitmojis creatively in the classroom, visit this Blogpost.  with a tutorial from the amazing Joe Dale.  This is an example of my Bitmoji Speaking on Relationships for my Y10 class.

SentenceBuillders.com 

Ths site is amazing for Modelling!!! It was created by the talented Marting Lapworth, creator of TaskMagic and Textivate and it is based on Gianfranco Conti's MARS EARS type of activities with Sentence Builders. You can create your own activities or use the premium ones based on prepopulated Sentence Builders on the site. I use the site for face to face teaching with my students, but especially to help pupils memorise our Sentence Builders in a engaging way. For more information on this site, visit its Blog

AWARENESS-RISING AND CONTROLLED PRACTICE

Flippity

I love Flippity for fun drilling practice of my Sentence Builders with elements of Fluency as I demonstrate on this video tutorial  

I also use Flippity with Manipulatives and as a listening activity, you can even insert your Bitmoji video there too! Check out this example. Overall, it is a great way to have a Blended Learning experience!

LearningApps

One of my absolutely favourites! This tool will allow you to create many different type of online activities which will help students memorise those important Sentence Builders and practise the language in a controlled and fun way! Here there's a tutorial video on how to exploit this free tool in the classroom. 

All my LearningApps activities can be found here

Wheel of Names

Another of my classic activities for Blended Learning. I explain how I exploit and milk this tool in this Video Tutorial. 

Quizlet, Memrise, Blooket and Carousel Learning.

These vocab learning platforms are great tools to practise the language and help students memorise Sentence Builders. I use Memrise with KS3 and Quizlet with KS4. I always link each of my Sentence Builders to at least 3 Quizlet or Memrise courses with around 10 chunks in them. Carousel Learning is also a great way to practise translations and carry out Retrieval Practice. I love Blooket as it allows me to upload my Quizlet courses so, from one activity a get two interactive tasks!

Quizizz

A quiz tool which I maximise by asking students to produce long answers to oral questions before we carry out oral practice in class. A type of warming up task! I also use it as an alternative tool for listening practice. I explain how in this video Tutorial. 

SPONTANEITY/ROUTANISATION/AUTONOMY STAGE

Genially

Great for Escape Rooms and especially, BoardGames to practise open ended questions or specific structures. 

Tip: Plan in advance with your team how you can exploit Genially and divide the work by deciding, within your team, who could create which activities on different topics. I also love using Genially to practise Exam skills in a relaxed way, even with ALevels! An example can be found here. 

Deck Toys

Deck toys is the not so known app and it is fantastic!  I use it to create Scape Rooms with all levels, including Y13/Y11 and exam skills. I love it, because I can also include Quizlet courses here. For a blogpost on how to exploit Deck Toys use in the classroom, click here. 

All my DeckToys activities can be found here. 

Flipgrid

Great for oral presentations! I love this app as students can cover their face or even do screencasting. I also like the fact that I can enter some rubrics to mark their work. 

Padlet

Another classic! I use it for collaborative work but also to showcase what students can write about from memory at the end of the learning journey, so the whole class can see each other's entries and learn from each other. I also use Padlet as a revision guide at GCSE. A post on how to do that can be found here. 

Of course there are more tools!  This is just a summary of my favourite mainly FREE ones! This is language, The Language Gym, Textivate and Languagenut are also some of my favourite ones at the Practice Stage too. 

The key point is to plan, when designing the curriculum, how and where these tools could be used in the classroom to give students WINGS!

A presentation on these ideas, which I carried out for Languagenut can be found here 

Blended Learning made easy

Following my presentation yesterday in the UKedChat Conference 2021 on how to have impact lessons via Digital Tools, I have started creating a series of short videos demonstrating how I exploit a Digital Tool in my lessons in a blended learning scenario. 

If your students do not bring their own device to school, remember that many of these activities can be carried out with a mobile. I know there are rules about mobile use in the classroom, but after the digital revolution we are living, I firmly believe that mobiles should be allowed in lessons when it is required by the teacher, maybe that's something you can talk to your SLT. We have certainly changed rules regarding using mobiles in lessons in specific scenarios. 

MOST OF THESE ACTIVITIES WILL TAKE YOU  ONLY 5 OR 10 MINUTES TO PREPARE!!!

Blended Learning Demo 1 How to maximise Flippity 

Blended Learning Demo 2 :How to maximise Wheel of Names

Blended Learning Demo 3: How to use Boardgames with Genially

Blended Learning Demo 4: Quiz time! Quizizz and Carousel Learning

Blended Learning Demo 5: How to maximise Flippity with the randomizer

Teaching in times of covid: Using Digital Games at Alevel

 After an amazing morning sharing ideas with wonderful MFL teachers in the TMMFLicons event, I would like to write briefly about how to upcycle most of the apps we use with KS3/4 and reutilise them at Alevel to create digital small games during Covid times.

My presentation from the TMMFLicons Webinar today

 

WHY?

Because games at Alevel as at earlier stages, engage and enthuse students and it is a fantastic opportunity to use the language in a real context: the interaction produced from the game is real target language use, which comes much easier than at the early years when their students are not as fluent. 

WHEN?

At Alevel I use my 10 Step Guide, which is fully explained here. I have found that using digital games at stages, 4, 6, 9 and 10 (in red below) of  this sequence, is particularly effective with my students and easy to do via Teams or Zoom if sharing a screen or even better in Breakout Rooms.

1. GCSE Oral activity

2. Oral activity based on a thought provoking photo

3. Working with a text (reading)

4. Practising structures from the text in stage 3 

5. Working with a text (listening)

6. Explicit grammar lesson 

7. Language assistant

8. Lecture Style lesson

9. Oral practice with ideas from all lessons.   

10. Exam style Questions.  

STAGE 4 WHEEL OF NAMES WITH POINTS

Wheel of Names examplehere 

At stage 3 we "milk" and "squeeze" a reading text, where we study ideas, structures, vocabulary etc.. For Stage 4 I recreate a similar text, in English, recycling the structures from our previous text and I divide it sections. I put the sections in wheel of names, with allocated points and share my screen. Students are divided in teams and when the wheel spins a member of the team must translate the chunk that comes up in the wheel, or even extend it. They do this orally so they get instant feedback. I keep a tally of the points.

Below a video on How to create a Wheel of Names activity

STAGE 6 CLASSROOMSCREEN AND FLIPPITY FOR GRAMMAR PRACTICE

Classroomscreen example here 

The example above is from a Y12 lesson on the subjunctive which I did on Friday. I share the screen, roll the dice and students need to create a sentence according to the number in the dice.

Flippity example here 

The example above is from a Y13 lesson to practice "difficult" structures with students. I enter key structures (grammar) in the Google Slides for the Flippity activity. When running the activity I go to "lineup" mode. I structure comes out. I divide the class in teams and someone from the team must translate the structure and create a sentence with it, orally. Teams get a point for each correct answer. 

At a second stage, here is how you can "milk" the activity, you can go to "groups of 2", now students need to create a big sentence using the two structures in each box. You can make it more challenging by going to "groups of 3/4 " etc.. At this point, students are allowed to write their paragraphs and post them into the Collaborative area in Onenote or use Spiral.ac. (In a normal classroom students would use mini whiteboards to write their answers) You can compare answers, students correct each other's paragraphs etc.

Flippity Example here for literature

Same as above but now students need to speak about the character, metaphor or even quote that comes up in the "lineup" mode. They can work in teams and support each other. Normally they need to talk for up to a minute. This is great once the book has been studied as a Retrieval Practice activity.

STAGE 9 GENIALLY BOARDGAME TO PRACTISE ORAL QUESTIONS.

Example here on Jumanlly on Genially

I play this game as a whole class by sharing my screen, as I have small sets at Alevel. However, it can be played in Breakout Rooms, where students play in groups of 4/8 students with one student sharing the screen with the group. I move the counters and when landing on a dot, students must answer orally a question on the given topic. Students love this activity and the template is free from Genially!  

Below a Video on how to Create a Genially Boardgame

STAGE 10 GENIALLY BOARDGAME AND DECKTOYS LEARNING PATH TO PRACTISE EXAM QUESTIONS.

Example here on Snakes and Ladders on Genially

I was trying to think of exciting ways to practise exam style questions without using the actual paper or worksheets from Exampro, and I thought of adding them in Genially and Deck Toys as little tasks!  

This is what I did:  using Snipping Tool, I selected the exam question I wanted to practise (mainly translations and summaries) and pasted it onto Genially.  

Students play the game in small groups in Breakout Rooms. When landing on a spot they must, as a group, carry out the exam question. They do this collaboratively, so learning from each other, and in writing. They upload their answers to Onenote for me to mark later.  If you have a look at the example, there is also a filling gaps LearningApps activity embedded from an actual past paper, a type of question that my students find particularly difficult!

Example here on Deck Toys  

This activity worked a treat yesterday Friday, Period 8 with my Y13s! Students carried it out in Breakout Rooms in small teams. 

The aim of the activity is to escape the island, by collecting keys, which students get by going through the learning path, which is formed of past exam questions!!! Reading, summaries and translations. 

One student shared the screen with everyone in their breakout rooms and worked collaboratively through the tasks. The big plus of Deck Toys is that students can submit direct answers to the game!!!! (not like in Genially).  Students go to the deck via a link and sign up with their Microsoft accounts (they can also use Google). THEY LOVED IT!   They did not have time to finish it in the lesson so I asked them to finish it for homework for Monday's lesson. Yesterday evening, I checked the Teacher's section of Deck Toys and everyone had escaped the island, meaning, they had completed all the past exam questions!!! Amazing!

Visit this post on how to use Deck Toys 

And here it is a How to Video to start using Deck Toys. Great for departmental use!

Happy Gaming!!!

Gamification in the MFL classroom: Deck.Toys

I believe in gamification, especially in MFL as the subject relies in constant drilling and practice of structures and vocabulary until these are embedded in our linguistic corpus. It is not easy, especially in the UK with limited curriculum time. Languages can be perceived as challenging and, worst of all, boring! 

Structured and careful planned game activities can be key to engage students, practice the language from different angles and help students to transfer information into their long term memories! 

Gamification can occur in many ways and shapes! Any element of competition, even in zero preparation activities involving oral input can be a game changer! 

I play games all the time! From the modelling stage, to controlled practice to spontaneous production! However, in this post I would like to talk about Deck Toys. 

Deck toys

This lovely tool was introduced to me by Jimena Licitra a few weeks ago! The concept is that teachers create a learning path or deck. The deck is full of different challenges or online activities that students must complete while they advance through their path, normally simulating moving around some idyllic landscape or boardgame!

But this is not all, the app is very powerful as it allows you to create two types of activities:

Study set games, based on some vocabulary/structures input (you can transfer your Quizlet courses for this) or

Slide Activities which allows you to upload any word, PPT, PDF or worksheet/presentation and make it interactive by adding different functions to it for students to interact with: polls, text input from students, drawing input, photo, oral input or multiple choice questions. 

The app also allows you to add some cool elements such as a treasure keys collection function, which allows students to collect different hidden keys along their learning path, which will open certain locks at the end of the end of the learning path; locks to enter different activities, timers, web links etc...  

You can also embed your own activities from sites such as LearningApps, WordWall, Flippity or Wheel of Names to include listening, filling gaps etc.. as part of your learning tasks challenges! This feature is super important as it allows me to recycle other activities in a different setting, saving me time!

Once created, you need to make sure you create a class and assign your deck to this class. The app generates a unique class url that you share with your students. When students click on it, they join the activity signing in with their Google/Microsoft accounts, or just as guests. 

The app also allows you to interact in real time with your students if working remotely!

You have access from your class, to the answers that your students submitted as part of their deck, which you can review and check for understanding.

You can do three decks for free before going pro, paying around £8 per month.  This would be great for a department to generate, end of unit practice! 

How do I use it? 

Creating a meaningful Deck!!! Students start by practising the language we are working on via the Study Set Games (flashcards, matching, memory game, multiple choice, jigsaw etc..), whose content I just copied and pasted from my quizlet courses!!! to move quickly to activities including Reading, Translation and Listening using LearningApps, Wordwall or Flippity which allows students to practice the studied language within context in a controlled way!

I like the feature of collecting keys!  You can put these keys at the end of any activity as a reward! Once collected, students can enter them into specific treasure boxes, giving a motivation to your activity, a little bit like a Escape Room! Students get points too as they advance through the deck! 

If you add Locks to your activities, then you have a Escape Room, as you cannot enter the following activity until a code is entered (I use Verbs in different tenses). 

The final activity of my deck would be a freely produced oral or written activity, using all the structures and verbs practised via the reading, listening and translation activities of the deck.  This does not need to be part of the learning path, but the subsequent activity and the purpose of the deck!

Look at this example for the topic of School in Y10:

Link to ALL my DeckToys activities

Tutorial on how to use DeckToys

Final Veredict!

I like it. I like it a lot! but it can take some time to set up if you go for a complex Deck from scratch!  However, if shared among the department, it is fine! Three Decks is not a lot! so if you like it, you will need to go pro! It takes some time to get used to the way it works but it is not difficult at all, just some time consuming for the first time, but the same issue I find with Genially!

You can use Decks from other educators and modify them or just use them!

Overall, this is a great app that can really enhance the learning experience of the students but you need to plan carefully all the activities that you will use in your deck and to maximise its use, reuse those old worksheets or those great activities in other apps!!!

Link to a postblog written by me for DeckToys

Language Show 2020 Presentations and Webinars

Thank you so much for the feedback I received today from both of my webinars in the Language Show. It has been amazing to read your comments, contributions and ideas! We learn from each other.

As promised the Webinars presentations and Videos are below.

Motivation and engagement in the MFL classroom: let's play, let's speak!

YOUTUBE LINK ON MOTIVATION

Stickability beyond the classroom: delivering high impact lessons via the use of IT tools.

YOUTUBE LINK ON STICKABILITY

Motivating students: Rosenshine's principles, not too easy, not too difficult, just right!

Although currently at half-term, I have been inspired, by many social media contributions, to write about motivation in the MFL classroom, a major issue, I believe, for many of us! How can we motivate our students to do well, to become independent learners and embrace the learning of MFL? Specially, at KS4 level leading to KS5? The constrictions of the GCSE syllabus, exam pressures, and harsh marking of papers for languages has, definitely, taken its toll but not everything is grim looking!

At a basic level, there's a lot that MFL teachers can do in everyday lessons, which we may take for granted, that can have a big impact in motivating most of our students. Of course, at a high level, doing project based learning, collaborative work with partner schools, a rich extra-curricular activity programme and opportunities to take languages outside the classroom and raise the profile of MFL, are also important factors. However, in this post I would like to concentrate on the basics: the ingredients for great teaching that help motivate students and take responsibility for their learning.

What motivates students?

In my opinion, is as simple as feeling that they are making progress, which consequently increases their confidence and as a result motivates them to continue doing well to make even more progress. 

As teachers, we have the power to plan and carry out activities aimed to help students to make this progress. For that, we do not need to become over complicated in our teaching, but just reflect on the ingredients of what makes great teaching. Why? 

Because great teaching, where activities are not too easy, neither too high, just right,  will spontaneously make our students make progress, hence, motivating them to do well, to take pride in their learning and to become, ultimately, independent learners (some with big help from us).  This takes me directly to reflect on Rosenshine's Principles of Instruction for great teaching. Principles that we all use, exploit, sometimes, unconsciously, in our lessons.

What makes great teaching?: Rosenshine's Principles of Instruction applied to MFL

1. Modelling

At its most basic level, in MFL this means modelling the structures we want students to master after a sequence of lessons, or a lesson! I do this via Sentence Builders. At a more complex level, this means providing worked out examples of good answers, for example for writing and speaking tasks at GCSE level or Alevel and narrating to students our thought process. Activities that work well at this level and will motivate students from the basics are any Teacher or Student based Reading/ Listening activities based on a give Sentence Builder or Key structures:

• Put sentences in the right order, read by the teacher (Sentences can be in English or TL on the board)
• Dictation activities or Delayed Dictation tasks
• Trapdoor reading activities
• Reading a sentence, stop and students finish it, this can be done as a whole class, in pairs, with mini whiteboards or orally. Jane Basnett offers an example on how this can be achieved by working with a model paragraph in this post here . A great example of low preparation, high impact activities for students to make progress just in a lesson.
• Battleships listening/ Reading game activities. 

• Bad listening: Teacher reads a paragraph of which students have a copy but with key differences that students need to spot.
• Filling the gaps in response to a paragraph read by the teacher but without gaps! So students need to really listen for detail while listening to and reading their text as they do not have the gaps to write the missing words.
• Narrow reading/listening type of activities: Spot the difference, completing boxes with key information.
• Providing example of written or oral tasks and analysing these with students, having a mark scheme with them, to find out why they are good, not so good or outstanding answers: what are the ingredients of a great response?

2. Structured/Guided Practice

This involves, extensive practice of structures, controlled by the teacher, with scaffolds for difficult tasks until these are mastered: the power of overlearning!!! which will increase confidence and will help students make rapid progress, hence, enhancing motivation. If we add a real communication element to the practice process and a game or competitive element, motivation is pretty much guaranteed! 

Similarly, having high expectations is key here too. When I tell my Y8 bottom set students: "this is a GCSE expression that I am confident you can use at this stage now", such as Me gustaría que mi casa tuviera ( I would like that my house had (subjunctive)),  90% of my students learn the structure and use it systematically! 

Always aim a little bit higher! Students, even those in low sets, will make progress as long as they have enough practice to master the content and this is practised periodically and they are not bombarded with many challenging expressions that can result in cognitive overload. Do not make the language over easy, as that can be as much a demotivating factor, as being too difficult and moving too fast! Some students will think, what is the point?, to too easy as well as to too difficult input!

High impact activities at this stage can include:

• Translating key sentences based on Sentence Builders from English into TL. This can be done in many different ways: via mini-whiteboards led by teacher using any IT tool to provide prompts if wanted, although teachers can just make up sentences on the spot! If IT tools are used, TaskMagic, Wheel of Names and Flippity can be excellent at this stage! Click on a previous post here on how IT tools can assist Sentence Builders practice. If the links of our activities are shared with students, then, they can practice translating sentences in pairs after a whole class practice.
• One dice, Speak! Based on the popular game One pen, One dice, this is an idea from Vincent Everett: Students work in pairs and are given a dice, student A rolls the dice until they get a 6. Students B needs to make as many sentences from their Sentence Builder as possible until their partner gets the 6 and they swap roles. 
• Any board game based on translating elements, focussing on a given Sentence Builder or key structures. Genially digital games are brilliant for this at the current situation!

• Jenga Games where students need to create a sentence before allowed to move a piece.
• Any information gap activity! where students need to exchange information with a partner. The information would, of course, be based on those key structures we want to practice!
• Stealing Sentences, a classic from Gianfranco Conti. I like doing it in three levels, so at level three students need to translate the sentences, with support of initials rather than just read them!

• Translating Pyramids, another classic from Gianfranco Conti.
• Ping-Pong Translation, as outlined by Gianfranco Conti.
• Dictogloss, which would include listening, reading, oral and writing on a given text! 
  
  
  
• LearningApps activities

 

 3. Checking for understanding: the use of Questions

Questioning is key! and it will help for retrieval practice too while keeping students motivated and alert! A good session of questioning after key, structured practice, or as part of this, is extremely powerful. In other words, questions should be the centre of lessons! Make sure you always reward accurate, correct answers!

Some Questioning techniques that helps students make progress and keep them alert are:

• Cold calling, not just volunteers!  so no student can relax!
• No opt-out, if a student does not know the answers, I move to another student and then I come back to student A again.
• Say it again, better, after a few rounds of questioning: Where do you go on holidays? I come back to the same students and ask them to say again but better, after having heard answers from fellow students!
• Think, pair, share!  This is great for more open general conversation questions or to practice the photocard part of the exam.
• Whole class response: Whiteboards!  Many activities of the activities in structured practice can be done this way! 
• Ask all students: What have you understood? versus Have you understood? Ask students to tell you exactly what they got from the lesson and reteach if necessary any gaps in subsequent lessons.  This is great as a plenary!

4. Retrieval Practice: Interleaving and reviewing material

This is extremely important in languages! Students must be given opportunities to revisit the material over and over again, this is critical in the case of grammatical structures but also with high impact expressions that can be used in many different topics and which should be embedded quickly in the students' mastered lexicon corpus. Make sure that students obtain a high success rate before moving to another concept! Techniques for retrieval practice:

• Daily, weekly, monthly review. Great as a starter activity! Ask students to translate sentences from last lesson, last week's lesson but also from last month! As time progresses, from last half-term or even last year. Reward students who succeed in this. To do this, the activities from Structured Practice are great as we can always incorporate content from last week, last month etc.. mixed up with new topics. Interleaving is key here. 
• Involve everyone! Whiteboards are ideal for this but also LearningApps activities and Quizizz quizes.

• Vary the way retrieval practice is carried out: Teacher led, but also via self-quizzing (quizizz , LearningApss and Quizlet are great for this). Use simple translation tasks, but also open responses tests (Quizizz allows you to do this). 
• Creating a knowledge map starting from some key words.
• Train students to be proactive at this! Self-testing. If you have a bank of resources available to students for each topic, say, Quizizz activities, LearningApss or Quizlet courses, you can prepare revision schedules for students to start with and encourage them to modify your schedule or create their own one based on their own needs. Click here for a post on how Padlet can assist you to create such schedules!

Click here for a post that Jane Basnett has recently created about low prep high impact activities in lessons. 

Click here for a post on how digital tools can assist on Retrieval Practice in lessons. 

5. Gradual Mastery of concepts: development of Fluency

Gradually, the scaffolding and support that we give students via the structured practice can be removed so students start producing language fluently, on their own, without having the Sentence Builders in front of them or having to be given model answers to be translated from English to TL. For students to be successful at this stage, they need to be engaged in the independent practice of structures: having a bank of self-quizzes for students to work independently, as explained above is crucial. When students manage to reach this stage, even at a basic level, their confidence suddenly plummets, and, with that, their motivation too. Good activities at this stage are:

• Speed dating activities where students formulate questions to each other for 5 minutes to move to another couple.
• Piedra, papel, tijera (stone, paper, scissors). Two students play together and whoever wins asks a question to their partner who needs to answer in the TL. Another variant: the winner speaks for a given time on a particular topic, using key words, as support, from the board.
• The Flippity Random Picker option, with key vocabulary instead of names! can be very useful here. The groups of 2,3,4 etc. (increasing difficulty as the number goes up) will generate groups of 2,3,4 etc.. words. Students can be asked to say or write a sentence incorporating all the vocabulary in each group. Below there is an example with 4 groups of 2 words each. Students would have to say or write 4 sentences using the words in each group.

• Creative written tasks via Padlet, so students can see each other's contributions and learn from one another. 
• Drama oral activities. Click here for a wide range of drama activities to be used in MFL lessons  designed by Creative Multilingualism. 
• Creative oral tasks via videos, short films, short stories, comics created by students
• All board games discussed above but now, with an open ended response. This is great to practice the General Conversation questions. 

I believe that by creating memorable, sticking lessons, with high expectations and lots of retrieval practice to allow student to master content, students make natural progress, which in return will make them feel confident, which contributes to becoming motivated! 

How do we motivate students? By delivering great lessons, having high expectations, even for low ability groups, providing learners with all the ingredients they need to make progress, so they believe in themselves and find MFL achievable! Creating the right balance of not too difficult neither too easy! JUST RIGHT.