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. 

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. 

The new GCSE, It's all about RETRIEVAL. PART 1: The 5 Magical Powers and the GCSE Vocabulary lists

After 7 weeks teaching the new GCSE for MFL, I would like to write a series of posts analysing my approach to teaching and my thoughts on the whole new qualification.  After teaching the new syllabus for 7 weeks, the good news is that there's not much difference from the old syllabus in relation to teaching and learning.  This is great, as whatever worked for us before should work now too!

Having said that, there are some fundamental changes:

1. The use of specific vocabulary 
2. A dictation task as part of the listening exam
3. A reading aloud task as part of the speaking exam

After all the controversy regarding the specific vocabulary lists, the topics under which the vocab is taught, are very similar to the old GCSE, not surprise here as there's only a limit of topics to talk about at GCSE level! However, whatever your thoughts about specific vocabulary lists, I think this is a great opportunity to really boost languages in schools.  It is a great selling point to tell students and parents that if you learn this vocabulary, in theory, students can access the listening/reading exams without any issues.  

Having this fixed list also allows us, as departments, to start teaching it as early as Year 7 and always have it in mind when we create our SoWs at KS3: how many of these words can we actually teach from day one as from Y7?  According to cognitive science, it takes considerable time to take information from our working memory to our long-term memory, which is a prerequisite to be fluent in the target language.  This means that the earlier our students have exposure to the established vocabulary and structures, the easier it will be to store such vocabulary into the long term memory, so, why not start at Year 7? Let's retrieve this key vocabulary and structures over and over again. Our goal is to lead our students to automatise the use of this key vocabulary in a given context, topics, with the application of grammatical rules so that they can communicate in the target language and get a good grade in their GCSE exam, of course. 

It is a long process to achieve this goal: FLUENT COMMUNICATION, especially given the curriculum time UK schools give to languages and the different contexts and backgrounds surrounding our pupils. That's why what we do in that precious curriculum time should be extremely well thought out and crafted to reach automatization and fluency. The only way to do this, following Rosenshine's Principles of instruction, is via Meaningful Modelling, breaking content in small steps, purposed structured practice, purposed independent/fluency practice, timely and purposeful feedback and RETRIEVAL, RETRIEVAL, RETRIEVAL hand in hand with checking for understanding. 

The 5 Magical Powers

 At Princes Risborough School, when we looked at the GCSE vocabulary list, analysed the new AQA mark scheme and the elements that allow students to achieve fluency, we came out with the 5 Magical Powers, which I personally have used in the past very successfully.  The 5 Magical Powers, are the ingredients that will allow our students both, sound fluent in the target language and acquire the best marks/grades in their GCSE exam. The powers are:

Using three time tenses as from Y7 by using what we called the nuggets: modal verbs followed by infinitives to tackle different tenses.  Suelo/solía/voy a/ me gustaría/ empecé a/ decidimos + infinitive.  The use of the nuggets to tackle different tenses is key to achieving fluency, making students feel clever and dealing with cognitive overload. We do grammar, of course, but our aim is for students to be able to express ideas in different tenses quickly and mechanically as from Y7 using the nuggets and it works!

Giving opinions, again in different tenses: Me gusta, Me gustaba, lo que más me gusta, lo que más me gustaba.

Giving reasons with key structures and chunks that can be applied to any topic/ context and which will help students achieve fluency: porque siempre he querido hacerlo (because I have always wanted to do it) porque me ayuda a relajarme (because it helps me relax) dado que se me da bien (given that I am good at it) ya que puede ser + adjective (since it can be, instead of "is" + adjective)

Reported speech or talking about someone else. This is crucial in everyday communication and also an element that translates into extra marks in the oral and written examination. That's why, as from Y7, students learn mi madre/amigo dice que (my mother/friend says that) a mi madre/amigo le gusta (my mother/friends likes)  mi amigo suele + infinitive (my friend tends to)

High Impact expressions. These include high frequent  expressions and chunks such as  cuando sea mayor, puede ser, si tuviera la oportunidad and a variety of fun idioms! Some of the reasons and nuggets are actually part of our High Impact expressions.

Once we established our 5 Magical Powers, we made sure that these are present in any topic we teach and surrounding all the topical vocabulary prescribed by the new GCSE syllabus. We use Sentence Builders to deliver our lessons following a lexicogrammar approach, rooted in Rosenshine's Principles and, as part of our commitment to achieve fluent communication, these 5 Magical Powers are present in every topic and sentence builder we teach, so that these 5 common elements get embedded in our students long-term memories together with the GCSE key vocabulary. For an example of Sentence Builder in Y10, topic of Free Time, click here. 

To create our Sentence Builders, we use the site Sentence Builders.com which has proved to be great value for money, not only to create professional looking, interactive Sentence Builders, but also as a key tool to help students memorise the language we teach through the sentence builders.  

So retrieval, will not only be part of the language learning/teaching journey in a traditional way, but it is also the core of how we have grouped the themed vocabulary around the 5 Magical Powers, as from Y7.  We believe so much in the 5 Magical Powers that our Mark Scheme for key written tasks at KS3, evolve around them. Click here to view our Writing KS3 Mark Scheme based on the 5 Magical Powers.

In Part 2, I will tackle Retrieval at the Modelling Stage of the learning journey at KS4.

Making instant Google Form Quizzes with AI to practise the productive Skills (GCSE ORAL/WRITING EXAMS)

Happy Easter everyone!  I thought I would share with you a short post on how to use AI to create Google Forms Quizzes in seconds, using the Chrome Extension Brisk Teaching, which you can download from the Chrome Web Store here.  I heard about this extension from Joe Dale, guru of all things technology and languages, and inspired by his brief, I thought of making it work to practise the productive skills of Writing and Speaking with my current Y11 students, once they are back from their Easter Break. 

Brisk Teaching is very intuitive and very easy to use. Once it is downloaded as an extension, make sure you pin it in your Google Task Bar. 

Brisk can create a wide range of tasks, based on any web text showing in your screen, this could be a website, a google doc, a google slide etc.. I have just explored the "Create" feature properly, but the extension also has a " Give Feedback"  feature which will create automatic feedback, after you give a rubric and/or what you want to focus on, on a given text.  This could be really useful when marking Y13 long essays or for History/English teachers. 

However, I just focussed on "Create". This is what I did after downloading the extension:

1. I opened a google doc where I had lots of sample of questions in Spanish and English to help students prepare for the oral exam.

2. I clicked on the brisk icon on my task bar and the extension opened up at the bottom of my screen, as the picture above.

3. I clicked on "create" and then "Quiz", which opened the following menu: 

4. I change the language to "in Spanish". This is great, as my text had questions in Spanish and English but the app, ignored all the English input and just focussed in the Spanish questions.

5. In the box "what should the quiz cover?" I pasted the questions from my document that I wanted the quiz to be based on, I started with those referring to Theme 1 in the AQA GCSE syllabus. 

6. I ignored the grade, and chose "long answer" instead of "Multiple choice", as well as "20 questions" (that is the maximum) from the following box. 

7. Brisk then, will ask you if you want your quiz in Google Forms or in  a Google Doc, this is useful if you just want to create a quiz for a worksheet. I chose Forms and that's it! 

Brisk created a 20 question quiz, based on the questions I had pasted, in Spanish for students to write a paragraph. I just have to share the Quiz with my students and look at the responses.  I carried the same process for Themes 2 and 3 and ended up with 3 quizzes covering potential questions for the forthcoming GCSE General Conversation oral exam. 

How can I see this working?

The whole process to make the three quizzes took me around 4 or 5 minutes so I saved a good hour of work.

I want to use the quizzes for my students to carry out as a self-testing mechanism, where they can open the form and write, without looking at any notes, anything they can on the given question.  Great to practise oral and writing skills. 

I am planning to go to Exampro, choose writing exam bullet points from the 90 words task and the 150 words task, save it to a Google Docs, and then use Brisk, to create a quiz based on the bullet points from different written tasks. 

As a teacher, I can see my students responses and spot common mistakes which I can then address as a class, either from a Grammatical point of view, or form: have they covered our 5 Magic Powers? I can also focus on individual feedback to specific students.

The extension will work brilliantly to make a reading comprehension interactive quiz, in seconds, on a given website for A level. In fact, Brisk can also rewrite the content of a website to make it more accessible, a little bit like Diffit, which is excellent in the case of original native articles to work in the MFL classroom.  

The "Give Feedback" feature as mentioned above, would be excellent to give feedback to students on something they have written in a google doc. Brisk even gives you statistics of the displayed text by telling you how long was spent writing it and how many pastes it had! so excellent to see if your students actually wrote an essay themselves or copied and pasted from different sources. 

Overall, I think this is a fantastic FREE extension that can really reduce our preparation teaching time massively.  Thanks, Joe!

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!

SOS: maximising skills for the GCSE exam!

Just before our Xmas break and before I got Covid from one of my lovely daughters, we conducted our Oral Mock exams for MFL. After Xmas we will carry out the other papers: listening, reading and writing. It was a strange feeling as last time we did these oral exams was back in 2019! 

In this post, I want to concentrate on a straight-forward line of action, which I have followed in the past, when Mock results for some sets/students were at least one grade below Baseline Grades, based on Midyis predictions. In fact, although a SOS guideline, these are strategies we apply to all our Y11 lessons as from September, for a matter of fact! 

Maximising Listening

This is the skill our students tended to underperform in the trial and in the real GCSE exams, the Cinderella skill, like Gianfranco Conti calls it! We started tackling the listening skill at KS3 and I wrote extensively about it in this blog. However, these are the strategies you can adopt at GCSE:

• Dedicate a lesson every two weeks, exclusively to practise listening skills. We have three lessons per week so, one of those 6 lessons, in a fortnight, is exclusively a listening lesson.
• Look up random vocabulary in transcripts and reading past papers, which has appeared in previous years and you know you have not taught and create Quizlet courses. This is one of mine, I have two of these courses. Students learn this vocabulary over several homework tasks. It is amazing to see how some of the most random vocabulary keeps appearing in exams, year after year like: ancianos, sopa de marisco, productos lácteos or me enteré/me decepcionó in AQA!
• Use Exampro activities for AQA, if you have the subscription, on a given theme/topic, so you concentrate on specific vocabulary at a time. If you don't have a subscription to this site, I would recommend you do so! It is affordable and invaluable in preparing students for exam style questions!
• When practising listening, for example via Exampro tasks, do it as a way to learn the language not to test it! For this, we always start by giving students the transcripts first, looking up vocabulary, doing translation activities, filling in the gaps, ideally in previous lessons, or as homework tasks. During our listening lesson, we always listen to the audio while reading the transcript and then complete the task. We may do only 2/3 tasks this way and then we attempt them again without the transcript. On a second listening lesson, we will do them again, interleaved with previous topic tasks, without transcript. 
• Students do add, any unknown vocabulary appearing in the transcript to their own random Quizlet courses: the more vocabulary they know, the better they will be at recognising it in a listening but also reading task!

Keep doing this routine every two weeks and during your normal lessons, emphasise listening tasks via Dictation, Battleships, Rock Climbing, Faulty Echo etc.. as explained in my previous listening blog. Over time, start mixing up topics and themes and set up listening tasks for homework too.  

Maximising Reading 

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

I normally tackle this skill via homework tasks, as I personally like using lesson time for oral/listening activities mainly. Exampro proves invaluable here too!

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

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

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

Tackling Writing

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

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

• Present students with a model of a writing task. Silvia Bastow has written extensively on how to do this on this Blogpost  as has Sonja Fedrizzi on this other Blogpost. Inspired by these two wonderful educators, this is my model video on how to tackle the 150 word question in AQA:

• Dedicate a lesson every two weeks, to carry out a timed writing task in Y11.  This is the list of Timed writing tasks, which I created based on past papers to train students to carry out the AQA 150 word task.   Every two weeks, students for homework, prepare one of the tasks, taking into account the advice given on the right box:

     During our Writing lesson, they will carry out the task in exam conditions, which will be marked by me, using the AQA Mark Scheme and giving them specific feedback, which they need to tackle on the next task:

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

• Retrieve, constantly in lessons, those verbs in present/past/future, that students need, together with high impact expressions to get the highest grades in the writing task.
• During lesson time, carry out Translation activities in a game environment! Genially games, as well as Carousel Learning tasks can be great here!

Maximising Speaking

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

• Spend as much lesson time as possible on oral skills. This is the only skill which is very difficult for students to maximise on their own! Similarly, it is the skill that will motivate them the most to study a language at GCSE and beyond!!! If they feel they cannot speak, they will give up on the subject. For that, you can use, some of the activities proposed on this blog, preferably from KS3.
• Using the Oral Booklet, model and practise, first in writing using MWBs, the Roleplay and Photocards. In Y11, these present great starter activities for a lesson! After practising as a whole class with MWBs, Students can practise the tasks, easily, with their partners as the oral booklet has on one side the student card and on the other the teacher's version. 
• To practise the General Conversation part of the exam, 50% of the whole speaking mark, give them model questions which students can start preparing in flashcards, little by little as from Y10, as the course progresses. I make it clear they cannot learn by heart all these questions! but having them in writing, gives them some confidence for their own revision on what a good model answer looks like! 

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

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

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

• During lessons, dedicate time to practise the general conversation questions in a game format. This is an example with Flippity: students click on the randomiser, play, Piedra, Papel, Tijera and must answer a question as it spins. To make the task more challenging, ask them to include a high impact expression, from the second column, in their answer. 

• Dedicate your lessons two weeks leading to the Mock and real MFL orals to just practise oral skills. 

• As with writing, make sure you retrieve, during your lessons, key verbs in different tenses and high impact expressions.

These techniques have made a big difference for me year after year and have helped my students maximise their grade! I hope it is useful for you. I would be super happy to hear what other techniques you use which are successful for you and your students!

Sentence Builders at KS4: A sequence of lessons, planning Fluency!

As we approach the beginning of a new term, it has been nice to hear from many teachers who are planning to ditch the textbook, or limit its use, to start introducing a lexicogrammar approach to their MFL lessons. Several people have personally asked me to show a sequence of lessons showing how I teach MFL with Sentence Builders, using many activities advocated by Gianfranco Conti. In this post I will be showing how I do so, specifically at KS4. I want to focus on a sequence of lessons at GCSE level, as I want to demonstrate that such approach can be adopted at any Key Stage, not only, KS3. I will show a typical sequence of 9 lessons on the classic topic of Holidays, which I typically teach in September at Y10, using high impact, low preparation resources.   

Lesson 1

I share with my students the first Sentence Builder on the topic of holidays via OneNote. Students are already familiar with around 90% of this vocabulary and structures as this is a popular topic at KS3, in my case, the topic is taught extensively in Y8 and much of the vocabulary, has been recycled in many other topics since Y7 to promote fluency.  When introducing a topic, where applicable, I always start introducing verbs in the infinitive form. I do so since Y7, as it allows me to focus on grammatical concepts smoothly later on.  During our first lesson, I display the Sentence Builder below in the IWB and model structures via chorus repetition (different voices, moods etc..). 

I tend to follow repetition activities with classical dictation activities using mini whiteboards, creating, in situ, sentences from the sheet below. Delayed dictation tasks, where I say a sentence and students are now allowed to write it down until after 10 seconds later, is another good activity to promote memorisation of structures after repetition. 

I like these activities, as I can start forming very simple sentences to move to more complicated ones, progressively, varying the speed of utterances to suit my students ability. Interleaving and Retrieval practice are key here, as I incorporate vocabulary and structures from past topics.

Finally, students carry out translation, from Spanish into English, tasks, via mini whiteboards. All these activities require zero preparation on resources as I work spontaneously through the Sentence Builders sheet. 

For homework, students will need to learn the vocabulary, (worth two homework tasks), using a Quizlet course, which corresponds entirely with the Sentence Builder below. Pace is key in this lesson, so students stay engaged! Giving little rewards for x number of correct, mini whiteboard answers.

Lessons 2 and 3

I always start my lessons with a quick fire Retrieval Practice session on the vocabulary introduced in previous lessons and past terms/years structures! After, that, I start working on Structured Production and lots of more Modelling via Listening and Reading. This means, using listening and reading tasks as learning activities not testing tools.

There are a wide range of activities to choose from at this stage but a typical sequence would be, Stealing Sentences, a Conti's classic, at three levels. 

I can continue with the following Listening activities (more modelling!): Listening Battleships and Bad Translation tasks, where I read a test at different speeds and students need, firstly, highlight the differences with their given copy and secondly write the actual differences. On a previous blogpost, I give ideas on how to explode Listening Battleships if I decide to do so for extra practice!   If needed, for higher ability students, I may ask them to translate the bad translation activity into Spanish. 

Lessons 4 and 5

At this point, all lessons will start with strong retrieval practice, via call-out questioning and use of mini whiteboards, for that I tend to use a Wheel of Names activity or Flippity. 

After my Retrieval Starter, I plan more structured practice activities. One pen and one dice translation works well. Finally, I can use a game, which requires zero preparation, such as Stone, Paper and Scissors, for students to work in pairs and, orally, to reproduce sentences, using the previous wheel of names activity, which I share with students via OneNote. As homework, translating the sentences from the wheel of names in writing, would be great to reinforce structures.

Lesson 6

At this point, I introduce the second Sentence Builder on the topic, the "I form" of the present tense and carry out similar activities to lesson 1 for modelling purposes, interleaved with structured production tasks, with structures from previous lessons, to promote retrieval and to scaffold fluency.  

This stage, in essence, is another retrieval practice task as the vocabulary in this new Sentence Builder, is exactly the same as in the previous one, but now focussing on the "I form". Students need to discriminate between the infinitive and the conjugated form of the verbs, which reinforces long term memory acquisition. 

Questioning students to make them think on uses of infinitive after certain structures, such as "suelo or solía", which have already been introduced since Y7, are key at this stage to reinforce grammar and promote metacognition.  Activities such as Read my Mind or Rock Climbing, inspired by Conti, can be done here. Ideas on how to maximise the activity Rock Climbing can be found here.

Lesson 7

At this stage, we revise the present tense as a full paradigm. For that, I use many games using mini whiteboards or board games via Genially. The Language Gym: Verb Trainer mode, is a great activity to do at this stage, as a whole class competition. 

When teaching grammar, as this is a revision lesson, I use Retrieval Practice techniques to make my students remember the endings of the Present Tense for regular verbs and revise main irregular and semirregular ones. As a summary of this tense, although not allowed to look at it unless I indicate so, for example, for scaffolding purposes, I give them a hand out on the present tense in Spanish. 

Finally, students will carry out Reading activities for homework, taken from Keerboodle and/or Exampro on holidays in the present tense, to learn new vocabulary and practise GCSE exam technique.

Lessons 8-9

After my usual Retrieval Starter, I start moving to the Fluency stage of learning on the topic of holidays in the present. Before doing so, I normally do a revision session on formulating questions, so students can ask each other questions, spontaneously in Spanish. This is not new for my students, therefore, this becomes another Retrieval activity which requires students to give me information through my key questioning.

I may quiz my students' ability to formulate questions via Quizizz and finally, they do independent oral conversations with their partners in a Survey or Speed dating format so that they ask several people different questions. Finally, to reinforce our Sentene Builders, I can ask students to prepare an oral presentation using Flipgrid. A writing task on Holidays in the present will be used at this stage, as a homework activity. 

I then introduce a new Sentence Builder, "I form" in the Preterit Tense, in lesson 10. Again, this would be a revision on this tense as it was extensively studied during Y8 and Y9. A very similar format to the previous 9 lessons will follow but I vary my activities at each stage, to avoid a fatigue feeling from my students. As shared in other posts, these are the activities I choose from at each stage.

Similarly, to promote fluency, I interleave Structured Production and Fluency activities from previous Sentence Builders/topics, right after Modelling, when working on a new Sentence Builder. This interleaving strategy and recycling of structures and application of different grammar is key to achieve Fluency as it allows students to use the language in different contexts and start manipulating structures:

Modelling new structures + Structured Production/Fluency activities retrieving past structures

Structured Production of new/past structures + Fluency activities retrieving past structures

Fluency activities of new/past structures

A direct link to all my Resources for KS3 and KS4 can be found here. 

As a norm in Y10 we cover: Holidays, followed by School/My studies, Free Time, Technology and finally Relationships and Family. I always notice that as we advance on the GCSE course, I can move quicker and quicker, as long as I keep recycling structures from past topics in most  lessons. Similarly, I always make sure that different tenses are covered in all topics, so students do not link a tense to a specific topic.