Spinning the plates: Responsive and Adaptive teaching in the mixed MFL classroom

I have not been posting recently, as I have been busy moving to Oxford. As I am having a Christmas break, I thought I would write something on how adaptive and responsive teaching looks like in the real classroom. The idea of differentiating by multiple tasks being used in the classroom at once, is long considered obsolete as it is time consuming and so difficult to implement successfully! Instead, we talk about adaptive/responsive teaching embedded in a culture of anchoring in challenge and providing scaffolds.

Anchoring in challenge, a term used by Shaun Allison and Andy Tharby in their book Making every lesson count, is well rooted in my teaching philosophy:  having high expectations for ALL students and pitching high, getting them ready for their best performance ever and making them believe that they can aspire to and achieve their personal best. As we pitch high, we provide the foundations for a I can attitude and we scaffold activities to support students to reach the same final goal.  To achieve this, sentence builders, underpinned by a lexicogrammar approach is key, as all students have got the ingredients to communicate and become fluent at the highest level, while providing a clear scaffolded structure to reach spontaneity. 

Adaptive teaching is about planning high ability core activities that are scaffolded by us, in response to our students’ answers, skilfully, through checking for understanding techniques, to cater for all abilities. It’s like a lift, that we elevate, when necessary, to stretch all students, or take down, to reinforce misconceptions from some students and to provide scaffolds for some, in order to immediately go up again, to stretch students straight away. 

How is this done in practice? 

Modelling stage

Through dictation activities where we move from dictating very short sentences to longer ones, using MWBs, to constantly check for understanding and react appropriately. In this type of activities, varying the speed of the utterances is also key to adapt input to the students’ demands: 

I start saying sentences very slowly, increasing the speed and the length of the utterance, as the activity progresses, to move back to a slower speed, again, if some students cannot cope well and go back to being faster again. We may need just a lesson for modelling but we may need two or even three if that is what our students need: Responsive teaching.

Modelling activities  are also great opportunities to check for understanding and identifying gaps in knowledge. I, personally, do this via grammar dictation, which is a normal dictation but with deliberate grammatical mistakes of stubborn, classical errors which students must spot themselves or via our skilful questioning: 

Is this sentence correct? Why? What would  be the correct way? Let’s revise adjective agreement! Can you give me examples of this rule applied correctly? 

For a wide range of modelling activities visit this blogpost. 

Scaffolded production 

At this stage, students must start producing the language themselves via structured and scaffolded practice. A this level, checking for understanding and carrying out responsive teaching, may be trickier as, we stop using MWBs and students start working in pairs or move around the room. It is imperative for the teacher to keep moving constantly to spot errors, making a mental note of these for a subsequent whole class feedback task, after an activity, or just to give advice and encourage students individually, as they carry out the activities in the lesson: 

That was a great answer, well done! How could you make it even better by adding the past tense? Or You are doing extremely well, can you include some content from the past topics we studied? Or, That was a great answer but a little bit short, can you have a look at your sentence builder to make sure you extend your answer?

When common mistakes and issues are spotted, we adapt our teaching to address these:

Students may need more practice of the learned structures as a whole class, either orally or with MWB, using a Wheel of Names or a Flippity task, where they need to translate sentences practising key structures, from English into the target language. When this is done, scaffolded and responsive teaching is also key. For example, for those who have finished translating a sentence, while others keep going: 

That’s great, could you add some more information on the spot using the future/past/imperfect tense? Or Can you write a list of alternative things you could have used instead of the shown translation? (Outformation/metacognition). For a wide range of activities to be carried out at this stage, visit this blogpost. 

Grammar

Some grammar will be learned, implicitly, within the modelling and structured/scaffolded stages. However, given the constraints of curriculum time, explicit grammar needs to be learned to make sure that students can manipulate the language and start moving away from the sentence builders. 

My experience is that an inductive approach to grammar works best, which also allows for checking for understanding and adapt teaching accordingly: 

Can students work out a specific grammatical rule after extensive use of sentence builders and narrow readings/listenings? Can they discuss this rule in pairs? Can we all explain the rule explicitly? Can we contrast our knowledge of past grammatical rules with this new rule? ( for example the formation of the present and the past tense?) 

After rules have been established, students need to apply the rules, using the same activities used in the structured production stage, but now, moving away from the sentence builder by changing the person who does the action and using different vocabulary from that on the sentence builder. The idea is to work with the grammatical structure in context (lexicogrammar) and in sentences, not just in isolation with new examples. Wheel of Names, Boardgames, Battleships or Flippity (randomiser), work extremely well to practise grammatical rules. 

As before, we do so as a whole class activity using MWBs, encouraging, supporting and stretching students as we carry out different activities: 

Great answer! Could you write this verb/sentence in the future too? Can you read your sentence and spot any mistakes? Where? Adapt your teaching according to the information you gather from the students: Do you need further lessons embedding grammar practice with scaffolded production tasks? If so, which activities are you going to use?

Reaching Fluency and Creativity 

At this stage, the idea is to work, entirely from memory and under time restrictions. Students tend to work independently, so moving around to spot errors is now more important than ever! This is what I call spinning the plates! We move around, we spot errors but also excellent use of the language: we showcase the latter; we engage students in deep thinking about what they know well and expect them to demonstrate this knowledge through meaningful independent output. Students set themselves targets based on this and where gaps are noticed, we reteach, remodel, practise again and again. Speed Dating, group talk or the 1,2,3 technique work brilliantly here. The important thing is to listen to the output produced by the students and to respond to it!

The beauty of the process is that not specific worksheets are needed, all is managed via our skilled questions and observation of the classroom and students' answers. It is teaching skill at its best. 

How to set up the foundations for a great MFL Year!

I am aware the new term started last week or even earlier in the case of Scotland, however, I thought I would write about my 6 best tips to make sure that we set up the best foundation for a very successful MFL teaching and learning experience at any Key Stage and level!

These are the elements I always dedicate time to think about when planning my lessons. As I have mentioned on my posts before, I never think of lessons as individual units but a string of little units to get my students to be fluent with the language. 

Anchoring in Challenge 

I always like anchoring in challenge! It doesn't matter the level, the ability or the key stage. I always have high expectations for all my students and I pitch high, then, I provide scaffolding strategies, Sentence Builders are a brilliant tool for this, to support those who may need the extra practice to get to my expectations.  

This is something I always make clear during my first lesson: everyone here can learn a language well and that is my expectation. I will give you all the ingredients to be successful but, you will need to commit. I believe in you but you need to believe in yourselves.  

I write extensively on how to stretch ALL attainer level students in this post and on this one I explore how to reach those lower attainer students.

To make the message clear, I started creating these amateur videos, one for KS3 and another for KS4, inspired by Danielle Warren. In them, I demonstrate the ingredients to be successful, as a recipe, and what I expect from my students:

Both videos focus on how to use our exercise book, for us OneNote, how to use our Sentence Builders and the independent work I will expect my students to carry out, guided by me, via Memrise, Quizlet, the Sentencebuilders site or the The Language Gym. These are my non negotiables!  The videos are also shared with parents so they will know how to support their child with their language learning journey. 

How to be successful at KS3 video

How to be successful at KS4 video

The Power of Praise!

I am of the belief that there cannot be too much praise for anyone. Once the students have clear expectations and are guided nicely on how to navigate throughout the different success ingredients set up in our video, it is important to praise them when they do this successfully, independently and willingly. This must be the case even when things are not perfect but there has been a clear attempt at doing something. There are different ways to do so, via Merits, Alphas etc.. but a big winner for me has been the use of Scratching Cards with my Bitmoji!

I got the idea from a lovely person from Face Book but I cannot remember her name, apologies!  This is the template.  The only thing needed is to print out the template, cut the cards and stick a scratch sticker, bought in Amazon for around £3 on top of the prize statement.  My students, even the most reluctant, die for these cards! I give them around for good answers, behaviour etc..  

Listening for Learning

This is a must I always contemplate in my planning, which is embedded in the notion that we acquire language via what we listen and read (input), following a lexicogrammar/EPI approach inspired by Gianfranco Conti. This means I must carefully plan listening tasks NOT as testing opportunities but as learning activities, which will allow students to internally process the Sentence Builders with the lexical material and grammar (together not separated)  and be transferred in students' long term memory so that they, at some point in the language learning journey,  are able to put it into practice via output tasks.

In this popular post I extensively write about my favourite listening for learning activities at all Key Stages

Gamification = Purpose

This is a must in all my lessons. Second language acquisition research such as that explained by Florencia Henshaw in her latest book Common Ground, advocates for the use of tasks in the MFL classroom. 

As Steve Smith clearly states in a post today, a task is an activity which primary focus is meaning, not a linguistic form; an information gap somehow, is needed, so there's a purpose to communicate; there's a clear goal to be achieved and students must use existing embedded language, as well as new one throughout the task material.  Games are, therefore, by definition, tasks, and make the language purposeful and fun to learn as controlled and/or creative output activities and I plan them carefully in my lessons.

By game I understand any information gap task and this can take place from day one of the language learning journey: 

In a first lesson learning to say what your name is in a target language, students work in pairs. I give them a card A and a card B with names and gaps in them so that students need to ask each other "What is your name?" and complete the names they have missing in their card. The missing names in card A are in card B and vice versa.  

For ideas on my favourite games, have a look at this Blogpost on gamification.

Structure

Thinking about the structure of the lessons and a sequence of lessons is vital. It is what I call thinking backwards: 

I have in mind a text/ content on a given topic that I want students to master/be fluent in by the end of a unit and I think backwards on what tasks I will need to devise to get them there, using a lexicogrammar approach, from Modelling the language to Fluency. What tasks I will need to model the language (listening for learning via input tasks), how I will check for understanding and what meaningful tasks I will devise for structured output and finally for creative/fluent activities.

On this post I exemplify this structure in a KS4 case study.

On this post I write how to plan from Modelling to Fluency

The cultural dimension

This is very important to me. How can we embed a cultural dimension to our lessons taking into account that students will have limited access to the language while avoiding the use of Google Translate?  How to do this in a time restricted curriculum? This goal can be achieved with simple cultural elements planned along the way, embedded in lessons, but also, via cultural topics being taught in our curriculum

On this post I write how we can incorporate culture via the use of Sentence Builders 

On this post I exemplify this notion via the film Coco

On this post I exemplify how to anchor in challenge with a cultural twist via Encanto

These six elements are my foundation and the ingredients for a successful MFL year! I am looking forward to reading your comments!

Having high expectations: Encanto and Anchoring in challenge!

I have been very busy lately with mocks, teaching intensively and all the other million things that we, teachers, do, while fitting a couple of interviews in between (no right job yet!) However, today I wanted to share an example of having high expectations, what I mean by anchoring in challenge as from Y7 and how we can plant the seed of  different verb tenses as from an early age while incorporating communicative activities and a cultural twist/element to the lesson.

Below, you can find a lesson sequence to teach descriptions in Y7.

 

When I planned this lesson, students already knew how to describe their hair/eyes using “tengo” (I have) and physical appearance using “soy” (I am). During this lesson, for a mixed ability group, I intended to revise the same vocab but now making reference to the third person, while expecting students to refer to the past and the future.

Activity one, consisted of revising the vocab about descriptions that students already knew. For that, I created a Flippity activity with such structures, in Spanish. Students just translated them into English, using the “single name" setting in the Flippity activity, I used the cold calling technique for this. This was a quick fire activity based on retrieval practice. On a second round, I expected the students to shout: tengo or Soy, for each expression, as students tend to get confused between the two verbs! We also remembered the o/a option for adjectives such as delgado/a. 

After that, I explained that we would describe Maribel’s family in Encanto. To do that I asked if we could use Soy/Tengo and why not. I then showed them the following Sentence Builder. 

The Sentence Builder had the vocabulary students already knew, like descriptive expressions and family members but introduced: “tiene” “antes tenía” “me gustaría que tuviera”  “es” “antes era” “ me gustaría que fuera”. 

We did lots of modelling and repetition with “tiene” and “antes tenía” using the vocab on the sheet. I explained how the second structure, was already GCSE level, and I was teaching it to them because I had high expectations on them.  They felt special and loved it! That motivated them!

I explained how we can remember “tenía” by thinking of the number “ten” in English and “ear”, like in “tenear”= tenía. I showed this with gestures (showing my 10 fingers, followed by touching my ear):  dual coding. Then we moved to “es” which they already knew and “antes era” and I explained how we could remember this sgructure by thinking about  a “past era” in time! I modelled the structures with MWBs: dictations, and translation both ways. On this occasion, I just mentioned “ me gustaría que tuviera/ fuera” and how this was, specifically, a Y11 expression. I did a little bit of modelling too with the expression but it was there to stretch  the high flyers while having high expectations on all of them. I expect everyone to use it but we will need more lessons for this! Stealing sentences would work brilliantly at this stage too!

Next activity, to be done in a second lesson if necessary, was a Battleships oral activity for students to practise the structures we had modelled. They played in pairs and described La Familia Madrigal in the present and the past! High flyers were encouraged to make reference to the future. All students had the previous Sentence Builders with them so scaffolding was integrated. Note that I gave students the initials of the translations in Spanish to trigger memory. 

Finally, after a couple of minutes cold calling about “how do you say, I have, he has, he had, I am, he is, he was?” We played the Piñata game in teams (A and B). The game had the same sentences as in the Battleships game, reinforcement of structures, but now these sentences were in a different format. 

The Piñata Game 

A person from team A chooses a number from the board, before releasing what there is behind, I spin the wheel and someone from team A translates the sentence into Spanish. I reveal what is behind their chosen number: positive points, negative points, a robber (so they lose all the points) or swapping points with team B. Then we do the same with team B. I keep a tally with each team points. They love it!  The original template and game was created by the amazing Genially Queen, Marie Allirot.

By the end of the lesson/sequence of two lessons, students in Y7 could say small sentences using the present and past tenses! Many could make reference to the future, using the conditional and the imperfect subjunctive, too.  

This is the perfect example of what a lesson anchored in challenge and high expectations means to me. It will require much more imput to embed the imperfect/conditional/imperfect subjunctive into my students’ long term memory but with retrieval practice and the recycling of such structures in future topics, it will get done! On the other hand, the activities provided students with opportunities to communicate with real examples: the games, while relating to them adding the Encanto film as a context too.  As I said, more lessons will be needed to get to automaticity but the seed was well planted! In subsequent lessons, students can describe/create posters of the different characters, listen to the famous No se habla de Bruno song. My post is about maximising language with some culture references but if you are interested in carrying out a project on Encanto, these two websites, suggested by Barbara Montero, may  be useful. 

Un viaje encantador a Colombia

Discovering Encanto