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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.
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:
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!!!
You may think I am obsessed with retrieval practice but it is so important in order to keep students motivated and make progress that a big percentage of my lesson time is dedicated to this.
A few weeks ago I read an article by Marc Enser on some research on retrieval practice. In the article Marc explained how two departments in their school (History and Geography) wanted to see the impact of retrieval practice in their students’ results. They used quizzes in their lessons for this. Both departments got an improvement in their test results but Geography’s were much higher. When they analysed the data and tried to explain this discrepancy, they discovered that History used to do a quiz in each lesson from previous knowledge but not related to the content of the actual lesson. Geography, on the other hand, did also a quiz but this was embedded in what students were learning in the lesson, hence, helping students to consolidate and embed learning in this long-term memory more successfully than the History department. This is powerful and it relates to my own practice.
Retrieval practice must be embedded with new content constantly so language becomes automatized and students can transfer structures freely from different contexts!
All activities done in lessons with new material should include structures from old topics applied to these new contexts while also making reference to the content from past topics. Planned activities and homework tasks should give students opportunities to practise past content as a matter of fact: When asking students to practice sentences on school topic, why not including sentences from holidays and, most importantly, adapting those structures from holidays into the new topic of school? When planning activities for Y11 students on the topic of festivals, why not including also content from work, free time and holidays? why not applying structures seen in the topic of free time "juego al fútbol desde hace 3 años" in this new topic "trabajo de canguro desde hace 3 meses"?
Digital tools for embedded retrieval practice
In this post I wrote, extensively, about different apps that I use for retrieval practice but I would like to add a few which I have used since while still mentioning the old ones!
This is the new kid on the block in my teaching! Introduced to me by Laura Causer during the Show and Tell Webinar of the Language Show, this tool has revolutionised my retrieval practice strategy and saved me time!!!!
Spiral is basically, like Wooclap or Mentimeter, an interactive response tool. What’s the difference with the two previous apps?You need zero preparation if you use the QuickFire light option!
Basically, you open an account, create a class (you don’t need names), select the QuickFire light option from the home menu, select your class and share a special URL and code with your students (these will also be the same for that class every time you launch the QuickFire, so my students have bookmarked it). Similar to Kahoot, Mentimeter etc....
Pupils log in with that special code (not additional login required) and you will start seeing their names appearing on your screen. When you are ready to ask questions to consolidate and retrieval previous knowledge, you just press the green go button!
Students then start writing their answers to your question, which will appear on the screen, only when you click on “reveal answers”. This option is great as students cannot copy each other and you can wait to reveal answers once everyone has submitted their input. To increase pace, I encourage early birds, either to check their answers or to extend them so they do not sit down doing nothing while partners submit answers, great for differentiation too!
At this point you may select “show names” too or “hide the names”: I find this little action powerful as sometimes you may want to give confidence to students who tend to make mistakes and you may decide not to show their names until a later stage.
However, when you decide to do so, the students’ names will appear with their answers on the screen! Big plus from Mentimeter or Wooclap and students can also modify/ improve their answer if you prompt them to do so. Great tool for feedback too.
Spiral is basically an interactive mini whiteboard and it is ideal for hybrid situations when you have students online and students in the classroom! Also no need to sanitise mini whiteboards after single use! In action it looks like the pictures below:
LearningApps
In my previous post I explained in lots of detail all the activities that can be achieved with this tool. The golden rule is to use these activities blended in the learning experience and incorporating structures and vocabulary from previous studied topics! Below there’s a how to video guiding you how to use the tool.
Another great free tool for Retrieval Practice! The randomiser and Random Name picker are great tools for retrieval practice! Instructions are straightforward and you will need a Google account.
This tool allows you to create personalised interactive quizzes, incorporating sound too so great to revise oral questions while also checking listening comprehension!
This is another of the new tools I have started to use in the last month. Designed by Adam Boxer, creator of Retrieval Roulettes, which Julia Morris talked about during the Show and Tell Webinar in the Language Show, Carousel Learning is also a free tool which allows you to upload a spreadsheet with as many items (Qs) as you want to include, and topics. As my input, I use short sentences that students need to translate into Spanish.
In your spreadsheet you must include your question (English sentence for me), the answer (Spanish translation) and the topic it refers to. There is a template in the site to get the setting right! Once this spreadsheet is uploaded, Carousel Learning allows you to create specific quizzes on particular topics, which you can rotate and assign to different classes. There are also many quizzes questions from the learning community for you to use too!
Why do I love Carousel learning? Because students do not get immediate feedback but they are presented with the right answers at the end of their quiz. Students then must decide if they were correct or not. I think this feature is extremely powerful for independent learning and making students take ownership for their own mistakes and improvement!!! What did I get right? What did I get wrong? Why? And look for help! Although it needs training!
Jane Basnett has created this súper video on how to set up a quiz on Carousel learning. It is extremely informative and well explained so a must watch!
Genially
I love this tool!! There are many talented Genially people in the UK such as Marie Allirot or Julia Morris who actually make their own genially activities from scratch!
However, I am lazy, so I use the templates provided in the gamification section! You have many interactive free games such as Snakes and Ladders or Escape Rooms, which you only need to modify to fit your retrieval practice input! I love genially because through games students reinforce those key structures! Genially also embeds smoothly into Onenote, which I use for my lessons, although you can just share your genially game with your classes the way you want to!
You can also embed your LearningApps to the genially game questions! How cool is this?
Let’s not forget the basics! This is not free but it is brilliant for retrieval practice! I love every feature of it! It is very affordable. It is an improved online version of Taskmagic: same creator Martin Lapworth.
This is a tool which allows you to create your own little games, which you then share with students. Students get tokens and rewards for completing the games. In my opinion, more suitable for KS3. My only reservation is that the games are based on multiple choice, which, I, particularly, am not keen on. However, still a great tool to revise those key structures, especially similar ones in different tenses!
Similar to LearningApps but you can only create a limit of activities unless you go premium! You do not have the embedded audio facility, which is a shame! However, the activities are very eye-catching and attractive for young learners!
Many people are using this! It is not free and I have not used it myself yet! The Intruders game seems like a hit on twitter and many people have recommend it to me. I need to explore this one!
This was introduced to me only a few weeks ago by the amazing Jimena Licitra and it has lots of potential! However, it will require some time to create your resources. This app allows you to create interactive learning paths for your students! It looks very, very powerful and engaging but you will need to dedicate some time to it! You can have some free decks, or learning paths for free but after that there is a premium to pay. You can also use decks created by others! If structured well, this should be an extremely engaging tool for topic revision and retrieval practice of key structures. Watch this space!
So, retrieval practice is important, very important. So important that it should be present in every lesson you do by embedding content and structures from all topics all the time. Using these tools allows me to do so in a motivating and engaging way! However, do not get me wrong, retrieval practice can be done without technology.
Embedded Retrieval Practice must take place at all stages of learning, ALL THE TIME and it must be planned thoroughly via meaningful activities, especially in the Practice Stage of learning!
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!
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!
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!
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.
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.
I have talked a lot about Digital Tools and how these can support my lessons, creating a Blended Learning experienced in my classroom. See my post here.
On this post, I am sharing some quick How to videos on how to use these tools in the classroom to create a Blended Learning experience. These tools were also invaluable during lock-down!
In the videos, which are not edited so apologies if they are not perfect, I show how I create the resource and I quickly explain possible uses in the classroom for MFL but also for other subjects!
These tools are great for Retrieval Practice and when implemented in the classroom where students bring their own device, you suddenly have Blended Learning in action! I use Onenote to share the activities created this way. However, Google Classroom would be equally good.
Since September, all my students bring their own device to lessons and they open their Onenote. I teach using, face to face techniques, activities through my board but also via activities using the apps from the videos, which have been previously shared via Onenote.
During lessons, some students may work on the activities online while others may do oral work with me, or the whole class may work through the activities online. This is how I have been teaching for the last three weeks and my students love it! Rather than doing an old-fashioned worksheet, students may do a Quizizz, Wheel of Names or a LearningApps activity! As we cannot use board games now, students play board games (for oral, translation practice) via the Genially free digital boards!
I have tried to maximise all the knowledge I acquired during Lock-down from amazing educators such as Joe Dale, Helen Meyers, Jane Basnett, Vincent Everett or Marie Allirot to just mention a few! I hope you find the video guides useful! There are more guides to come: Flippity, Flipgrid and Padlet but on a second post as this has taken most of the Sunday morning to make.
I love technology! Not just for the sake of it but because I believe (based on my own experience) that it can enhance the teaching and most important, the learning experience of my students.
I love blended learning and I think that digital resources can be crucial in retrieval practice, which is key for languages! If students are not continuously exposed to the language (our Sentence Builders), they will simple forget them! Similarly, digital tools help, along with cultural input, to make lessons memorable! These are just some of my favourite platforms!
TaskMagic- Textivate
I have written extensively how these can be used at all different stages of the teaching/learning process according to the MARS EARS model: especially in the Model/ Awareness and Structured Production stages. Please see previous posts to see how I introduce/drill language using these tools.
Quizlet and Memrise
These are essential in making students independent and help them learn our SBs! Most students are used to using technology on their mobiles and, although the Repeating, Covering, Testing traditional learning method still has a place for many students, creating courses online linked to my Sentence Builders have proved to be a huge success! I use Memrise for KS3, they love the competition points system, and Quizlet for KS4.
All courses are shared with students via Firefly, our school digital platform and via Onenote. Students complete the courses for homework (learning tasks) and they get tested on them in lessons, formally or as a whole lesson activity. I think it is vital we give students learning tasks as homework! Let's face it, if we do not explicitly say they have to learn the vocab, most learners would not do it!
I love this simple app! You can create roulette type of exercises for retrieval practice, again, based on our Sentence Builders. Its use is ideal in the first two stages of learning but it can also be used in the last stage (Spontaneous stage) where students create a sentence from a given prompt. This technique, can be used up to KS5, very successfully.
This is an example of a Wheel of names activity based on SB from the topic of Technology (Y10) The activity can be done orally (testing after the Quizlet learning task) or in written with mini whiteboards. Able classes can be asked to extend the sentences with something that makes sense or/and using a different tense! I can spend a whole lesson doing just Wheel of names activities! If you add and element of game (points system) you have a winner!
Most nicely, you can have two or even three wheels opened on your screen! which means you can practise very long sentences! It would look like this: (Wheel 1 is about Sentences with IR and wheel 2 about reasons why)
Fantastic app which I discovered thanks to Joe Dale. Similar use to Wheel of names but many more uses! Vincent Everett has many examples of how he uses the Randomizer tool with Sentence Builders, like the above example, without having to split your screen! Mike Elliott also has a great example of how to use the Randomizer in conjunction with Flipgrid! Below is Mike's video on how to do this to practise pronunciation with students on a given set of SBs. Once you create your activity, you just share the link with your students!
This must be my absolutely favourite app! which I have used for a few years now and has proved so handy during lock-down. It allows you to create many exercises based on the Sentence Builders that you are working on during lesson time.
It also develops independence in learners and just adds a fun element to a conventional worksheet! It helps to make your lessons Memorable!
I particularly like the Freetext input activities, which allows me to create translation activities but also listening and dictation! Great for modelling the language! Example below:
As in the case of Flippity, once you have your activity you just share it with your students! I do this via our class Onenote.
This is the coolest app I discovered during lock-down thanks to Carmen Quirós. It is a presentation app but very engaging and interactive! I love the templates it provides to create info-graphics, board games and escape rooms! You can get very creative with these Escape Rooms!
Marie Allirot and Julia Morris have shared many impressive escape rooms using Genially, check them here. However, using the templates as they are, is also highly innovative and engaging.
I have created my own escape rooms, again, to practise in a different way those precious SBs so they are great for the structure production stage of learning. What I love about Genially, is that you can embed activities from LearningApps (or any other app) into your slides, making these activities part of the challenges to escape the room! This is Retrieval Practice and Gamification on the use of SBs at their best!
Another cool use of Genially, is their board games templates! These are just ace and students love them to practise their Sentence Builders or discussing KS5 topics!
Mentimeter allows you to create interactive presentations by letting your audience (your students) interact with you! I used it to test SBs too (2nd stage of learning) but also to get spontaneous responses from the students from a prompt. The teacher carries out the presentation with questions and students will get a code which they introduce in their own devices. Students answer those questions using their devices.
All answers will appear on the screen! Great for collaboration, sharing good answers among students and quick feedback for the teacher (how many mistakes are there?/ checking for understanding). This tool proved great during lock-down too! See example below:
This app is great to practise oral and writing collaborative work. I use it in the last stage of the learning process (spontaneous, extensive production) although it can also be used for Controlled Production. I love it because it is a collaborative space for students and they can learn from each other. It is eye-catching and again, it makes the learning more memorable than just using a classic worksheet!
Another use for a Padlet is to share videos that students make! and for collaboration with partner schools. This is our Erasmus journey, using Padlet, below. I also use Padlet for revision schedules for my Y11 students. They love it! This is an example.
This is a great app for oral practice. I create a group for each of my classes and then threads on whatever I want them to give a presentation on. I use this at the last stage of the learning cycle: Spontaneity and free output from students!
This app presents a great solution to the current climate. It offers a digital mini whiteboard. You just need to create a class and share a code with your students. Pupils from their own device will join your class with a board which will be displayed in the big screen, that way you can see each other answers, to say translations, verbs etc.. and everyone can see each other answers too on the the big screen/projector. Great to check for understanding, pinpoint areas of weaknesses, establish grammar discussions etc.. you name it! The big screen will look something like this:
This is a Quiz app but with a twist! It allows you to create different quizzes in different formats. Also, as part of your quiz input you can include listening (up to 10 seconds) which it makes it perfect for testing our SBs from a listening point of view! My favourite Quiz: Open-ended! so I can include dictations, translations, oral questions, you name it! Again, something very similar to Flippity, LearningApps but on a different formal so it is not boring from the students' point of view! The way I use it is not so much as a testing device but as Solo Practice mode. This way, I promote independence in my students.
Jane Basnett offers a fantastic overview on how Quizizz can be used for retrieval practice here.
Other digital resource I love with ready to use activities are:
The language gym extremely good for SBs practice and VERB TRAINER!!! the students love the competition element! This is Gianfranco Conti's app!
This is language great for listening videos! Again, my students can be come addicted to this.
Languagenut this offers listening, reading online activities
