Beyond the Red Pen: Adaptive teaching in MFL as a tool to reduce "formal" marking

Happy belated Easter! As the end of the Easter holidays approaches, I want to reflect on the power of adaptive teaching and how, when it is applied skilfully, it can reduce the time we need to spend on more formal marking, because, adaptive teaching is all about constant formative assessment of students' performance, is all about constant checking for understanding and how we react to this in order to close gaps, tackle misconceptions and stretch all students, via skilful scaffolding. 

Adaptive teaching should take place at all stages of the language learning journey. Following Rosenshine's Principles of Instruction and the foundations of a lexicogrammar approach, this language journey can be divided in 4 stages: Modelling, Structured Practice, Expansion (via the study of grammatical rules) and Independent Practice, to lead to Fluency under a communicative framework. 

Adaptive teaching, should take place at all these four stages of learning and, because we react to students' outcomes, then and there, the feedback is immediate: the reaction to these outcomes. This means that that marking books can become obsolete and unnecessary. Of course, personal comments on pupils' work can still take place, but this will become more of a encouraging tool rather than the main means to close gaps.  Formal marking of work, using specific rubrics, normally rooted in exam boards criteria, will still be needed; but this will be more sporadic and comments on these more tactical, which will also be the source of future teaching based on common errors spotted by us.  This formal marking can also be assisted by AI generative tools, for example, the new "Help me Write Feature" in GoogleClassroom will write a review on students' work based on specific rubrics which we can then modify accordingly to help us save precious time!

How does Adaptive teaching looks in practice?

Through Modelling

In the modelling stage, adaptive teaching can be achieved with the help of MWBs. After choral repetition of vocabulary/ key structures, to which we can react straight away from a phonics and pronunciation point of view, carrying out Dictation tasks using MWBs can be extremely powerful. 

We can scaffold the process by providing students with with key vocab handouts of sentence builders to be used if needed, or displaying these on the board for support. We can then carry out different dictation tasks, scaffolding the process: starting with simple sentences leading to more complex utterances, carrying out the dictation tasks in a slower or faster pace, repeating several times as needed, basically, responding 100% to students' performance on the MWBs.  

At this stage, having a seating plan where we can clearly identify Premium Pupil students, students with SEN and Gifted and Talented pupils, will be essential, as we navigate the classroom encouraging these students and giving them quick guidance ( pointing them out to the use of our Sentence Builder or just telling them not to use these and extend answers).

 As we are responding to students' work, we can spot specific common gaps, for example, on links between phonemes and graphemes and reinforce these. We can also stretch the students by asking them to translate sentences/ key vocab on the spot or explain a particular grammatical rule which can inform us on how well our students know specific material and act upon it. 

At this point, we are marking students' work and nothing can be more interactive and powerful than our reaction to this on the spot, instead of wating for a worksheet to be marked in a couple of weeks!!

Through Structured Practice

At this stage, students will be carrying out more oral, communicative tasks, in pairs or small groups, for example via information gap activities, board games where students have to translate given sentences, battleships  or connect four games etc.. 

When students are carrying out these more independent tasks, we should be moving around the classroom, again, spotting mistakes, encouraging key students to extend answers and helping those students who need it by guiding them to use a sentence builder or oral mat. 

Structured Practice although should involve oral practice, can be preceded by whole group work, again, via MWBs. For this, I am a big fan of Flippity or Wheel of Names, where key structures come out and students need to translate them into the target language and pupils be encouraged to extend their answers using the Rule of 3 (using 3 sentences for each answer) or our 5 Magic Powers, linked to the Rule of 3. 

This way, we can spot gaps, reteach misconceptions, revise key vocabulary and stretch pupils by asking them to use different tenses or vocabulary from previous topics and react to students' answers. Again, feedback is carried out interactively and effectively while carrying out these activities.

Through Independent Practice

At this stage students will be practising communicative tasks, where they will need to think on the spot for specific answers to given questions or situations.  At this point, scaffolding the process and reacting to students' performance before they need to be fully independent will be key. 

To do this, we can show any oral questions we want students to answer in a Flippity format or Wheel of Names and expect students to write model answers before embarking on oral tasks to develop confidence and allowing them to reflect on their own knowledge, making the link between productive skills. 

This can be done via MWBs again, so that we can guide and stretch students as needed while checking for understanding for the use of specific grammatical structures or tenses. This can be extremely useful to develop fluency. 

After a few minutes answering key questions in writing, we can then carry out oral work in pairs or groups, for example via games such as this Monopoly Game to practise potential questions for the new GCSE exam. 

Once students are carrying out these oral activities independently, as with the previous stage, moving around, spotting mistakes, talking to students to give guidance or encouraging them to extend answers is our way to adapt our teaching. At some point, we may need to stop an oral activity to give feedback to the whole class on a specific common error or we may need to reteach or revise a specific grammatical point or tense. 

Adaptive teaching and Metacognition

Another big asset of using adaptive teaching via interactive techniques is that we also develop metacognition skills with our students. As we drive students through their learning journey via the use of key questions and by scaffolding the process, we can add more reflection moments which will help students to identify and self-assess what they command. 

Doing Brain Dumps, which I call In my own words, can be a wonderful strategy here, for example, by asking students to write down all the vocabulary they remember from the previous lesson or write down a paragraph as long as possible, using the structures and vocabulary practised throughout a lesson or previous lessons. Similarly, using quick, low stake tests or self- quizzes via Flippity or Forms, will help students to retrieve vocab, structures and self-assess their own progress. 

Carrying out learning schedules to encourage guided independent practice at GCSE level, can also be a powerful tool which will help students to develop ownership for their own learning journey. I use learning schedules via Padlet, an example can be found here.

By adapting our teaching to students' responses in situ, what I call, spinning the plates, we are providing valuable and face to face feedback to all our students, which is more powerful than a written comment in an exercise book, Onenote book or Google Classroom Assignment. 

To embed this in our department procedures, a clear mark scheme where specific reference to how we provide specific feedback to students in our MFL department is essential. Key pieces of written and oral work will still be needed to be marked and collated, however, the routinary and time consuming process of marking books can be fully avoided or minimised if adaptive teaching is fully embedded in all lessons by all members of the MFL department.

Skilful Questioning in the MFL mixed ability classroom: adaptive and responsive teaching

 As I am recovering from an operation at home, I have been thinking a lot about adaptive and responsive teaching, what I call Spinning the Plates, meaning that teachers start assessing students' answers in the classroom and start responding to students' needs, encouraging students to work at different speeds/levels within the classroom. 

I wrote a very thoughtful blogpost on adaptive and responsive teaching three years ago and I still stick to each strategy detailed and explained there. To have a look at that post, click here. 

However, what happens when most students in our MFL mixed ability classroom are disengaged students as they find learning languages extremely challenging and have multiple special needs?  What happens when students' working memory is particularly weak and they have processing difficulties?  How do we get those students to produce language after the modelling stage and numerous listening/dictation activities?

The answer is RETRIEVAL PRACTICE and CHECKING FOR UNDERSTANDING in every single lesson, via SKILFUL QUESTIONING.

This morning, I read a great blogpost by Ross McGill in the teacher toolkit website on  The art of asking good questions in the Classroom you can find the article here.  In the article, Ross McGill talks about Monological, Declarative, Dialogical and Metacognitive questions. This made me think  of my own practice and how I use questions in the classroom to scaffold the production learning stage from word to paragraph level.  

Scenario with a mixed ability Y8 class with multiple students with SEN and high level of disengagement: scaffolding the production process 

In this scenario, retrieval practice is key. Imagine we are studying the topic of Free Time and we have been doing so for some weeks, so students should be ready for some structured, guided practice of the language in small paragraphs.  How do we move them from word to paragraph level?

This is what works for me.  Using MWBs, I start scaffolding their practice.  All students have access to our Sentence Builders via Google Classroom and these must be opened in their laptops, so they can be easily accessed if needed, although I will encourage the most able to work from memory. The sequence of questioning will be something like this:

OK, how do you say "I like" in Spanish?" Please, write it in your MWB, 3,2,1 show up your boards"  I am confident that nearly everyone will have written Me gusta. 

That's brilliant, so, let's use our Magical Powers and let's use some other vocab and tenses. How do you say "I tend to"?  Again, we are working at word level and most of my students will be able to write suelo in their MWBs, because they know it or in some cases, because it is in the Sentence Builder hand out.  

Fantastic, what about "I liked"?  and "I used to"? Great, do you know, these are now GCSE structures and you can do it! By making this comment, I am telling them that I believe in them and they are clever as they can do GCSE work!

Well, what about "I like to listen to music"? At this stage, I will start revising the free time verbs so we can move to writing in sentence level. Remember, force your brain to remember how you say listen to music, a clue, starts with E M.  However, if you really cannot remember, use your SB!  3,2,1 show up your boards.  Great.  I like doing this, as I like to share the learning process with them so that they can start owning it. This is how we learn and we are doing this to help you remember the vocabulary. 

Can you think and share other activities that you remember from your free time? such as to go to the swimming pool, to play football, to read?  Do this with a partner. You have 2 minutes to think and write as many verbs as you remember in your MWBs.  This is  the classic, think, pair and share strategy.  OK, 2 minutes have gone by, 3, 2, 1 boards up!  At this point students will have written different verbs in the infinitive form.  

My experience tells me that someone, may have written the "I form" of the verb, instead of the infinitive. If this happens, I can stop the class and say: Ok, someone has written "juego al fúltbol", that is a great verb, but what does it mean? pause 2 seconds, Maya? (cold-calling someone that I know will know the answer to move to the explanation). That's right "I play football" but I want structures with the infinitive, basically with "to in front of the verb, to sing, to play" so how do you say to play football? pause 2 seconds, Tyler? (cold-calling the person who wrote "juego al fútbol" in the first place) You can check your SB, Tyler.  That's right "jugar". Why am I making a fuss of this? Why do we need "jugar, tocar" and not "juego, toco" etc...? pause 2 seconds, Seb? (Cold calling and probing questions now). If students  are insecure, I can proceed with something like this to scaffold their thinking process to get them to the answer I need to: well, How do we say "I like"? Can I say "I like I play" in English? Does this make sense? what does "Me gusta juego" mean?, pause 2 seconds, Trish? (cold calling again).  Well done, "I like I play" and that is wrong, so I need " I like to play"? How do you say "I like" again? how do you say "to play"? How do you say "I like to play" then? write it down in your MWBs, 3,2,1  show me boards!   

Excellent, what about "I liked to play football"?  Remember that you must force your brain to give you the answer, but if your brain is not working today for you, use your SB!  By doing this, I am allowing students to use their SB if they cannot remember and I am telling them is not them the issue but their brains that need more exercise!!

Maya, that's great ( she wrote the answer in a few seconds, while everyone is still writing, so I approach her and say: Maya, can you extend your answer? can you say what other things you liked to do and when?  There may be other students like Maya, working at a different level now: adaptive teaching).  Ok, 3,2,1 boards up!  Brilliant, now, can you write something you like or tend to do and something you liked or used to do in the past?  Check your spellings! Remember that we are using the infinitive. After several examples with this, we can move to the next level.

What about reasons? how do you say "because"?  how do you say "because it can be fun"? "because it can be cool?" Excellent. Use your MWBs, 3,2,1, boards up. Ok let's do it orally now,  "how do you say because it is cheap", Tom? (cold calling, if he doesn't know I will go to someone else and then come back to him, so he cannot opt out). 

Brilliant, you are working hard and you are really helping transfer all these expressions to your long term memory!  

So how do you say "I like to listen to music because it can be fun"? thinking time, 3, 2, 1 boards up. Excellent,  how do you say "I used to play football with my brother"?  Thinking time, 3,2, 1 boards up.  Excellent, how do you say "I like to listen to music because it can be fun but I used to play football with my brother"?  This is now more challenging so the thinking time is longer.  When doing this,  try to work from memory, but the SB is there to help you as your safety net. I can then approach some of my weak students and say: I can see you are stuck, open your SB and look for "I like" and "to listen to music", that's right, can you find the other vocab?  Maya, you finished, excellent, can you add more information by saying other activities you like and liked?  Again, I am spinning the plates, approaching different students who will be working at different levels. We do these with several sentences.

Excellent, so now, using your MWB, can you write a small paragraph saying two activities you like to do in your free time and a reasons and two activities you liked/used to do before? Can you do it from memory? Tris, don't worry if you need to use your SB but make your brain work before you look at it.  You have 2 minutes to write your answer. If this is easy for you, can you make your paragraph as long as possible? OK, time is up 3,2,1  boards up!  We are moving now to paragraph level, while reassuring some  students and making sure I stretch others. 

Who would like to read their little paragraph loud for 3 Achievement Points?  Someone reads their paragraph. Excellent reading, remember how we pronounce "JU" in Spanish.  Ok, what does Maya like to do in her spare time? now, I will ask for volunteers, why does she like it?  Maya can you read it again? We now do some impromptu listening with the students' information. 

Let's have a look at your paragraphs, why is your paragraph good? Think about the 5 magical powers! Does it have more than one tense? does it have reasons? Does it have high impact expressions? Have you used "because I have always wanted to do it" or "because I am good at it" or "because it helps me relax"?  Check with your partner.  We have now moved to the metacognition self-reflection, self-monitoring sphere. 

Can you now write another paragraph in Google Classroom? Try to do  it from memory! Does  it have all the ingredients for a great paragraph? Reflect on it. Remember to use the infinitive! (Metacognitive skills). If you need to, use your SB. Trish, can you write at least 3 sentences like the ones you did with your MWB?  I am moving around (spinning the plates) and I will be giving a scratch card to those who are writing a great paragraph!

This will take the whole lesson but the idea here is that students can move from writing one word to writing a whole paragraph in different tenses, using opinions. Weaker students always have the support of their SB and are not punished or made feel less good for using these, while more able students are encouraged to write longer sentences, paragraphs from memory.  Students get constant feedback and get rewarded with Achievement Points.

Finally, I moved from monological, right-wrong questions to more metacognitive questions that make students think about their own thought process.  The beauty of this process is that it can be adapted to any level from Y7 to Y11.

Goal: mastering the language, the importance of Metacognition

As we embark on the last stage of the exam preparation process with our Y11 and Y13 students before they carry out their public exams, I stopped to reflect on what I expect my students to have achieved after 5/7 years of language learning.

My goal, as from Y7 has always been for my students to achieve fluency in the target language (mastery of vocabulary and structures to communicate effectively), while learning about the target culture, but also to make them independent and reflective learners in the process. Achieving these goals, I believe, will make them successful in their GCSE and AS/ALevel exams. 

How do we make our students independent learners?

Following Rosenshine’s principles, firstly by providing good models of language and tasks needed for their exam. This means, not only modelling language but also modelling how to tackle a 150 word task or a literature essay at ALevel. Silvia Bastow and Sonja Fedrizzi have written extensively about Modelling the thought process when tackling a written task. Inspired by these two educators, I created this video for my students before their mocks. 

We must also model the learning process in our lessons by carrying out lots of retrieval practice, interleaving topics and/or structures and providing structured/scaffolded practice. Most importantly, it is essential to explain students why we do the activities we do and how these tasks will help them encode information into the long term memory (learning), so that they get involved in and own their learning process.

The idea is that by talking about the activities we do in lessons, we model learning techniques that students can reflect upon and eventually apply themselves independently.  

This is a huge task that requires lots of reflection embedded in lessons. These are some of the questions I ask students in my lessons: How do we learn?  Have you been in a situation that you thought you had done lots of revision but did not do well? Why didn't you well? Is just reading material over and over again, good enough to learn vocabulary/structures? What alternatives do you have? What do we do in lessons to help you master the vocabulary and structures? What of these techniques can you try at home? How can you do retrieval practice/ self-testing at home? How can you practise listening, reading, writing or speaking?

This reflection is the first step to developing metacognition (the power to reflect on our own learning process, identify gaps and plan a strategy to fill such gaps and move forward). 

Metacognition leads to independent learning and is key to experiencing success, which is a great motivator in any learner. 

How to start the metacognition process to achieve independence?

Via powerful feedback and the setting of high expectations.  Feedback given to students should not be just a mark but a way to identify gaps in knowledge and suggest little steps to tackle such gaps, while providing the opportunity to reflect on performance with the setting of own targets. 

When setting targets and designing a course of action to tackle gaps and move forwards, students can then use the repertoire of learning modelled strategies used in everyday lessons. I like calling feedback, feedforward. This involves adopting a positive relationship with mistakes. Mistakes are good! They are the first step to learning.

In my experience, students tend to be overconfident when assessing their knowledge and skills and tend to revise what they are good at, which explains the feeling of "but I revised lots and still I did not do well". Feedback is a good reality check for students to learn what the real gaps are and what they need to test themselves on, using our modelled learning techniques. This means knowing how to develop/test the micro skills leading to a good performance in MFL: listening, reading, writing, speaking, grammar, vocab/structure learning, not just recalling vocabulary in isolation! At this point having a revision schedule, provides a clear path for students to set themselves targets and devise their own strategy, based on a trusted, modelled repertoire of techniques. I do this via Padlet

Power Tools to develop Metacognition in our students

These tools or techniques have been adapted from the wonderful book Powerful Teaching by Pooja K. Agarwal and Patrice M. Bain and I use  to embed Metacognition in my lessons. These tools are closely interlinked to Feedback and Retrieval Practice as starting points to reflect on our learning and moving forward:

• To provide planned breaks within lessons for silent self-retrieval practice . I do this by carrying our In my own words time. Somewhere within lessons I stop carrying out the normal tasks and ask: Can you explain this grammatical rule in your own words? Students may write the rule in MWBs or just share orally with a partner. Or, you have 5 minutes to write down, from memory, as many structures learned today and last week, again using MWBs to check for understanding.

• To plan self-reflection opportunities, after self-retrieval practice in lessons. You have 10 minutes to write down as many sentences/structures as possible from the topic of Free Time in Spanish. After the 10 minutes elapse. What could you remember? Could you share with a partner? Are you happy with what you could remember? Do you need to revise this topic again? How? Set yourself a target as part of your homework today. 

• To help tool one, I use Retrieval Cards  every other lesson with specific translations from English into Spanish, to be completed by students, based on past topics as well as recent ones. I normally use 10 translations. Students translate, in silence, as much of the 10 sentences in the Retrieval Card, from memory. Then, I allow students to look at their notes/sentence builders to look up those structures they could not remember on the spot. Students highlight the structures they could not retrieve on their own, and set up a target, as part of their homework, to revise these and tackle the gap. A few days later, I carry out a very similar Retrieval Card to see what has changed. 

• To use Metacognition Sheets after a unit/topic is taught. This is a normal self-assessment sheet: I know the verbs to describe my holidays but with space for students to actually write down answers from memory.  Then, again, I provide reflection time, alone or in pairs: could I remember lots? why not? what do I need to revise? Students then provide a personal target as part of their homework to deal with this gap.

• Write, leave and retrieve technique. After we go through several activities in a lesson, students write what they know, while it is still fresh in the working memory. Then they leave it, and after 10 or 15 minutes, I ask students to retrieve the same information. How much could they remember when it was not so fresh? What does that tell them? How are they going to close the gap?

These tools empower my students by sparking a conversation about their own learning and encouraging them to make a judgement of learning. 

I train students to differentiate between what they know versus what they do not know and provide them with a repertoire of techniques/steps for them to independently use to take ownership of their learning and do something about knowledge/skills they do not know or can't master yet!  

For MFL, the added complication is that students need not just to know content, like in other subjects, but to use such content spontaneously via different skills, hence the importance to practise the micro skills of listening, reading, writing, speaking and to model how to put the language together in an oral / written task. In other words, doing just Quizlet will not make students write/ speak in a MFL, they will need strategies to practise these skills. 

Metacognition allows students to prioritise learning and experience success so they are open to learning more! 

Metacognition is about not just getting information in their heads, but expect students to get information out from their learning, spontaneously, hence, helping students to encode information into the long-term memory: Learning independently.