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.

Coco: A sequence of lessons, anchoring in challenge!

In this blogpost I am focussing on project based learning and how we spent 6 weeks in Y9 studying the film Coco. We did this right after the Easter Holidays leading up to the May half-Term. Previously, we had studied the topic of TV learning to describe different types of TV programmes, comparing them, saying why students like/ liked some and not others. The idea was to link such vocabulary to a real film, while learning about South-American culture, Mexico and the Day of the dead. Students have two lessons per week in Y9 and this sequence of lessons was intended for a top set but it was slightly updated for all abilities. 

We started by watching the film Coco in Spanish with English subtitles. For that, we payed for the film in Youtube. 

We created two sentence builders. Sentence Builder 1 is what we called Levels 1 and 2 and focusses on what is the film about and how to describe the plot. 

Sentence Builder 2, was a short one and we called it Level 10 and focussed on giving an opinion about the film.  ( Levels 3-9 were not covered in the 6 weeks of teaching, due to lack of time, but it included descriptions of clothes and relationships among members of the film).

We also created a Memrise course to go with the unit for students to learn the chunks that we were covering in lessons.  For Memrise Course, click here. 

The sequence of lessons can be found in this Genially below:

 

The film and all the activities presented in this Genially were carried out within 12 lessons and involved tasks following the EPI/Lexicogrammar approach by Dr Gianfranco Conti, with my own variations and use of digital tasks. 

The sequence starts with modelling activities when a Sentence Builder is introduced, including repetition, dictation, delayed dictation, finishing the sentence after me etc.. with the use of MWBs and lots of praise and merits for every 3 correct answers (my students always keep a tally in their MWBs and at the end they collect their merits). This motivates all students as they want to do well to get their merits at the end of the lesson.

The planned sequence, involves students learning the vocabulary, little by little, using the Memrise courses, in a Flipped Classroom scenario, so when the Sentence Builder was introduced for the first time, students were very familiar with the vocabulary. Spanish being a phonetic language is great for this!

For many lessons, after modelling, we practised the vocabulary in many different ways, until students mastered the Sentence Builders, and believe me they did!!! We carried out, translations via LearningApps, Textivate, Oral Ping-Pong, Battleships and more traditional translations where students were working in Pairs and competing with each other!

I recycled the Wheel of Names activities as starter/plenaries and whole class oral/written activities as needed! By the end of the 12 week period, students could carry out the final writing task from memory and talk for around 2 minutes on Coco. 

The sequence also includes a cute listening activity which I created with Snapchat, inspired by Naziha de Londres. I love this type of video, listening activities because I can vary my vocabulary, speed etc and personalise the learning experience!

Finally, students learned about Day of the Dead in Mexico and carried out a Poster using Spanish and English where they wrote about Coco but also what they had learned about the Day of the Dead.

Why I love it!

The sentence builders are, deliberately, quite complex as they allow me to introduce Direct Object pronouns easily: "su tatarabuelo los abandonó" or "su familia lo obliga a ser zapatero". We dedicated a lesson towards the end analysing these Object Pronouns and comparing the two sentences above with "merece la pena verla"  Why lo/los/la? why in the case of "verla" the pronoun appears after the verb? What is the rule? This grammatical point will be reinforced after half term when we introduce our last topic: food and we learn "lo comí" etc.. Similarly, we revised the past tense, which students had already learned, and I introduced the future "si promete que no será músico".  

Furthermore, students learned about Mexican culture, watched a real film with a purpose and learned sophisticated vocabulary at GCSE level! They loved that as they felt "clever": anchoring in challenge! The sequence also allowed students manipulate the language and conjugate verbs in different tenses while giving their real opinion on something relatable to them!

My best (not free but worth every penny) apps and sites to support EPI

I have written a few posts on the apps and digital tools that I extensively use to deliver my lessons and support Sentence Buillders and the EPI methodology, led by Gianfranco Conti. However, so far the vast majority of these apps were free ones such as Flippity, Wheel of names, Genially, LearningApps, DeckToys, Loom or Canva. 

Today, I would like to talk about the sites and apps, which are not free, but that are essential in my MARS EARS approach to teaching Spanish and are worth every penny! Of course, budgets vary massively from school to school, but hopefully this list will help you decide which ones you could try and start using within your budgets.

Modelling and Awareness-raising

Sentencebuilders.com

This is the first stage of the learning process via a lexicogrammar approach to learning languages. Although most of the process will involve the teacher providing live models for students via a Sentence Builder, which can just be displayed into an Interactive Board, using various repetition techniques and activities such as Syllabing, Spotting the missing word, Dictation, Delayed Dictation or Sentence Puzzle, to mention but a few, the site Sentence Builders, can really add an element of fun for whole class activities at this stage.  

This site is super affordable and it is evolving by the day!  It operates around the concept of Sentence Builders. You can use pre-populated Sentence Builders, under Premium Resources, in Chinese, French, German, Italian, Spanish and Welsh! or, and this is what makes the site so special, you can create, using the site itself, your own Sentence Builders, which you can share with your school or the whole community! Once created a Sentence Builder will look like this, and will generate endless online activities:

It is great for this Stage as you can display it on the board, do repetition as needed, as you would normally do with a PPT or Smartboard slide, but most importantly, after repetition, if you click on the little beret cap icon at the bottom (teacher tools) you will have many choices to display your Sentence Builder: with just initials, with just consonants, with the English translation, without, with the word shape etc.. and now the fun starts!!

After a few repetition rounds with all the words displayed in both languages, I tend to show the Spanish version, firstly, without vowels, then 50/50, finally just initials. I involve the whole class but doing choral repetition to start with and moving to cold calling after a few rounds, working in teams to get points! As this is the modelling stage, students just say the Spanish, but with the added difficulty of having to remember some of the missing letters. I love it, as it avoids me to create a PPT with different slides and it makes the lesson super engaging!  For information on how to use the teacher tools in the Sentence Builders site, have a look at this blogpost.

If you click on Random Spanish prompt, in the yellow box, the site will create random Spanish sentences, based on your Sentence Builder, which you and your students can read, incorporating Phonics into your lesson in context, and translate into English to help memorising.

At this point, I will point out grammatical structures, without explicitly explaining them: Raising Awareness, and will elicit grammatical rules already studied: For example for this Sentence Builder, about holidays in the past, I would ask students to transform the Spanish sentence at the bottom, to the present and would practise the verb IR in the Present tense, followed by "de": voy de vacaciones/ voy de compras/ voy de paseo or just the verb SER. The site will also allow you to print out your Sentence Builders or any Premium, pre-populated ones, which is great to make your own Sentence Builders Booklets! 

Receptive Processing 

This stage is very much linked to the previous one, as it involves to create high-intensity processing practice via listening and reading tasks, (controlled input). At this stage, the Sentence Builders website is great too, as it will create, automatically (once your Sentence Builder is created), a wide range of classic EPI activities such as Dictation, Delayed Dictation, Read and translation, Listening to Translation, Delayed Copying etc.

The site allows you to create your own classes, very easily, and will provide login details for your students. At this stage, I assign a pre-defined path of activities, based on receptive input, which students may carry out during the lesson, as all my students bring their own device to lessons, or as Homework Tasks. 

Structured Production

Sentencebuilders.com and Textivate

At this stage, where students will be required to produce their own sentences via careful planned scaffolded practice, based on the studied Sentence Builder, I use, the Sentence Builders site again. Now, I pre-select activities within the Translate to Spanish option, which will give a lot of  scaffolded opportunities for pushed output: from Word gap (click) to Type all (no clues). Students get points and immediate feedback and you can check progress from your classes section. 

Textivate, another super affordable site by the same creator as Sentence Builders, Martin Lapworth, is another great site for Structured Production activities. The concept is very similar to Sentences Builders, but activities are generated from a text you previously add to the site, rather than a Sentence Builder.

EARS (Expansion, Autonomy, Routanization, Spontaneity)

The Language Gym, Languagenut and This is Language

This is the latest stage of the process and the most difficult to reach! At this stage, the structures have been extensively learned by the students and are practised, interleaving past structures from old Sentence Builders and requiring students to start manipulating the language to create their own output. Scaffolding will still be needed, though! Activities such as creating presentations, freer translations, open questions with limited time constrictions, work well at this stage. Other classics include: speed dating, the spider game, group talk or speak bingo. 

At some point in this stage I will cover grammar via an inductive process, see this blogpost here and will use another of my favourite sites, The Language Gym. The Language Gym allows you to practise the language, via a wide range of pre-populated activities. The site is the digital version of the popular The Language Gym books, authored by Gianfranco Conti, Dylan Viñales and the Language Gym team! So if you use the books in your lessons, this site is a must, and again super affordable! Similarly, using the pre-populated activities in the site, although they don’t coincide entirely with my sentence builders, is priceless to start learning new vocabulary on a given topic, as I explain below.

At this stage, my favourite activity is the Verb Trainer. The verb trainer, does what it says in the tin! It will help students memorise conjugation of verbs. In the Language Gym you can, very easily, create classes and assign assessments from any of the 8 types of exercises above. I love the Verb Trainer because, it helps students drill verb endings in a fun way, especially if you carry the activity live, where all students compete against each other and provide some prizes, like my scratch Bitmoji cards!  It is a winner every single time and students will start using the Verb Trainer independently to revise different tenses, before oral and writing tests. You can practise up to 9 verb tenses, making it ideal from KS3 to KS5!!! My Alevel students use it too!

At this point, together with lots of productive tasks, I also carry out many listening and reading activities moving away from our Sentence Builder.  This process is important, as I want to train my students to learn more vocabulary than just that practised in our Sentence Builders, in preparation for their GCSE exam. I wrote a post on vocabulary learning and how I distinguish between Productive and Receptive vocabulary. Click here to read that post.  To learn Receptive vocabulary, which ideally I would expect to become productive as the students become better linguists and independent in their learning process, I use The language gym activities but also the following sites:

Languagenut and This is Language.  Both of these sites will require the creation of classes, which is very easy to do, and log in details and both of them will be based on pre-populated activities.

This is Language is a site designed to practise listening skills from authentic videos, recorded with native speakers, based on typical GCSE questions and topics for French, German and Spanish. I love it because it allows me and my students to practise exam-style listening content, in a very engaging way, far away from the boring, constricted exam listening tasks and audio files.  The site also allows students to practice grammar and vocabulary aimed at AQA and Edexcel, which makes it a great independent practice tool at KS4!

Recently, the site has also added a Speaking type of activity, which looks great! You can choose a topic, a type of question within that topic and before students record themselves with a suitable answer, they are encouraged to watch some videos with model answers and activities to inspire and enhance their pre-learned oral questions. I love this task, as it practises listening for oral productivity, a key aspect of the EPI approach. As part of the learning process, while carrying out the activities, students are encouraged to add any learned new vocabulary into their Random Quizlet and learn it as part of strategic homework tasks. 

My students really like This is Language and the videos! They are designed, as all the activities in the site, for KS3 and GCSE. You can choose videos per topic for KS3 or by board for GCSE, and within that per theme/topic. Once you select a topic you have a few videos to choose from. I love the fact that you have different accents to choose from, ranging from different regions of Spain to South America. The stars represent the difficulty of the listening, and once a video is selected and assigned, students can slow down the audio as needed in order to carry out some really good activities, which exploit the video resource fully!  

I have found that using This is Language in the last stage of learning on covered topics, expands my students vocabulary and trains them to listen to unknown, unprepared words/structures. The fact that they have access to the full transcript and they are encouraged to look words up, makes it a very powerful tool, which can then be used independently by my students in preparation to their GCSE or just internal exams. 

Languagenut can be used from Primary to GCSE level, with plans to extend it to Alevel! It is available for French, German, Mandarin and Spanish. I love it because we can use it from Y7 to GCSE, under the same subscription. It has a very wide range of pre-populated activities to choose from which are assigned to your classes. 

The activities I mainly use for students to learn new vocabulary via reading and listening, are those under Exam Skills. The texts range from different level of difficulties, which I can assign to specific students. Students will complete the activities and when encountering new key vocabulary, they will add it to their random Quizlet, as done with This is Language. Every so often, my students need to learn this personal random quizlet and when carrying out productive tasks, I always encourage them to use some of such structures/vocabulary. 

Languagenut will also allow students to practice writing and speaking, using the GCSE exam framework. This is great to promote spontaneity as students cannot prepare a given set of questions and writing titles, making it the perfect GCSE revision tool! Students can record their answers and submit them for you to listen to! 

I am lucky that my department can afford these subscriptions! However, there's something for all pockets and focus! When used within a planned sequence of lessons, all these sites can be extremely powerful in the MFL classroom to achieve fluently and develop independent skills in students!

Low ability classes: how to reach them!

Three years ago, I had two vey disillusioned classes, one in Y8 and one in Y10. Both were mixed ability groups with many special educational needs, together with disorganised demotivated students. The Y10 class (1st year of GCSE) had lessons always in the afternoon, being one of them on a Friday Period 8 (3:40-4:30). It was not easy, and although the lessons were good, the students were clearly not enjoying Spanish and certainly, I was not winning them all.

I started to do some research on what would work for them and I came across Gianfranco Conti's blog The Language Gym and the Lexicogrammar approach to teaching. I was doing many of the things portrayed in the blog but not in a systematic way. At the time we had ditched the textbook and had a rich reduced curriculum. We also used Knowledge Organisers (with nouns, verbs etc..) but students still struggled to create accurate sentences and to make rapid progresss.

I introduced Sentence Builders to both classes, and consciously spent more time in the modelling stage of learning, with many listening/reading activities before moving to structured production.

The change was instant. Students were increasingly more and more engaged and started to become better at Spanish. It was the beginning of my lexicogrammar journey. All my Y10 students passed their GCSE with at least a 4 grade.

Low ability students often struggle to learn languages because they tend to have poor memory and poor processing skills. When we add to the equation not much curriculum time and a big syllabus to cover, the result is a I can't do attitude which tends to translate into low expectations from the part of the teacher and demotivation from the part of the students. It is a dog chasing its tail situation. This is my strategy. 

15 steps to reach low ability students: a sequence of lessons

• Less is more and have high expectations. Expect all your students, regardless of ability, to do well in MFL. However, at the beginning you may have to go extra slowly with certain classes with a big proportion of low attainers. Do not rush, because, in the long term it will pay off and you will be able to increase the pace enormously. It’s important to set robust roots. 
• Using Sentence Builders is key as these give a structure to learning and will allow students to make progress quickly, hence increasing their motivation. They are also great for students with poor memory retention as it prevents them from turning to Google Translate! Their Sentence Builders becomes their Google Translate and in time, they will memorise them. Similarly in mixed ability classes, SBs will allow you to differentiate easily via scaffolding: while you reinforce structures, high flyers can move on to use more complicated language. 
• Spend lot of time modelling language (your Sentence Builders) via listening activities so that students get good phonetic models and eventually memorise the vocabulary. Think of lessons as a space to help your students to transfer your sentence builders into the long term memory, so students learn the chunks for later manipulation. Carry out Modelling activities with mini White Boards. These are amazing to add a fun element to the lesson and a competition feeling, while creating a non threating set as students just need to wipe out their answers if not sure. They are also great to stretch high ability kids if needed. Great, Lily, can you extend your answer with something we learned in the last topic? See below for some of my favourite Modelling activities at this stage. 
• Start focusing on small chunks and increase them in length and speed (when doing listening activities) little by little. 
• Some Sentence Builders will require the use of verbs. Start teaching the infinitive form of the verb first. (With normal modelling tasks) As this will allow you to start introducing a variety of structures! Suelo, me gustaría, nos gusta, me gusta etc.. See Example for the topic of Holidays. Then move to the first/third person forms, through another Sentence Builder, and finally the we/they forms via an explicit grammar explanation of a given tense. 
• Start every lesson with a Quick Fire session revising last lesson's chunks and interleaving structures from past weeks even months or years! I do this with MWBs and I just make up sentences! Sometimes for this Retrieval PracticeI may use Wheel of names.
• After at least 1 lesson, sometimes I need 2 or 3 at this stage! Start moving to Practised Production activities. See below for activities ideas at this stage. Remember to differentiate via scaffolding with sentence builders. You can push hard and if the activity is difficult, allow some students to use their SBs for support.
• Introduce questions to students on the topic you are covering and expect some improvised answers from students. To help students at this stage, ask the questions orally as a class and expect students to write down model answers in their MWBs. Then do it orally. If students cannot improvise anything, give them ideas on things they can say in English, for them to translate orally for you. Go to another student and come back to the same student, to make sure they can improvise something this time! 
• Repeat the above activity but now with a game! The genially games are excellent for this, but now with questions that students need to ask each other and respond to. 
• Ask students to carry out a Writing Task (90/150 words) on the studied topic, interleaving information from previous topics. My students tend to do this for homework. Have high expectations and model the writing task with your students first by creating a task collaboratively! Instructional videos like those created by Sonja Fredizzi are great for students to refer to when at home and developing independence. Before this writing task, my homework’s consist of explicitly learning the SBs with a Quizlet aligned to them, reading activities, translations etc..
• Mark the writing task and provide feedback to students, including oral collective feedback, and use a lesson to improve the task based on such feedback. I do not mark all mistakes but I highlight them and expect students to correct them during this lesson. Students then rewrite their task: without mistakes and improving it regarding content, if necessary. Do not accept poor quality writing! 
• Carry out more practice of structures with games and information gap activities via oral questions. 
• At this stage, students should be quite confident with their sentence builders so it is the perfect opportunity to explicitly teach grammar!
• Use Flipgrid and Padlet as tools for the students to start being creative and write/speak their own discourses. At this stage, I encourage students to add past topics vocabulary. This is the More Creative/Fluent stage of learning! 
• Finally, I ask students to provide a Writing Task 2 on the topic or oral presentation. Any task based activity will come after this stage. 

Excellent activities for the Modelling Stage of learning 

• Dictations with MWB (Miniwhite board) 
• Delayed Dictations: like normal dictations but students have to wait a few seconds before they are allowed to write their sentences/chunks in their MWB. In those crucial seconds, they should repeat the sentence to themselves to help them memorise structures. 
• Translations both ways. (Miniwhite board)
• Putting sentences, from a list on the board in English, into the correct order as you read them randomly. Increase your speed or reduce it according to your students' ability/needs. 
• Bad listening: provide students with a short text (in TL less challenging in English more difficult), based on your Sentence Builders, read it to students but with small changes. Ask students to highlight the differences first, then to write the structures they hear. 

• Gap filling activities based on a text read by you but without gaps! This is an excellent activity as students need to fully concentrate as they don't know where the gaps are. Similarly, it is an excellent activity for students to try to guess where the gaps will be likely to be, which is an excellent way to emphasise and work with collocations and priming. 
• Rock Climbing: You create a grid like the one in the picture and you call out combinations which students need to jot down (always read a choice from the bottom line, a choice from the second etc.. hence the name of Rock Climbing!) This is another great activity to recycle as an oral/writing task too!

• Listening Battleships: You create a grid with many sentences in it and then you call out the sentences and students write the coordinates of the sentences you read. I love this activity because it can be used later in the Practised Production stage, as a retrieval grid or even for homework, where students need to write down the sentences into Target Language. 

Excellent activities for Practised Production

• Use Wheel of Names and Flippity randomiser for students to start practising the language, first via MWB, lex by you, but then, sharing the links, as oral activities in pairs. I combine these activities with the game Stone, Paper, Scissors. It works extremely well!  I may ask students to write the sentences in their books, after doing them with MWBs as a whole class, for extra practice with some classes: every child uses the link, spins the wheel and write their translation in books. I explain how I do this with Wheel of names in this video. 
  
  
• Use the Sentence Builders website.  This website, created by Martin Lapworth, creator of Textivate and TaskMagic, allows you to create your own sentence builders and hundreds of activities, which students access via their own accounts, which teachers create for them. It is an absolutely excellent site to help students memorise and practise your Sentence Builders. Activites include, translation both ways (with initials, missing vowels, anagrams form) reading activities, listening activities in chunks or in sentences and many more! Excellent for homework tasks and easy to monitor progress.

• Any information gap activity works at this stage! Below is an example with Ping-Pong translation. 

• Battleships but now students play in pairs and need to guess their partners coordinates by saying the sentences. More confident students can be asked to extend the sentences appearing on the board. 
• Board games where students need to translate sentences: Jenga, Snakes and Ladders, Connect Four etc.. for this I use Genially Templates. You can watch this video where I explain how to use Genially. 
  
  
• Stealing Sentences three levels! 
• Rock climbing but now students do the active in pairs. Students write specific coordinates and their partner need to guess the actual coordinate. Great for translation activities too! 

Remember, not to reinvent the wheel! Revamp and use the same activities in many different ways! I show how to do this on this blogpost. 

This sequence, complimented with a game/competition element and lots of praise, did win my disaffected students a few years back and it still works today. The process may seem slow but it increases in pace as you do it more and more!

That’s why starting to adopt this strategy at KS3 is key to have more curriculum time at KS4. However, it works equally well at KS4 for the first time too. 

Have a look at this blogpost where I go through a sequence of lessons at GCSE level using Sentence Builders. 

It works as my lessons become sticky and allows students to process information into the long term memory and automatise the language.

The strategy is based on the Lexicogrammar approach, underpinned by Rosenshine’s principles of instruction, summarised in the three pillars of Retrieval Practice, Interleaving and Spacing and Feedback driven Metacogniton aiming to create self-efficacy and independence in learners. 

 

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. 

Some thoughts on embedded differentiation

A couple of weeks ago, a mfltwitterati member, asked for advice on blogs about differentiation in MFL. Different lovely members of the mfltwitterati community suggested great publications and it made me reflect on the issue of differentiation.

I have the same high expectations for all my pupils, regardless of their ability. What I provide is different levels of support and scaffolding, embedded in all lessons, which guide my students through their individual learning journey. 

The anchor effect

I believe in the anchor effect, as exposed by Shaun Allison and Andy Tharby in "Making every lesson count": exposing my students to content always at a level higher of what is considered above national expectations, for EVERYONE.

This just  means having high expectations for ALL. I don’t like labelling learners in particular ability boxes: I believe ALL my pupils can achieve high goals and must aim high. 

Consequently, at KS3 I add elements of GCSE grammar that I expect all my students to master at some degree, and at GCSE we dip into ALevel. Students find this strategy MOTIVATING, as I place trust in their ability, and, as a consequence, they start adopting a growth mindset versus a static one, which is key for success in low ability students.

The Goldilocks effect

This means to challenge students at the correct intensity: I have one common objective for ALL and place the bar high, but at the correct level:

The expectations bar cannot be so high that some students may find it impossible to reach it, neither so low that it will demotivate and make students bored, after all, learning involves pain, which we call germane overload. 

The key is to plan tasks that are not too difficult, neither too easy but just right! In other words, to plan lessons with a desirable level of difficulty to create the perfect conditions for germane overload. 

Building blocks, scaffolding and embedded differentiation

Once I set up high expectations, my teaching will focus on careful planned activities and support aiming to achieve a long term goal: for example, to master a model text with key structures and vocabulary by the end of a particular unit. 

I plan all the micro skills and think of all the steps that will be needed for learners to achieve our long/medium term goal. My lessons are like building blocks and scaffolds aiming to reach that final goal. Sentence Builders are a great tool to do this as they provide a final, clear model for students and are easy to break up into small building blocks or little steps in the structured practice stage of language teaching and learning.

The power of questions  

Questions are powerful and are the engine of my lessons for embedded differentiation and retrieval practice purposes. I ask questions all the time: at the modelling stage of learning, but especially at structured production and automatisation stages. 

Cold calling and no opt-out

So everyone is alert all the time! If a student does not know the answer to my question, I move to someone else and I alert them that I will be back at them in 5 minutes. I always go back to those students who did not know a particular answer, and by then, they have worked out the answer: a particular structure, verb ending etc, because they heard it from someone else, encouraging active listening or because they actively looked for the answer themselves in their notes, encouraging curiosity! 

Say it again but better

This question technique is great to stretch those students that need to be stretched, in a simple way. That’s a good answer but how could we make it a 8/9 grade? Can anyone help?

Think, pair share 

Another great technique for easy embedded differentiation which allows students to reflect and use metalanguage with their peers. When I question is posed, I give students thinking time (remember that many students have issues with processing time), they share thoughts with partners and finally they get ready to answer a question as prompted by me.

Whole class responses

This must be one of my favourite embedded differentiation techniques, done via mini whiteboards, so I can check for progress at a glance, reinforce structures for those who need it while allowing high flyers, to extend their answers and show off their skills, differentiation at its best! 

For example, students may need to translate a sentence to practice specific chunks, but if found easy, they must extend the sentence using three tenses. I like this technique as it helps learners to reflect and decide where they sit in their own learning journey: shall I just stick to the translation or extend it?, while providing them with autonomy, which increases motivation. 

This technique allows me to differentiate in situ, with minimum preparation, and to put the ownership of the learning back at the learners, with my guidance. Suggesting alternatives to individual students, asking strategic questions in the process and encouraging students to look at each other responses, are all bonuses of this strategy and mechanisms of embedded differentiation. 

Providing different levels of support 

This is key for differentiation at all stages of the learning journey. My students have access to their sentence builders and grammar charts, if they are really stuck, and they are taught where to find these and how to use them, in our digital exercise book, Onenote. Key structures and expressions are displayed around the classroom with giant post-its on the windows with topical key structures in display which are changed periodically. 

When practising structures, especially during translation tasks, which we do a lot of, I use the initials of the required words in the target language for support. This is a very useful technique for translation tasks. Students may opt to ignore these initials, displayed in the big whiteboard, worksheets or digital apps but they are there to support those who decide to use them because they need them! 

When doing listening tasks, I plan lots of small tasks building up in difficulty: listening for individual words, listening while reading the transcript, filling gap activities with the transcript  and finally listening comprehension tasks without transcript. 

When doing oral or writing activities, students are encouraged to work from memory but they always have the support of their sentence builder and grammatical charts at hand if they need to.

Live modelling the thinking process 

After lots of structured practice activities, where support is given, via questioning and task design, students need to move to the more creative production stage. At this point, I do like live modelling a task as a whole class, so we go through the thinking process of creating such task. This could be a model oral answer or a 90/150 word writing task. Sonja Fedrizzi and Elena Díaz do this beautifully with tutorial videos for students.

We do write model answers as a class, using students’ ideas, developing autonomy, reflecting on what to add, the tenses to use while I ask strategic questions to specific students: how to make the text interesting or how to make it to a 7+ grade. This is another example that questioning is key for embedded differentiation and how differentiation happens naturally in all well planned lessons.

Templates are great for this and time for reflection in pairs is a vital tool too, as this will allow students to focus on metacognition (the way students plan, monitor and evaluate their own thinking). Adam Lamb, Silvia Bastow and Jane Basnett, all provide wonderful writing and oral templates in their blogs, to scaffold students' more creative responses. This is the template we follow to carry out this activity and which students are given to plan their writing/oral tasks, which is shared on Onenote. 

If you have come across Elena Díaz, you will know about her 20 keys to teach MFL. Using the 20 keys model also provides another great opportunity for differentiation and scaffolding. Jane Basnett, using the 20 keys model, has created this template for students. Click here

Spinning the plates

I Keep moving in the classroom when students are working in pairs or individually in my lessons and I step in individually or as a whole class as needed. In the current climate, Onenote is great for this, as it allows me to see what students are doing from my desk! 

I highlight mistakes, I direct students to the correct section of our Onenote for support, without giving them the answer. I make them think or check for understanding, with strategic individual questions. I may re explain to the whole class a concept that I can see is not well cemented. I may showcase a good piece work and analyse why it is good. I may have a chat with a particular struggling student and we set up a mini action plan to tackle a particular task. All these are examples of embedded differentiation techniques.

Removing support

It is important not to spoon feed students. The long term goal is to be fluent in the target language and remove any given support progressively and individually.

In fact, our main goal is to educate independent learners, that means leaving support behind, as in real communicative situations students will need to think on the spot! 

Despite having high expectations for all my students and focusing on challenge, I also accept that sometimes some students will not get there and that is fine. 

After all, many experts agree that 58% of academic achievement in pupils is down to genetics, leaving me only 42% to play with in my lessons. 

Still it is a very respectable percentage to instil high expectations and high goals in all students and making them believe that they CAN become fluent with the right amount of support from my part, which I remove, little by little and at different stages for each individual student. 

Differentiation, for me, means providing embedded scaffolded support to learning building blocks at all times to ALL.

Curriculum design at KS3: Less is More!

I've just had a wonderful CPD day today. In the morning I attended, albeit virtually, the ALLswmfl conference with great speakers and in the afternoon we had our first Clubhouse MFL discussion organised by Katie Lockett, where we were discussing MFL uptake to GCSE. At some point the question on what an excellent KS3 curriculum looks like popped out, which has inspired me to write this entry. I am not implying our KS3 curriculum is perfect or excellent but it is working very well. By working I mean is enthusing our students and our pupils are enjoying Spanish at KS3, resulting in many choosing this language for GCSE (a MFL is compulsory in my school at this level in most cases).

What are the elements of our Spanish curriculum?

• Adoption of the MARS EARS approach by Gianfranco Conti and the use of Sentence Builders
• Getting away from textbooks (we use Mira/Viva in the background, just to extract listening and reading material to some extent)
• The notion that Less is More: we only teach three big topics in Y7/8 and four in Y9.
• Interleaving of structures and topics. In fact, we dedicate nearly the Summer Term at KS3, to revise all the topics/ Sentence Builders/ Grammar studied since September.
• The identification of some High Impact expressions or Taste of Fluency Expressions/Universals using Gianfranco Conti's nomenclature, which are introduced at Y7 and are recycled thoroughly throughout the whole KS3 journey.
• The identification of High Frequency Words. We obtained these from the NCELP and we have tried to incorporate as many of these to our Sentence Builders. 
• Cultural projects clearly embedded and well structured into the curriculum with specific Sentence Builders attached to them, thus, avoiding the use of Google Translate.

Why adopting the MARS EARS approach?

This approach focusses on Lexicogrammar and develops skills in our learners by teaching less content but more functions aiming to achieve fluency in the students. For a whole explanation of this methodology visit The Language Gym Blog or read the book Break the Sound Barrier, which I thoroughly recommend, by Gianfranco Conti and Steve Smith.  

The approach has four differentiated stages: 

Modelling of chunks or Sentence Builders

Awareness Rising through planned repetition of structures, led by the teacher.

Receptive processing. This means controlled input of the selected chunks via planned listening and reading activities, such as narrow readings or listenings among many others!. 

Structured production: pushed output of the selected chunks. This stage will require grammar practice and drilling once the intended chunks have been assimilated and embedded in our students' longer term memory. 

Expansion. Automatisation. Routanisation. Spontaneity. This is the last stage of the language journey and difficult to get to, where students learn to use the learned language creatively and spontaneously. 

Why does it work?

This approach works because it breaks up the language in affordable chunks which are easier to assimilate by students as they reduce cognitive load in the working memory. It takes less time to retrieve a chunk of language than trying to retrieve words individually and then apply grammatical structures to them, such as verb endings and adjective agreement. Carrying out the second action can be frustrating, breaks fluency, results in inaccuracy and demotivates students to speak. Retrieving chunks, on the other hand, is more efficient from the point of view of working memory. It is the first step to fluency and reflects how we learn our mother tongue. I recommend reading Memory, what every Language Teacher should know by Steve Smith and Gianfranco Conti too, where they explain, beautifully well, the way our memory works and why a lexicogrammar approach is best. 

Because our curriculum is designed to deal with one/two pages of Sentence Builders for a whole term, students have a lot of time to embed these into their long term memory, start seeing patterns and, we, the teachers, can dedicate more time to planning spontaneity, via  structured production and many, many, many retrieval practice tasks and planned manipulation of the language. 

Students feel they are in control, feel motivated as they can start speaking and feel they are making progress! For this to work, we must be FREE which is why my department decided not to use textbooks in the strict sense. Most importantly, the whole department contributed, to certain extent, to this curriculum so we all had ownership of it and shared they same goal: to achieve fluency in our students while making them independent learners in their language language. 

This approach allowed us to apply the Just right effect, which I have mentioned in so many other blogposts: the curriculum is not too easy, neither too difficult (as there must be some pain in learning) and allowed us, not the publishers, to decide our own balance of structures and grammar to teach our students. 

The interleaving aspect of the approach and embedded retrieval practice are also key to its success! 

Our high Impact expressions, including Imperfect Subjunctive structures, are repeated throughout the whole KS3 course and are meant to plant the seed for assimilation of more difficult structures, that traditionally are not learned until GCSE/Alevel. However, why can't a Y7 student say " si pudiera me gustaría cantar como los ángeles" (If I could I would like to sing like the angels. Use of imperfect subjuntive in Spanish and an idiomatic expression)  under the topic of Free Time or " me gustaría que mi madre fuera menos estricta" ( I would like my mum to be less strict, which requires the use of impefect subjunctive in Spanish) under the topic of describing personality? 

The key here is to recycle such structures in as many different topics as possible! " me gustaría que mi rutina fuera más tranquila" in Y8 or "me gustaría que mi ciudad fuera más moderna" in Y9. 

Less ability students love this approach because it gives them a structure and, as Sentence Builders reduce cognitive load and we do not study too much content, they can remember more and have the time to assimilate these chunks well.

High ability pupils fly in this approach because they can start being fluent very quickly and start manipulating the language freely by adapting the key structures. I had a Y9 student who taught himself the imperfect subjunctive as the seed of curiosity was planted in him via the sentence builder and wanted to find out more! High ability pupils will also spot patterns quickly and start applying grammar freely, with our guidance. In other words, for these students, the Sentence Builders constitute a springboard to the wonderful world of grammar and word manipulation.

Project Based learning and Culture

I believe these are an essential intrinsic aspect of the language journey, as they present a great opportunity to develop Autonomy, Competence and Relatedness, in Liam Printer's words, thus motivation! So we must harness this opportunity, but in a planned manner. 

Our curriculum allows for some project based learning linked to specific Sentence Builders:

Y7 students complete a project on Miró, where they will study his pictures in English and will learn a Specific Sentence builder to describe these. Students then create their own Miró's inspired pictures and describe them orally or in writing in our own Art Gallery. This allows to learn to express feelings and more abstract language.

Y9 students study Coco for 6 weeks. This allows students to study el Día de los Muertos and talk about family relationships, clothes and festivities using the film as a background, which will spark discussion, albeit in English but we do not mind!. The final project requires students to create a film guide on Coco, explaining the plot, what happens in the film, giving opinions on it and thinking what will happen to the main character in a second part of the film, using the future tense.

Schemes of Work

We do not use weekly SoWs but termly. We decide what to cover in a term, linked to a Sentence Builder page or two pages, then, each teacher, plans how long to spend on each subtopic/ section of the Sentence Builder. 

Why? because every teacher is different and most importantly, each class is different! a top set may be quicker at embedding our Sentence Builder and will carry out more creative tasks while a bottom set will need more activities in the Structured Production stage. 

I cannot dictate what to cover each week! What happens if the teacher is absent? Panic! It is better to plan in the long term, having, interleaving at the core of such planning. We share resources, yes, but each teacher will need to plan and adapt those resources to the needs of their students. Having said that, all members of the department will follow the MARS EARS approach. The system would not work otherwise!

Our SoWs do not dictate what to do but  guide the teachers through the MARS EARS approach and give them a wide range of activities to choose from to carry it out . In other words, our SoW is like a teaching manual with many suggested ideas/tasks to carry out in the classroom, many of which I took out from Breaking the Sound Barrier and the mfltwitterati community.

I don't like giving teachers PPTs to follow but equip them, after reflecting together, with the tools needed to carry out the MARS EARS approach, which has its foundation in a pre agreed set of Sentence Builders.

For an example of our departmental KS3 SoWs in Spanish click here. 

A compilation of MARS EARS ideas at a glance: