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.

Scaffolds and Lifts: adaptive teaching in the mixed ability MFL classroom

Today I want to talk about having high expectations, differentiation in a meaningful and stress free way, and adaptive teaching: the new differentiation in the classroom.

When I trained in 1999 differentiation was already a hot topic and I remember extremely well how I had to provide evidence of specific and different tasks for at least three levels of learning in the classroom. I basically planned the same task in three versions corresponding to levels: high, medium, low and would pre-determined who would fit each level, hence the adaptation of my worksheets. It was a nightmare to run and to photocopy!

We have moved away from this philosophy and over the years I have stuck to the concept of Anchoring in Challenge (from Making Every lesson Count) meaning, pitching high and expect ALL the students to reach the top of our expectations. To achieve this, we must provide scaffolds for those who need it and lifts for the more able students, making it clear that the expectation is that everyone reaches the top at their own pace. 

How to manage a mixed ability classroom in practice?

They key is to check for understanding constantly, and adapt our teaching accordingly within the lessons, using our repertoire of scaffolds and lifts. This means preparing one activity (not multiple versions of the same task) but leading students to the top, skilfully, through our scaffolds via the use of questions and whole class involvement. It’s about spinning the plates, reacting to what you see and changing our lesson plan if needed, on our feet.

Having Sentence Builders in a booklet format (for the whole academic year) has been instrumental in providing me with the tool to easily scaffold and lift any task. 

Let me show you how I adapt my teaching using scaffolds and lifts with different activities.

Dictation activities

I always carry out these activities with MWBs, an easy way to check for understanding at all times. I start dictating small sentences, repeated very slowly and gradually move to longer utterances at increased speed. When checking for understanding with MWBs, I can see at a glance, how many students could carry out the dictation easily and who struggled. Based on this information, I continue dictating sentences, but will direct some students to have their Sentence Builders booklet in front of them while I will ask others to take it away. I go back to shorter sentences after two longer ones and back to a challenged utterance. After increasing my speed of dictation, I go back to short utterances again and back to longer sentences at different speeds. I do this as a response of what I see in the MWBs. I adapt to what students produce, constantly. 

I may start with a gapped dictation (only some words are missing, basically a fill in the gaps type of activity) to move to a fill in the gaps without gaps (words are missing but without gaps and students have to listen carefully for the word missing in specific spots) and back to fill in the gaps again to be back to dictation without gaps, all in the same text. 

I can also dictate deliberate grammatical, lexical or pronunciation mistakes and can use cold calling to ask students if they spot something dodgy. 

When carrying out dictation activities and some of my students finish quickly while others are still writing, I may ask the faster learners to translate the sentence into English or to extend it using vocabulary from a past topic. I will do this on the spot, adapting to each child’s needs at that moment. 

Scaffolded output practice

When carrying out language activities involving scaffolded production of the learned topic, I normally start with simple translations from English into TL, again using MWBs, wheel of names works wonders for this and students will get points (they keep a tally on their MWB) for each correct sentence they translate. I give them thinking time and writing time, then I will check answers: I may have to ask some students to revise their sentences:  can you spot a mistake? If all correct I can ask students to extend their sentence with something they can think of on the spot. I may use initials in the activity and after a while just initials without the English support to go back to short translations. I may ask some students to stop writing and tell me the sentence orally while others write it. 

Another strategy is to give prompts and students to write/say a sentence based on this. Some students may write something short, others something long. I can push all students to include different tenses and one or more magical powers, we have 5! See this post for the Magical 5 Powers.

In oral, pair work activities I move around the classroom, I redirect students where needed, to our Sentence Booklets, while I remove the booklet from others. I can ask challenging/reinforcing questions to different students while moving around: why did you choose that ending? How would you say....? Can you extend your answers so you speak for an en extra 10 seconds?  While moving around, I take notes of mistakes, answers and we analyse them, reflecting on the students' work at the end of the activity. While walking around, I may decide that students need extra practice with verbs in the past or the future or in pronouncing specific sounds and will plan a subsequent lesson accordingly.

Fluent Practice (Mastery of concepts: spontaneity)

At this stage, I can push students to speak faster and faster and more spontaneously: talk 2 minutes about a topic with your partner/or recording yourself. Then, say the same information now in 1:30 minutes finally in 1 minute. Speed dating, Relay Races and any oral activities with time limit are great! Again, I would be walking around, directing students to their SB booklets if needed. 

If doing written creative practice, I would model the thinking process first and we would write a model answer together, then on their own or in pairs using our 5 Magical Powers sheet as a scaffold, where needed, but wouldn’t allow the use of their SB booklet: think, think what you can say instead or what you actually can remember! 

This is differentiation by outcome, a sin when I trained, as that wasn’t considered real differentiation. I disagree! Working at your own level, receiving scaffolds or lifts and allowing you to reach the top with skilful guidance is the way forward and that is, differentiation by outcome, not by task as ALL students are working towards the same target with the same task at their own pace with the expert guidance of their teacher.

It is about having high expectations for all!!! 

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

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

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

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

How is this done in practice? 

Modelling stage

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

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

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

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

For a wide range of modelling activities visit this blogpost. 

Scaffolded production 

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

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

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

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

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

Grammar

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reaching Fluency and Creativity 

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

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