The NEW GCSE: It's all about RETRIEVAL. PART 4 PRODUCTIVE structured Practice and developing FLUENCY

Merry Christmas to all! What a term this has been! I hope you can now relax with your loved ones and enjoy the festive season. As I have now some time, I would like to complete the final part of my thoughts/strategies to tackle the new GCSE for MFL. Part 4 and the last one, is all about developing fluency in students via oral structured practice. I find this stage the most challenging one and, in my experience, only possible to achieve if the other stages have been carried out thoughtfully and in depth, which can be difficult given the curriculum time constraints we all face.  

Stage 4 is all about students being able to produce language via structured practice, mainly via the use of translations from English into Target Language, or prompts, expecting students to work from memory as much as possible. At this stage we create models of language that students, eventually, will be able to produce on their own as they become more and more fluent. 

This stage should be full of communicative activities/games, where there's a need to produce language. These are some of my old favourite tasks:

Oral Battleships

This old activity is always a winner! Students work in pairs and choose 8 boxes from the battleships grid randomly. I give students the prompts and they must create sentences to find out where their partner's chosen boxes or ships are.

Information Gap Activities

In any shape and form! Basically, any activity where students, working in pairs, have to exchange information to complete a task.  This can be done by asking each other questions to get specific answers, that students need, to complete a table, or just by exchanging information by translating sentences to each other. The important element for these activities is that we give students prompts or the sentences we wan them to produce and again, we expect them to translate such sentences from memory as much as possible!!

Board Games

Again, in any shape and form! Any game will be great, virtual or by using a classic board, dice and counters! Snakes and Ladders or No Snakes and Ladders, which is the same! Connect 4, Noughts and Crosses, Jumanlly etc.. work wonders. The idea is that when students are placed in a box, they produce target language orally responding to a particular prompt: an image, a sentence in English that they must translate, a word they must extend and put in a sentence etc.. 

I love digital games, so I use many games from Genially, which require hardly any preparation time.  Click here for an example. 

Flippity is also great for this: have you tried its new Connecto game? Click here for an example

The idea with these games is to create nearly real communicative situations basically the willingness to win the game and for that, a need to speak in the target language. As they become more and more confident with the covered material, we can exchange the prompts for questions and add time to the equation, so that students need to produce the language, quickly.

The same games/activities can be carried out by students several times but decreasing the time they have, to produce their answers: 2 minutes, 1 minute, 30 seconds, so we start developing fluency. 

Wheel of names matched with "Stone, paper, scissors" is also a popular game: students spin the wheel then play "Stone, paper, scissors" and the winner translates the utterance that appear in the wheel. 

Writing Practice using Google Forms

Productive language does not only involve oral work, but it can also be written production. In fact, this can be a powerful task before doing extensive oral work.  To do this, Google Forms with open end questions can be an excellent alternative and to create them, we can use the Chrome Extension Brisk. 

Brisk is wonderful to help you create a Google Form based on a given set of questions. I created the following Blogpost explaining how to use Brisk in this way, step by step. Click here to have full access to instructions about how to use Brisk.  At this stage, I expect my students not to need prompts, so oral, open free questions are key at this stage, but in writing, so students can still think freely, at this stage. 

Writing Practice using Padlet

Padlet is another old friend. It is great, again, to develop fluency in students. I create a Padlet for a given topic, any type of Padlet works. 

Once created, go to "Settings" and then "Posts". Once in Posts, go to "Posts Fields". Create a post field for each question you want your students to write about in the Padlet when they add their entry. You can create as many Post fields as you want to! This means that when you share your Padlet with students and these click on the + button to add their entry, they will see the questions, you want them to answer in writing, one for post field, which you previously created. Students then press "publish" for their entry to be visible to you and all the other students. This is powerful to get inspired by others' answers/entries. 

See an example here

Using a tutor chatbot with Mizou

Finally, the ultimate fluency developer, Mizou. 

Mizou is a FREE AI chatbot generator. I started using Mizou last year with Year 11 students and it proved a great success for those students who were reluctant to practise their oral skills with me as they were too shy. Mizou allows you to create a personalised chatbot in minutes. Just click on "Build a chatbot" , then "Custom". 

Give your Chatbot assessment a title, for example: Practising questions on the topic of Technology. Then fill in the "AI Instructions". Be specific for example, for my Mizou practice on Technology my instructions were:

The students will practice their new GCSE oral exam with you. You will need to ask them the following 4 questions on the topic of Technology:

1 ¿Tienes un móvil? ¿Qué haces con tu móvil? 

2¿Cuál es tu red social favorita? ¿Por qué?  

3 ¿Qué peligros y ventajas tienen las redes sociales? 

4. ¿Cómo solías usar tu móvil en el pasado? 

Ask one question at the time. Ask the questions in Spanish but give feedback in English. Students should answer with accurate Spanish using opinions and reasons.

Give your AI assistant an image, Mizou will create one for you, after your description and give it a name. My AI assistant in Mizou is called Ana. Click on "more options" and type the welcome message that students will see when starting their session with Ana. Then type the "rules". My rules were:

Use the new MFL GCSE mark scheme for the speaking exam to give feedback

Students will answer in Spanish

Ask a question at the time in Spanish on the topic of Technology, starting with the questions given in the instructions.

When giving feedback, do it in English

Add a thumbnail on the topic of your questions and a short description. 

Try your Chatbot and if you are happy just launch it. Click on "Share with students". Mizou will ask you to start a session and will give you link to share with students. 

You can have a look at the final product here. 

The idea with Mizou is for students to develop their fluency with typical GCSE questions that they are familiar with from lessons. 

I hope you found these ideas useful, please, share your views and ideas by leaving your comments below. 

Embedded grammar: The Eureka Effect!

As you probably know, I have been working with the talented Dr Gianfranco Conti and Dylan Viñales on a new Spanish Grammar book aimed at foundation level, underpinned by EPI methodology and a lexicogrammar approach to teaching MFL. The book is called  Spanish Verb Pivots, title which reflects the core of the EPI methodology and which, Gianfranco has explained really well in social media and in the book itself. 

I thoroughly enjoyed co-writing this book with such gifted practitioners but what I enjoyed the most was the opportunity to implement in a systematic way, how I have been approaching grammar in my lessons for years. 

I don’t teach grammar in isolation, I did at some point, and I quickly realised it was useless, as practising a set of rules over and over again could lead to excellent choral conjugation of verb paradigms but made no difference in reaching  fluency, hence leading to frustration! 

Instead, I soon realised that grammar should be taught embedded in the lexicon we teach via chunks. For that I use my own sentence builders. We practise those chunks constantly during lessons, we analyse patterns, I plant the seed, quoting Dr Conti, on grammar to come, students become fluent on a particular topic, and then, only then, I teach grammar explicitly. At that point grammar becomes a dejá vu feeling and most likely to be automatised. 

Grammar is embedded in the language, so let’s deconstruct it, yes, but only once students have internalised target structures/vocab, so that they can develop creativity. 

An example: The past tense in Y8

This is how I teach the topic of holidays in the past in Y8, always after having learned to talk about holidays in the present, which will lead to the learning of the Past tense in Spanish.

Modelling stage

At this stage I introduce the following Sentence Builder via choral repetition and showing the Spanish written graphemes and the English, so there's no confusion whatsoever on what structures mean! Thinking about the new GCSE, this Sentence Builder, already incorporates High Frequency words: such as the verbs intentar and encontrar. The Sentence Builder aims for students to learnn the I form of the past tense, including irregular verbs and be fluent with them.

We carry out lots of modelling activities as outlined in this blogpost here. At this stage I work mainly with MWBs to check for understanding. I also allow students to have their Sentence Builders with them: scaffolding. Lots of input activities take place throughout the Modelling stage, which will last a couple of lessons. 

By the way, I only teach, depending on ability, a row at a time in the Sentence Builder above. For example, I would not teach opinions and reasons, at the same time as all those verbs in the Past Tense to avoid cognitive overload.  

Similarly, when doing listening/translations/dictations, I always make sure I interleave past structures and vocabulary: embedded retrieval practice! This stage finishes with the explicit learning of the chunks for a spelling test. Quizlet, Memrise and even better, the Sentence Builder site are great tools to assist students in this learning, which I do as homework tasks.

Structured Practice Stage

Following the MARS EARS approach to lexicogrammar teaching, after 2 modelling lessons per row, I would expect students to start producing some sentences with guidance. I always do this as a whole class to start with with MWBs and orally. 

Digital tools are great at this stage, such as Flippity, Wheel of names, or Sentence Builsders site, as well as some old classics, like any Battleships, Oral Ping-Pong, pyramid translations, board games or just any information gap activity! Have a look at this blogpost for ideas. 

At this stage, we can start looking at grammatical patterns in the sentence builders! Homework tasks may include more extensive reading, as well as guided written practice: tangled translations for example. In this blogpost I give some ideas on how to revamp and maximise the digital activities we use in lessons as homework tasks, saving lots of time. 

Fluency stage

The hardest stage! Which, paradoxically, seems to be ignored. This will take three/four lessons and it is similar to the previous stage but I expect students to come up with their own answers to specific questions under time constrictions! 

Speed dating, stealing sentences with initials, board games with questions or the beginning of a sentence, flippity with a question and a expression to be used in the answer are some of my favourite activities here! A summary of the activities at each stage can be seen below:

Somewhere in the fluency stage I teach grammar! 

Inductive grammar: The Eureka Effect!

As students have had so much practice with the structures I want them to learn, I expect my pupils to work out the rule of the past tense for all persons from a text that we analyse. Remember, they already know the present and the I form of the past tense extremely well! This is the Eureka effect of this approach!

Students work in pairs to come up with a rule, we check it, we agree on it and then I explain it, explicitly, again. They take notes and then, as if it was a sentence builder, I follow the same process of modelling, structured practice, fluency tasks, again but referring to Grammar. 

Modelling Grammar

This involves carrying out the same tasks done at the Modelling Stage, when learning our sentence builder,  but now using the we, he/she, you, they persons of the past tense: dictations, reading activities, listening tasks, translations. At this stage a homework task will involve to learn the six verb endings for -ar and -er/-ir verbs in Spanish and a test, which just will inform me if students understood this grammar point but which is not a reflection of student success in Spanish! 

Practising Grammar

Again, we carry out the same tasks as in the structured practice stage, but now focussing on the grammar point we are studying: the past tense. 

This is where learning grammar can be great as there are lots of games I can incorporate at this point! Basically, any game like connect four, snakes and ladders, stone/paper/scissors, Jenga, four in a box, you name it, works here! My students love grammar because it is fun and they experimented a Eureka feeling, which leads to motivation and "a can do" attitude. Remember, we don’t just conjugate verbs but we embed the past tense into communicative utterances! More traditional worksheets work very well here too, with an element of competition! 

Being fluent with Grammar

This is the Holy Grail of MFL! If students  are fluent in grammar, by default if taught via a lexicogrammar methodology, students should be fluent in the target language! Easier said that done! 

This will involve a few lessons and lots of interleaving over the years! But at this stage, I expect students to be able to narrate, in a simple way and quickly, what they and other members of their family did during the holidays! All the fun activities from the previous stage work, but with a time limit. 

This stage must be reinforced by carefully planned homework tasks that will allow students to be creative, while still having time to think about grammatical rules: Creative Writing tasks are ideal at this stage. 

So, grammar is clearly embedded in the learning process and it leads itself to have a Eureka effect. 

It can be explicitly taught but not at the beginning of the learning journey but towards the end and not as end on its own, but as a tool to be able to communicate fluently in the target language. 

Similarly, any grammar point will neeed to be revised many times and in different contexts to be fully assimilated: free time by saying what students did yesterday or what happened in a film; school by saying what students studied yesterday etc… 

I would like openly to thank Dr Gianfranco Conti and Dylan Viñales for the opportunity to allow me to work and learn from them during the creation of Spanish Verb Pivots. It’s been such a pleasure.  

Language Show 2021 Webinars

It was an absolute pleasure to present today twice in the Language Show 2021. Thank you everyone for your lovely comments, they really mean a lot!  The actual webinars and presentations can be found below:

Blended Learning, Giving students superpowers!

Developing Oral Skills in MFL: From Modelling to Fluency

As promised presentations for both talks can be found below too:

Developing Oral Skills in MFL: From Modelling to Fluency 

Blending Learning: Giving Pupils superpowers!

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. 

From Structured Production to Fluency

I have decided to write a short post on the trickiest and most difficult stage of the language learning journey: the transition from structured production, where students practise the structures and chunks in our Sentence Builders, to spontaneous output, where the students can produce such structures freely and, most importantly, creatively by manipulating the chunks and applying grammatical rules.

What is fluency?

Before I show my strategy, I would like to define what fluency means for me in the context of a secondary school setting, with limited curriculum time and pressures from external exams.

Fluency does not mean to be able to speak freely on any topic, as a nearly bilingual person would do. That’s another interpretation of fluency, which, hopefully we can reach at some point, normally towards the end of Year 13 and in some cases by the end of Y11.

In my context, fluency means that my students can reproduce in speaking or writing format, unaided, from memory, the structures we have practised on a given topic and in the case of intermediate learners, to start combining Sentence Builders from past topics and applying grammar freely to express their own opinions and saying what they want! In this sense, my Year 7s can be fluent when talking/writing about Free Time for example, which is hugely motivating. 

Students start creating schemata in their long term memory with the studied Sentence Builders on different topics, creating a web of fluencies/schemata which relate to each other, allowing them to manipulate language and combine key structures and vocabulary, such as suelo, me gusta, me gustaría que… fuera/ si tuviera la oportunidad, etc… and apply grammatical rules, in new contexts, becoming creative with the language, to reach, little by little, the more general definition of fluency, which for me would mean the true internalisation of the grammatical system and a big corpora of vocabulary/structures, which can be reproduced by the brain, automatically, to create utterances and which, as I said, in my experience, starts occurring by the end of Y11 or Y13, if not later!

It is liberating then, to say to my Y7 you are fluent in Spanish on this topic and as you become fluent with other topics too and start applying the grammar and combining structures more freely, you will become a truly fluent speaker of Spanish in any given topic. But your first step is there!

How to achieve fluency?

In my experience, it is essential to have a clear SoW and learning path for students. That's why I always advise teachers to plan backwards. Start by deciding as a team, what outcome/ model text you would like your students to be able to produce by the end of a topic or unit, making sure that you incorporate structures and grammar from past topics/sentence builders, retrieving key structures in new contexts. 

Once that is decided, design the Sentence Builders based on the vocabulary/grammar needed for your students to reach your final outcome; and reflect on the activities you, as a department, are going to use to help your students at each stage of their learning journey within a topic, from Modelling, going through Structured Production to reach Spontaneity/Creativity.  Having a list of these activities in a given SoW can be extremely useful for a team, see the second picture below. 

Do not expect Fluency/Spontaneity/Creativity to happen spontaneously without careful planning and a clear  structure. Spontaneity or the EARS part of the learning journey, using Gianfranco Conti's nomenclature, needs to be planned and structured and it relies on a robust implementation of the two previous stages of learning (MARS). Move too fast, and the last stage will not happen! hence, why it is so difficult to achieve in a secondary school setting, although not impossible!

Strategies to achieve fluency

Have a “less is more” approach, specially at KS3, so that you avoid cognitive overload. Start increasing the amount of topics/grammar to cover in a given year, as students become more mature. In our case, we teach 3 topics in Y7, 4 in Y8 and 4/5 (as we study a film as a topic) in Y9. You can see this in my KS3 SoW, which you can find here. 

Retrieval Practice and Recycling of key structures, called Universals by Gianfranco Conti, or high impact expressions by me, is key. This requires careful planning of the SoW, and the material to include in your Sentence Builders. These should incorporate content vocabulary but also a list of key structures and high frequency words, recycled in different Sentence Builders, so when given a new Sentence Builder, around 20 or 30% of the structures are already known to students. They will feel motivated too.  When deciding your activities, for the Modelling and Structured Production stages, make sure you  incorporate vocabulary from previous topics. Retrieve past topics and LEARNED STRUCTURES, CONSTANTLY. it is what I call EMBEDDED RETRIEVAL PRACTICE. A blog post on this can be found here.

Case example:

My Y10 students studied problems/accidents during the topic of holidays and they learned the structure "un dia iba a/quería + infinitive" (salir con mis amigos, ir a la playa, which allowed them to recycle vocabulary from Free Time anyway) "cuando de repente, me picó una medusa/ tuve un accidente con el móvil/ me caí al suelo/a la piscina etc...".  Students learned these structures extremely well via Structured Production activities and could produce them spontaneously when we did the topic. I thought that was a nice way to incorporate a story, which could be funny so memorable, as Vincent Everett explains in his blog, to their GCSE repertoire. Consequently, in subsequent topics, we always incorporated a problem or an accident that happened to them when in school, when working at the weekend, when they met their best friend. Every time we revisit this subtopic, I incorporate new key structures to the problem, "le dije" "me dijo" " ese dia estaba contento porque había ganado una competición de música". All my students now, can narrate, fluently, a little accident/problem in many different contexts using key vocabulary, thanks to constant revisiting of the stuctures!

Recycle of all the activities you used in the Structured Production stage but with a twist. In the previous learning stage, I tend to use many translation type of activities, either by using Battleships, Information Gap activities, Oral Ping-Pong and especially LOTS of classic BOARD GAMES, which at the moment I do via Genially Templates and those produce by the talented Marie Allirot. A link to Marie's Boardgames as she showed in the ALLLondon Show & Tell in June can be found here. 

I use these templates all the time!  However, at this final stage, instead of expecting students to translate a sentence, the boardgames tasks will require students to create utterances from a given word, for example, or answer open ended questions on a given topi, always incorporating questions from past topics too, which force students to retrieve language/structures from their long term Memory. 

Flippity and Wheel of Names are also brilliant ways to develop fluency in this way! firstly in writing via mini white boards and then in pairs by testing each other. I explain how I do this in these two youtube Videos of mine:

How to maximise Wheel of Names (via Blended Learning) for Spontaneous Production. In this video example, I use translations but for spontaneity, I would use open ended questions or the beginning of a sentence they have to finish, or a topic students need to write or speak about, for a given time. Video link here

How to maxime the the use of Flippity (via Blended Learning) for Spontaneous Production. Video link here 

Other activities that work for Spontaneous Practice:

Oral presentations via Flipgrid. This can be very powerful if students feel confident about the language and the structures they need to use. 

Use of Padlet, where students write from memory what they remember from a particular topic. See example below from my Y9 students.  I also find that trying spontaneous production in writing before doing it orally, helps a lot!

3,2,1. Speak on a topic for 3 minutes, then change partner and do it for 2 minutes then for 1 minute!  This activity works extremely well combined with Speed Dating! 

Any Dice game linked to a topic: have six topics on the board numbered, if you get a 1 you must talk about that topic for a set period of time.  I love Vincent Everett's idea, where students work in pairs and scribble in a piece of paper while their partner speaks and stop when their partner stops talking.  The person who managed to speak the longest, more scribbling in the sheet, is the winner! This is his blogpost where he explains this activity. I tried this a couple of weeks ago and it worked brilliantly!  All students wanted to speak for long. 

Group talk like Greg Horton beautifully explained in the ALL June conference last week.  Get students to work in groups of 3/4. Set some questions on the board, mainly opinions on topics, and students must have a conversation, agreeing and disagreeing with each other on the given topics. This works really well if, previously "small talk" phrases have been taught to students such as: estoy de acuerdo, pero estás loco! , se te va la olla, de ninguna de las manera, pues para decir verdad, yo diría que, ¿de verdad?, tienes razon, no tenía ni idea! 

Piedra, Papel, Tijera (Stone, paper, scissors) where the winner needs to answer a question or talk on a topic. This can be combined to 1,2,3 or the Scribble Vincent's idea. 

Use of Flippity: the Randomizer in pairs. I am going to use this next week with my Y10s in preparation for their oral exam: students click on the randomizer and must answer the given question from column one, using the structure, some how, from column 2. Example here. 

Finally! Practising questions!!! if we want students to be fluent, they will need to ask questions. This can be done, easily, with Flippity and the Randomizer using question words that students need to create to find out things about the life of the teacher, for example.

Fluency is not easy, but if it is planned effectively it can take place as early as Y7!!!