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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.