The NEW GCSE: It's all about RETRIEVAL. PART 3 PASSIVE structured Practice using AI

This blopost Part 3 is all about Retrieval of vocabulary and structures in the Structured Practice of our learning journey. When I think of Structured Practice after the Modelling stage, I think of receptive and productive practice. Receptive Structed Practice consists of students getting exposed to the vocabulary and structures we have modelled in the previous stage in a listening and reading format, but still not expecting students to produce language themselves. Productive Structed Practice will consist of tasks expecting students to produce language in an oral or written format with scaffolds, mainly, through the use of translation from English into target language or by the use of prompts that will encourage students to practice the language we want to focus on. 

Passive Structured Practice

At this stage, it can be really difficult not to end up doing the same types of tasks over and over again. Similarly, it can be very timed consuming creating new listening and reading material to base our activities/tasks on. 

That's why the use of Artificial Intelligence can be vital at this stage as it will allow us to create multiple texts, on given vocabulary, to be exploited in the classroom. It is also important to make it clear that any listening and reading tasks should not be based, purely, on reading/listening test comprehension questions, but these should be an opportunity to work with the language (meaning and form) to help students to embed new structures into their long term memory, reading/listening for learning not testing.

Using Twee to create multiple texts 

Twee is a free website that allows teachers to create a text based on specific vocabulary/structures and subsequent different types of questions, which we can easily modify, such as Fill in the gaps, Multiple Choice answers etc.. 

However, the best asset of Twee is to be able to create the texts in different formats: for example, in the format of a funny dialogue or funny story.  The key is to allow students to have access to the vocabulary we want them to embed in many different ways. Twee will also allow you to create activities based on Youtube videos, for Alevel students, vocabulary, or writing tasks. Once the texts are created, we can choose to use Twee activities or create our own ones, based on "form" as well as meaning. Some activities that we can create with the given texts are:

• Asking students to identify specific words/expressions/tenses or grammatical points in the text.
• Asking students to translate parts of the texts.
• If several texts are created, Twee will allow us to create Narrow Reading activities easily: comparing the differences between 2 or more texts. 
• Asking students to infer meaning from specific words/structures in the text. 
• Asking students to turn the text from present to past or future tenses.
• Asking students to focus on collocations of words, seeing words in context and create own sentences. 

Of course, the texts we create can also be used in the Fluency Stage as model texts on what students could write themselves! 

Using Diffit to spice up your texts

Once we created a text with Twee, we can use Diffit to format it and transfer it into Slides/ PowerPoint but also into Forms. I love the latter possibility. Diffit, will create questions based on a given text, that was created with Twee and will turn it directly into a Forms activity. Once in Forms, we can modify the questions by focusing, again, on form, specific meanings etc.. but within a Form activity.  I think this is great in order to retrieve the vocabulary we want students learn, aka, transfer to their long term memory, over and over again, in different formats: as a worksheet, in Slides/PPT and Forms.

Using Vocaraoo to personalise listening tasks

Once we have our texts created by Twee (we can also use Claude or ChatGPT) we can turn a text into sentences and exploit them as listening material by recording our voices with Vocaroo. Vocaroo is an old friend but it does the job! It will allow you to record your voice and share your recorded audiofile directly, with a unique URL (which expires within 3 months), or download your audio into a MP3 file to be used over and over again on different activities:

• Dictation/fill in the gaps dictation/ fill in the gaps without the gaps dictation.
• Transcription type of tasks: write down exactly what you hear in English or Target language.
• Correct the mistakes in given translations from an audio.
• Matching halves of sentences
• Putting sentences in order making up a full paragraph, which students can then translate or work from a reading point of view. 

To make the experience more real, I ask my students to bring headphones to our lessons, so they can carry out these activities individually at their own pace. This works wonders at KS3 too!

Using Vidnoz to create video/listening material with avatars

This is my favourite site. In the past I have used Synthesia for this type of activities but in September I came across Vidnoz, which is so much easier to use. Vidnoz allows us to create a video, within 5 minutes, with a chosen avatar from the site. We can choose a video template, an avatar, the language we want to practise, the voice and finally we can just copy and paste the texts we created with Twee to be turned into audio. We can decide the speed we want our avatar to talk and a MP4 video will be created within 5 minutes. You are allowed to use 3 minutes per day for free, which I think it is enough as videos, should not exceed the 2 minute length, to avoid fatigue. Once created, we can download it or we can upload it into our own Youtube channel to share more easily.  Once you have the audio/video material, it is great to carry out, again, lots of audio tasks:

• Fill in the gaps
• Transcriptions of the whole video
• Rearranging the transcript in the correct order
• Spotting all the verbs in a particular tense 

Using Google Earth to spice up reading tasks

Another app that can really help us to do reading/translation tasks with a twist, is Google Earth. Why not ask students to go on a virtual journey around Madrid, Paris, Barcelona or Berlin showing them the main landmarks while we ask them to translate specific texts/sentences? Again, this is a fantastic way to retrieve vocabulary in an interactive way! Once you create your project, by choosing your landmarks, your pictures and editing the content (the text you want students to translate, work on) you can share it as a slide show. Students will be taken to the specific landmarks, they can complete the tasks and have a walk around Barcelona, Paris or Berlin!

Passive structured practice is key to establish a very good foundation for students to be able to use the language. It should not be rushed and AI is great to help us create interactive material swiftly and interactively. 

Boosting numbers at GCSE in your MFL department: Stage 1, focus on the curriculum

As we approach the beginning of the summer holidays, I wanted to reflect on my first year at Princes Risborough School. It has certainly been a challenging year but also an exciting and successful one. What the team has achieved in just nine months, I think, is very special.  The main success has been to move from 22 students studying MFL at GCSE between French and Spanish, to 70 (48 in Spanish and 22 in French). There's still a lot to do but lots to celebrate too!!!

I wanted to share with you what our strategy has been to boost the numbers at GCSE in the department and raise the profile of languages in the school. 

I must talk about the THREE PILLARS:

1. Creating a mission statement. 

2. Designing a rich and clever curriculum, underpinned by our mission statement

3. Educating students and parents.

CREATING A MISSION STATEMENT

This is key! The mission statement should be the core of any department, our unique selling point to students, parents and SLT. This should be our intent and must be underpinned by the school own mission statement.  It must also reflect the context of the school we work in.  Finally, it has to be agreed by the whole department so there is ownership by all members of what we want to achieve by the end  of our learning journey in MFL.  

At PRS the MFL mission statement is Languages, a life-skill to achieve.  The school big mission and logo is aspire and achieve so we wanted to show that in order to be successful in life, a language is necessary as it is a life-skill, such as being able to swim or ride a bike. This urge in the mission statement places languages at a high level: you must learn a language as it is essential, it is a life-skill and by doing so, you will achieve!

Once agreed, our mission statement was turned into big banners which were displayed in our MFL corridor and underpinned our BIG MFL CURRICULUM INTENT AND PEDAGOGY:

Our big intent in the implementation of our curriculum, underpinned by our mission statement is for our students to achieve FLUENCY by the end of their language learning journey. We believe that FLUENT oral communication is the core for MOTIVATION and RECRUITMENT at GCSE and beyond. This journey starts at Y7 and will culminate for many, at Y11.

You can have a look at our intent and pedagogy document in this document here.

  DESIGNING A CLEVER AND RICH CURRICULUM

Our curriculum was then underpinned by our mission statement and big intent. We had to create a curriculum which will lead our students to achieve FLUENCY and will create the foundations of success at GCSE. This meant that students had to experience success in MFL and had to be able to communicate as from day one, using high frequency structures and incorporating from day one, the vocabulary that will be required at GCSE.

To help us retrieve these key structures and create nuggets of success, which could be retrieved constantly in any studied topic from Y7 to Y9, we came up with the concept of the 5 MAGIC POWERS:

1. Using more than one tense: through high frequency structures which can be applied to any topic, such as "suelo, solía, decidí, me gusta, me gustaba, me gustaría, or quiero" followed by infinitive.

2. Giving opinions

3. Giving reasons

4. Using reported speech "mi amigo dice que" or/and talking about someone else

5. Using high impact expressions and/or idioms "lo que más me gusta es"

We also embraced the concept that less is more, so we decided to teach only 3 topics per year at KS3. All this was embedded in Sentence Builders and a lexicogrammar approach to teaching languages, which allowed us to scaffold the teaching/learning process to suit all abilities and help students experience success. It worked!

EDUCATING STUDENTS AND PARENTS

This was essential. We had talks for parents and students where we explained what is the eBacc, what it required and the implications if a student did not study a language at GCSE: they would not get the eBacc! To help us with this, we created posters and leaflets using Canva. This is the link to our "Why study languages" poster. Depending on your school context, you may have to educate SLT! We were lucky at PRS at SLT were behind us and understood the mission.

We also delivered presentations to parents about why students should study languages at GCSE.  This is the link to our parents' presentation.

In this process, we also invited David Binns from Sanako to talk to our Y9 students.  David gave an extremely entertaining and engaging talk from the point of view of employers, on how more desirable, potential employees who can speak a language can be and how much more money they can earn!  

This 3 pillar strategy worked for us in just a few months. This was just stage 1. Stage 2 will focus on extracurricular activities and project based learning. 

However, for numbers to be high at GCSE, just focussing on extracurricular activities and culture is not enough, although it will be fundamental at a second stage, once the curriculum, intent and pedagogical approach (achieving fluency and experiencing success) are well rooted in the department and the school.

Tweaking the Curriculum for the new GCSE

As you know, I am starting a new job in September as Head of MFL in a comprehensive school near Oxford, Princes Risborough School. Talking to my new team, it was obvious that they are super talented and really committed, as well as the SLT, to raise the profile of MFL across the school. MFL is an option at GCSE and we would like more students to choose it as option at the end of Y9!!  

"Languages, a LIFE skill to achieve"

I had a preliminary meeting with my new team in May to establish the priorities of the department using the SWOT analysis diagram:  Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats.  This led the path for our vision: For MFL to become a popular, established choice for students at GCSE with great results and make sure that pupils saw the benefits of learning a new language.  We came out with a Mission Statement that summarised this vision: Languages, a LIFE skill to achieve. This vision/mission statement would drive our curriculum: students should choose MFL for GCSE because it is a LIFE skill and must be learned and nurtured. 

To make the connection between LIFE skill and what happens in the classroom, we agreed that being able to communicate ORALLY at the end of the language journey had to be a must for the students, so our curriculum should be focussed on developing FLUENCY. 

To achieve this, we would use our knowledge of Cognitive Science, the benefits of a Lexicogrammar approach to language learning and applying Rosenshine's Principles to our teaching pedagogy, without forgetting the power of gamifying the curriculum, for real communicative tasks, even when these are just a drilling exercise, part of the learning process and, of course, Project Based Learning, as the reason why a unit will be taught, which will connect what we teach to a purposeful, meaningful, real to life scenario.  At this point we agreed that we would involve our partner school links as much as possible, so that at the end of each taught unit, students would have the opportunity to speak/present what they had learned to a real native audience. 

Tweaking the curriculum: LESS IS MORE and PROJECT BASED LEARNING

Last week we met to actually design a new curriculum for KS3, which would take into consideration all these elements, as well as the elements of our new GCSE for languages. 

Below you can find the presentation I use with my team to give a rationale to our new Curriculum. It was lovely to see that actually, the topics for KS3 would be the same as studied so far! We just had to take into consideration the new vocab lists for AQA/Edexcel and tweak some of the content to make sure that as much of that vocabulary list was learned during KS3.

We also decided that LESS is MORE, so we would teach just a unit/topic per term, to allow time for students to really practise the topic, embed structures, teach grammatical points and be creative with the language to, finally, become fluent in that topic.

5 Magic Powers to help Fluency and Embed Exam Skills

Finally, we agreed to use 5 Magic Powers, our non-negotiables, which would be the common thread across the whole curriculum. I have talked about the 5 Magic Powers before in this blog. I love them, because, not only they are success criteria for productive skills at GCSE level, even with the new GCSE, but they help my students to be able to speak and be fluent, as these powers are so embedded in all our lessons. 

If I ask my students: what do you do in your free time? They will always have something to say: an activity, an opinion, a reason, reported speech sentence, more than one tense and some extremely colloquial and common expressions, high impact expressions as students learn a few formulaic expressions for each power element, throughout the curriculum to be used in any context. By doing this, students not only speak but they embed the elements that will score them points later in their GCSE exam. We teach them to speak and give information and, by default, they will score highly in their exam.  

Finally, let's not forget, that at the end of each unit, students will have the opportunity to put the language (vocabulary, register and grammar) into practise via a real-life situation task: Taking part in little drama sketch performed in assembly, talking to our partner schools on a given topic/presentation, pitching for the best holiday experience to be featured in a digital travel blog, taking part in a film review competition, taking part in a school treasure hunt with the studied topic as the theme for this etc...

The 5 Magic Powers:

• Using more than one tense
• Give opinions
• Give reasons
• Using Reported Speech
• Using some idiomatic/high impact expressions, so you sound like a Spaniard/French speaker.

For the Magic Powers to have effect, they will need to be taught and practised constantly, throughout the learning journey at KS3, in all the units: that's why less is more!! Fewer units, more time to learn lexis and grammar and more time to embed skills.

The next step is to create the content for the units: via Sentence Builders, using  the material in textbooks, the new GCSE vocabulary lists and our knowledge of the language as specialists and create a mark scheme to mirror the curriculum. To create our sentence builders we are using the site Sentence Builders, super fast to create + lots of interactive activities to go with them! I will share mine once I create them. 

This is the language journey to share with students.

A Treasure Hunt to gamify your lessons using AI and other tools

This week I have been thinking about ways to assess my students work informally in a fun, non threatening, meaningful way at the end of a teaching unit, while they have the opportunity to put their linguistic skills into practice in a real situation. 

This is easily done via Project Based Learning (teaching a unit giving students all the tools they will need for later, to carry out a particular writing/reading/listening/oral project).  However, I wanted to think of another way to do this involving all the skills in the project, promote collaboration, movement and ultimately fun! 

I thought that a game would tick all these boxes so I planned a Treasure Hunt game to carry out at the end of a particular unit or after several units. This is what I came out with, thinking of a Y10/Y11 group. The Treasure Hunt involves  culture as well and to generate it I used the help of ChatGPT and HeyGen (a tool that allows you to create a video Avatar from a photo).  This is the result:

La Caza del Tesoro

Divide the class in pairs or groups of threes. You will need to print off the following QR Codes (one per group so I suggest you stick them on colour card and assign a colour to each group). This is important as the students will need to move around the school and you don't want 30 students scanning a QR code at once! It will be much easier if students look for the QR codes with their colour. There are 7 tasks to complete in total but you can remove or add more!

QR Code 1

This will set up the context of the Treasure Hunt. To create the video in the slike, I used the App ToonMe on my iPhone from a picture of mine. Then I used HyGen to create the video. HyGen is an AI tool that allows you create videos from a script that you write. You only get 1 minute free but I thought it was cool!

 If your context is concise, say 10 seconds, you can create up to 6 little videos for free! Otherwise, PhotoSpeak is completely free and it does the job, although not as realistic! Students Scan the QR code and will get the image below. If they click on the hourglass icon, a message comes up telling students to go to a particular area of the school and look for their following coloured QR Code.

QR Code 2: Task 1

This task is a writing collaborative task. Students need to create a dialogue in Spanish about their Free Time and use the app Chat Animator to write it.  Chat Animator will create a little video of their text dialogue, which students must download to prove they have accomplished the task. Again clicking the hourglass will direct students to the next task. 

QR Code 3: Task 2

This task is focussed on Reading, Translation and Culture. Students have to complete the Riddle, super easy (the answer is Ceuta), and go to the QR code on the slide which will take them to a Google Earth Presentation. The presentation takes students around 5 iconic places in Ceuta. They just have to follow the presentation and translate into English the information about the landmarks. I used ChatGPT to generate the five landmarks with information about them in Spanish at GCSE level. 

QR Code 4: Task 3

This task involves Oral skills and Culture. Students need to look for different famous people in Spain and create a Roleplay/Conversation where each participant adopts the personality of a Spanish celebrity and ask questions to each other to find out key information about the different characters. I just expect students to ask basic questions about their age, name, birthday, what they do for a living, why they are famous, what they work on, family members etc.. It is also a great opportunity to learn about celebrities in Spain, a new topic inf the new GCSE!

QR Code 5: Task 4

This task focusses on Reading: Fill in the Gaps. The QR code will take students to a LearningApps activity on fill in the gaps on the topic of Environment. 

QR Code 6: Task 5

This is another Oral task. The QR code in the slide will take students to a Wheel of Names with lots of questions on Theme 2. They just have to play Stone, Paper and Scissors, evolution with each other until one of them wins (becomes Superman!), while spinning the wheel and answering the question that comes up!

QR Code 7: Task 6

This an Oral and Cultural task. Students find out the name of the Picasso picture on the slide and then, collaboratively prepare a collaborative presentation describing the actual picture and recording it using Flip, which they will access via the QR code in the slide. This is a very powerful activity which will require a follow up in a subsequent lesson: What does Guernica represent? What was the Civil War in Spain? What happened? Consequences? Of course in English! It is a great way to practise vocabulary for the GCSE Photocard.

QR Code 8: Task 7

This is another Reading Task. Students scan the QR code on the slide which will take them to a Google Doc with a reading comprehension text on celebrities. I did use ChatGPT to create this text. I asked it to create a 150 words text in Spanish at GCSE level on the advantages and disadvantages of being a celebrity using a specific list of vocabulary, taken from the AQA Excel document with the draft Spanish vocabulary list on Celebrities, for the new GCSE. 

It did it in 5 seconds! Then, I asked it to generate 6 reading comprehension questions in English. The hourglass will tell students to get back to their Spanish classroom.

QR Code 9: The end!

This just tells them Congratulations, in Spanish, and at this point, the teacher needs to check the tasks have been completed. In a subsequent lesson, I would give them the treasure: some tapas, certificates, merits or any other reward you really want!

For this activity you will need in total these 9 QR codes x the number of groups/pairs you have. My treasure hunt involves walking around the whole school and it will take 2 or three lessons to complete properly but you can have fewer tasks and/or simpler tasks such as small translations or just cultural questions. Instead of running around the school, you may want to restrict the hunt to two corridors or your school hall!

It can be adapted from Y7 to Y13, just change the tasks! I think it is a great way to assess students with a real game!

This is the whole Treasure Hunt for you to adapt in Genially as you need it fit. 

I have used Genially, for my treasure hunt, because I can create individual URL links to each slide, rather than the whole presentation, which then I have turned into individual QR codes.  

Google Slides and PPT, as far as I know, don't allow me to do this. I also love the interactivity and the graphics of the Genially Templates and it is FREE!

 Just click on the link below and at the bottom of the presentation click on the blue box where it says "REUSE THIS GENIALLY" to have your own copy to modify. You just need to open an account with Genially.

La Caza del Tesoro Presentation in Genially

This is a Google Document with all the QR codes in two pages for easy printing. 

La Caza del Tesoro Document

To create an individual URL link to each Genially slide, you need the last slide in the presentation, which looks like this

Just copy the RED box and paste it onto each slide, anywhere. Go to PREVIEW and in there, copy the URL link that will appear (That's the unique page URL for the slide). Paste it onto a tab and do the same for each slide. Finally, go back to edit and DELETE the RED BOX in each slide. 

The wonderful Julia Morris, explains the process very well in this 6 minute  Youtube video tutorial. IT IS REALLY EASY TO DO!   Alternatively, you can print each slide separately but it won't be interactive: for example, the hourglass information would need to be copied and pasted as part of the slide. 

I hope this makes sense!!!

Creative ways to practise writing, reading and translation skills: Google Earth

This week has been one of those weeks were more traditional activities and the latest cutting edge technology have merged to inspire me!  This morning I saw on Twitter a great writing game, shared by Erin Gray, called "Capture the flag"  to revise for the fast approaching GCSE writing exam. It goes like this: 

Divide your class in 6/8 teams. For the game you will need a set of coloured flags, say 12, per team.  Print your cards and stick them on the board, as shown by Erin on her twitter post picture: 

Give each team a list of typical GCSE questions/bullet points. Students, in teams, write a paragraph for each given question. Once their paragraph is written, they must come to the teacher who checks the paragraph for any mistakes and if correct, students are allowed to pick any flag belonging to any team from the board. If the paragraph is not correct, they must go back to their seats and correct it. 

At the end of the session, points are given to each coloured flag, (see picture below from Erin Gray posted on twitter) so the team with most points wins the game. As Erin points out, it is a mixture between a running translation activity and a group game with the add-on of practising writing skills!

I love the game as it is! Thank you, Erin. However, after attending the third webinar on Joe Dale's series on AI for MFL teachers, and being a BIG fan of Google Earth and Wheel of Names tasks, I was inspired to combine these two tools with Erin's concept into one activity. This is the result

Writing Quest around Barcelona using Google Earth and Wheel of Names

I created a project in Google Earth based on a Writing Quest around Barcelona. Inspired by Joe Dale, I used Chat GPT to suggest 10 famous landmarks in Barcelona and to provide me with a description of such places in Spanish at GCSE level. I added the places suggested by Chat GTP and their description information to my Google Earth project. 

Then, I went to Wheel of Names and created a wheel with the GCSE questions in relation to Theme 1 for AQA GCSE Spanish (it could have been any theme and I could have used Chat GPT to give me a suggestion of questions, but I had my own). I went back to my Google Earth project and added the link to my wheel of names, at the end of each landmark description. 

This is the result :  Google Earth Writing Quest around Barcelona 

It works like this:

1. Divide the class in 6/8 teams like the original Erin's game

2. Have the sets of coloured flags like Erin suggests, stuck on the board. One set per team.

2. Share the Google Earth link with students via Onenote or Google Classroom

3. Students in teams, you could this in pairs or threes too, open the Google Earth presentation, go to the different places and do two things: 

         a. Translate into English the description of the landmark they are seeing (Reading)

         b. Click on the Wheel of Names link, spin the wheel and write a big paragraph on the  selected question for Theme 1. They must do this without looking at notes. (Writing)

4. One member of the team must go to the teacher to check their writing is correct

5. If correct, like in Erin's game, they pick up a flag from the board from any other team. If mistakes are found, they must go back to their team and revise their paragraph.

6. They continue with the next landmark in the presentation.

I have included 10 landmarks, meaning, 10 translations and writing 10 paragraphs. The translations include nice, new vocabulary, which I will ask students/teams finishing early, to identify and add to their personalised Random Quizlets. 

The whole activity took me 10 minutes to design thanks to Chat GPT. The Wheel of Names can be reused in other retrieval practice tasks for self testing, either for writing or oral purposes. In fact I have a wheel of names for each AQA Theme for this purpose:

Wheel of names Sample Questions for Theme 1

Wheel of names Sample Questions for Theme 2

Wheel of names Sample Questions for Theme 3

The game, adding Google Earth Projects, adds a cultural important element: a virtual visit to Barcelona. If done periodically, you can show different cities where the target language is spoken! Students will need to speak in Spanish when talking among them: real purpose for the activity, which helps motivation!

I hope the idea is clear and thank you again, to Erin and Joe for their inspiration today!

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!

Having high expectations: Encanto and Anchoring in challenge!

I have been very busy lately with mocks, teaching intensively and all the other million things that we, teachers, do, while fitting a couple of interviews in between (no right job yet!) However, today I wanted to share an example of having high expectations, what I mean by anchoring in challenge as from Y7 and how we can plant the seed of  different verb tenses as from an early age while incorporating communicative activities and a cultural twist/element to the lesson.

Below, you can find a lesson sequence to teach descriptions in Y7.

 

When I planned this lesson, students already knew how to describe their hair/eyes using “tengo” (I have) and physical appearance using “soy” (I am). During this lesson, for a mixed ability group, I intended to revise the same vocab but now making reference to the third person, while expecting students to refer to the past and the future.

Activity one, consisted of revising the vocab about descriptions that students already knew. For that, I created a Flippity activity with such structures, in Spanish. Students just translated them into English, using the “single name" setting in the Flippity activity, I used the cold calling technique for this. This was a quick fire activity based on retrieval practice. On a second round, I expected the students to shout: tengo or Soy, for each expression, as students tend to get confused between the two verbs! We also remembered the o/a option for adjectives such as delgado/a. 

After that, I explained that we would describe Maribel’s family in Encanto. To do that I asked if we could use Soy/Tengo and why not. I then showed them the following Sentence Builder. 

The Sentence Builder had the vocabulary students already knew, like descriptive expressions and family members but introduced: “tiene” “antes tenía” “me gustaría que tuviera”  “es” “antes era” “ me gustaría que fuera”. 

We did lots of modelling and repetition with “tiene” and “antes tenía” using the vocab on the sheet. I explained how the second structure, was already GCSE level, and I was teaching it to them because I had high expectations on them.  They felt special and loved it! That motivated them!

I explained how we can remember “tenía” by thinking of the number “ten” in English and “ear”, like in “tenear”= tenía. I showed this with gestures (showing my 10 fingers, followed by touching my ear):  dual coding. Then we moved to “es” which they already knew and “antes era” and I explained how we could remember this sgructure by thinking about  a “past era” in time! I modelled the structures with MWBs: dictations, and translation both ways. On this occasion, I just mentioned “ me gustaría que tuviera/ fuera” and how this was, specifically, a Y11 expression. I did a little bit of modelling too with the expression but it was there to stretch  the high flyers while having high expectations on all of them. I expect everyone to use it but we will need more lessons for this! Stealing sentences would work brilliantly at this stage too!

Next activity, to be done in a second lesson if necessary, was a Battleships oral activity for students to practise the structures we had modelled. They played in pairs and described La Familia Madrigal in the present and the past! High flyers were encouraged to make reference to the future. All students had the previous Sentence Builders with them so scaffolding was integrated. Note that I gave students the initials of the translations in Spanish to trigger memory. 

Finally, after a couple of minutes cold calling about “how do you say, I have, he has, he had, I am, he is, he was?” We played the Piñata game in teams (A and B). The game had the same sentences as in the Battleships game, reinforcement of structures, but now these sentences were in a different format. 

The Piñata Game 

A person from team A chooses a number from the board, before releasing what there is behind, I spin the wheel and someone from team A translates the sentence into Spanish. I reveal what is behind their chosen number: positive points, negative points, a robber (so they lose all the points) or swapping points with team B. Then we do the same with team B. I keep a tally with each team points. They love it!  The original template and game was created by the amazing Genially Queen, Marie Allirot.

By the end of the lesson/sequence of two lessons, students in Y7 could say small sentences using the present and past tenses! Many could make reference to the future, using the conditional and the imperfect subjunctive, too.  

This is the perfect example of what a lesson anchored in challenge and high expectations means to me. It will require much more imput to embed the imperfect/conditional/imperfect subjunctive into my students’ long term memory but with retrieval practice and the recycling of such structures in future topics, it will get done! On the other hand, the activities provided students with opportunities to communicate with real examples: the games, while relating to them adding the Encanto film as a context too.  As I said, more lessons will be needed to get to automaticity but the seed was well planted! In subsequent lessons, students can describe/create posters of the different characters, listen to the famous No se habla de Bruno song. My post is about maximising language with some culture references but if you are interested in carrying out a project on Encanto, these two websites, suggested by Barbara Montero, may  be useful. 

Un viaje encantador a Colombia

Discovering Encanto 

Stretching ALL students in MFL, not just High Achievers!

In these post I will be focussing on how to stretch ALL students in the MFL classroom and in the process, any high achievers that you may have, but not exclusively them, especially if like me you use Sentence Builders. I have read lots of comments suggesting that the lexicogrammar approach or EPI, following Gianfranco Conti’s nomenclature, can be boring and not stretch students in lessons, especially those with a higher aptitude for languages.

Anchor in Challenge

I have experienced the opposite. ALL my students, including  highly motivated students with an aptitude to language learning, can actually fly using this approach. The reason why is that from a very early stage we plant the seed for more sophisticated structures, which nurtures my students' curiosity and makes them explore grammatical concepts earlier and start being creative with the language. Sentence Builders allows me to Anchor in Challenge.

How to stretch students

Curriculum Design

Make sure you design a good curriculum which allows for creativity and the exploration of grammatical concepts early on. 

On one hand, your students will feel special, clever as you point out that some of the structures they are learning are 7-9 grade structures, you are telling them that you BELIEVE  IN THEM and they CAN ACHIEVE. 

On the other, High achievers tend to love finding out how the language works and planting the seed to interesting grammatical structures is key to make them expore!

For example, our Sentence Builders in Y7 incorporates the structure me gustaría que mi madre fuera + personality adjective  (I would like my mother to be), which in Spanish would require the use of the Imperfect Subjunctive. 

ALL our students, independently of ability, can recognise and/or use this structure and they feel good! On top of that, high achievers are prompted to work out how we would say I would like my parents to be which would require them to use fueran (3rd person plural), which they often decode after applying the pattern from “tienen” (they have= adding -n to the 3rd person singular tiene), so applying that pattern they add “n” to “fuera”. When I carry out this metalanguage thinking skills session, I do it for the whole class: having high expectations.

Later in the curriculum, in Y8, the same structure reappears now under the topic of Where I live: Me gustaría que mi casa fuera and we introduce tuviera. It will be repeated in Y9 too in the topic of tourism: me gustaría que mi ciudad fuera/tuviera” 

Our curriculum, based on Sentence Builders, is very well thought out and is full of high impact expressions like this, which are analysed in lessons, engaging high achievers and making ALL students feel clever! 

Such structures are introduced and practised extensively, with more simplistic structures. However they are not introduced all at once. Remember  less is more, and at KS3 we can spend weeks with a single sentence builder until students are fluent with it.

These are a few of the structures spread over our Sentence Builders at KS3 and recycled at KS4:

Le gusta/nos gusta/les gusta, instead of just me gusta

Me gustaba, so students work out les/nos gustaba, as they have been introduced to les/nos gusta: IDENTIFYING PATTERNS

Me gustaría + infinitive 

Me habría gustado + infinitive pero no pude As with Me gustaba, they soon work out le/les/nos habría gustado

Se me da bien, so students start working out se le/nos/les da bien

Puedo/podemos + infinitive

Suelo + infinitive

Solía + infinitive, so students work out solíamos/ solían

Siempre he querido hacerlo, so students start modifying it to siempre he querido + any infinitive

Me hace sentir bien

Me hizo sentir bien, so students can modify it to me hace/hizo reir/tener miedo/estar contento

Si pudiera me gustaría, so students start analysing pudiera and take risks to say, si pudiéramos. 

Si tuviera la oportunidad me gustaría+ infinitive 

Me ayuda a /me permite + infinitive 

All these are complex but extremely frequent expressions in spoken Spanish which students naturally use to express themselves and if following a textbook, would only encounter in Y11 or Alevel, recurring to Google Translate in the meantime!

Using a random personal Quizlet

All our sentence builders are linked to our departmental Quizlets. However, at some point in the learning journey, we carry out extra listening and reading activities moving away from the structures in the sentence builders, once students are fluent in a particular topic. 

Students always collect this vocabulary, which we nominate receptive, in their Random personal Quizlet courses. They have a Random Quizlet course per topic. Student learn this vocabulary, so that they can recognise it in listening or reading tasks. However, I also encourage pupils to use it in creative responses to substitute vocabulary from the official Sentence Builders. 

Could you?

When carrying out retrieval practice activities or structured practice tasks, mainly with mini whiteboards, but also in oral tasks, I always encourage, by modelling myself, students to extend their answers, using some of the high impact expressions above in new contexts: INTERLEAVING. 

That is great, could you use "me hizo + infinitive" to extend your answer?

I also encourage them to use the receptive vocabulary which we encountered in listening and reading tasks, from textbooks or Exampro and away from our Sentence Builders.

Many do it instinctively after a few lessons! In these video tutorials I demonstrate how I do this with Wheel of names and Flippity:

Have a repertoire of enrichment activities 

These activities are not just for high achievers but, for anyone who would like to stretch themselves and enrich their MFL experience.

I used to keep folders in my classroom with reading activities, such as graders or the lovely Authentik Magazines. I still do! But I have now a lovely repertoire of enrichment and extension tasks on OneNote, under the content library, to be done during lessons, as decided by students if a whole class tasks is finished or as extra learning at home. 

My repertoire include:

Independent work in the Verb Trainer of the Language Gym. What about learning about a new tense?

Independent work using This is Language and Languagenut

Extra videos + worksheets

Short films in Spanish 

Netflix Series

Zig-zag listening activities 

Zig-zag reading stories

The Language Gym Extranjeros book.

Cooking  recipe book/you tube videos for students to create their own dish 

Learning Spanish with songs with a link to Lyricstraining. 

Anchor in Challenge

I have high expectations and expect from ALL students a level higher than that expected by National Curriculum standards: at KS3, I expect some work at GCSE level and at GCSE level some work at ALevel. 

This principle is particularly important in the case of stretching the high achievers. So I give them websites aimed at higher levels and they love it! Languagenut and This is Language is brilliant for this, although not free, as you can assign special assignments to specific pupils within the same class, or have a challenge assignment for the whole class.

In the case of Spanish these two free websites are invaluable for KS4 students:

Hola Carmela

Spanish Podcasts

The use of Golden Expressions (Idioms)

Apart from the High impact expressions, which normally include idioms, blended within our Sentence Builders, we give students from Y7 to Y11 our Golden Expressions sheet. I challenge students to learn two idioms from the Golden Expressions sheet every half term and use them within oral or written activities. When done, I use my famous Scratch cards with Bitmojis. See this Blogpost here. 

A copy of my Golden Expressions sheet can be found here. 

Planning a rich curriculum

This means any extra curricular and cultural activity which will inspire students. The key is to offer it to ALL the students. 

We use Poetry in lessons: the Gloria Fuertes poems are brilliant for this, as they are authentic but easy to understand for all students. They also provide a perfect opportunity for high achievers to expand their repertoire of vocabulary and be creative with the language. 

Encouraging creative writing following models from Stories and Poems can be extremely powerful! 

Organising a speaking/debating/board games in MFL club 

Theatre Viewings etc.. are also excellent opportunities to stretch your students. A wrote a blogpost, on extracurricular activities to enrich your curriculum some time ago, with many ideas to try! 

Project Based Learning

As I explain on this blogpost, the importance and the power of Project Based Learning in MFL to stretch students and open the door to cultural understanding.

Our MFL curriculum includes a little project every year during KS3: Picasso Project for Y7, La leyenda del Espantapájaros (short film) for Y8 and Coco the film for Y9. These projects are embedded within our curriculum and are carried out by all students with scaffolding and specific Sentence Builders, so all students are enriched. Higher achievers, particularly enjoy Projects, and very quickly start manipulating the language, if a solid foundation to the structures expected throughout the project, has been set up. 

My experience is that Sentence Builders are a great source to stretch ALL students as it provides a solid structure and foundation on what to excel, plants the seeds for more sophisticated grammatical structures and creative language, avoiding the use of Google Translate and focussing on communication and fluency. 

Example of Work, in exam conditions, from a Y11 High Achiever using Sentence Builders and a Rich Curriculum: How you prepare for exams and problems in your school.

Example of Work, in exam conditions, from a Y11 middle range student using Sentence Builders and a Rich Curriculum: How you prepare for exams and problems in your school.  Careless mistakes are highlighted but not corrected. Student needs to correct them.