Low ability classes: how to reach them!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Excellent activities for the Modelling Stage of learning 

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

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

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

Excellent activities for Practised Production

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Assessment Time = Feedforward and Aim High!

Last week we started a new term in the UK. Despite having been teaching for years, I always get nervous and apprehensive in September. It was a lovely, albeit tiring week, by the way! During our fist week, I had several people asking me about assessment in my lessons, especially as I don’t use textbooks. Do I write my own reading tests? Do I record my own listening activities? Do I adapt material from test assessments in textbooks? 

The truth is I do a little bit of everything.

Why do we assess? The Power of Feedforward 

It’s important to ask ourselves this question. Do we do it because the school ask us to do so? Do we do it because of parent pressure? Do we do it to inform, especially, our teaching and help our students become independent learners by reflecting on their performance (feedback driven meta cognition)? 

In my case, I do assess to inform my teaching and my learners, and, of course, to provide data, which my school and parents demand.

This means that assessment must be purposeful and should be embedded in students' language learning journey, as a tool to check for information for the teacher, using Rosenshine’s terminology, while providing meaningful feedback to the students, on how well they are doing, so they reflect on their knowledge/skill gaps and take (independent)action, with our help, to close such gaps. 

Feedback should really be called Feedforward via assessments. 

Low stakes tests 

Great MFL teaching should incorporate lots of modelling opportunities and  structured production tasks leading to spontaneity and creativity with the language. In order to successfully drive our students in this journey, we must constantly check for information, check they are confident with the structures we teach. I do this via lots of embedded retrieval practice, see this post here. This means that I am constantly assessing in my lessons. I do it through low stake tests which I, sometimes, do not even call tests. 

For this, I use, mainly, two tools, mini whiteboards and powerful questions:

• Questions that allow me to check for understanding 
• Questions that allow to deepen understanding in my students by making connections between new learning and what they already know.
• Questions that allow students to think and 
• Asking all students, hence, the power of mini whiteboards.

It is true that I also need data, so every three/four lessons, especially at the beginning of a new topic, I carry out low stakes tests. This means that it is done in paper.

I give students 10 small sentences to translate, both ways, based on the Sentence Builder covered and incorporating structures from past Sentence Builders (interleaving); we mark them in class (students mark their partners’ work, 2 marks per sentence and 1 mark if a mistake was made) and at the end of the lesson, as an exit ticket, students tell me in Spanish, their mark, which is always out of 20. This mark, I collect not only as evidence of progress for me, but also to give Merits to all those achieving 100% or even 80-90%, in a given test.

The key element for this tests is to make sure that students are ready for them and everybody gets at least 80%.  

These tests are a celebration for the class, a way for students to show that we care for each other and they feel safe, not anxious. This means lots of previous practice activities (normal tasks and also via LearningApps or Wheel of Names) and a couple of specific learning homeworks, via Quizlet or Memrise, linked to our Sentence Builders. 

These tests involve 0 preparation for me! My students love them and do not cause anxiety because very rarely they do badly, so it’s a great way to get a well-deserved Merit! 

Assessing all skills? 

I don’t do official end of unit tests and definitely not in all four skills. I rather use my, already reduced curriculum time, teaching/learning/practising the language. I use reading and listening tasks, as modelling tools to help my students learn the language not to be tested. However, twice a year we do two official assessments, following my school protocol. In these assessments we include two skills only: one productive and one receptive. 

For KS3, we adapt material from different textbooks while adding bits in relation to our studied Sentence Builders. We use textbook audio files, so students get used to many different voices, not only their teachers.

At KS4, we use Exampro, which uses past papers GCSE questions, which can be selected by topic and level (Foundation, Overlapping, Higher). We tend to do lots of Exampro activities as part of our normal classroom activities, so again, students are ready for these. 

At the end of these tests, we do Self-Reflection tasks to help students to reflect on what went well, identify gaps and decide an action plan to overtake these hurdles. 

Example of KS3 Self-Reflection sheet

Example of KS4 Self-Reflection sheet

Similarly, Y11 students carry out a Writing Task in test conditions every two weeks to help them to master the 150 words GCSE question in the exam. For this, students are given a list of writing tasks. Directed by me, they prepare one task for homework, after, as a class, we have modelled, collaboratively, a good answer and after reading the question support information provided in their given writing task Title in yellow:

Y11 Timed Writing Questions and support

I mark these tasks using the AQA mark scheme, providing oral feedback on OneNote so that students, as part of the lesson, reflect on their performance and learn what to address in the following task in two weeks’ time.

In other words, assessment should be used to feedforward and anchor in high expectations! 

Of course Digital Tools can also be used for low stakes tests: Quizizz, Quizlet, MS Forms and Google Forms, are also great ways to provide short tests for students to check on their understanding and make them reflect on the outcome!

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. 

Maximising resources: minimum preparation, high impact tasks

On this post I am focussing on how to reduce workload  by exploiting minimum preparation tasks to be used in many different ways within a lesson or a series of lessons.   

When planning my activities, I always try to create tasks which require minimum preparation time but which have high impact, so students see measurable results. 

These are 5 of my favourite tasks and how I exploit them to be used for many different activities. More activities, which can follow the following pattern, can be found in Simona Gravina's Padlet here .

Battleships

This classic activity can be exploited in many different ways just with a single grid. This is my sequence which gives me materials to last a whole lesson or even two!

• Listening Battleships: I say a sentence students write the coordinate according to the grid. I tend to do this for 10 or 20 sentences. Sentences are very similar, so students really need to listen to specific verb endings and structures. 

• Translation codes: I give students coordinates BC, A2, D5 etc.. and they translate the sentences, the codes correspond to. To spice up the activity, I turn the activity into a little competition with a merit given to the first 10/12 students completing the task. We then go through the translations together to check out accuracy with many strategic questions based on grammar which help me to check for understanding. I use this question session in conjunction with mini whiteboards. This allows me to revise specific grammar in context. 

• Oral Battleships: Students play classic battleships orally in pairs. Normally they tick 8/9 boxes. They need to sink their partner's ships by translating orally, the sentence corresponding to a specific coordinate.

• Extensive writing: Using their oral battleships choices and those of their partners, students write, collaboratively, an extensive piece of writing using linking words and adding extra information. Students can start planning their writing during the lesson and finish it as a homework task. 

• Mini Whiteboard work based on the grid and beyond: to finish the lesson, or in a second lesson, I check for understanding by asking students to write down, in mini WB, sentences from the grid, which by this stage they are super familiar with, so the success rate is high, which is important to promote intrinsic motivation. I then start asking students to write sentences moving away from the grid as I incorporate content from previous topics: retrieval practice. We finish the sessions doing this orally, for those who feel more confident.

Stealing Sentences

This Gianfranco Conti's classic can also be exploited to fit many activities:

• Level 1: just as a reading activity to focus on phonics and pronunciation and help memorisation of chuncks. Students take 4 pieces of paper and write a number from 1 to 7 (or as many as shown on the board) on each piece. Students move around the room and read a sentence from the board to each other. Students steal sentences, pieces of paper, if the person they read the sentence to, has the number corresponding to their read sentence, written on one of the pieces of paper. The student with more pieces of paper at the end of the activity is the winner.

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• Level 2: Same activity but with gaps, encouraging retrieval of key structures.

• Level 3: After carrying out levels 1 and 2, students play the game again, but this time, they need to translate, orally, the sentences, using the initials as help.

• Writing activity: After doing the oral activities in the different levels, students write down the sentences in pairs, unaided as a self-test task. How many can they remember accurately? As in the example with Battleships, we go through the sentences focusing on key questioning on grammar in conjunction with mini whiteboards. 

• Read my mind: Level 1/2/3 of this activity can be used to carry out this classic activity from Gianfranco Conti too, to be done against the teacher or in pairs. I think of a number, which I write in a piece of paper, and students try to guess the number by saying the sentence in the grid. 

Rock Climbing 

Another Gianfranco Conti activity which leads itself to be exploited easily. I follow this sequence:

• Listening activity: This is led by the teacher. I say a full sentence in the Target Language and students write down the numbers of the different components of the sentence. This listening activity can also be carried out in pairs, where a student says the sentences and their partner identifies the chunks.

• Writing activity: Next, students write sentences based on my combinations. See example below.

• Oral activity: Finally, students work in pairs. They write their own combinations in numbers (sentence a: 1,8,14,24)  and their partners, orally, must guess the correct combination by saying the sentence in the target language. Students love this challenge. 

Wheel of Names

I have written many posts on how to exploit this Digital Tool. See this Video here. I follow this sequence:

• Retrieval practice: I use the wheel of names with sentences in English with key structures, to be translated to the Target Language, for retrieval practice, in conjunction with mini whiteboards and/or orally.

• Oral practice: I share the wheel of names link with students, and they test each other orally. They need to translate a given sentence, answer a question, conjugate a verb etc.. Students normally do this while playing, Piedra, Papel, Tijera (Stone, Paper, Scissors) so the winner of each round takes a turn to carry out a task. 

• Writing practice: Students, individually or in pairs, spin the wheel and write down a given sentence in their books or OneNote. For differentiation purposes, some students may need to translate a sentence and extend it or translate the sentence and change it to a different tense etc.. As in the case of battleships, I may add a competition element! Students love this type of activities versus an old fashioned worksheet!

• Homework task: Students record the sentences orally using the insert audio in Onenote or Flipgrid. Confident students are encouraged to extend their sentences.

• Appsmashing with Genially: Once created, Wheel of Names can be embedded within Genially to create oral board games.

Flippity 

This is another digital tool providing activities, which take only 5-10 minutes to create and can generate tasks for a whole lesson or even more. For a video on how to do so click here. 

• Retrieval practice: I use the Flippity Random Name Picker to write key words and verbs that students must know well. After 5 minutes doing this, I ask students to write a sentence with the given key word/structure using mini whiteboards. 

• Extensive writing: I use the Groups of 2/3/4/5 in Flippity, within Random Name Picker, (increasing the difficulty), so the application will group my key structures into small groups. I set up the timer and students need to write a full paragraph using all the structures in each group in the time given. Rewards are given to those who manage to write a very good paragraph within the limit. At this point, like in previous activities, key questioning on accuracy to check for understanding and consolidating grammar is extremely valuable. The activity can then be followed up as a homework task.

• Oral work: I share the link with students, who carry out this activity orally in pairs within a given time using the timer in the app. For homework, they can also carry out this oral activity recording themselves using the Insert Voice feature in OneNote or Flipgrid.

These five tasks, which do not take long to prepare and are not fancy, although I love beautiful created resources, provide me with a whole lesson worth of tasks + homework. All tasks are engaging but also allow students to learn successfully. As they are easy to prepare, these allow for personalisation of the learning to specific classes. It is what I call minimum preparation time and high impact, sticky tasks.

Lights, Camera, Action! Empowering the curriculum

This post has been inspired by the talented Isabelle Jones who asked in Twitter which Spanish films teachers integrated as part of SoW at KS3. She made me think of film in the MFL classroom, which can be such a powerful cultural tool to motivate students, learn culture, values and of course language! 

However, like any task/activity, it must be very well thought out and truly embedded in the curriculum. I am not keen of watching films, for the sake of it, but planning to watch and study a film while taking the opportunity to exploit it and embed it into the curriculum. 

How to integrate films into the curriculum 

When planning a unit based on a film, I think of three pillars: the planned final discourse, cultural outcome and linguistic/grammatical exploitation.

Pillar one: the final discourse

Firstly, like with any other unit, plan the discourse which you would like your students to produce, linguistically, after watching the film. For me, in most cases, regardless of the linguistic level of my students, this discourse is to be able to tell what happened in the film and give opinions about it as well as recommendations. 

As with any work unit, I need to define the exact final outcome/discourse that students will have to produce and work backwards thinking of activities to get them there. For that purpose, I create a Sentence Builder with this language which will be the backbone of the whole film unit. See this link to see the Sentence Builder I created for Coco this year for our Y9 classes.

Pillar two: the cultural dimension

However, a film is richer than that! So, also think about the cultural dimension and what you would like students to learn culturally from any given film. In this category we can also include values or international issues promoted by the film:

Coco for example, is great to explore the Day of the Dead in Mexico and the Aztec culture.

Voces inocentes is a fantastic opportunity to talk and debate about children in war, the power of friendship and children soldiers. It is also a good film to learn about differences between poor and richer countries and immigration. 

Cuerdas is a fab example to talk about diversity. 

Zipi y Zape it’s great to talk about values such as friendship, family and the world of comics in Spanish speaking countries. In fact, it could be twinned with a Zipi Zape comic story and it could lead to the Argentinian comic Mafalda. 

I always conduct these debates and research in English.  

Pillar three: exploiting the language

Finally, the last pillar to consider when planning a unit based on a film, is the language (vocabulary and grammar) which I would like to explicitly teach and to practise from the film. For this, I use extracts from the film to be analysed linguistically with specific activities, to move later, to practise such structures in different contexts.

This pillar is normally integrated with the first one, as I would like students, to learn such structure and use it in their final discourse and it is included as a seed planting experience in the original Sentence Builder. 

Planning/creating the tasks

I then start planning the different activities to tackle these three objectives. Another strategy I use when exploiting a film, is to make it clear to students that they will need to create a project on the film, so there is a clear product for them linked to the final discourse. I turn this into a competition! 

The project, tends to be a big poster where students write or talk, using a QR codes, on what happens in the film and a recommendation ( basically a review, based on our original sentence builder) and a section on the cultural/international/geographic aspect that we debated in lessons, written in English. All must be illustrated with pictures, etc.. promoting the artistic vein of my students! Normally, I give a choice of format to create this final project: poster by hand, a video, a digital infographic, a physical/digital book etc.. so there’s something for everyone! 

However, for the film to be embedded nicely into the curriculum, pillar one is key! To develop this, I apply the same T&L  strategies I do on any topic. For me these are based on the Lexicogrammar or EPI approach, by Gianfranco Conti.

I exploit the original, planned Sentence Builder, after watching the film, by doing lots of listening and reading tasks on the content of such Sentence Builder (Modelling phase), such as dictations, mini white board activities and quizlets/Memrise for students to learn the key vocabulary. 

I then move into Structured Practice with many of Gianfranco classic activities: pyramid translations, oral ping pong, information gap activities, lots of pair work based on practising sentences from our Sentence Builder. For this, I use digital tools such as Genially, wheel of names or LearningApps among others. Grammar is learned/ practised towards the end of this stage. 

Finally, once students know the structures well, we move to developing fluency and manipulating the language with more activities: speed dating, some of the activities from the previous stage but now with open ending questions, leading to students acquiring the language spontaneously and creatively to carry out their final project. 

Once the language is secured and students can narrate events on what happened in the film, we move to the cultural/ value activities on the film, which would have been already pointed out as part of the Sentence Builders but now will be debated and analysed in English. At this stage, I use YouTube videos, online materials and group discussion activities to promote dialogue and debate! 

The whole process normally takes me 6 weeks, basically, half a term.

An example of this process can be found in my resources from Coco. However, these are not fully finalised. Click here.

Students learn the film unit well and I have had many students who use the sentence builders learned at this stage, to describe a film they recently watched as part of their GCSE oral conversation, which shows the impact such films had in students.

Normally we dedicate 6 weeks in Year 9 to a film project, while we use Short Films and Extra episodes with Y7/8.

Favourite Films for Spanish 

Coco

Voces Inocentes

Valentín

Carlitos

Zipi y Zape

Manolito Gafotas 

Campeones 

Tadeo Jones

Short films

If you do not have lots of time, using short films and some follow-up activities, is also a stimulating way to learn the language! Personally, I use short films for Y7/8 and a whole film unit in Y9, as their language is stronger. Have a look at this pack on short films activities we created for my department.  

These are some of my favourite short films:

Cuerdas

La Leyenda del espantapájaros

La Huida

Los Gritones

Finally, oldies like the Extra videos (available in French, German and Spanish), which can be found in YouTube, are great for a relaxed soap time at the end of a busy term or every so often to chill out! Worksheets for the Extra Spanish series can be found here.

Overall, film can really enrich the curriculum, however it is important to be exploited fully and be part of your teaching continuum.