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I believe in gamification, especially in MFL as the subject relies in constant drilling and practice of structures and vocabulary until these are embedded in our linguistic corpus. It is not easy, especially in the UK with limited curriculum time. Languages can be perceived as challenging and, worst of all, boring!
Structured and careful planned game activities can be key to engage students, practice the language from different angles and help students to transfer information into their long term memories!
Gamification can occur in many ways and shapes! Any element of competition, even in zero preparation activities involving oral input can be a game changer!
I play games all the time! From the modelling stage, to controlled practice to spontaneous production! However, in this post I would like to talk about Deck Toys.
This lovely tool was introduced to me by Jimena Licitra a few weeks ago! The concept is that teachers create a learning path or deck. The deck is full of different challenges or online activities that students must complete while they advance through their path, normally simulating moving around some idyllic landscape or boardgame!
But this is not all, the app is very powerful as it allows you to create two types of activities:
Study set games, based on some vocabulary/structures input (you can transfer your Quizlet courses for this) or
Slide Activities which allows you to upload any word, PPT, PDF or worksheet/presentation and make it interactive by adding different functions to it for students to interact with: polls, text input from students, drawing input, photo, oral input or multiple choice questions.
The app also allows you to add some cool elements such as a treasure keys collection function, which allows students to collect different hidden keys along their learning path, which will open certain locks at the end of the end of the learning path; locks to enter different activities, timers, web links etc...
You can also embed your own activities from sites such as LearningApps, WordWall, Flippity or Wheel of Names to include listening, filling gaps etc.. as part of your learning tasks challenges! This feature is super important as it allows me to recycle other activities in a different setting, saving me time!
Once created, you need to make sure you create a class and assign your deck to this class. The app generates a unique class url that you share with your students. When students click on it, they join the activity signing in with their Google/Microsoft accounts, or just as guests.
The app also allows you to interact in real time with your students if working remotely!
You have access from your class, to the answers that your students submitted as part of their deck, which you can review and check for understanding.
You can do three decks for free before going pro, paying around £8 per month. This would be great for a department to generate, end of unit practice!
How do I use it?
Creating a meaningful Deck!!! Students start by practising the language we are working on via the Study Set Games (flashcards, matching, memory game, multiple choice, jigsaw etc..), whose content I just copied and pasted from my quizlet courses!!! to move quickly to activities including Reading, Translation and Listening using LearningApps, Wordwall or Flippity which allows students to practice the studied language within context in a controlled way!
I like the feature of collecting keys! You can put these keys at the end of any activity as a reward! Once collected, students can enter them into specific treasure boxes, giving a motivation to your activity, a little bit like a Escape Room! Students get points too as they advance through the deck!
If you add Locks to your activities, then you have a Escape Room, as you cannot enter the following activity until a code is entered (I use Verbs in different tenses).
The final activity of my deck would be a freely produced oral or written activity, using all the structures and verbs practised via the reading, listening and translation activities of the deck. This does not need to be part of the learning path, but the subsequent activity and the purpose of the deck!
Look at this example for the topic of School in Y10:
I like it. I like it a lot! but it can take some time to set up if you go for a complex Deck from scratch! However, if shared among the department, it is fine! Three Decks is not a lot! so if you like it, you will need to go pro! It takes some time to get used to the way it works but it is not difficult at all, just some time consuming for the first time, but the same issue I find with Genially!
You can use Decks from other educators and modify them or just use them!
Overall, this is a great app that can really enhance the learning experience of the students but you need to plan carefully all the activities that you will use in your deck and to maximise its use, reuse those old worksheets or those great activities in other apps!!!
You may think I am obsessed with retrieval practice but it is so important in order to keep students motivated and make progress that a big percentage of my lesson time is dedicated to this.
A few weeks ago I read an article by Marc Enser on some research on retrieval practice. In the article Marc explained how two departments in their school (History and Geography) wanted to see the impact of retrieval practice in their students’ results. They used quizzes in their lessons for this. Both departments got an improvement in their test results but Geography’s were much higher. When they analysed the data and tried to explain this discrepancy, they discovered that History used to do a quiz in each lesson from previous knowledge but not related to the content of the actual lesson. Geography, on the other hand, did also a quiz but this was embedded in what students were learning in the lesson, hence, helping students to consolidate and embed learning in this long-term memory more successfully than the History department. This is powerful and it relates to my own practice.
Retrieval practice must be embedded with new content constantly so language becomes automatized and students can transfer structures freely from different contexts!
All activities done in lessons with new material should include structures from old topics applied to these new contexts while also making reference to the content from past topics. Planned activities and homework tasks should give students opportunities to practise past content as a matter of fact: When asking students to practice sentences on school topic, why not including sentences from holidays and, most importantly, adapting those structures from holidays into the new topic of school? When planning activities for Y11 students on the topic of festivals, why not including also content from work, free time and holidays? why not applying structures seen in the topic of free time "juego al fútbol desde hace 3 años" in this new topic "trabajo de canguro desde hace 3 meses"?
Digital tools for embedded retrieval practice
In this post I wrote, extensively, about different apps that I use for retrieval practice but I would like to add a few which I have used since while still mentioning the old ones!
This is the new kid on the block in my teaching! Introduced to me by Laura Causer during the Show and Tell Webinar of the Language Show, this tool has revolutionised my retrieval practice strategy and saved me time!!!!
Spiral is basically, like Wooclap or Mentimeter, an interactive response tool. What’s the difference with the two previous apps?You need zero preparation if you use the QuickFire light option!
Basically, you open an account, create a class (you don’t need names), select the QuickFire light option from the home menu, select your class and share a special URL and code with your students (these will also be the same for that class every time you launch the QuickFire, so my students have bookmarked it). Similar to Kahoot, Mentimeter etc....
Pupils log in with that special code (not additional login required) and you will start seeing their names appearing on your screen. When you are ready to ask questions to consolidate and retrieval previous knowledge, you just press the green go button!
Students then start writing their answers to your question, which will appear on the screen, only when you click on “reveal answers”. This option is great as students cannot copy each other and you can wait to reveal answers once everyone has submitted their input. To increase pace, I encourage early birds, either to check their answers or to extend them so they do not sit down doing nothing while partners submit answers, great for differentiation too!
At this point you may select “show names” too or “hide the names”: I find this little action powerful as sometimes you may want to give confidence to students who tend to make mistakes and you may decide not to show their names until a later stage.
However, when you decide to do so, the students’ names will appear with their answers on the screen! Big plus from Mentimeter or Wooclap and students can also modify/ improve their answer if you prompt them to do so. Great tool for feedback too.
Spiral is basically an interactive mini whiteboard and it is ideal for hybrid situations when you have students online and students in the classroom! Also no need to sanitise mini whiteboards after single use! In action it looks like the pictures below:
LearningApps
In my previous post I explained in lots of detail all the activities that can be achieved with this tool. The golden rule is to use these activities blended in the learning experience and incorporating structures and vocabulary from previous studied topics! Below there’s a how to video guiding you how to use the tool.
Another great free tool for Retrieval Practice! The randomiser and Random Name picker are great tools for retrieval practice! Instructions are straightforward and you will need a Google account.
This tool allows you to create personalised interactive quizzes, incorporating sound too so great to revise oral questions while also checking listening comprehension!
This is another of the new tools I have started to use in the last month. Designed by Adam Boxer, creator of Retrieval Roulettes, which Julia Morris talked about during the Show and Tell Webinar in the Language Show, Carousel Learning is also a free tool which allows you to upload a spreadsheet with as many items (Qs) as you want to include, and topics. As my input, I use short sentences that students need to translate into Spanish.
In your spreadsheet you must include your question (English sentence for me), the answer (Spanish translation) and the topic it refers to. There is a template in the site to get the setting right! Once this spreadsheet is uploaded, Carousel Learning allows you to create specific quizzes on particular topics, which you can rotate and assign to different classes. There are also many quizzes questions from the learning community for you to use too!
Why do I love Carousel learning? Because students do not get immediate feedback but they are presented with the right answers at the end of their quiz. Students then must decide if they were correct or not. I think this feature is extremely powerful for independent learning and making students take ownership for their own mistakes and improvement!!! What did I get right? What did I get wrong? Why? And look for help! Although it needs training!
Jane Basnett has created this súper video on how to set up a quiz on Carousel learning. It is extremely informative and well explained so a must watch!
Genially
I love this tool!! There are many talented Genially people in the UK such as Marie Allirot or Julia Morris who actually make their own genially activities from scratch!
However, I am lazy, so I use the templates provided in the gamification section! You have many interactive free games such as Snakes and Ladders or Escape Rooms, which you only need to modify to fit your retrieval practice input! I love genially because through games students reinforce those key structures! Genially also embeds smoothly into Onenote, which I use for my lessons, although you can just share your genially game with your classes the way you want to!
You can also embed your LearningApps to the genially game questions! How cool is this?
Let’s not forget the basics! This is not free but it is brilliant for retrieval practice! I love every feature of it! It is very affordable. It is an improved online version of Taskmagic: same creator Martin Lapworth.
This is a tool which allows you to create your own little games, which you then share with students. Students get tokens and rewards for completing the games. In my opinion, more suitable for KS3. My only reservation is that the games are based on multiple choice, which, I, particularly, am not keen on. However, still a great tool to revise those key structures, especially similar ones in different tenses!
Similar to LearningApps but you can only create a limit of activities unless you go premium! You do not have the embedded audio facility, which is a shame! However, the activities are very eye-catching and attractive for young learners!
Many people are using this! It is not free and I have not used it myself yet! The Intruders game seems like a hit on twitter and many people have recommend it to me. I need to explore this one!
This was introduced to me only a few weeks ago by the amazing Jimena Licitra and it has lots of potential! However, it will require some time to create your resources. This app allows you to create interactive learning paths for your students! It looks very, very powerful and engaging but you will need to dedicate some time to it! You can have some free decks, or learning paths for free but after that there is a premium to pay. You can also use decks created by others! If structured well, this should be an extremely engaging tool for topic revision and retrieval practice of key structures. Watch this space!
So, retrieval practice is important, very important. So important that it should be present in every lesson you do by embedding content and structures from all topics all the time. Using these tools allows me to do so in a motivating and engaging way! However, do not get me wrong, retrieval practice can be done without technology.
Embedded Retrieval Practice must take place at all stages of learning, ALL THE TIME and it must be planned thoroughly via meaningful activities, especially in the Practice Stage of learning!
In this post I would like to discuss my approach to teaching literature at ALevel. As a department we decided to teach a film in Y12, in our case, El Laberinto del Fauno and a text in Y13, La Casa de Bernarda Alba. We chose this text because the themes portrayed in it are easy to understand and still relevant nowadays, so it is easy for students to relate to.
When choosing a text it is important to choose something that you feel comfortable with but, a text that has quite a lot of resources available for you to cover it, confidently, and which is not too long for students to read!
Similarly, reading the text in class, aloud, is extremely powerful! As we chose a play, students play the different roles while reading during the lesson, which makes the reading interactive, while getting lots of oral practice!
I also advocate for a bilingual edition, if available. When tackling a literary text, there will be lots of new vocabulary and having a page, translated into English by the side, saves valuable time while empowering students to learn new vocabulary.
A holistic approach versus a linear approach
In a linear, traditional approach, students would read the text and then, the teacher will teach, via key passages, worksheets featuring short summaries and reading comprehension tasks, the different aspects of the play. In a normal sequence that would be: Historical Context, Main themes, Literary Figures, Characters, Structure, Style, Message etc.. Although this approach is perfectly valid, I like to use it, only, at the end of the learning process.
At the beginning, I want my students to have a holistic approach to the text, which I believe, makes them understand the literary work much more thoroughly and puts them right in the centre of the learning process!
In a holistic approach, students would also read the text in the classroom and prompted by the teacher, they will analyse the play, page by page, orally, in a class discussion.
For this to happen, these are the type of questions I would ask them:
What do you think this means? What does this represent? Why is this written the way it is? Which theme can we see here? What does this say about this character? How is the tension achieved? etc..
Students will take notes, highlight their text, look at the translation by the side, if needed, and will start creating Flashcards with our class discussions, incorporating key quotes/references to the text to back up their ideas.
Why is this holistic?
Because we study many themes at once as they keep appearing throughout the play. Students start creating a corpus of flashcards for the different elements of the play, which may appear at once and certainly not in a linear way! From lesson one, students create their own study guide in the shape of flashcards.Students tend to make these flashcards for homework after key ideas have been discussed during lessons. By the time we finish reading and analysing the book, students have created themselves, a valuable, learning document full of thorough analysis and quotes! These lessons are carried out mainly in Spanish with the support of English, when needed. We also use mini whiteboards to put difficult ideas into Spanish. Students take photos of the ideas in their mini whiteboards, and will incorporate such information to their flashcards as necessary. Up to this point, we do not make use of any specific resources, just the book!
After this process, we study the text again, in the linear more traditional way! At this point, students bring their flashcards to lessons and using these, they lead the linear discussions: talking about and analysing the different traditional topics, guided by me, of course! At this stage we start using other external resources, such as the Zig-Zag series or the Hodder/Oxford Literature Guides as well any materials online.
It is at this point that students start writing essays.
This approach allows students to be the centre of the learning process, and be an active part of the lessons:
They read the text
They come with the ideas through discussions and my support, of course!
They create their own study guide, through flashcards!
They can, quite successfully, analyse the different themes of the play, which we study in the traditional approach to literature in a second round! By this point, students have become the experts!
It takes me nearly a whole term, three lessons per week, to study the text, holistically and linearly. We always do this in the Autumn Term and we use the Lent Term to carry out timed writing sessions every other week.
Thank you so much for the feedback I received today from both of my webinars in the Language Show. It has been amazing to read your comments, contributions and ideas! We learn from each other.
As promised the Webinars presentations and Videos are below.
Motivation and engagement in the MFL classroom: let's play, let's speak!
Blended learning, we have definitely heard this term over and over again since the first lockdown when schools were shut, as the future of education.
What is Blended Learning?
The way I see it, Blended Learning means that students learn through the combination of face-to-face and on-line teaching methods, all blended into one, to maximise their learning experience. In other words, learning occurs via traditional methods, such as worksheets, Question and Answer sessions, activities via a textbook or a worksheet, combined with the use of IT tools which, via careful planning, help students in their learning journey.
When I think about Blended Learning, I think about the different spaces where learning takes place and the different ways in which such learning can occur.
Why different places for learning?
Students do not just learn in the classroom, they may learn on the bus, at home in their bedroom or during a school trip. They can access knowledge from any space, as long as they are doing a learning activity, like the school trip example, or, most importantly, have a device from which to carry out learning! That's why when blending learning, I think carefully, where students can access different activities.
Why different ways of learning?
Practice is key in learning and making progress. However it can be tedious to do such practice in just one way, say via worksheets using paper and a pen. This can be the case for young learners, who are bombarded with stimuli and immediate feedback experiences via technology at all times: you like a series, you binge it and watch it all! Accessing information and learning via videos, online images or collaborative tools can be extremely engaging and productive.
Blended Learning, allows me to take the learning experience outside the classroom if and when students or I choose to do so and teach in many different ways, which in the process, allows me to revisit content over and over again from different angles, without a feeling of repetition or dejá vu. This experience, in exchange, engages my students, makes them more independent, more involved in their learning process and, ultimately, makes their learning more in tune with their 21st century experience.
How to Blend Learning?
Planning a sequence of lessons:
First of all, I would advise to have a vision of what you would like your students to achieve by the end of series of lessons and move backwards from there. For example, to be able to talk about their holidays last year.
Secondly, think about what elements do your learners need to get there? This means structures, including vocabulary and grammar. A Sentence Builder with the potential sentences that students should be producing/understanding by the end of your sequence of lessons can be extremely powerful or just a model text.
Finally, think about how are we going to take them there?What steps do we need to plan for the students to practise and embed our planned structures? It is, in this final step where we can blend learning!
Elements for blending learning
Use an online platform with your students so that you can share your planned activities, aka, learning steps, with them: Google Classroom, Firefly, Onenote/Classnote, Teams are the most common platforms, I believe, schools are using.
Plan the activities for your lessons and think, at each stage, which and how IT tools can assist you and your students to enhance the learning experience.For this I have a list of potential IT tools that I could use at any stage. You do not need to use them all but it is important that you are aware of them.
In my case my Blended Learning IT tools ready at my disposal are these:
In the centre I have Microsoft 365 as the core of my blended learning classroom:
Onenote
Teams (for remote teaching)
Onedrive
Flipgrid
Forms
Sway
Word/PPT
These main apps are supported by Firefly (our School Virtual Learning Platform) which I use for online libraries for my students, not class specific, and Smartboard Software for the delivery of in-class lessons.
Finally there is a wide range of apps and tools that I can use for my teaching and students' learning:
LearningApps, Quizlet, Wheel of Names, Flippity, Loom, Peardeck, Memrise, Genially, Quizizz, Edpuzzle, Padlet, Canva, Mentimeter, Wooclap, ClassroomScreen,Thinglink or Wordwall.
For ideas on how the different tools can support Sentence Builders and the learning experience, click on the following post.
I use, Onenote (Class Notebook) to share the links to these online activities with my students, who need to bring their own device to my lessons. I share my lessons with students weekly. Consequently, students have access, via Onenote, to all worksheets we work with during lessons and to links which will take them to different interactive activities which need to be carried out during lessons or at home, for reinforcement, or as part of homework.
A normal set of lessons (3 in this case) looks like the example below on Onenote. As you can see there are classic activities such as Battleships (which I could photocopy if I want to) but also links to other interactive activities like Flippity or Wheel of names, to be carried out orally in pairs, or in writing. Reference materials, such as the formation of the past tense in Spanish, are easily shared this way too:
I teach normally, using my Smartboard, and when prompted by me, students access their Onenote and carry out the online activities with blue links. If using Microsoft apps, such as Word, Forms, Flipgrid, or Genially and Youtube videos, the apps appear automatically embedded on my onenote, which is visually nice! Depending on the activity, students may work on their own, but also in pairs, like in the case below, where Y9 students accessed a Genially interactive game and played in pairs:
Students can also work collaboratively via the Collaboration space on Onenote or a Padlet or Google Document. This is great for brainstorming of ideas on a given topic.
Homework, may include a video, which can be embedded into Onenote, which I have previously recorded with Loom (screencasting) where students need to follow instructions and complete a series of activities directly on Onenote in the box supplied:
Homework can be oral practice, via the Insert Audio function on Onenote, which allows me to carry out a dictation, ask questions which students need to answer, or just repeat after me for pronunciation work. In the example below, students had to click on the Quizizz activity for practice, before listening to my questions which they had to answer using the audio insert on onenote:
By blending learning and having a platform (Onenote) to share my online activities, as well as worksheets, with my students, I can create Learning Libraries, with resources for specific classes to which students have access at all times, in all spaces. The resources will also include a wide range of activities using different tools. They are all under Content Library and are classified in different Tabs. See the example below from my Y11 Onenote:
The way I blend learning is by maximising the use of a wide range of online resources in the classroom, via Onenote.
Students can access their Onenote, and their interactive personalised activities in lessons but also in any other space (bus, home, library). The online, interactive tasks allow learners to practise key vocabulary and structures (sentence builders) in many different ways and shapes, making the learning experience innovative, catchy, memorable and sticky, just like the different social media platforms, so embedded in our students' lives, do! The difference is, that I use technology not just for entertaining the kids but to enhance their learning experience in all different ways and spaces!
