Some thoughts on embedded differentiation

A couple of weeks ago, a mfltwitterati member, asked for advice on blogs about differentiation in MFL. Different lovely members of the mfltwitterati community suggested great publications and it made me reflect on the issue of differentiation.

I have the same high expectations for all my pupils, regardless of their ability. What I provide is different levels of support and scaffolding, embedded in all lessons, which guide my students through their individual learning journey. 

The anchor effect

I believe in the anchor effect, as exposed by Shaun Allison and Andy Tharby in "Making every lesson count": exposing my students to content always at a level higher of what is considered above national expectations, for EVERYONE.

This just  means having high expectations for ALL. I don’t like labelling learners in particular ability boxes: I believe ALL my pupils can achieve high goals and must aim high. 

Consequently, at KS3 I add elements of GCSE grammar that I expect all my students to master at some degree, and at GCSE we dip into ALevel. Students find this strategy MOTIVATING, as I place trust in their ability, and, as a consequence, they start adopting a growth mindset versus a static one, which is key for success in low ability students.

The Goldilocks effect

This means to challenge students at the correct intensity: I have one common objective for ALL and place the bar high, but at the correct level:

The expectations bar cannot be so high that some students may find it impossible to reach it, neither so low that it will demotivate and make students bored, after all, learning involves pain, which we call germane overload. 

The key is to plan tasks that are not too difficult, neither too easy but just right! In other words, to plan lessons with a desirable level of difficulty to create the perfect conditions for germane overload. 

Building blocks, scaffolding and embedded differentiation

Once I set up high expectations, my teaching will focus on careful planned activities and support aiming to achieve a long term goal: for example, to master a model text with key structures and vocabulary by the end of a particular unit. 

I plan all the micro skills and think of all the steps that will be needed for learners to achieve our long/medium term goal. My lessons are like building blocks and scaffolds aiming to reach that final goal. Sentence Builders are a great tool to do this as they provide a final, clear model for students and are easy to break up into small building blocks or little steps in the structured practice stage of language teaching and learning.

The power of questions  

Questions are powerful and are the engine of my lessons for embedded differentiation and retrieval practice purposes. I ask questions all the time: at the modelling stage of learning, but especially at structured production and automatisation stages. 

Cold calling and no opt-out

So everyone is alert all the time! If a student does not know the answer to my question, I move to someone else and I alert them that I will be back at them in 5 minutes. I always go back to those students who did not know a particular answer, and by then, they have worked out the answer: a particular structure, verb ending etc, because they heard it from someone else, encouraging active listening or because they actively looked for the answer themselves in their notes, encouraging curiosity! 

Say it again but better

This question technique is great to stretch those students that need to be stretched, in a simple way. That’s a good answer but how could we make it a 8/9 grade? Can anyone help?

Think, pair share 

Another great technique for easy embedded differentiation which allows students to reflect and use metalanguage with their peers. When I question is posed, I give students thinking time (remember that many students have issues with processing time), they share thoughts with partners and finally they get ready to answer a question as prompted by me.

Whole class responses

This must be one of my favourite embedded differentiation techniques, done via mini whiteboards, so I can check for progress at a glance, reinforce structures for those who need it while allowing high flyers, to extend their answers and show off their skills, differentiation at its best! 

For example, students may need to translate a sentence to practice specific chunks, but if found easy, they must extend the sentence using three tenses. I like this technique as it helps learners to reflect and decide where they sit in their own learning journey: shall I just stick to the translation or extend it?, while providing them with autonomy, which increases motivation. 

This technique allows me to differentiate in situ, with minimum preparation, and to put the ownership of the learning back at the learners, with my guidance. Suggesting alternatives to individual students, asking strategic questions in the process and encouraging students to look at each other responses, are all bonuses of this strategy and mechanisms of embedded differentiation. 

Providing different levels of support 

This is key for differentiation at all stages of the learning journey. My students have access to their sentence builders and grammar charts, if they are really stuck, and they are taught where to find these and how to use them, in our digital exercise book, Onenote. Key structures and expressions are displayed around the classroom with giant post-its on the windows with topical key structures in display which are changed periodically. 

When practising structures, especially during translation tasks, which we do a lot of, I use the initials of the required words in the target language for support. This is a very useful technique for translation tasks. Students may opt to ignore these initials, displayed in the big whiteboard, worksheets or digital apps but they are there to support those who decide to use them because they need them! 

When doing listening tasks, I plan lots of small tasks building up in difficulty: listening for individual words, listening while reading the transcript, filling gap activities with the transcript  and finally listening comprehension tasks without transcript. 

When doing oral or writing activities, students are encouraged to work from memory but they always have the support of their sentence builder and grammatical charts at hand if they need to.

Live modelling the thinking process 

After lots of structured practice activities, where support is given, via questioning and task design, students need to move to the more creative production stage. At this point, I do like live modelling a task as a whole class, so we go through the thinking process of creating such task. This could be a model oral answer or a 90/150 word writing task. Sonja Fedrizzi and Elena Díaz do this beautifully with tutorial videos for students.

We do write model answers as a class, using students’ ideas, developing autonomy, reflecting on what to add, the tenses to use while I ask strategic questions to specific students: how to make the text interesting or how to make it to a 7+ grade. This is another example that questioning is key for embedded differentiation and how differentiation happens naturally in all well planned lessons.

Templates are great for this and time for reflection in pairs is a vital tool too, as this will allow students to focus on metacognition (the way students plan, monitor and evaluate their own thinking). Adam Lamb, Silvia Bastow and Jane Basnett, all provide wonderful writing and oral templates in their blogs, to scaffold students' more creative responses. This is the template we follow to carry out this activity and which students are given to plan their writing/oral tasks, which is shared on Onenote. 

If you have come across Elena Díaz, you will know about her 20 keys to teach MFL. Using the 20 keys model also provides another great opportunity for differentiation and scaffolding. Jane Basnett, using the 20 keys model, has created this template for students. Click here

Spinning the plates

I Keep moving in the classroom when students are working in pairs or individually in my lessons and I step in individually or as a whole class as needed. In the current climate, Onenote is great for this, as it allows me to see what students are doing from my desk! 

I highlight mistakes, I direct students to the correct section of our Onenote for support, without giving them the answer. I make them think or check for understanding, with strategic individual questions. I may re explain to the whole class a concept that I can see is not well cemented. I may showcase a good piece work and analyse why it is good. I may have a chat with a particular struggling student and we set up a mini action plan to tackle a particular task. All these are examples of embedded differentiation techniques.

Removing support

It is important not to spoon feed students. The long term goal is to be fluent in the target language and remove any given support progressively and individually.

In fact, our main goal is to educate independent learners, that means leaving support behind, as in real communicative situations students will need to think on the spot! 

Despite having high expectations for all my students and focusing on challenge, I also accept that sometimes some students will not get there and that is fine. 

After all, many experts agree that 58% of academic achievement in pupils is down to genetics, leaving me only 42% to play with in my lessons. 

Still it is a very respectable percentage to instil high expectations and high goals in all students and making them believe that they CAN become fluent with the right amount of support from my part, which I remove, little by little and at different stages for each individual student. 

Differentiation, for me, means providing embedded scaffolded support to learning building blocks at all times to ALL.

Blended Learning made easy

Following my presentation yesterday in the UKedChat Conference 2021 on how to have impact lessons via Digital Tools, I have started creating a series of short videos demonstrating how I exploit a Digital Tool in my lessons in a blended learning scenario. 

If your students do not bring their own device to school, remember that many of these activities can be carried out with a mobile. I know there are rules about mobile use in the classroom, but after the digital revolution we are living, I firmly believe that mobiles should be allowed in lessons when it is required by the teacher, maybe that's something you can talk to your SLT. We have certainly changed rules regarding using mobiles in lessons in specific scenarios. 

MOST OF THESE ACTIVITIES WILL TAKE YOU  ONLY 5 OR 10 MINUTES TO PREPARE!!!

Blended Learning Demo 1 How to maximise Flippity 

Blended Learning Demo 2 :How to maximise Wheel of Names

Blended Learning Demo 3: How to use Boardgames with Genially

Blended Learning Demo 4: Quiz time! Quizizz and Carousel Learning

Blended Learning Demo 5: How to maximise Flippity with the randomizer

New MFL GCSE Proposals: some thoughts!

As you know a couple of weeks ago we woke up to the news that GCSE content for MFL was going to be changed and the new proposal, currently under consultation, was published. I have mixed views on the proposal as a whole. These are the main points that struck me straight away:

• A specific list of words, 1700 for Higher and 1400 for Foundation on which the exam will be based, without distinction between receptive and productive vocabulary. Some of those words include irregular forms of verbs so the list is actually narrower. 
• Only 2% of the words in the exam can be outside this list and will be glossed. 
• 90% of vocabulary on this list will be based on the most frequent words in a given language. 
• Emphasis on phonics, which will be reflected in a reading aloud exam element and dictation.
• Listening extracts will be at no faster than moderate pace.
• Explicit teaching of grammar is expected, although grammar knowledge, a priory, seems reduced from the current GCSE. For example, the Pluperfect Tense and the passive in the Future, Imperfect and Perfect forms has been omitted, together with the Subjunctive and juxtaposed object pronouns. 
• Receptive and productive knowledge of grammar will be tested. 
• Culture will be inherent in the way we teach but will not be assessed.
• The oral exam will include a Role Play and answers to visual stimuli, although a more general conversation, non scripted, seems not to be present. 
• Questions in the Reading and Listening exams will be in English. 

The rational behind the proposal seems valid and Rachel Hawkes explains it very well in this 60 minute screencast video.

It is difficult not to agree with her in many aspects. Her rational is: the current GCSE is too inaccessible as it has too many topics, too many words to master and too many words that need to be inferred by context, meaning that it advantages bilingual candidates and high ability students with better literacy skills. The proposed GCSE aims to close this gap and make languages accessible to all as it removes guesswork and rewards hard work: if you know that list of words you will be fine! The proposal aims to promote individually generated and more varied written and spoken outcomes, giving individual words their value back and discouraging a reliance on unanalysed chunks, promoting manipulation of language. 

What I like!

The importance of phonics in the curriculum. I agree that Phonics improves writing and speaking, helps with vocabulary learning and, I welcome that it will be explicitly assessed in a test. Decoding words is very rewarding for students and extremely powerful when learning structures, so this will promote phonics teaching in the classroom. 

Questions in English for the Reading and Listening tests.

Glossed vocabulary 

A reduction of the content that students need to master: less is more! Although I have reservations, I agree on a reduction of the corpora that students need to master to get the highest grades. In the current GCSE there are far too many topics that I tend to rush through without having a chance to really allow students to embed structures properly. Also, I don’t like the current distinction of receptive and productive vocabulary, which has been eliminated from the proposal. I hate when high ability students perceive MFL as too difficult and choose other subjects for ALevel, which will allow them to achieve UCAS points more easily. 

However..... 

My initial thoughts to see a specific list of vocabulary were of joy as it seemed to promote the less is more concept: Let's learn less content but learn it really well and become fluent in it, incorporating a corpora of key, important structures to be mastered and used in all contexts. However, there’s a catch, 90% of those words come from the most frequent words, meaning there are a lot of prepositions, conjunctions, common verbs but not a lot of content vocabulary that allows you to speak of more varied and interesting topics, especially if we want to speak about culture, as we should, and if we want to inspire students and broaden their views of the world. Also, how do these words relate to the interests of a 15 year old? is there a frequent word list for different age ranges?

Although, a priori, not having prescribed topics seems like an opportunity to design a curriculum around a communicative approach, grouping words around functions, for example, and focussing on useful content that students could find useful if travelling to the target countries, that is clearly not the intention as I started reading through the proposal, in fact the word communication is not used at all! That worries me. We use a language to communicate in real situations!

This made me think that surely, the proposal does not expect us to teach random words and grammar in isolation from each other and expect students to become creative with it? There must be some specific contexts in which to teach this list of words in conjunction with grammatical structures. These contexts are not clear and it worries me that schools will create their own contexts for this, increasing workload and creating disparity among schools. 

This takes me to the next point, if themes or topics are not anymore, productive skills must be based pretty much around grammatical productivity. Students cannot be asked to write about the benefits of school uniform, for example. Written/oral utterances must be expected to be driven by grammatical knowledge and broad questions: what you did yesterday or plans for the future. This narrows the scope of questions tremendously and makes accuracy the inner force of the curriculum, rather than communication. This worries me. 

I am also worried about the emphasis on individual words and declarative grammar knowledge in isolation. The proposal clearly pushes for a structuralist pedagogy. This worries me as GCSE content should never prescribe a teaching methodology. It clearly discourages chunking when the lexicogrammar approach, based on chunking, is proven to lead to fluency and increase motivation in students as it promotes communication from day one and it helps memorisation of structures thanks to parsing. There seems to be a misunderstanding of the lexicogrammar approach, which is working so well in so many schools: this approach does teach grammar explicitly but only once students have embedded a particular set of lexical and grammatical structures. In fact, when applied properly, grammatical knowledge in students massively improves with this approach. Consequently, this emphasis on individual words and declarative grammar seems to be out of tune with what I am experiencing in my day to day lessons. 

 

Finally, I am concerned that the oral exam does not include a general conversation. I loved that part in the current GCSE. It was the opportunity to see real interaction and spontaneity! The reason why some schools have resorted to rote learning, devaluing the power of this task, is because of the pressure to include as many tenses as possible and show complexity at all costs, which is unnatural! I would also need to learn some of my questions if I need to give mini speeches, including a certain number of tenses, opinions, idioms etc if someone asked me where I live! It is not the task but the criteria at fault. I would get rid of the role play, as it does not allow for spontaneity and real interaction.

Those are my initial thoughts so far. I recommend that everyone attends the scheduled ALL webinar after the Easter break to debate these issues and have an informed view on the proposal. My main concern, is the pedagogical shift that underpins the proposal which may stop creativity in the classroom for us the teachers.

IT tools applied to Rosenshine’s Principles

Digital tools can make a difference to great teaching! In this webinar for ISMLA I explained how to use simple IT tools that can make a big difference to the learning experience of our students.  WE CREATE MAGIC! 

Webinar Video 

Curriculum design at KS3: Less is More!

I've just had a wonderful CPD day today. In the morning I attended, albeit virtually, the ALLswmfl conference with great speakers and in the afternoon we had our first Clubhouse MFL discussion organised by Katie Lockett, where we were discussing MFL uptake to GCSE. At some point the question on what an excellent KS3 curriculum looks like popped out, which has inspired me to write this entry. I am not implying our KS3 curriculum is perfect or excellent but it is working very well. By working I mean is enthusing our students and our pupils are enjoying Spanish at KS3, resulting in many choosing this language for GCSE (a MFL is compulsory in my school at this level in most cases).

What are the elements of our Spanish curriculum?

• Adoption of the MARS EARS approach by Gianfranco Conti and the use of Sentence Builders
• Getting away from textbooks (we use Mira/Viva in the background, just to extract listening and reading material to some extent)
• The notion that Less is More: we only teach three big topics in Y7/8 and four in Y9.
• Interleaving of structures and topics. In fact, we dedicate nearly the Summer Term at KS3, to revise all the topics/ Sentence Builders/ Grammar studied since September.
• The identification of some High Impact expressions or Taste of Fluency Expressions/Universals using Gianfranco Conti's nomenclature, which are introduced at Y7 and are recycled thoroughly throughout the whole KS3 journey.
• The identification of High Frequency Words. We obtained these from the NCELP and we have tried to incorporate as many of these to our Sentence Builders. 
• Cultural projects clearly embedded and well structured into the curriculum with specific Sentence Builders attached to them, thus, avoiding the use of Google Translate.

Why adopting the MARS EARS approach?

This approach focusses on Lexicogrammar and develops skills in our learners by teaching less content but more functions aiming to achieve fluency in the students. For a whole explanation of this methodology visit The Language Gym Blog or read the book Break the Sound Barrier, which I thoroughly recommend, by Gianfranco Conti and Steve Smith.  

The approach has four differentiated stages: 

Modelling of chunks or Sentence Builders

Awareness Rising through planned repetition of structures, led by the teacher.

Receptive processing. This means controlled input of the selected chunks via planned listening and reading activities, such as narrow readings or listenings among many others!. 

Structured production: pushed output of the selected chunks. This stage will require grammar practice and drilling once the intended chunks have been assimilated and embedded in our students' longer term memory. 

Expansion. Automatisation. Routanisation. Spontaneity. This is the last stage of the language journey and difficult to get to, where students learn to use the learned language creatively and spontaneously. 

Why does it work?

This approach works because it breaks up the language in affordable chunks which are easier to assimilate by students as they reduce cognitive load in the working memory. It takes less time to retrieve a chunk of language than trying to retrieve words individually and then apply grammatical structures to them, such as verb endings and adjective agreement. Carrying out the second action can be frustrating, breaks fluency, results in inaccuracy and demotivates students to speak. Retrieving chunks, on the other hand, is more efficient from the point of view of working memory. It is the first step to fluency and reflects how we learn our mother tongue. I recommend reading Memory, what every Language Teacher should know by Steve Smith and Gianfranco Conti too, where they explain, beautifully well, the way our memory works and why a lexicogrammar approach is best. 

Because our curriculum is designed to deal with one/two pages of Sentence Builders for a whole term, students have a lot of time to embed these into their long term memory, start seeing patterns and, we, the teachers, can dedicate more time to planning spontaneity, via  structured production and many, many, many retrieval practice tasks and planned manipulation of the language. 

Students feel they are in control, feel motivated as they can start speaking and feel they are making progress! For this to work, we must be FREE which is why my department decided not to use textbooks in the strict sense. Most importantly, the whole department contributed, to certain extent, to this curriculum so we all had ownership of it and shared they same goal: to achieve fluency in our students while making them independent learners in their language language. 

This approach allowed us to apply the Just right effect, which I have mentioned in so many other blogposts: the curriculum is not too easy, neither too difficult (as there must be some pain in learning) and allowed us, not the publishers, to decide our own balance of structures and grammar to teach our students. 

The interleaving aspect of the approach and embedded retrieval practice are also key to its success! 

Our high Impact expressions, including Imperfect Subjunctive structures, are repeated throughout the whole KS3 course and are meant to plant the seed for assimilation of more difficult structures, that traditionally are not learned until GCSE/Alevel. However, why can't a Y7 student say " si pudiera me gustaría cantar como los ángeles" (If I could I would like to sing like the angels. Use of imperfect subjuntive in Spanish and an idiomatic expression)  under the topic of Free Time or " me gustaría que mi madre fuera menos estricta" ( I would like my mum to be less strict, which requires the use of impefect subjunctive in Spanish) under the topic of describing personality? 

The key here is to recycle such structures in as many different topics as possible! " me gustaría que mi rutina fuera más tranquila" in Y8 or "me gustaría que mi ciudad fuera más moderna" in Y9. 

Less ability students love this approach because it gives them a structure and, as Sentence Builders reduce cognitive load and we do not study too much content, they can remember more and have the time to assimilate these chunks well.

High ability pupils fly in this approach because they can start being fluent very quickly and start manipulating the language freely by adapting the key structures. I had a Y9 student who taught himself the imperfect subjunctive as the seed of curiosity was planted in him via the sentence builder and wanted to find out more! High ability pupils will also spot patterns quickly and start applying grammar freely, with our guidance. In other words, for these students, the Sentence Builders constitute a springboard to the wonderful world of grammar and word manipulation.

Project Based learning and Culture

I believe these are an essential intrinsic aspect of the language journey, as they present a great opportunity to develop Autonomy, Competence and Relatedness, in Liam Printer's words, thus motivation! So we must harness this opportunity, but in a planned manner. 

Our curriculum allows for some project based learning linked to specific Sentence Builders:

Y7 students complete a project on Miró, where they will study his pictures in English and will learn a Specific Sentence builder to describe these. Students then create their own Miró's inspired pictures and describe them orally or in writing in our own Art Gallery. This allows to learn to express feelings and more abstract language.

Y9 students study Coco for 6 weeks. This allows students to study el Día de los Muertos and talk about family relationships, clothes and festivities using the film as a background, which will spark discussion, albeit in English but we do not mind!. The final project requires students to create a film guide on Coco, explaining the plot, what happens in the film, giving opinions on it and thinking what will happen to the main character in a second part of the film, using the future tense.

Schemes of Work

We do not use weekly SoWs but termly. We decide what to cover in a term, linked to a Sentence Builder page or two pages, then, each teacher, plans how long to spend on each subtopic/ section of the Sentence Builder. 

Why? because every teacher is different and most importantly, each class is different! a top set may be quicker at embedding our Sentence Builder and will carry out more creative tasks while a bottom set will need more activities in the Structured Production stage. 

I cannot dictate what to cover each week! What happens if the teacher is absent? Panic! It is better to plan in the long term, having, interleaving at the core of such planning. We share resources, yes, but each teacher will need to plan and adapt those resources to the needs of their students. Having said that, all members of the department will follow the MARS EARS approach. The system would not work otherwise!

Our SoWs do not dictate what to do but  guide the teachers through the MARS EARS approach and give them a wide range of activities to choose from to carry it out . In other words, our SoW is like a teaching manual with many suggested ideas/tasks to carry out in the classroom, many of which I took out from Breaking the Sound Barrier and the mfltwitterati community.

I don't like giving teachers PPTs to follow but equip them, after reflecting together, with the tools needed to carry out the MARS EARS approach, which has its foundation in a pre agreed set of Sentence Builders.

For an example of our departmental KS3 SoWs in Spanish click here. 

A compilation of MARS EARS ideas at a glance: