Spinning the plates: Responsive and Adaptive teaching in the mixed MFL classroom

I have not been posting recently, as I have been busy moving to Oxford. As I am having a Christmas break, I thought I would write something on how adaptive and responsive teaching looks like in the real classroom. The idea of differentiating by multiple tasks being used in the classroom at once, is long considered obsolete as it is time consuming and so difficult to implement successfully! Instead, we talk about adaptive/responsive teaching embedded in a culture of anchoring in challenge and providing scaffolds.

Anchoring in challenge, a term used by Shaun Allison and Andy Tharby in their book Making every lesson count, is well rooted in my teaching philosophy:  having high expectations for ALL students and pitching high, getting them ready for their best performance ever and making them believe that they can aspire to and achieve their personal best. As we pitch high, we provide the foundations for a I can attitude and we scaffold activities to support students to reach the same final goal.  To achieve this, sentence builders, underpinned by a lexicogrammar approach is key, as all students have got the ingredients to communicate and become fluent at the highest level, while providing a clear scaffolded structure to reach spontaneity. 

Adaptive teaching is about planning high ability core activities that are scaffolded by us, in response to our students’ answers, skilfully, through checking for understanding techniques, to cater for all abilities. It’s like a lift, that we elevate, when necessary, to stretch all students, or take down, to reinforce misconceptions from some students and to provide scaffolds for some, in order to immediately go up again, to stretch students straight away. 

How is this done in practice? 

Modelling stage

Through dictation activities where we move from dictating very short sentences to longer ones, using MWBs, to constantly check for understanding and react appropriately. In this type of activities, varying the speed of the utterances is also key to adapt input to the students’ demands: 

I start saying sentences very slowly, increasing the speed and the length of the utterance, as the activity progresses, to move back to a slower speed, again, if some students cannot cope well and go back to being faster again. We may need just a lesson for modelling but we may need two or even three if that is what our students need: Responsive teaching.

Modelling activities  are also great opportunities to check for understanding and identifying gaps in knowledge. I, personally, do this via grammar dictation, which is a normal dictation but with deliberate grammatical mistakes of stubborn, classical errors which students must spot themselves or via our skilful questioning: 

Is this sentence correct? Why? What would  be the correct way? Let’s revise adjective agreement! Can you give me examples of this rule applied correctly? 

For a wide range of modelling activities visit this blogpost. 

Scaffolded production 

At this stage, students must start producing the language themselves via structured and scaffolded practice. A this level, checking for understanding and carrying out responsive teaching, may be trickier as, we stop using MWBs and students start working in pairs or move around the room. It is imperative for the teacher to keep moving constantly to spot errors, making a mental note of these for a subsequent whole class feedback task, after an activity, or just to give advice and encourage students individually, as they carry out the activities in the lesson: 

That was a great answer, well done! How could you make it even better by adding the past tense? Or You are doing extremely well, can you include some content from the past topics we studied? Or, That was a great answer but a little bit short, can you have a look at your sentence builder to make sure you extend your answer?

When common mistakes and issues are spotted, we adapt our teaching to address these:

Students may need more practice of the learned structures as a whole class, either orally or with MWB, using a Wheel of Names or a Flippity task, where they need to translate sentences practising key structures, from English into the target language. When this is done, scaffolded and responsive teaching is also key. For example, for those who have finished translating a sentence, while others keep going: 

That’s great, could you add some more information on the spot using the future/past/imperfect tense? Or Can you write a list of alternative things you could have used instead of the shown translation? (Outformation/metacognition). For a wide range of activities to be carried out at this stage, visit this blogpost. 

Grammar

Some grammar will be learned, implicitly, within the modelling and structured/scaffolded stages. However, given the constraints of curriculum time, explicit grammar needs to be learned to make sure that students can manipulate the language and start moving away from the sentence builders. 

My experience is that an inductive approach to grammar works best, which also allows for checking for understanding and adapt teaching accordingly: 

Can students work out a specific grammatical rule after extensive use of sentence builders and narrow readings/listenings? Can they discuss this rule in pairs? Can we all explain the rule explicitly? Can we contrast our knowledge of past grammatical rules with this new rule? ( for example the formation of the present and the past tense?) 

After rules have been established, students need to apply the rules, using the same activities used in the structured production stage, but now, moving away from the sentence builder by changing the person who does the action and using different vocabulary from that on the sentence builder. The idea is to work with the grammatical structure in context (lexicogrammar) and in sentences, not just in isolation with new examples. Wheel of Names, Boardgames, Battleships or Flippity (randomiser), work extremely well to practise grammatical rules. 

As before, we do so as a whole class activity using MWBs, encouraging, supporting and stretching students as we carry out different activities: 

Great answer! Could you write this verb/sentence in the future too? Can you read your sentence and spot any mistakes? Where? Adapt your teaching according to the information you gather from the students: Do you need further lessons embedding grammar practice with scaffolded production tasks? If so, which activities are you going to use?

Reaching Fluency and Creativity 

At this stage, the idea is to work, entirely from memory and under time restrictions. Students tend to work independently, so moving around to spot errors is now more important than ever! This is what I call spinning the plates! We move around, we spot errors but also excellent use of the language: we showcase the latter; we engage students in deep thinking about what they know well and expect them to demonstrate this knowledge through meaningful independent output. Students set themselves targets based on this and where gaps are noticed, we reteach, remodel, practise again and again. Speed Dating, group talk or the 1,2,3 technique work brilliantly here. The important thing is to listen to the output produced by the students and to respond to it!

The beauty of the process is that not specific worksheets are needed, all is managed via our skilled questions and observation of the classroom and students' answers. It is teaching skill at its best. 

5 Magic Powers for GCSE productivity and high grades

As a new GCSE is coming home soon, I am still thinking about the current one and what to do to make sure that students can and will manipulate the language, while scoring the highest grades in the productive skills of Writing and Speaking in the GCSE exam. 

In other words, how can we make sure that students use the vocabulary and structures they know to express opinions on any topic, spontaneously and fluently?  Uhmmm that's what the new GCSE is trying to sort out! I believe the current GCSE, already does that, but anyway... 

These are the techniques we use as from Y7, the beginning of the learning journey, to make sure students become spontaneous with the language and get the highest grades at GCSE in the process, a default nice outcome!

To do so, we introduce  5 magic powers as early as possible, from Y7, little by little!

The 5 magic powers, based on the GCSE AQA Mark Scheme, are:

1. Using more than one tense
2. Giving opinions
3. Giving reasons 
4. Reported Speech
5. High impact expressions and Idioms

These powers are practised inside out, via retrieval practice, throughout KS3 so, when students start the official GCSE course in Y10, they are a second nature to them! 

Then as from Y10, the GCSE specific topic vocabulary is taught, but always subordinated to these 5 magic powers, whose use is needed to score the highest grade in Writing/Speaking at GCSE. Topical vocabulary is constantly revisited via Retrieval Practice and our Sentence Builders. We also work hard to make sure that as much vocabulary as possible from the different topics is recycled in new ones. This is a necessity to tackle the Writing Task 2 in the Higher Paper or the Translation exercise.

As a department, we decide the language we are going to include for each magic power, which will be used, over and over again, throughout the learning journey, by the teachers and students alike: via modelling listening and reading activities and structured practice, creative and, finally, fluency tasks, following a lexicogrammar approach to teaching and learning languages.

We also use the following strategies:

Planning Writing Frames

We use these when students attempt any writing task as from Y10. 

Remember that most of the expressions in the Magic Powers, have already been introduced and fully practised as from Y7! so now we have two more years to make sure these powers are even more embedded with the new GCSE topical vocabulary, which we simplify for the Writing and Speaking exams in our GCSE AQA Sentence Builder Booklet. 

Self-Evaluation and Marking Frames

To develop independence and metacognition in our students, we also try to develop evaluating skills in our learners. For that, once they have produced a written task, they will also use the following Green Sheet/Card to proof-read their work. 

It is very similar to the Planning Writing Frame, but the green card is meant to be a checking point  for the students to notice and avoid careless mistakes, all taken from the AQA mark scheme. Students are welcome to tick the boxes they think they have covered well. Students will get this card and their planning time frame, with every piece of writing they have to produce.

Teachers also use the green card to mark students' work. This saves lot of time for us and it makes it clear to the students what the expectations from the exam and the teachers are. We highlight in green what was great in a given piece of writing, and in pink what could be improved, according to the check list in the card, with a general comment, if applicable, written in the card. The good news is that most of the time this is not needed! 

We also tick the boxes, with a green pen, to make it visually clear, what students did include and could have included!  When a piece of writing is given back to students, they have some reflection time to look at their green card and make improvements, where applicable, while they have the opportunity to ask a friend or teacher if unsure about something. 

These 5 magical powers are reinstated in oral activities too! 

To develop automaticity, spontaneity and fluency, we use Flippity, with potential questions and expressions from this 5 magic powers. We don't want students to learn by heart answers, but, instead, to try to answer these questions with bits they can retrieve spontaneously, using the magic powers column. The answers will be different every time they practise the questions, although, some nice phrases will be learned for specific questions and this is fine! 

Of course, these 5 magic powers are practised via many other activities all the time! and of course, there has been a lot of thinking, as a department, about what expressions/ structures to teach as from Y7 to maximise the students' grades, for example, teaching SUELO + infinitive or Me gustaría que mi madre tuviera. Then in Y8 students will say Me gustaría que mi casa tuviera.

The approach, supported by our Sentence Builders and our repertoire of activities works!

Practising Exam skills at A Level with Wheel of Names

Lately, I have been thinking a lot about A Level teaching. There are so many activities and ideas to help us teach languages from KS3 to GCSE, but hardly anything for A Level teaching. In the case of Spanish, I have always loved Neil Jones' Blog, Ollie's Boletín and the weekly news from Fiona's A Level news, which have always inspired me with ideas and resources fo which I am extremely grateful!

In this short post I want to exemplify how gamification can successfully and easily take place at A Level too, to practise those elements of the A Level exam which are vital to score the highest grades. For AQA, these are the six skills that students need to have command of:

• Listening for key information / summarising texts from audio input
• Reading for key information / summarising texts from written input
• Accurate translation skills = Command of application of grammar
• Essay writing skills: analytical and critical skills + vocabulary + accurate application of grammar
• Knowledge of culture and society to be applied to the essay and oral exam
• Oral skills: Fluency + development of ideas + knowledge of culture and society + vocabulary + accurate application of grammar + analytical and critical skills

Most of these skills can be practised with simple, interactive, fun games.

I use Wheel of Names (Yes! my favourite app!) to develop oral follow-up ideas, containing analytical thinking in my students, orally, or in writing, to start with, using MWBs in a competition format between two teams. The questions in the wheel have been taken from several Stimulus Cards from AQA past exams. When a question pops up, a student in the correspondent team needs to answer such question, backing up their ideas with specific examples (data, facts, events) showing their knowledge of Spanish society. Students need to answer on the spot, developing fluency. 

The same technique can be used with a proper Stimulus card. In this case, students need to respond to the information in the stimulus card, giving a critical opinion and making sure they make reference to all the information printed in the card. This is an essential skill to have if students want to score marks from the top band in the exam. Again, giving an element of competition between a team A/B works well after doing work with the whole class with MWBs: How do you react to this information?

The same principle can be used to practise reading summarising skills in a fun way as an activity embedded in our lessons:

Finally, the same technique can be used to practise essay skills for the writing paper. In this case, a question comes up and students, in MWBs or in paper, write a paragraph answering the question in relation to a text or book. They must do so, giving evidence to prove a point and explaining how this evidence proves such point, another essential element to score high marks in the A Level essay. After writing their paragraphs they exchange it with a partner and mark each other's. Where does the paragraph fall within the mark schemes bands, why? Alternatively, students can work in pairs and write a paragraph collaboratively.

Finally, Wheel of Names is perfect to carry out simple games with translation or grammar!

These little games are not only great way to embed exam skills practice in lessons, but they are also a great way for students to use on their own to revise for their exams as part of a revision schedule. They work great to be used with a language assistant if you are lucky to have one. After working with them as a whole class competition, I share the URL with my students and they work in pairs, orally.

I know I use Wheel of Names a lot, but, isn't it a versatile, easy to use and above all GREAT tool to be used even at A Level?

Ideas for European Day of Languages

The European Day of languages is on Monday 26th September.  This is a fantastic opportunity to raise the profile of languages in your school!  Over the internet, especially on Facebook, I have read wonderful ideas and schools who are planning a full timetable of activities for the day or even the week!  Amazing!

This is a very short post for those who have not planned activities in advance and want something quick to do on the day! 

Some short Youtube Videos to show with your students or in a short assembly: 

A simple video from Birmingham University about the benefits of learning languages

A funny video on learning languages  with GoldFish Kitty! Very old but always a winner!

A video by David Binns, UK Sanako representative talking to students about his experience with learning languages and how it had an impact on his career!

A video from Naziha de Londres for MFL departments on the careers that can be pursued with languages. Click here. I love this video to share with parents and students via a QR code and also to display in your department corridor! 

These are 5 activities that require very little preparation and have a great impact to celebrate the European Day of Languages: 

A European Theme Baking competition throughout the school.  Easy to set up and you will only need a place to keep all the cakes!  Involve the community by inviting your school kitchen staff to judge which is the best cake! Give prizes to the students. Take lots of pictures and showcase them around the MFL block/corridor!

A European T-shirt Logo competition. We did this with our Y9 students last year and it was a great success!  Students in Y9 designed a logo to showcase the importance of learning a language. The did this by hand and/or digitally. The MFL department staff chose the best logos, 5 in total, and we made them into t-shirts!!!  The Logo was due on the day of the European Day of Languages but we showed the t-shirts in an assembly later in the year with an Amazon voucher.  Vistaprint was great to have our t-shirts printed! 

A Languages Lunch on the day. We invited students in Y10/11/12/13 to take part in a Language lunch. Students spoke in French, German and Spanish only and we prepared traditional food for the day. Our Alevel students led the conversations with the younger students.

Cooking a traditional dish in school on the day. This a great cross-curricular activity with the Food tech department!  We have cooked paella and crepes in the past!

A Break Time Photo Booth with prompts about how great it is to learn languages. This can be run by Y11s or Language Leaders if you have them.  Easy to set up. KS3 students can create the prompts in lessons and the older students take the photos with a school device.  This will make a wonderful display!

If you want some Quizes or activities, sonríe in Spanish have created the following free resources to be used in the classroom or adapted. 

How to set up the foundations for a great MFL Year!

I am aware the new term started last week or even earlier in the case of Scotland, however, I thought I would write about my 6 best tips to make sure that we set up the best foundation for a very successful MFL teaching and learning experience at any Key Stage and level!

These are the elements I always dedicate time to think about when planning my lessons. As I have mentioned on my posts before, I never think of lessons as individual units but a string of little units to get my students to be fluent with the language. 

Anchoring in Challenge 

I always like anchoring in challenge! It doesn't matter the level, the ability or the key stage. I always have high expectations for all my students and I pitch high, then, I provide scaffolding strategies, Sentence Builders are a brilliant tool for this, to support those who may need the extra practice to get to my expectations.  

This is something I always make clear during my first lesson: everyone here can learn a language well and that is my expectation. I will give you all the ingredients to be successful but, you will need to commit. I believe in you but you need to believe in yourselves.  

I write extensively on how to stretch ALL attainer level students in this post and on this one I explore how to reach those lower attainer students.

To make the message clear, I started creating these amateur videos, one for KS3 and another for KS4, inspired by Danielle Warren. In them, I demonstrate the ingredients to be successful, as a recipe, and what I expect from my students:

Both videos focus on how to use our exercise book, for us OneNote, how to use our Sentence Builders and the independent work I will expect my students to carry out, guided by me, via Memrise, Quizlet, the Sentencebuilders site or the The Language Gym. These are my non negotiables!  The videos are also shared with parents so they will know how to support their child with their language learning journey. 

How to be successful at KS3 video

How to be successful at KS4 video

The Power of Praise!

I am of the belief that there cannot be too much praise for anyone. Once the students have clear expectations and are guided nicely on how to navigate throughout the different success ingredients set up in our video, it is important to praise them when they do this successfully, independently and willingly. This must be the case even when things are not perfect but there has been a clear attempt at doing something. There are different ways to do so, via Merits, Alphas etc.. but a big winner for me has been the use of Scratching Cards with my Bitmoji!

I got the idea from a lovely person from Face Book but I cannot remember her name, apologies!  This is the template.  The only thing needed is to print out the template, cut the cards and stick a scratch sticker, bought in Amazon for around £3 on top of the prize statement.  My students, even the most reluctant, die for these cards! I give them around for good answers, behaviour etc..  

Listening for Learning

This is a must I always contemplate in my planning, which is embedded in the notion that we acquire language via what we listen and read (input), following a lexicogrammar/EPI approach inspired by Gianfranco Conti. This means I must carefully plan listening tasks NOT as testing opportunities but as learning activities, which will allow students to internally process the Sentence Builders with the lexical material and grammar (together not separated)  and be transferred in students' long term memory so that they, at some point in the language learning journey,  are able to put it into practice via output tasks.

In this popular post I extensively write about my favourite listening for learning activities at all Key Stages

Gamification = Purpose

This is a must in all my lessons. Second language acquisition research such as that explained by Florencia Henshaw in her latest book Common Ground, advocates for the use of tasks in the MFL classroom. 

As Steve Smith clearly states in a post today, a task is an activity which primary focus is meaning, not a linguistic form; an information gap somehow, is needed, so there's a purpose to communicate; there's a clear goal to be achieved and students must use existing embedded language, as well as new one throughout the task material.  Games are, therefore, by definition, tasks, and make the language purposeful and fun to learn as controlled and/or creative output activities and I plan them carefully in my lessons.

By game I understand any information gap task and this can take place from day one of the language learning journey: 

In a first lesson learning to say what your name is in a target language, students work in pairs. I give them a card A and a card B with names and gaps in them so that students need to ask each other "What is your name?" and complete the names they have missing in their card. The missing names in card A are in card B and vice versa.  

For ideas on my favourite games, have a look at this Blogpost on gamification.

Structure

Thinking about the structure of the lessons and a sequence of lessons is vital. It is what I call thinking backwards: 

I have in mind a text/ content on a given topic that I want students to master/be fluent in by the end of a unit and I think backwards on what tasks I will need to devise to get them there, using a lexicogrammar approach, from Modelling the language to Fluency. What tasks I will need to model the language (listening for learning via input tasks), how I will check for understanding and what meaningful tasks I will devise for structured output and finally for creative/fluent activities.

On this post I exemplify this structure in a KS4 case study.

On this post I write how to plan from Modelling to Fluency

The cultural dimension

This is very important to me. How can we embed a cultural dimension to our lessons taking into account that students will have limited access to the language while avoiding the use of Google Translate?  How to do this in a time restricted curriculum? This goal can be achieved with simple cultural elements planned along the way, embedded in lessons, but also, via cultural topics being taught in our curriculum

On this post I write how we can incorporate culture via the use of Sentence Builders 

On this post I exemplify this notion via the film Coco

On this post I exemplify how to anchor in challenge with a cultural twist via Encanto

These six elements are my foundation and the ingredients for a successful MFL year! I am looking forward to reading your comments!