Bitmojis: spice up your lessons!

After being inspired by the wonderful Language Show and Joe Dale’s webinar on the use of Bitmojis, I have decided to revamp this old post.

I started using Bitmojis more and more during lockdown. I had used them before to create scratch cards. 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..  

During lockdown I maximised their use and by doing so also my students' positive response to their learning. 

The first thing I recommend doing is to upload the Bitmoji extension on your google bar as an add-on. That way you can just click on the Bitmoji symbol (second on the left in green), look for the bitmoji you want and copy and paste the image onto any document.

For the technicalities of creating a Bitmoji, watch Joe Dale’s webinar. 

Bitmojis for PDF and video certificates 

I have created certificates to acknowledge excellent progress and effort during distance learning. To do this, I have used Canva.  Having the extension on my google bar, I just copied and paste my bitmoji into my Canva project. This is an example:

To accompany the above certificate, I also created simple videos, using Bitmojis and the IMovie trailer app on my iPhone. Students and parents particularly loved this! I also created one for my tutor group to wish them good luck during internal exams/ assessments in July. 

A video tutorial on how to do this video trailer can be found here, I can assure you it takes 10 minutes!  The only thing you will need, is a selection of saved bitmoji pictures in your phone/iPad/Mac to add to your trailer video.

Virtual Classrooms

Bitmoji Virtual Classrooms, through the use of Google Slides, became increasingly popular during lockdown! I, personally, did not need to use Google Slides, as I use  Onenote for my lessons. However, I created my own virtual classroom picture which I incorporated to all of my Onenote lessons to make them more engaging. I created mine, again, with Canva instead of Google Slides as I wanted it as a picture, without hyperlinks:

Here there's a video tutorial, there are many on Yutube, on how to do this step by step. 

Using Bitmojis to give feedback

I also used Bitmojis (on Onenote) to give feedback to my students and encourage them to continue working hard, that is, by giving Merits and Alphas according to my school reward protocol. Below there's an example from a Y9 pupil:

Using Bitmojis with Forms, virtual trips and Escape Rooms

Most excitingly, I use Bitmojis as listening activities embbeded as YouTube videos on Microsoft Forms or just in Onenote. In order to do this, I do the following:

1.  I used PhotoSpeak on my phone to make my Bitmoji talk (it moves the mouth when doing so): I just uploaded the Bitmoji I wanted into Photospeak as a photo, which I saved on my phone, added voice (my listening input) and saved it as MP4 video.

2. I uploaded the video into my Youtube channel.

3. I embedded the Youtube video, by copying and pasting the URL link, into my Form activity. I did this for extensive listening practice.

4. I created, using Forms, different tasks: filling in the gaps, questions/answers, transcription type of tasks, multiple choice etc.. I created many listenings/videos within the same Forms activities like this! 

You don't need to use Forms to practise listening this way, but just have the videos on Youtube and embed them into Onenote or link them into your Virtual Classroom.  Listening/ video activities can, then,  be personalised to suit different abilities (length, specific use of vocabulary and speed, depending on your students). This is a great way to model listening for students based on given sets of Sentence Builders for retrieval practice!

Example of Forms using Bitmoji for listening 

The Bitmojis can be used on Virtual trips! There are excellent examples in our MFL Padlet.

Finally, I used the Bitmojis for my own Escape Rooms using Genially, below there’s an example. Marie Allirot has many, many examples on how to use Genially to create Escape Rooms. Many of her examples can also be found on MFL Twitterati Padlet. 

Of course, students can also create them to practise speaking and give little presentations, using the method above or by using bitmojis with Flipgrid. In his webinar, Joe Dale actually explains very well how to do this! 

Overall, Bitmojis  make my lessons more engaging and, again, memorable! However, there is specific planning on their use as they are not just used for the sake of it! Check the Face Book group Bitmoji Craze for educators  for fab ideas on their use! It is addictive, be warned!This is the template.This is the template.

Planning a "Blended" curriculum: Give students wings!

You all know how much I love technology in the classroom, not because it is a gimmick but because it genuinely spices up my teaching, saves me lots of time and most importantly, it is a great tool to practise key structures, in many different ways, which equals to lots of retrieval practice and stickability, in all the stages of the learning journey. Finally, it allows me to take languages outside the classroom and make my lessons accessible to my students once they leave the classroom, in other words, it can give students Super Powers or like the old Red Bull advert says, it gives my students wings!

However, for Digital tools to have a positive impact in our students' learning,  it is important to plan and make its use clear in the curriculum. In order to do that, as I mentioned in my previous blogpost on achieving Fluency, it is important to decide a platform to share with students and think backwards: What do we want our students to achieve by the end of each unit? How are we going to get there? and finally, which tools can we use at each stage of the process? 

This is the journey:

a these are some of the tools I use at each stage:

MODELLING STAGE

Spiral and Mentimeter

I use both tools as an alternative to Mini Whiteboards in the classroom: I do translations both ways, dictations, delayed dictation, finishing the sentence or write a sentence with the given word (great for retrieval practice). A tutorial video on how to use Spiral can be found here 

Screencasting 

Screencasting, I use Loom, your modelling activities, and upload them into your own very Youtube channel, is a great way to practise Modelling. Of course, I do modelling in face to face lessons with my students, however, I love the possibility of using my own Youtube videos as listenings, dictations and translation as homework tasks. This is a clear example of how technology allows you take your lesson outside the classroom! Modelling and listening/practise pronunciation has never been easier! This is an example video 

Bitmojis

Bitmojis are a great way to carry out modelling activities! I can make my Bitmoji talk and create multiple listening comprehension activities based on this: Fill in the gaps, Questions/Answer, full transcriptions etc.. I use PhotoSpeak on my iPhone to create the talking effect. Once the video is created and uploaded unto my Youtube channel, I can create a MS Forms task with it, add it to a LearningApps activity or just embed it into my OneNote with the activities I want my students to carry out. I love creating my own Speaking Bitmoji as a listening activity as I can speak faster, slower etc.. to meet the needs of my students.

For a post on how to use Bitmojis creatively in the classroom, visit this Blogpost.  with a tutorial from the amazing Joe Dale.  This is an example of my Bitmoji Speaking on Relationships for my Y10 class.

SentenceBuillders.com 

Ths site is amazing for Modelling!!! It was created by the talented Marting Lapworth, creator of TaskMagic and Textivate and it is based on Gianfranco Conti's MARS EARS type of activities with Sentence Builders. You can create your own activities or use the premium ones based on prepopulated Sentence Builders on the site. I use the site for face to face teaching with my students, but especially to help pupils memorise our Sentence Builders in a engaging way. For more information on this site, visit its Blog

AWARENESS-RISING AND CONTROLLED PRACTICE

Flippity

I love Flippity for fun drilling practice of my Sentence Builders with elements of Fluency as I demonstrate on this video tutorial  

I also use Flippity with Manipulatives and as a listening activity, you can even insert your Bitmoji video there too! Check out this example. Overall, it is a great way to have a Blended Learning experience!

LearningApps

One of my absolutely favourites! This tool will allow you to create many different type of online activities which will help students memorise those important Sentence Builders and practise the language in a controlled and fun way! Here there's a tutorial video on how to exploit this free tool in the classroom. 

All my LearningApps activities can be found here

Wheel of Names

Another of my classic activities for Blended Learning. I explain how I exploit and milk this tool in this Video Tutorial. 

Quizlet, Memrise, Blooket and Carousel Learning.

These vocab learning platforms are great tools to practise the language and help students memorise Sentence Builders. I use Memrise with KS3 and Quizlet with KS4. I always link each of my Sentence Builders to at least 3 Quizlet or Memrise courses with around 10 chunks in them. Carousel Learning is also a great way to practise translations and carry out Retrieval Practice. I love Blooket as it allows me to upload my Quizlet courses so, from one activity a get two interactive tasks!

Quizizz

A quiz tool which I maximise by asking students to produce long answers to oral questions before we carry out oral practice in class. A type of warming up task! I also use it as an alternative tool for listening practice. I explain how in this video Tutorial. 

SPONTANEITY/ROUTANISATION/AUTONOMY STAGE

Genially

Great for Escape Rooms and especially, BoardGames to practise open ended questions or specific structures. 

Tip: Plan in advance with your team how you can exploit Genially and divide the work by deciding, within your team, who could create which activities on different topics. I also love using Genially to practise Exam skills in a relaxed way, even with ALevels! An example can be found here. 

Deck Toys

Deck toys is the not so known app and it is fantastic!  I use it to create Scape Rooms with all levels, including Y13/Y11 and exam skills. I love it, because I can also include Quizlet courses here. For a blogpost on how to exploit Deck Toys use in the classroom, click here. 

All my DeckToys activities can be found here. 

Flipgrid

Great for oral presentations! I love this app as students can cover their face or even do screencasting. I also like the fact that I can enter some rubrics to mark their work. 

Padlet

Another classic! I use it for collaborative work but also to showcase what students can write about from memory at the end of the learning journey, so the whole class can see each other's entries and learn from each other. I also use Padlet as a revision guide at GCSE. A post on how to do that can be found here. 

Of course there are more tools!  This is just a summary of my favourite mainly FREE ones! This is language, The Language Gym, Textivate and Languagenut are also some of my favourite ones at the Practice Stage too. 

The key point is to plan, when designing the curriculum, how and where these tools could be used in the classroom to give students WINGS!

A presentation on these ideas, which I carried out for Languagenut can be found here 

The Power of Feedback: Spinning the plates!

After four weeks of teaching, today, I would like to reflect on feedback and marking, as both are intrinsically linked, although feedback should be provided by other means rather than marking. 

Feedback is key to teaching, in fact, I believe that Teaching is constant Feedback. Feedback is extremely powerful: Hattie's meta-analysis suggests that good feedback can improve the rate of learning in one year by at least 50%. In fact, the most effective learners always long for feedback on how to get better.

Consequently, feedback should not be a mere marking, ticking box exercise done for SLT or Ofsted! Feedback must take place in the classroom to inform both, our students on how to get better and us, teachers, to check understanding and re-explain, re-model etc.. accordingly. In order words, Feedback should have a double purpose: closing the learning gap for students and inform planning for us, the teachers.

What are the best ways to give feedback to students?

Of course, marking students' work will need to be done at some point, but this should be a meaningful task not a ticking exercise imposed by school without clear follow-up and strategy. There are different ways, we can carry out marking and provide effective feedback while reducing workload, these are the strategies I use to make my marking manageable while providing high impact feedback to my students:

1. Focused editing

I do not mark every single mistake. I believe this is useless. It takes me ages to do so and on most occasions students will take just a minute to go over it with no impact whatsoever. What I do is highlight those mistakes that I know they should not have made, careless mistakes I call them. When work is returned, students always spend good 10 minutes (my starter activity) going through the highlighted bits and trying to spot why they are wrong and correct these errors. Similarly, if I noticed a common pattern in all my students, before they start this process, I point out, to the whole class, some of these mistakes so we reflect on why they are wrong and how to correct them. This is an example of how marking serves to both the student, but also informs me to plan subsequently. As a consequence, after marking a particularly piece of work, I can see that more lessons may be needed to practice different Sentence Builders or a grammatical point. 

2. Mark Live

Although this is not always easy to do, every so often, I see students individually over a key piece of writing. This is mostly the case towards the end of a unit. To do this, I put two lessons aside, when students are working individually over listening practice, so that I can go through a key piece of work, oral or written, with each student at a time. This can be extremely powerful but, I am aware that it may not work with the logistics of some classes, because of large numbers, behaviour management issues etc..  While I speak to each student individually, the rest of the students need also to be 100 % focussed on another activity, which is why individual listening practice with their laptops and headphones is the perfect scenario to do this. 

3. Open Gallery where students mark each other's work

This is another great technique to do every so often, which is powerful and alleviates the marking burden in the teacher. For this purpose I use Padlet for writing and Flipgrid for oral assignments. After a topic has been studied, practised and assimilated well, students will carry out a piece of writing or oral presentation in Padlet or Flipgrid. Armed with a marking scheme, which must be very familiar to students, pupils look at each other's work and mark it accordingly to such marking scheme while spotting errors etc.. This technique is powerful because students become increasingly familiar with a mark scheme, enhancing their exam technique, while they are forced to think about common accuracy errors. Similarly, students can see everyone's work which provides a fantastic model to work from and real peer inspiration!

On the other hand, this technique would only work in a class with a good learning environment where students feel safe with each other and are open to constructive peer criticism. That's why, from day one, the culture I instil in my lessons and students is that failing is the first step to success, in other words, only if you struggle learning does take place.  By creating such culture, students become positive towards potential failure and less anxious to have their work scrutinised by a peer member of the class. 

4. Oral feedback 

Along with highlighting careless mistakes, I always give students feedback on something that went really well and two/three wishes or targets to focus on a second piece of work. This can take a lot of time to write in students' books! We use Onenote in my school, which means, that I can insert an oral audio giving specific feedback to the students much, much quicker!  Oral feedback has reduced my marking time by 50%! Students have headphones with them, and as mentioned above, after work is returned, they are given reflection time to go over my feedback and highlighted bits, individually. In fact, students can respond to my feedback with another audio, where they are asked to model some sentences etc...

If you don't use Onenote, Qwiqr is perfect to do this! Basically, using Qwiqr QR stickers, you can give students fast oral, video or photo feedback. Most importantly, students as in with Onenote, can respond to such feedback with another QR sticker, making it the perfect tool for oral modelling tasks too. 

5. Live feedback in action: Spinning the plates

Use your normal lesson activities for constant live feedback, individually or as a class! Do not wait until you mark their work. Make them think on the spot. Keep moving plates spinning at once in your lessons. This can be done individually or collectively:

• Move around, as much as we can move around in the current climate, and highlight mistakes you see on the go.
• Point individual students towards a display or a section in their Onenote or exercise/text book
• Ask students to review a paragraph or sentence
• Ask key questions (which ending would you use to talk about what your mum does over the holidays?)
• Show a model
• Alert the class of common mistakes that you have spotted, re-explain, re-practice, read aloud or show a good piece.
• Ask students how they are struggling and ask for solutions. 

If working via Onenote, going through students work, can be done from your desk so that you do not need to come near them!

6. Use self-marking tests

When planning homework tasks for classes, I try to do it so that one piece of homework is writing/reading/oral and another a learning task or listening, which I can quickly mark via a Forms test, Quizizz, LearningApps activity or just Quizlet! Students carry out the test or task in lesson time, without support and will get immediate feedback which, they report to me as a percentage. In a less digital way, I carry out classic tests in a lesson which they mark themselves, reporting their score to me. This is extremely effective as I can easily test how well they have learned vocabulary/ grammar while preventing me from taking a test home to mark!

7.Redrafting

Once feedback has been given, always ask students, in a second homework, maybe a couple of lessons later (interleaving), to carry out the task again, using the comments from their previous draft as a way to improve a subsequent version of their work. 

8. Use of Bitmojis for rewards

During lockdown I started using Bitmojis to reward good work from students. Previously, we used stickers to reward merits/ alphas etc.. according to the school protocol. However, as bitmojis are more personalised, the students preferred them so we have changed the use of old stickers for our bitmojis on Onenote. 

Giving rewards when students excel is another powerful strategy to provide psychological feedback, as students love competitions and are keen to do anything for getting my bitmoji!  This particularly works with disaffected students! By improving in small steps and being rewarded by it, students start believing in themselves and start taking pride in their work, because they feel their efforts are recognised. This culture is intrinsically linked to having high expectations on our students and expect the highest standard of work at all times, regardless of ability!  

Think about the Anchor effect: exposing students to content at a level usually considered above national expectations: at KS3, use of GCSE expressions, at GCSE, use of Alevel work. ANCHOR IN CHALLENGE and REWARD students for it, using your school system when giving FEEDBACK. This will contribute to their Growth Mindset!

By using these 8 techniques, I have witnessed how my students' work, regardless the ability has improved over the years, while my marking load has reduced drastically! FEEDBACK should be the PATH towards INDEPENDENT LEARNING so, it should be MEANINGFUL TO THE STUDENT AND INFORMATIVE TO OUR PLANNING, not a BURDEN imposed by the high spheres! Feedback should not only be present when marking but be embedded in our lessons: spinning the plates!

Teaching in Times of Covid: Providing Feedback

I have just spent my Saturday morning attending the Linguascope Annual Conference, this year online, and I am buzzing with ideas and inspiration!  So many great teachers in the MFL community! Similarly, this week I have been thinking about how I am providing feedback to my students online. I wrote a post on Feedback, which you can visit here  a few months ago, but on this post I just wanted to focus on online feedback.

I see that many teachers are using MS or Google Forms to minimise marking, or platforms such as Quizlet, Quizizz or even Blooket to collect performance data from students, which I think is brilliant, but how do we comment on this performance?

I think, providing feedback and making a personal connection with our students is essential in the current climate. Students are working more independently than ever on set tasks and it is so important to reassure them on their work and make sure that they take pride in the work the carry out and for that, feedback is essential.

These are some of my solutions!

1. Give verbal feedback when possible. Not just because it is fast for you but it is lovely for the students to hear your voice too!

If you are using Onenote, this is a must! It is incredibly quick to provide feedback about anything the kids are doing and they really appreciate your voice talking to them. If you do not use Onenote, consider using Flipgrid, where you can record your feedback, which can be shared via a QR code or a link.

 Also Vocaroo is brilliant for this!  What about using a Vocaroo link with a Congratulations Certificate? I sent this certificate last lockdown and I have a list of students for a new certificate to be sent next week. I created it with Canva.  Daniel Warren also uses Canva Certificates for her students. I email them to students and their parents. 

Qwiqr is another option for video, audio, text or web feedback, linked to a QR code that you can share with your students via email, for example. Adding a Qwqr, Flipgrid, or Vocaroo QR code or link to your Canva certificate would make it extra especial!

2. Use pre made stickers using your Bitmojis. Kids love this! You can give Merits, Alphas or whatever system your school uses to provide feedback. I have a lovely repertoire of these Bitmojis in Onenote which I just copy and paste as needed. 

3. Use personalised stickers from Onenote which you can prepare with a rubric. In my video on Top tips to use on Onenote, I show where to find them and how to insert them. Click here for the tutorial. 

4. Use the Window + V shortcut!  This allows you to copy many stickers with different pre-set comments and when clicking on Window + V, all your copied options will be there for you to select the one you need to. I learned this tip, literally last week, from Becky Jones, who shared this Youtube tutorial on twitter.  I think this a game changer to be super quick! Tutorial here from Becky Jones. 

5. Finally, encourage your students to interact with your comments!  Have they understood? What are they going to do to move forward? Close up the circle with their commitment to set themselves targets!

6. Use live verbal feedback and encouragement via Teams. This is the easiest and most obvious way to keep students motivated. Use Teams to give individual feedback in Breakout Rooms, go over a particular piece of work with a particular student, and have that special 5 minutes time with your individual students every so often. Also, give and encourage your students as a group!

Blended learning: The use of Onenote and Screen Casting during lockdown and followup

Lock-down was a big shock for all of us, however, amid the chaos, I have found positivism and a great opportunity for the teaching  community to think outside the box and, for the first time, to seriously think about blended learning, that is, how to integrate conventional teaching techniques with IT tools to make the learning experience more memorable, stickier!

When I first found out about lock-down, my first question was whether to teach synchronously or asynchronously. Most teachers in my school chose the first format but I was not sure it would work for MFL, except for small groups such as Alevel students. I made the choice to teach using a mixture of both methods. I was lucky that our school had signed for Office 365 and we had Teams!

My school also chose to respect our normal timetable, so students were expected to join our Teams lessons at the times we would have had our lesson anyway. Students joined via a link sent to them from Firefly, our school intranet and the method we use to set normal homework tasks. Once on Teams, I would have a 5 minute starter synchronously, which I allowed late arrivals to join in.  The starter would normally be a question and answer recap from our previous lesson (retrieval practice).  For this Starter, I would also use Mentimeter , Quizlet, Quizizz or Classroom Screen. I can also recommend using Spiral.ac! This would last 5/10 minutes. The rest of the time, students would work independently, on a well thought out and structured lesson plan using Onenote from Microsoft. Students and I were still on Teams so, if a question rose, they could asked me directly or they could use the chat.  At the same time, Onenote would allow me to check the work students were doing live and give live feedback verbally via Teams or in writing.

So, Onenote was key for my learning distance lessons!  The second element was Youtube and Loom.  What I did, was to screen cast my lessons in 20/30 minute videos, where I would do everything I would normally do in a lesson using the MARS EARS approach explained in previous posts. This means, showing a particularly Sentence Builder sheet and carry out over different Onenote lessons the activities I would normally carry out in face to face lessons: Repetition via TaskMagic/Textivate, Flippity activities, dictation activities, translation activities in writing and orally (Onenote allows you and students to insert audio). After I created my videos, I would upload them onto my Youtube channel ( this step is not necessary, as I can share my videos via a Loom URL, but I like using Youtube as videos get automatically embedded in my Onenote pages/lessons). Below there is an example of a lesson/Onenote page shared with my students using one of my videos:

My third element was the use of Bitmojis!  I used Bitmojis to engage with my students, to give merits to present listening, reading, writing work etc... see example above.

In order to give structure to my students, I created frames in my Onenote pages for them to insert the answers to the interactive videos: translations, dictations, oral input etc..

Onenote allows you to create virtual exercise books for each of your teaching groups. You create a Onenote for each of your sets and add the students to it. Students will then have an individual area in the Onenote only visible by you and them. You also have the Content Library, an area visible for everyone. I create my lessons in the Content Library: I recommend a page per a week’s worth of lessons. In the Content Library I also have different tabs: a grammar section, sentence builder section, mark scheme section etc.. Finally you also get a collaborative section, also visible for everyone, where students  can collaborate and see each other inputs:

I used to distribute my lessons or pages to my students at the beginning of the first lesson of the week, remember that each page has work for the whole week, so every student would have the lesson in their own area, watch my video, do the activities and these could  be corrected by me!

After a few lessons with videos, I would also embed or link other activities in their pages:

Quizizz activites, Quizlet learning courses, Flipgrid assignments, Genially escape rooms, Listening activities via Forms and use of Bitmoji, LearningApps, Deck Toys, Flippity activities, Wheel of Names, Padlet entries or just a writing frame! 

Onenote and Teams have proved invaluable during lockdown and the feedback from my students and parents has been extremely positive!  If a student could not join in a lesson live, they could always complete the work any other time! Synchronous lessons were also very slow with big classes so this approach allowed students to work at their own pace! 

What can be taken forward?

In my MFL department we are definitely planning to continue the use of Onenote as from September. We are not going to get rid of traditional exercise books but this is an excellent way to share IT tools easily with all students with a structure.  Onenote is great for oral practice too, as one of the examples above show, students can repeat after you (using a video), doing reading activities, practise Photocards or recording presentations which you can hear straight away and give instant feedback, orally too!  

We are going to to continue the use of videos (screencasting) for specific listening, oral modelling and homework tasks!  

Finally, if you are absent, your worksheets and any material, such as PPTs etc.. can be shared there for your students. The same works if a pupil is absent and needs to access the missing work.

Feedback is extremely easy to give and much quicker than in conventional exercise books, so when pressed for time, we intend to use Onenote for homework tasks, to which we can respond with specific oral or written (via a digital pen) feedback.

We are planning to work with two exercise books: one digital (a Onenote for each set which will be created in September) and one physical. Students will be required to work with both in lessons, meaning they will need to bring their laptops/ tablets to lessons. We are lucky we have a set of iPads in the department, so students can always access their exercise book even if they forget their own device.

In other words, the lock down has allowed me, and my department, to explore a wide range of IT tools. This skill cannot be wasted but used to enhance the learning experience of our students by making the learning memorable.  Remember the use of IT tools is not the outcome but the means to facilitate our outcome: language proficiency! 

For an insight on how Blended Learning can be incorporated into MFL lessons, listen to the following round table discussion among Joe Dale, Helen Myers, Janet Basnett and myself hosted by Rob Walden from Real World Education for the IFL Festival. 

Embedded Phonics: nothing revolutionary, it is what learning languages is about!

I have wanted to write a post about Phonics for a long time, especially after the announcement that a new GCSE was going to be launched, focussing on the NCELP three Pillars of Grammar, Vocabulary and Phonics. It struck me that the new GCSE was implying that, currently, we did not teach enough, if at all, Phonics in the MFL classroom. 

Well, if we teach languages and we teach listening/speaking, irremediably, we are teaching Phonics!

The way I teach Phonics is through an embedded approach, rather than a Synthetic one, which seems to be the case for NCELP.

What is Phonics?

Phonics is actually a teaching method (as apposed to Phonetics which is the science of studying speech sounds) which consists in learning how the different graphemes in a given language correspond to specific sounds, which we call phonemes when referring to linguistics or a language in abstract.

Having this knowledge is key for any language learner as it is the foundation of pronunciation, hence communication in the target language and, equally important, it allows learners to understand the spoken language, by making a correlation between the sounds they hear to specific graphemes, and ultimately meaning.

Phonics and lexicogrammar

As you know, I follow a lexicogrammar approach to teaching languages, which works wonders for all different ability levels, inspired by Dr Gianfranco Conti. I have heard criticism to the Lexicogrammar / EPI approach implying that it does not teach Phonics, neither Grammar nor individual Words. I can assure it does! 

I teach Phonics embedded in all the stages of the learning journey. When preparing our Sentence Builders, my team and I always make sure that we include a wide range of words containing key sounds in Spanish, and at some point, as we do with grammar, this is explicitly pointed out. However, we don’t teach such words//sounds in isolation as a synthetic approach would do.

This way, our students will have being exposed and extensively practised, all the sounds specific to the Spanish language and its correspondent grapheme within a year starting in Y7. Yes, I teach Spanish, so doing this is so much easier in this language than in French, as Spanish, as German, is a phonetic language.  

For example, in Y7, students learn phonics from their first lessons, when they learn how to say their name and how they are feeling in Spanish. Our Sentence Builders will include names such as:

Alejandro, to teach the sound/phoneme /x/ which corresponds to the grapheme  j 

Hector, to teach that the grapheme h in Spanish is mute and does not correspond to any phoneme, we just don't pronounce it!

Ramón, to teach the phoneme /r/ and later on, in the topic of Free Time, correr, to explain how the phoneme /r/ corresponds to the grapheme r at the beginning of a letter or rr between vowels.

Me llamo, to teach the phoneme /ʎ/ or Tengo sueño, when teaching ¿Cómo estás? to teach the phoneme /ɲ/ . 

How do I teach Phonics?

Embedded in all the stages of the learning language, through lots, lots of modelling activities and structured practice tasks, as part of the memorisation and, ultimately, automatization of the language, to achieve fluent communication. 

Below you can find a selection of some of my favourite activities that I use at each stage of the learning process, many inspired by Dr Gianfranco Conti’s and Steve Smith’s book Breaking the Sound barrier. There are more but this is just a selection.  

Some of my favourite activities at the Modelling stage:

Repetition in different ways/voices to model pronunciation: chanting, singing, angry. 

Dictations, normal dictations, gapped dictations, delayed dictation (same as a normal dictation but students have to wait around 10 seconds before they are allowed to write the words/ sentences they hear). I do this, initially, with short chunks to, increasingly, using longer sentences and chunks combinations.

I start a word and students finish it

Descriminatory games where I say two words with a distinctive phoneme and students need to decide which represents a specific cleaning: hago patinaje versus hice patinaje or haré patinaje. Which one refers to the past? This is important, as phonemes are the smallest linguistic unit which has an impact on meaning.

Bad listening, where I give students a text, I read it with subtle differences and students need to sport such differences.

Battleship listening, where I give students  battleships grid, filled with small sentences, I say about 10 of the and  students write the coordinate of my sentences.

Pyramid listening , where I small chunk which progressively gets longer as we advance in the pyramid and students need to transcribe what they hear.

Faulty echo, where I say words with the wrong pronunciation and students must identify where the mistake lays.

Basically, I expose my students to lots of listening activities in the Modelling stage, so that they become familiar with different phonemes or sounds, making a direct correlation, via the sentence builder, to their correspondent graphemes and therefore to meaning. 

For an exhaustive list of listening activities, visit this blogpost. To do this successfully, it is important to personalise these listening tasks and not just carry out listening activities via a given textbook audio to test meaning only,  but to use listening tasks, via my voice, live, as a learning tool, to focus on the correlation of graphemes and sounds/phonemes. 

Before using commercialised listening tasks, I also create my own listening material, which allows me to continue personalising my listening activities, when using longer audio passages to focus on meaning. For this, I use, any online recording app, like Mote, Vocaroo or I use speaking Bitmojis, and Snapchat videos! 

Below, you can find a short video, under a minute, for my Y9 students on the topic of Coco.T The video will be the basis of a listening task: fill in the gaps, questions, summarising, translating etc..

In other words, Phonics is strongly linked to listening and it is tackled when we carry out listening tasks heavily based on vocabulary from our Sentence Builder.

After modelling, for at least a lesson, sometimes two lessons, at the Structured Practice stage, I plan lots of reading aloud activities. The idea here, is for students to practice the sounds that they have extensively listened to and have already made correspondence to graphemes and meaning, in the previous learning stage. 

Some of my favourite activities at the Structured Practice stage:

Stealing Sentences

Reading Battleships (same as listening battleships but students read the sentences now and play the game in pairs, where they need to find out the coordinates of their partner’s.

Oral Ping-Pong

Pyramid translations 

....and any choral reading aloud activity, performed as a class or in pairs using Wheel of names, or Flippity, which will allow students to practise the pronunciation of words, hence, doing Phonics. 

There's no need to say that phonics or saying words in good/correct pronunciation, will continue in the Spontaneous and Routinisation learning stages. 

Do I teach  Phonics explicitly and in isolation?

Explicitly yes! At some point in the learning journey, sometimes as early as at the Modelling stage, I will point out, explicitly, the correspondence of sound/phoneme and grapheme. Sometimes later. This is super useful when new words, with the same sound, appear later in the course and I ask students to predict how to pronounce them based on their knowledge of  phonics and the corresponde of phoneme/grapheme.

In isolation, no! My experience is that students forget words when taught out of context. My experience is that learning Vocabulary(Meaning)-Grammar-Phonics all at once (Lexicogrammar), via our Sentence Builders, reduces cognitive overload and facilitates the transfer of structures/vocabulary to the long term memory.

To sum up, I teach Phonics as I teach Spanish and I teach how to pronounce words and students consistently learn how to link sounds to graphemes. So, nothing new from the new GCSE, neither worried about a Dictation task as part of the new GCSE assessment, although I will argue the communicative value of such exercise in an exam! I teach Phonics because I teach Spanish via a Lexicogrammar Approach.

Stretching ALL students in MFL, not just High Achievers!

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

Anchor in Challenge

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

How to stretch students

Curriculum Design

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Me gustaría + infinitive 

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

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

Puedo/podemos + infinitive

Suelo + infinitive

Solía + infinitive, so students work out solíamos/ solían

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

Me hace sentir bien

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

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

Si tuviera la oportunidad me gustaría+ infinitive 

Me ayuda a /me permite + infinitive 

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

Using a random personal Quizlet

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

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

Could you?

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

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

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

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

Have a repertoire of enrichment activities 

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

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

My repertoire include:

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

Independent work using This is Language and Languagenut

Extra videos + worksheets

Short films in Spanish 

Netflix Series

Zig-zag listening activities 

Zig-zag reading stories

The Language Gym Extranjeros book.

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

Learning Spanish with songs with a link to Lyricstraining. 

Anchor in Challenge

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

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

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

Hola Carmela

Spanish Podcasts

The use of Golden Expressions (Idioms)

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

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

Planning a rich curriculum

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

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

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

Organising a speaking/debating/board games in MFL club 

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

Project Based Learning

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

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

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

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

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