QR codes

There was a lot of talk at #ililc6 about QR codes.  I recommend this presentation by Annalise Adam of which you can see my sketchnote here.

I had experimented before with the site QRCode Monkey, which allows you to add an image to the middle of your QR code.  That's what I used to make the two codes above.  I thought that adding an image could add an extra dimension to a QR activity.

I have designed a scavenger hunt, inspired by Annalise's weather activity in which we took part on Sunday, using QR codes with images embedded.  Please feel free to take a look and use it if you wish.  You can download it from here.

Ideas for Ultratext and PicPlayPost

Warning: this blogpost contains flashing images!

Over the weekend Joe Dale introduced me to Ultratext and its partner app, PicPlayPost.  I've been having a play with them and thought I'd show you some ideas for how you could use them in the languages classroom.

1.  Reading out loud and/or translating sentences:

2.  Reading sentences out loud, substituting words for pictures as necessary:

It's easy to colour code masculine and feminine words and other word classes.

3.  Practising numbers.  Say the numbers out loud as you see them.  You may miss some the first few times but will get better the more times you see it:

4.  Odd one out.  Which is the odd one out of these four Spanish articles?  There may be more than one possible answer, but as long as you can justify your answer grammatically you will be correct:

5.  Look at the pictures and say the correct words.  It will take a while to be able to say all the words:

6.  Import Ultratexts into PicPlayPost alongside a picture.  Which sentence describes the picture?  Alternatively there could be a scrolling sentence alongside 4 pictures.  PicPlayPost has lots of different frames.

7.  Import Ultratexts into PicPlayPost and ask children to answer questions.  You could number each square but I think it's more effective to do each group of words in one colour, as I have here, so that the children can give a colour for their answer:

a. Who likes milk?

b. Who likes cheese?

c.  Who likes fish?

d. Who likes pasta?

e. Who likes bread?

I hope these examples have given you some ideas that you can use with your classes.  Of course the children can use them to create language for you or for their classmates as well.  I'd be interested to hear what you have done with these apps.

#ililc6 - ICT and Languages Conference

I spent the weekend in Language Teacher heaven, a.k.a. the latest #ililc conference.  This year the venue moved from Southampton to Dorking, where we were hosted by the Ashcombe School, Helen Myers and ALL London.

This was the first #ililc conference that I didn't present at, and I enjoyed attending my 8 different sessions as well as, of course, catching up with old friends and making new ones.

Here are the sketchnotes from the sessions that I attended:

Find out more about Anna's work on her Twitter feed where you'll also find information about her YouTube channel.

Read more on Annalise's blog

This is a superb example of how teachers who inherit Year 7s with mixed KS2 experience can do the usual in an unusual way.  The perfect example of how to tweak a scheme of work to cover the necessary structures within a more mature and interesting context.

The focus of the weekend was very much on the use of technology to enhance language teaching and learning, and consequently I found myself downloading new apps to play with.  These are the new apps that I have on my (Android) tablet:

I'm looking forward in particular to playing with Ultratext (see above!) and using it to make reading activities, as well as making some activities for Light Bulb Languages using QR codes.  If I can get network issues sorted out I would really like to experiment with Plickers.

Boxes of French and Spanish

I've already told you about my Challenge Cards, Pocket Cards and Minibooks books for French and Spanish.

I am pleased to introduce my newest resources: Box of French and Box of Spanish.

Box of French and Box of Spanish are packs containing all you need to teach a series of lessons.  They have detailed lesson plans and all the resources.

The first ones, J'aime les sports! and ¡Me gustan los deportes!, comprise six 30-minute lessons talking about the Olympics and opinions of sports.  Learners will move from word level to text level over the course of the lessons.

If you order J'aime les sports! before 18.04.16 and ¡Me gustan los deportes! before 25.04.16, you can have a discount of 50% by using the codes BOXOFFRENCH and BOXSPANISH respectively at checkout.

More Boxes are in development.