130 Activities for the Languages Classroom

A week ago I finished and published this resource.  It was inspired by a teacher on the Secondary MFL Matters Facebook group who had been asking if there was a list of activities anywhere, and by other colleagues who have been saying for a while "You should write a book!"

All the activities listed and described are ones that I have used in the classroom or blogged about or both.  It was originally going to be called "150 Activities.." based on my original list, but the list was reduced when I saw that some activities could be put together.

Each activity has a key to show which skills it addresses - Listening, Speaking, Reading, Writing, Vocabulary, Grammar, Phonics or Translation.  Here is an example of one of the activities:

It's available from my Sellfy shop now. I hope you like it, and that you find there some activities that you didn't know about, as well as some that you did know about but had forgotten.

Clozemaster

A few days ago I saw this tweet from Lindsay Williams (@LDLanguages):

I asked her about how Clozemaster works, liked the sound of it and had a search for it.  Very luckily there is an Android app!  There is also a web interface, and I presume there is a fruit-based app also.

I've mentioned before that I am learning German at the moment (daughter #1 begins her GCSE German course in September) and so far have been using Duolingo and Stimmt 1.  

Here's how it works.  You need to sign up for an account and give yourself a username.  Then you choose the language you want to work on.  This is my dashboard:

I've chosen to work on the 100 most common words to begin with and am quite chuffed how much I know from Duolingo.

When you select the words you want to work on, you get different options:

I've chosen the top multiple choice.  I might be brave and do the text input version later!  This is an example of a question.  You have the sentence with the gap and four options underneath.  Helpfully, you have the English translation as well to help you to find the correct word.

You tap on the word you think fills the gap, and you get instant feedback:

If you get it wrong, the same question comes around again before you finish the round.

I think this would be very useful for Key Stage 4 students wanting some consolidation of basic sentences, and of course anyone who, like me, is learning a new language in their own time!