Pillars of Progression: Vocabulary

 

This is the text of the presentation that I gave at the online Primary Languages Conference: Pillars of Progression, on October 17th.

This post will be looking at:

• why there is currently a focus on vocabulary.  
• how to choose vocabulary for your SoW 
• how to present it to the children and practise it 
• how to support its retention especially in these times where children have to help themselves more 
• how to extend the children’s “pot of words” so they can say what they want to say 

and of course there will be lots of ideas, things that you can take away and try in your own classroom 

In the early days of primary languages, 10 or 15 years ago now, the subject was often criticised for children just learning lots of lists of nouns, but nothing else that they could use to build sentences with. Fortunately we have moved away from that now, but still when we think of “vocabulary” we tend to think of nouns, or, at the very least, single words. 

In fact, the vocabulary that we include in our schemes of work and that we teach should include single words but also “lexical chunks”. These chunks are groups of words which are commonly found together, which have a clear and formulaic usage, and which convey a particular meaning in the same way that single words do. Examples of lexical chunks from the early stages of learning might include greetings such as buenos días, and questions like comment t’appelles-tu. So for the benefit of this presentation, vocabulary includes single words and lexical chunks. Sometimes I might say “words” rather than vocabulary, but I am referring to the same thing. 

The Teaching School Council’s MFL Pedagogy Review in 2016 outlined the three threads of grammar, phonics and vocabulary. The review looked at languages in Key Stages 3 and 4, but said that “much of what we say is also relevant to pedagogy in the upper end of primary”, and indeed it is now filtering into Key Stage 2. The main points to note are: 

• the vocabulary you choose should be informed by its frequency of occurrence in the language – children will be able to say more with higher-frequency language 
• the “verb lexicon” is of particular importance 
• teachers need a strong repertoire of techniques for teaching and having children practise and use the vocabulary. 

It also mentions looking at origins of words, and words shared between languages (cognates and false friends), as well as patterns like prefixes. This links to the curriculum for Key Stage 2 English. 

This intertwining of vocabulary, phonics and grammar has informed the most recent Ofsted framework, as you have heard.  It’s worth noting that without grammar, very little can be meaningfully conveyed, even with a lot of “words”, but without vocabulary, nothing can be conveyed.  Learning some vocabulary is the first step towards language output, hence the title of this presentation – learning vocabulary before you start building phrases and sentences equates to learning to walk before you run.

Hobson and Milton said in 2019 that “Knowledge of the most frequent 2000 words in particular is an important feature in successful communication in a foreign language”. 2000 words over a limited lesson time in Key Stage 2 is a very tall order, and grammar and structure would certainly suffer at the hands of vocabulary learning. Rachel Hawkes recommends a lexicon of 500 words over the 4 years of KS2, which tallies with level A1 of the Common European Framework. When broken down per year and per week, this works out at only a small number of words per week, 3 or 4. Alternatively, a pot of 12 words or so that you might use over a number of weeks. 

You can see from this list of the most frequent words in French that not all the words are suitable for Key Stage 2 or would make for very exciting lessons. Also these words are not of inherent interest to 7-11 year olds. We will necessarily have to choose some words which are lower down on the list of frequency, but in which children are interested. 

The box containing the most frequent animal words (including virus!) is a good example of this – chat, chien, souris etc. are lower frequency, but very interesting for young children and good for explaining points of grammar such as gender, plurals and so on. We need to make sure that our list of vocabulary will include nouns but must also include other parts of speech which will help children to build phrases and sentences, the verbs being particularly important. 

About a year ago I heard Rachel Hawkes speaking at the Northern Primary Languages Show about vocabulary, and this gave me the push that I needed to review my scheme of work for Spanish, something that I had been mulling over for a while. I had a feeling that my scheme of work had more than the 500 words, and I wasn’t happy with the sequence of the units. It was a bit haphazard, and there wasn’t a logical thread of grammar and structure or of verb forms. It had grown organically really, over the 11 years that I had been teaching primary Spanish. 

I started off by mapping out the units and their vocabulary on pieces of A1 paper. It gave me a clear view of the grammar and the progression as well as the number of lexical units. I was interested to see that there wasn’t as much vocabulary as I thought. 

I then re-organised the units so that there is now a better thread of grammar and of verbs. For example I moved family and pets into Year 3 from Year 5, as this allowed for expansion from units 1 and 2 of the verbs tener (to have) and llamarse (to be called), and the nouns followed on nicely from the previous unit which introduces gender. I moved weather from Year 5 into Year 4, as the language is relatively simple, but moved description and adjectival agreement from Year 4 into Year 5 as it’s always seemed a bit complex for Year 4 and I’ve never been entirely happy with it.  Units 7 and 17 are the only brand new units. 

The next step was choosing the vocabulary, grammar and phonics for the scheme of work units. I kept a lot of the vocabulary the same, as I already had a lot of resources and didn’t want to create too much work for myself! It was interesting to see the frequency of the vocabulary I was using. 

This is unit 4, for example. The pencil case words are low frequency (many of them outside the top 5000) but are of great importance to primary children! Using these words will motivate them, and they are good first nouns to use to explain gender and indefinite articles. The indefinite articles, which will be used with all nouns, are very high-frequency. I have used the 10 most common nouns in Spanish, listed here, as examples for identifying gender. 

Something else worth considering when you are choosing vocabulary for your scheme of work are cognates – words that look like English, often sound like English and which mean the same thing. These are easier for children to learn and remember, and provide a useful exercise in phonics – the words might look like English but they don’t sound the same! For Year 6’s first unit (unit 16) I always start with the 8 cognate places and use those to build all our sentences in the first instance.  

Another thing to think about when choosing your vocabulary for your scheme of work are your phonic objectives for that series of lessons. Are there any particular sounds that you’d like your vocabulary to exemplify? An example of this are the pets that I use in my family and pets unit. I deliberately chose two with the j (pájaro/conejo) sound, then there are two with the rolled r (perro/ratón), and one with the z (pez) sound. They also provide the three different ways of making the plural in Spanish, and there are examples of masculine and feminine nouns and indefinite articles. 

Once you’ve chosen your vocabulary, it’s time to start teaching it! When it comes to presenting and practising the new vocabulary with the children, it’s worth considering what exactly the learners need to know about the new words. They need to know:

• the meaning
• the part of speech including the gender if appropriate
• the pronunciation or sound of each word
• how it is spelt
• how it’s going to fit in with other words within a phrase or sentence. 

This is necessarily going to influence the methods that we choose to present and practise the words. There is also some discussion about how many words or chunks you can introduce to your learners in one go. Current secondary practitioners appear to be advocating presenting 10-15 items in one go. This is too much, though, for our beginner linguists. The number of words that you choose will depend on the age and experience of your learners, as well as the nature of the words themselves – if you’re using largely cognates, you can probably have more, for example. I would use 5 or 6 words/chunks as a general rule, with a few more for your older, more experienced learners. 

For the initial presentation stage, I’m a big fan of flashcards, as there is so much you can do with them. As well as using them for introducing vocabulary, you can use them for games and to build sentences. I don’t like presenting via a PowerPoint slide quite so much – my arm gets tired with all the pointing! 

We need to be mindful of what the children’s first stored image of a new word will be. They will store an image of what the new word looks like as soon as they hear it, and, especially if they are beginner learners, will probably use their knowledge of English phonics to do that. It’s likely therefore that a child hearing una plaza without seeing the word will store that word as “platha”. We need to engage a multimodal approach as much as possible – this means letting the children access the words in as many different ways as possible.  The ideal flashcard will have 

• an image to show meaning
• the word to show the spelling
• some kind of colour coding to show the gender, if it’s a noun 
• the children will hear the word as well

You may remember the pets slide – you could see the images, the words and colour coding for gender. We used this for initial practice of the words and then removed the words for later practice. This multimodal approach offers children several different access points for comprehension, invites their participation, and motivates repeated practice of the vocabulary. It engages a number of different senses in the learning process. 

Presenting the new vocabulary and practising it on one occasion will not be enough to embed the words in the children’s long term memories or for them to recall it when necessary. We need to introduce it on multiple occasions over a relatively long period of time, allowing a gap in between each one. This spacing leads to a better long term learning of the vocabulary. It’s crucial to allow the learners to forget the words and then to revisit them. This repetition can take the form of speaking practice, but we can also repeat the words in different ways, such as word puzzles and PowerPoint activities such as can be seen here. 

Here are some ideas for practising vocabulary with a view to consolidating the meaning of the words. 

• Trash or Treasure is a categorisation activity, where children are given a collection of words or chunks which can be sorted into various different groups. I do this activity with dates, and so there are some days of the week, some numbers and some months in the bag of words. The children work in pairs to put into their treasure the words that you are asking for. Everything else goes into the trash. So my first sort is the days of the week. Then we put all the word cards back in the same pile and next sort the numbers into the treasure. Each time they sort the words, the get quicker, as they have seen the words before and have been able to think about the different meanings. 
• The pointing game is a simple activity where the teacher (or another child) says one of the words or chunks and the children all point to the right picture on their copy. I have a copy on the board too, so that I can point to the correct one and the children can self assess. It’s a quiet activity! 
• Shape puzzles and dominoes are also useful for thinking about meaning and for reading the new words.
• There are lots of games that you can play with flashcards that will work on meaning and which will oblige children to recall the words that you have been working on. "Which card?"  is my classes’ favourite, where I conceal my cards and they have to work out which one is one the top of my pile. 

Here are some ways of practising vocabulary with a view to clarifying and embedding spelling. We need to be aware of and to anticipate the sorts of errors that the learners are likely to make. They are unlikely to make the same sorts of spelling errors as native learners, although I’m always secretly pleased when my Key Stage 2s mix up their v and b in Spanish! Typical errors made by Spanish learners, for example, tend to involve silent h, b/v, g/j, c/k/z and y/ll and knowing where to put the accents.  English-speaking learners learning Spanish are unlikely to make the same kind of errors. Phonics are of the greatest importance. Oracy supports and reinforces reading and writing and learners need to be aware of the links between sound and spelling. English is what’s known as an “opaque” language – one with an inconsistent correspondence between letters and sounds – and therefore generally speaking learning to read and write is slower for native English speakers than it might be for speakers of “transparent” languages such as Spanish or Italian where there is a much greater and more regular correspondence between the sounds and the spelling. It could be said, therefore, that English speakers might find it easier to learn to spell transparent languages. 

I’m sure all our learners make spelling errors when they are writing in the new language. Some of these are a result of carelessness, but others can be explained in different ways. Some errors can be ascribed to the interference of English. By the time students start to learn the new language in Year 3, they have undergone four years of rigorous training in English spelling and phonics. The new language has different letter clusters and sequences, but the students can, often unconsciously, replace these patterns with more familiar English spelling patterns. The four formative years of learning English spelling is enough to build a muscle memory, so that it feels more natural, for example, for a student to write rough rather than rouge, as the -ough letter cluster occurs in some frequently-used English words and the -ouge cluster is unfamiliar to English native speakers. 

If we look at this example in the speech bubble (above), which I’m sure will make many French teachers shudder, we can see some of the typical errors that learners make due to the interference of English. Oui is often written as qui, as qu is much more common in English than ou on the front of a word. Deux is misspelt as ue is more common in English than eu (think of words like glue for example) and nation is more well known than natation. We assume that compain is influenced by companion. 

It’s clear that some focussed work on spelling is necessary, drawing particular attention to those words that might suffer from the interference of English, and those that contain specific graphemes. 

I’ve been doing this with my Year 3 classes this term. I say the word or phrase and then we use our finger pencils to spell it out in the air together.  This also reinforces English SPaG (spelling, punctuation and grammar). 

• You can draw attention to certain important parts of the word by showing it with some letters missing. 
• Another strategy that makes children think about the size and shape of the letters in a word is using word shapes. The children need to think about which letters are taller than the others and which hang below the line. 

• The slow fade:  Display the word on the board, with the PowerPoint animation set to fade slowly. Learners look at and study the word, but aren’t allowed to write it down until the word has completely faded. This works in a similar way to “don’t repeat until I click” – the learner has to repeat the words and the spelling to themselves in order to recall it at the necessary time. 
• Multiple choice, to see if children can spot the correct spellings amongst incorrect ones.  This would go well after some focussed work on spelling as a formative assessment. Children have to hold up for you the correct letter – I have voting sticks with the 4 letters on, 2 on the from, 2 on the back. It’s a quiet activity that provides immediate feedback for you. 

• If you were at secondary school in the early 80s, like me, you’ll probably have had to do dictation in your language lessons. It was a scary thing (which I secretly loved!) which involved a long text and negative marking. It fell out of favour for a long time, but it’s a great way of making children think about sound and grammar, when done in a focussed way. This is an example of a Spanish dictation focussing on the vowel sounds. Children have to listen to me saying the animal words very carefully, and fill in the right vowels in the right place. They use their knowledge of grammar to get the un/una at the beginning of the words, and also to get the o / a on the ends of the masculine and feminine words where appropriate. 
• The use of word puzzles like wordsearches and crosswords in class can be a little contentious. However, if nothing else, writing the word into a crossword makes you look at the spelling so that it will interlink correctly with the other words, and being able to complete a crossword is a good lifelong skill. 
• Writing words without a pen, like using cut-out letters to form the words, is less threatening than committing pen to paper, as it can be easily edited. 

• When you’re starting to think beyond individual words and towards sentences, try this activity. Children have to transliterate the sentences, putting in the capital letters, full stops and finger spaces. It makes them think about the spelling of the words and the sense of the sentence. An alternative to that activity is anagrams. With this one, children know they have all the letters they need for each word, and they know where the finger spaces are. All they have to do is put the letters in the right order to make the words. 

• Here’s something that would suit upper Key Stage 2 as they are learning meanings and spellings. The idea here is to provide an accurate model which the learner then uses to repeatedly test themselves. First of all they look at and study the words in English and in the new language. Then they fold over the column on the far left (German in this case) and write the German in the first blank column , using the English as the stimulus. Then they unfold and check their writing. Next, they fold the two far left columns behind, so that they are using their checked German as the stimulus to fill in the English. Then they unfold to check the English, and so on. These sheets also provide evidence that the learning has been attempted. 

If we want children to spell words and read words aloud correctly, we need to ensure that they are confident in decoding and especially writing the accents and other marks that English doesn’t have but their new language does. It’s worth taking a bit of time before formal reading and writing starts, to alert the children to these marks (we can’t assume that they will automatically spot them) and to practise writing them. This is a resource I use with Year3, usually in the 3rd or 4th week of their language learning. The children trace the letters, following the arrows where necessary. This term I haven’t been able to share my laminated copies of this with the children, and so we’ve been using our finger pencils again to practise writing the letters in the air, saying what we are doing at the same time. And I think I prefer it this way – I can see what all the children are doing and I know they are all practising. As the teacher you just have to remember to write all the letters backwards! Learners need to know why these extra marks are important, and what effect they will have on the writing if they aren’t there. In Spanish especially this can be done with some humour, for example Tengo ocho anos and Me lamo. With French, there is also the issue of apostrophes. For some children, apostrophes and accents are interchangeable in name, function and appearance. We need to make sure that learners know the precise reasons why both are there. 

Next, how can we support our learners with their vocabulary as they start to use it along with their grammatical knowledge to put together phrases, sentences and, for the more experienced ones, texts?

We want them to focus on the structure without the worry of the words that are going to go into that structure. Over the last six months, there has been a lot of discussion and reflection about knowledge organisers, as well as some online events to explore them further. Knowledge Organisers appear to be becoming more prevalent across the curriculum. A knowledge organiser is a single A4 sheet containing a summary of the essential knowledge from a unit of work It needs to be specific to your children in your class, should follow your scheme of work. It shows the big picture of a unit of learning in an easily shareable low-tech format. It is characteristic of the current Ofsted and DfE focus on a knowledge-rich curriculum, and acquiring and retaining subject knowledge. There is no set format for a knowledge organiser. A languages one should probably include key vocabulary plus any essential facts or structures presented in manageable chunks. They often contain model texts and can have images as appropriate. It's important that they also contain English meanings to reduce the cognitive load and to help children to use them effectively. "Dodgy English" is often used to emphasise structure in the target language, for example J’ai faim = I have hunger". Above all, the knowledge organiser should be engaging and clear, so that the children can use them easily and regularly. They aren’t a magic solution to teaching languages - they should be seen as another tool in your kit and one of the solutions to problems of retention and memory. Having a knowledge organiser to hand means that children won't have to hold so much information in their working memory, and it enables them to constantly review their learning. They are particularly useful in the current climate, when many of us are unable to go up to the children to help them if they are stuck. 

The most commonly used format in Key Stage 3 is the parallel text approach, but I have found from experience that this approach is only suitable for Year 6 and maybe Year 5, because of the amount of reading involved, in English and in the new language. In other subjects, knowledge organisers are mostly lists of words and facts related to that unit of work. The format that I have settled on to accompany my scheme of work can be seen here:

There is a list of the nouns that will be used, and then a selection of parallel Spanish and English sentences to show how we are going to use them. There is also an explanation of the grammar that is going to be covered (plurals of nouns for this unit), and key verbs and key sounds. I have been giving them to my classes at the beginning of each unit, and the children are using them every lesson. They seem to like being able to refer to them while we are doing speaking and listening work, and I have been able to answer all questions so far by saying “look at your knowledge organiser”! They have been more useful so far than the previous “word list” or writing frame, as everything that they need is there, including the English. 

I’ve always been partial to a writing frame to support children as they start to write. In recent years, I’ve found myself needing to add in further support, such as the English translations and/or pictures to assist with the understanding. Again over the last 6 months, when we’ve all had more time to think about things a bit more (!), I’ve been exploring sentence builders and the best format for Key Stage 2. Joe Barnes Moran came up with the flowchart format, which is proving useful in the classroom. It’s very useful to be able to point out to them that as long as they follow the arrows, their sentence will be correct. Some of them were still trying to go places the arrows didn’t take them. It’s possible as well of course to use the more traditional table format. I find it’s a bit easier for the children to miss words / columns out with this format. The sentence builder is also, technically, a knowledge organiser, as it has all the language you need for a certain task in one place, and has the English for extra support. 

How can children extend their vocabulary to say what they want to say? When we are teaching a new grammar point or structure, it’s best to introduce a small pot of words with which to illustrate that point, so that the grammar doesn’t get lost in a sea of vocabulary that the children aren’t quite sure about. When we turn the children loose to be creative with the language, though, there will be some children who want to talk or write about something that we haven’t taught them. To enable them to say what they want to say, which is what it’s all about after all, it’s important that we teach them to use the bilingual dictionary. Initially we will be using “familiar” or learned vocabulary to build sentences, but the national curriculum programme of study acknowledges that children want to broaden their vocabulary, and specifies dictionary use as one way of doing this. The children need to know how to track down a word in the dictionary quickly, using the guide words at the top of the page and then the entry words. They need to know what the abbreviations for the target language words mean, and how to check the whole definition instead of always picking the first word they see! 

It’s well worth investing some time in this. I usually do it when I start teaching nouns and introducing the concept of gender, in Year 3. In French, I do this using the book un triangle by Néjib. The cover and each of the pages has a triangle cut out, and the triangle forms part of the pictures inside. The language used is super-simple. We read and discuss each page, and decide whether the word on each page is masculine or feminine. Then I give them the challenge of creating a new book called un carré (a square) (which really does exist by the way, as does un rond), so they use the dictionary to find the French words for things that are square, and using the same structures for the French, present their work in a minibook. The children are creative and find out their own vocabulary within a given framework. 

At present, with not being able to use the dictionaries, I am preparing glossaries for the children to use, which have the words in alphabetical order, with the English and the parts of speech given. 

So I’ve talked about what vocabulary is, why it is important, and the factors that should guide your choice of vocabulary to teach. I’ve outlined how you can present new vocabulary to children and practise it over several lessons until the children are confident. I have also mentioned ways in which you can support their vocabulary, and how children can extend their vocabulary to help them to say what they want to say.

Teacher Aprons

Ever since I started teaching primary languages in 2009 I have taught in a different room every session.  I've tried several different ways of storing and carrying round my belongings, in particular my stationery.  In February last year I caught a discussion in a Facebook group about teacher aprons, and investigated!

I made one (the grey and green one at the bottom of this picture) and tried it out at my schools, and was immediately sold on the idea - why hadn't I tried this before?!  They are a very handy way of carrying around your stationery and other small pieces of equipment and always having them to hand.

Since the new regulations came in, I have been mindful of cross-contamination between my schools.  Therefore I've made two new ones so that I have one for each school.

I use them to carry around a pen (4 coloured Bic), pencil, rubber, pencil sharpener, board markers, glue stick, scissors, sticky notes, marking stampers, my whistle, USB, a small bottle of hand sanitiser and, last but not least, my ID on the keyring.

If you're interested in making your own, I used this pattern.

Managing choral speaking

 

In my previous post, I wrote about language lessons in the "new normal", particularly with regard to choral speaking.

To help manage choral speaking, I have made some PowerPoint slides which tell the students which group should be speaking at any one time.  It also tells them what they should be doing while others are speaking.  There are slides for two groups and three groups, and the PowerPoint is available for Spanish, French, German and Italian.  You can download it from here.

Grouping in 3 groups (which I will have to for my classes of over 30) was a slight problem for Spanish, as the flag only has 2 colours.  So the three groups will be Los Rojos, Los Amarillos and Los Escudos, which I will probably type onto the slide.  Great for phonics too!

The "New Normal" Classroom

Here we are at last: the new school year, the new term, and the “new normal”.  I’ll finally be heading back into the classroom next week, to earn a teaching salary after 173 days of not earning a teaching salary.  In preparation for the big return this week and next week, teachers have been discussing behind the scenes what we will and won’t be able to do in the classroom this term.

WARNING AND DISCLAIMER: The plans and strategies that I am going to discuss here are appropriate to my schools, the risk assessments that my schools have in place and agreements I have with my headteachers.  They may not be suitable for your setting.  Always check your own risk assessment and confirm with your headteacher.

I’ll be seeing all my classes pretty much as normal, as peripatetic teachers are allowed to work in multiple bubbles.  For additional protection for me, for the children and for the other adults in the schools, the way I teach is going to be different to usual. 

I will be restricted to a small area at the front of the classroom.  This means that scaffolding and supporting activities, building up the learning in small steps, is going to be even more crucial than usual.  If a child is stuck, I won’t be able to go over to help them.  The class teacher’s seating plan is not always conducive to children successfully helping each other, so knowledge organisers are going to be a huge help and provide that extra layer of security and confidence for the children.

One of the main discussion points over the summer has been choral speaking.  In the government guidance, specific mention is made of singing, chanting and shouting.  I don’t consider choral speaking to be the same as chanting, and emailed the DfE at the end of last term for ask for clarification.  No clarification has been forthcoming.  Therefore it has been the responsibility of each headteacher to decide how to address choral speaking in their schools.

I will still be able to do choral speaking activities with the children (thank goodness – I don’t know what I would have been able to do otherwise – it’s my bread and butter!) but only with a maximum of 15 children at a time.  For most classes this will be half the class at a time, but I have some classes of over 30 and so will have to divide them differently, into more than 2 groups.

I’ve been thinking, therefore, about the ramifications of choral speaking with only a small group at a time, and how to manage the activity.  What about the ones who aren't speaking?  What will they do?  I want them to physically do something so that they don’t have time or the opportunity to look out the window / fiddle / talk etc., and so that I can see that they are engaged.

Thank you to everyone on Twitter and in the Languages in Primary Schools Facebook group who responded with their ideas, particularly Amanda, Noelia, Suzanne, Vicky, Barbara, Steve, Erica, Jane, and Maria.

Actions  The children do an action which represents the word.  This is an example of a multimodal approach.  My 13 year old daughter has been teaching herself BSL (British Sign Language) over the summer; you could try one of the signs as your action.

Mute button  Children mouth the word silently, they “put their Mute button on”.  (This might take some practice with certain children!)  If the children are speaking, you can also use an imaginary volume control button with them to ensure they are speaking quietly and therefore not expelling too many droplets.  By the way, whispering should be avoided – it has been shown to expel more droplets than ordinary speaking.

Writing  The children write the relevant words on their mini whiteboard, using their knowledge organiser or other support to help them.  I like this idea as I would like to do a longer period of speaking with one small group, rather than rapid swapping between groups.  I’ll get the writers to hold up their whiteboard to show me what they’ve done!  To make the writing more engaging you could try:
- writing the words in order of length, shortest first
- writing the words in alphabetical order 
- writing the words in order of preference (could be useful for later work on opinions)
- writing the words with a finger on their sleeve
There’s also the dice activity where the number thrown tells you how to write the word.  Here are some suggestions:
1 – write the word in bubble writing
2 – write the word with your other hand
3 – write the word backwards
4 – write the word with your eyes closed
5 – write the word normally
6 – choose how you want to write the word

·     Group A Group B  You could say your word or phrase, then ask the first group to repeat it, followed straightaway by the second group.  The second group will listen to the first group and so are reliant on the first group’s accuracy.  This could be adapted to have a row speaking at a time in a Mexican Wave style.

·     Pointing  The children have a sheet with showing the words, English translations or images.  The children who aren’t speaking have to point to the correct word or image as the other half of the class say it.  Find out more about this activity here.

I still haven’t solved the problem of pair speaking activities, such as dialogues, where the children all practise together in pairs, but am hoping that most other things won’t be too different.

If you're looking for other ideas, check out Janet Lloyd's video No singing? No problem!  and these Covid-friendly activities from TheIdealTeacher.

I hope this has given you some ideas for your classroom.  There are some more ideas for choral repetition here.  If you have any other ideas, it'd be great if you could pop them in the comments.

Wishing everyone well for the new term.

Making a flag

The last unit of my Year 3 scheme of work is one of my favourites - Mi bandera.  The children learn how to describe the colours and shapes on flags, opening the door to other countries that speak Spanish and their cultures.  It usually coincides with a major sporting event and so the children are always interested in it.

After we have finished practising all the speaking with actions (multimodal - it really works!) the children make their own flag and describe it to the rest of the class.

I always use the method of making a wave-able flag that I first saw on Barbara Cheded's blog.  Unfortunately the link for the instructions no longer works, and I can't find them anywhere else, so I've done my own instructions for making the flag here:

1.  Fold a piece of A4 paper into quarters.

2.  Cut off one of the quarters (it doesn't matter which one).

3.  It's important to get the piece of paper the right way round at this stage - children sometimes put the paper in the portrait orientation and end up with the wrong-shaped flag.  At this stage children draw and colour their flag design on the "flag" section.

4.  When the flag design is finished, roll up the flag pole section of the paper and stick it with some sticky tape (we've never had any luck with glue!)  The flag is now ready to be waved.

Primary Languages Conference: Pillars of Progression

Primary teachers and specialist teachers of primary languages are always looking for good quality CPD.  The online conference Pillars of Progression is a joint project from the teams behind the successful Northern Primary Languages Show (NPLS) and Southern Primary Languages Show (SPLS), and I am delighted to have been invited to speak about the pillar of vocabulary.

Here is more information about the conference and its sessions:

The conference will take place on Zoom.  If you're a member of the Association for Language Learning (ALL) it will cost you £5, if you aren't a member it's only £25.  

To book your place, go quickly to the online booking form, as places are limited.

See you there!

Doozy

I've mentioned before that I subscribe to Richard Byrne's blog Free Tech for Teachers.  I recommend you follow it as well, particularly if you use Google Classroom, as there are lots of posts and useful information about that.  This morning Richard has written a post about an online quiz generator called Doozy.

You can use Doozy to build quizzes that require students to type in their answer, or multiple choice quizzes.  

I've had a go at making a quiz where you have to type the answers in.  It's all about regular -AR verbs in Spanish, and you can try it out by clicking here.

You don't have to create an account to use Doozy, so if you create content you'll have to think of a way of keeping a record of the links for the quizzes you've made.

You can play by yourself, or send the link to friends and play along with them, or you can be the quizmaster - this generates a quiz in a similar way to Kahoot that can be played by a group of people at the same time.  The quizzes can also be played over Zoom, Google Hangouts, Messenger and Houseparty - Doozy is a new application which has been developed since the beginning of lockdown.

I haven't yet had the opportunity to play as a team or against others, but if you challenge yourself, you answer the questions and then at the end you have to mark your own answers.  In the language learning context this provides useful feedback to the student.

Doozy provides a useful and different alternative to other online activity generators, such as educandy, which have been widely used during this period of home learning.

Have a go and see what you think.

Do they know they're making progress?

I've mentioned before that I've been following the free Futurelearn course Teaching Languages in Primary Schools: Putting Research into Practice.  Yesterday I worked through week 2 (there are 3 weeks altogether) and it gave me more food for thought.

Following week 1, I've been thinking about progression, particularly in upper Key Stage 2 (age 9-11).  I learned that the younger children (lower Key Stage 2, age 7-9) benefit from lots of varied input with which they can actively engage.  They are emotionally engaged with the learning, and "fun activities from an engaging teacher" are particularly important for them at this stage in their learning journey.  The older ones, on the other hand, appreciate more challenge, focus, logic and structure, and more opportunities to reflect on the language and on their learning.  As the children get older, they gain a deeper understanding of their own learning and they become more frustrated if they don't achieve their learning goals.  Younger children are motivated by enjoying the fun activities, while for the older ones, progress and achievement are crucial to motivation.

So awareness of progression and a sense of achievement are key factors for motivation in the older children.  This has led me to think about progression:  I know what progression looks like in my scheme of work, and I know when the children have progressed and achieved their objectives.  But do the children know?  Do they know they're making progress?

I'm thinking of a possible way of showing the children explicitly how their learning is progressing and how they can do things at the end of a lesson that they couldn't do before.  Giving them a green stamp for achieving an objective and showing them my spreadsheet every so often probably isn't sufficient.

Week 2 of the Futurelearn course, during an interview with Sarah Dugdale, mentioned WAGOLL (What A Good One Looks Like) texts for showing children what they are aiming for.  In this case, children can help the teacher to compile a list of things that they will need to know in order to create their own version of that text, and will see their progress as they "tick off" the different points on the list.  Sarah advocates using as the WAGOLL text a piece of work that  has been done by a previous pupil.  Children will find this more motivating: if that child can do it, they can do it.  You could also provide a teacher-produced WAGOLL, but children might perceive this as less motivating, as they already know the teacher can do it!  Incidentally, Sarah also commented that she can see a use for "WABOLL" (What A Bad One Looks Like) texts, where children are shown a bad (or less good!) example and can suggest ways to improve it (maybe in a content sense rather than accuracy).

Another solution that I have been thinking about is, at each stage of the learning, getting the children to write a few words or a short sentence to summarise what they have learned during that lesson, that they didn't know before.  I've made a mock-up of how that might look for the beginning of my first Year 6 unit:

Alternatively we could break down the learning objective to create a tick list as mentioned before.

What do you think?  Do you think that the children in your Year 5 and Year 6 classes know that they are making progress?  Can you think of any easy-preparation and quick ways of showing the children explicitly the progress that they are making so as to motivate them in their learning?

Languages in the news (3)

There has been another rash of press articles about languages following the publication yesterday of Towards a National Languages Strategy: Education and Skills.  The document has been compiled by the British Academy, The British Council, ASCL, Universities UK and the Arts and Humanities Research Council.   It is a set of proposals for a new national languages strategy and is well worth a read.

There are many proposals for all stages of education.  They include the establishment of an online portal for sharing messages, information and resources called Languages UK, which they want to establish as a brand.  They would like a major communications campaign to promote languages, and want to ensure the continuation of programmes like Erasmus+.

There are also a number of proposals for primary languages:

• The strengthening of existing funded partnerships or centres, to spread best practice and help all children to access high-quality provision (SCILT in Scotland, NICILT in Northern Ireland, Global Futures in Wales, and NCELP in England.
• A new task force or separate wing of NCELP devoted to primary education, led by primary practitioners and experts, for England
• Work with UK governments to establish and implement the best approach for the primary curriculum
• Work with UK governments to establish and implement the best approach for the transition to secondary
• DfE in England should develop clear non-statutory guidance on the amount of time that should be allocated to language learning in KS2  
• In Wales, the Welsh government should recognise and specify the time allocation for primary languages in the new Curriculum for Wales 2022
• In Northern Ireland, the DE should develop and implement a fully funded primary languages curriculum.
• Require teacher education providers in England, Wales and Scotland to extend the amount of time allocated to the primary languages subject specialism
• Universities and colleges should facilitate language learning for primary education trainees, so that they have the opportunity to achieve at least CEFR A1/A2 in a language
• DE(NI) should explore teacher education qualifications for primary languages

School cash incentive to promote language A-levels, BBC, 9.7.20 

Language learning is key to UK’s post-crisis recovery, ministers told, Big Issue, 8.7.20

* * * * * * *

Last week the DfE released the guidance for schools preparing to welcome back all students in September.  I noticed that languages were included in the list of subjects that Key Stage 3 students should be doing in September as part of their broad and balanced curriculum, but there was no mention in the Key Stage 2 list:

Given the often precarious position of languages in some primary schools, I found this concerning, and so tweeted DfE to ask if the failure to include languages was just an oversight or if it was deliberate.  Suzanne O'Farrell of ASCL replied and said she would investigate.

On Wednesday (July 8th), Baroness Coussins, chair of the All Party Parlimentary Group on MFL, stressed in the House of Lords the importance of language learning in primary school and asked for clarification.  (Time 18.49 on this video clip)  Baroness Coussins also shared the news via Twitter:

Please make sure that this news is shared with all your primary colleagues!

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Making a good resource

You may know that I have been making resources for some time.  25 years in the profession and 16 years sharing online have given me plenty of time to find a style that works and that other people are happy to use.  I made this video to show how I make a resource and to give my tips and tricks about fonts, images and so on.  I hope it helps you with your own resources.

To KO or not to KO? Knowledge organisers in primary languages

During these months of lockdown and working at home there has been a lot of discussion and reflection on Twitter and in the Facebook groups - primary and secondary - about Knowledge Organisers.  They are becoming more prevalent in both primary and secondary education across the curriculum.

In the primary languages context, there have been two main questions.  Firstly, what are knowledge organisers, and secondly, should we be using them?  I'll try to answer those questions:

What is a Knowledge Organiser (KO)?

• A single A4 sheet containing a summary of the essential knowledge from a unit of work
• It needs to be specific to your children in your class, and should follow your scheme of work.  An "off the peg" KO might not suit your children and your school.
• It should contain what you are going to teach and nothing extra.
• It shows the Intent of your curriculum, and may also determine the Implementation to a certain extent.
• A series of KOs should show progression.
• KOs show the big picture of a unit of learning. 
• A KO is low-tech and therefore easy to share with parents and carers if necessary.  Being paper-based means that there are no barriers to learning if a certain child can't access technology.
• KOs are characteristic of the current Ofsted and DfE focus on a knowledge-rich curriculum, and acquiring and retaining subject knowledge.
• There is no set format for a KO.  A KO for languages should probably include key vocabulary plus any essential facts or structures presented in manageable chunks.  They often contain model texts and can have images as appropriate.  It's important that the KO also contains English meanings to reduce the cognitive load and to help children to use them effectively.  "Dodgy English" is often used to emphasise structure in the target language, for example "Tengo hambre = I have hunger".  Above all, the KO should be engaging and clear, so that the children can use them easily and regularly.
• KOs are not a magic solution to teaching languages - they should be seen as another tool in your kit.  They are one of the solutions to problems of retention and memory.

Why should I think about using them?

• Having a KO to hand means that children won't have to hold so much information in their working memory.  They reduce cognitive overload.
• Having a KO to hand enables children to constantly review their learning.  They should have the opportunity to look at and become familiar with the KOs and practise retrieving the information.
• They save time for the teacher in the classroom - if the children all have a KO you won't have to answer as many questions!
• Children who have more prior knowledge of a unit are likely to learn more from the teaching of it.  The new knowledge hooks onto the "pre-knowledge" and becomes sticky.  Knowing the big picture of the learning we are more likely to make links and help the knowledge to stick.
• If a child is absent or goes out for intervention, having the KO means that they will have what they need to catch up.

My opinion:

I can see the benefits, from having read about them and attended an online event, of using KOs in the primary languages classroom to facilitate the learning and to help children to become more independent learners.  I can appreciate how it would help children to have the information to hand from the beginning of a unit, particularly in the new and changed circumstances in which we will all find ourselves come September.

As far as format is concerned, the format that is favoured in secondary classrooms is the parallel text.  I tried an example of the parallel text approach a year ago:

This is from my Yo soy músico unit, which is the one I keep in my back pocket to teach if I run out of scheme of work with any year group.  It introduces opinions of genres of music, musical instruments and regular -AR verbs.  This parallel text illustrates the infinitive and the 6 forms of the -AR verb tocar.  

I tried it out first with two very good Year 6 classes, who bought into it wholesale and got a lot from it.  I tried it the following week with a Year 4 class.  Many of them found it OK, but the weaker readers found the approach very hard to deal with, and opted out.  

I think it's most suited to upper Key Stage 2, and I would have to think carefully before using this approach in lower Key Stage 2.  We need to think carefully about the English literacy level of the children in the classroom.  Children in Years 3 and 4 often enjoy languages because of the focus on speaking and listening and the fact that there is considerably less reading and writing than elsewhere in the curriculum, so it would be a shame to opt for a reading-heavy approach which would lead to less enjoyment for them.  I'm also not convinced that younger children would be able to delve through a text of this nature to find the part they need when it comes to adapting and substituting text.

Yesterday I worked through the first week of the MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) Teaching Languages in Primary Schools: Putting Research into Practice on FutureLearn.  It focused on three pedagogical principles for middle childhood, which more or less corresponds to Key Stage 2.  This was one of my main takeaways: "Fun activities from an engaging teacher are particularly important at this stage" (i.e. Year 3 and maybe Year 4), as children of this age are more emotionally engaged in this kind of learning at this stage.  This ties in with what I said above, that children need a more teacher-led and less reading-heavy approach in lower Key Stage 2.  However later on, as the children get older, they appreciate more opportunities to reflect on the language and to see that they are progressing.  This would favour the parallel text approach more.

At the top of this page you can see the format of KO that I have chosen to accompany my new scheme of work for Key Stage 2 Spanish.  It comprises the vocabulary that the children will need for that unit, as well as examples of the phrases and sentences that we will be working on.  I have also displayed the key verbs that that particular unit includes and the key sounds, which are also underlined throughout the KO.  That's not to say that these KOs won't undergo a few tweaks here and there when I eventually get to use them!

It's worth pointing out here that a sentence builder (such as the one below, tabular as well as flowchart) can also be a KO - it contains all the key vocabulary and the structure.

I'm still very much on my journey of discovery as far as KOs are concerned, and of course I haven't had the opportunity to use them in the classroom yet.  I would be very interested, as always, to hear any of your constructive comments!

Useful reading:

• Knowledge Organisers: What they are and how to use them in KS1 and KS2
• What are Knowledge Organisers and how can we use them in the primary classroom?
• A Knowledge Organiser about Knowledge Organisers
• Knowledge Organisers - from Steve Smith's blog
• Everything in the MFL Knowledge Organisers group on Facebook