Spicy questions

 

This term I have been experimenting with a different kind of starter for Years 3-6.  

While we are getting ready, giving books out and so on, the children see three "spicy questions" displayed on the board.  Some questions relate to previous lessons and prior learning, to check understanding and perhaps address misconceptions, while others relate the learning that will take place in that lesson.

The more peppers a question has, the "spicier" or more difficult it is.

We discuss the answers, and I click to animate the answers into the PowerPoint slide.

I'm finding the spicy questions useful as a way of "setting the scene" in the lesson.

Language World 2017 #LW2017

Here are my sketchnotes from this year's Language World conference, which took place in Nottingham yesterday and the day before.

The main thing I have learned is that our new printer-scanner-copier is slightly too small to scan successfully the size of notebook that I chose to use, so apologies for the little bits of pages that are cut off or the ones that are a bit wonky.

The opening of Language World, by ALL President Anna Lise Gordon.
We spent a lot of time huddling and sharing!

Assessment without tears for KS2
Jackie Rayment and Yvonne Kennedy from the Herts for Learning team

Tuning into Translation.  Lots of good ideas from Glennis Pye.

Linking Languages with Grammar, Punctuation and Spelling at KS2- Julie Prince

AIM high in MFL - an insight into the AIM programme from Suzi Bewell and Lynn Cook

Progress: Moving from A to B or going round in circles?  Wise words from ALL President Anna Lise Gordon

A very interesting overview of the Teaching Schools Council Review of Languages Pedagogy from Ian Bauckham.  Lots of food for thought for all key stages.

Embedding Languages across the Primary Curriculum.  Ideas for using languages to help to teach science and healthy eating from Richard Tallaron.

Making the weather and creating the climate for success - Dr Rachel Hawkes

Improving literacy through languages... and improving languages through literacy - Nathalie Paris

I led a workshop about using Formulator Tarsia to create language puzzles.  All the info you need is here.

ClassPOPS

A little while ago on the Languages in Primary Schools Facebook group, we were discussing ways of making traffic-light cards for use in the classroom.  Someone recommended ClassPOPs.  They have been designed by a practising teacher and can be used for Assessment for Learning purposes, for giving answers to multiple choice questions, and much more.  They are double-sided, with A and B on one side, and C and D on the other.

I have purchased 2 sets (they are £6 each), one for each school.  As you can see, I have numbered each of the 30 ClassPOPs in the set.  I used the numbers with Year 5 last week to call on individual students to answer questions.  It made them concentrate very hard!  I have also been using the PowerPoint templates that are available free on the ClassPOPs website to create quizzes for my classes.  Here's an example of one of the slides that I have made for Year 6 Spanish to make them think about gender and word order when using adjectives:

The children have found them easy to use (I have used them with Year 3 upwards) and enjoy using them as well.

How should we assess KS2 Languages?

It's a question often asked, and a question to which there is no simple and straightforward answer.  Unfortunately, as the image above suggests, there is no magic wand that can be waved to say "this is what we should all do".  What we can do, though, is to look into some of the background and at some useful documents, and investigate what practising teachers really do.  This will stimulate discussion about what is most suitable for each teacher's individual setting and will inform them of the information that we need to record and why.  This is a discussion that should be held by secondary teachers as well as primary, if we are to ensure a successful 7-14 continuum.

I put together the information that follows for the most recent meeting of the Sunderland ALL Primary Languages Hub, and I thought it would be useful to share it more widely.

First of all, the new Programme of Study for KS2 Languages does not specify the exact level that children should reach by the end of Year 6.  However, the professional opinion is that this level should be A1 on the Common European Framework (CEF).  So when we are designing our schemes of work we need to bear this level in mind. This is the "substantial progress" to which the Programme of Study refers.  Fortunately the KS2 Framework for Languages is targeted at the same level and so continues to be of great help and support.

We also need to consider what secondary teachers are looking for in their new Year 7 students.  I asked secondary languages teachers on Twitter what they wanted their new KS3 students to have done in KS2.    Here are the answers in descending order of popularity:

- Phonics

- Present tense of high-frequency verbs

- Understanding of different parts of speech

- Ability to put sentences together, using connectives

- Ability to adapt sentences

- Knowledge about Language (KAL), Language Learning Skills (LLS), from the KS2 Framework

- A love of language and a willingness to have a go

It was clear from some responses that many secondary teachers are not familiar with the new KS2 requirements.  Those who are familiar with the new programme of study for KS2 appear to be those who are actively involved in teaching it.

I also asked what information they would like to have about the Year 6s coming to them.  Here are the responses:

-          Which language have they studied ?

-          How long have they studied it for ?

-          How frequent and how long are their lessons ?

-          What have they covered ?

-          Balance of skills

-          What activities do they enjoy ?

-          Basic assessment of individuals’ competence

It is important that, in this time of no levels and of different schools assessing in different ways, that we give this information to secondary schools in a format that can be easily understood and therefore used.  Secondary colleagues at the Hub meeting said that “I can” statements were the most helpful.

The topic of assessment has been discussed frequently and at length by the members of the Languages in Primary Schools Facebook group.  I have made a note of some of the methods that people have mentioned:

•       Post-its – used to record self-assessment and peer assessment quickly and easily

•       I can statements. Children can stick a copy in their books and also record their achievement on them.  The statements will also inform planning and help with objectives for the lesson.

•       Photograph evidence – if children do some writing on their mini whiteboard, take a picture to keep for evidence.

•       Children self-assess using a red-amber-green method.  This shows their view of their own competence in a certain area.  They could also use smiley faces.

•       Teachers use the iDoceo app (iPad only) to record quickly and easily who can do what.

•       Take brief notes about who can do what.  Lessons are usually too short and there are too many children to write a lot down.

•       It may be possible to fit Languages assessment in to the same structure as the other subjects.  However do we know, for example, what the emerging, expecting and excelling levels are for each year group?!

Sue Cave has produced a tool which breaks down each of the statements in the Programme of Study into four progressive levels.  It's well worth a look.

Another document that is well worth a read is from the Expert Subject Advisory Group for Languages.  It is a very comprehensive and very useful overview.  This link takes you to the pdf document.  

So, as I said, no definite answers, but hopefully some useful information. 

Language World 2015

Ever since #ililc5 I had been looking forward to Language World (#LW2015) for several reasons.  First, it was held at Newcastle University, only 8 miles from my house.  It made such a refreshing change to be able to hop on the Tyne and Wear Metro to get to a top-class conference, rather than have to make a trek of several hours.  Secondly, I was looking forward to catching up with old friends and meeting new ones.  Thirdly, it was an opportunity to find out new things and refresh my knowledge of things that maybe I had forgotten.  And finally, as you may have read here before, it was an opportunity to practise live Sketchnoting.

Here are the sketchnotes of the talks that I attended.  Those with multiple pages I have stitched together using PhotoJoiner.net.  If you go to the ALL website, you can download many of the presentations from the conference.  I gave my presentation Be a crafty Languages teacher, which you can find here.

1.  Bertram Richter - Planning for progress at Key Stage 2

2.  Vicky Cooke - Teaching reading in Key Stage 2: leading learners towards independence

3.  Bernadette Holmes - Interculturalism and the power of three

4. Louise Courtney - Primary to Secondary Transition in French: Insights from research

5.  Rachel Hawkes - ALL Connect

6.  Wendy Adeniji - How can your teaching be consistently good or outstanding?

7.  Nadine Chadier - It's all about the code

8.  Carol Hughes - 25 ideas for creativity from Language World

9.  Rachel Hawkes - Memory and Thought: why we can't have one without the other

10.  Steven Fawkes - Now we are 25

See you in Rugby next year!

#MFLSAT York

Yesterday was the latest MFL Show and Tell in York, affectionately and hashtaggingly known as #MFLSATY.  I have blogged about previous #MFLSATs (Oldham, Nottingham and Cramlington), all of which were excellent and from which I and scores of other language teachers came away buzzing with new ideas enthusiasm.  York did not disappoint.

I have already blogged my presentation about Trash or Treasure, and here are some other golden nuggets from the day. 

Marie O'Sullivan talked to us about using songs in the classroom, and we had a go at telling the time in German to the EastEnders theme tune.  Marie recommended the Lyrics Gap website, which has songs with ready-made gap fill exercises and the opportunity to create your own activities in the Teacher Area.  For German she showed us AlexTV, where familiar songs in English are given the German treatment.

David McDermott spoke about learning mats.  Learning mats are a portable learning device (!) and having them avoids having to change wall displays too often.  David likened a learning mat to the picture on the lid of a jigsaw box, which shows you the completed picture for reference.

One of David's examples that I particularly liked was an A3 laminated sheet where half was blank for writing and the other half contained the objectives and success criteria.

Learning mats can also contain useful words for responding in speaking activities à la Group Talk.  The subject for discussion can then be stuck in the middle of the mat on a Post-It.

Isabelle Jones gave us some ideas for making revision more interesting and effective.  She suggested revisiting core language, false friends, suffixes and prefixes, singing songs which illustrate specific linguistical points and exploring jokes in the target language.  You can see all this and more on Isabelle's blogpost about the event.

Mary Cooch showed us a Google Street View webquest which she has embedded in Moodle and which was inspired by the work of Vincent Everett.  Students look at the Street View of a village in France and have to find people and landmarks in order to collect clues to solve a mystery.

Compiling an activity like this must take a huge amount of work, and we are very lucky that it is available for us to use.  If you have to try the Moodle version it's here, while Vincent's original version is here. 

Amanda Salt recommended the videos El Caso de Lorenzo and El Viaje de María, as well as the app Decide Now, which, sadly, isn't available for Android.

Claire Hampson had us singing songs about French verb endings à la Abba.  Claire likens understanding and using verbs correctly to a packet of seeds.  You can't just put a packet of seeds in the ground and expect them to grow, just as you can't pluck a verb from the dictionary and put it in your sentence and expect it to be OK.  Seeds, like verbs, needs to be unpacked and changed and nurtured before they will grow properly.  Claire showed us a picture of some verb flowers that her students made. Each had 6 petals, one for each person of the verb.  I really like this idea for a display for Primary, and will incorporate it into my Y6 Spanish scheme for next year.

Claire uses Ameritz for backing tracks.  She also records her students singing, uploads it to the school blog and then sticks a QR code into the students' books so that they can listen and share their work at home.

Alicia Hamilton told us how to Make Learning Visible, using a Tarsia discussion wheel as her starting point.

At the beginning of the lesson, students draw an arrow on the desk, with the lesson start time at one end and the finishing time at the other end.  They are given 24 lexical items on a vocab sheet and have to highlight what they already know.  Then they plot this point on their arrow along with how many of the words they know, and set themselves a target for the end.

In groups they put the discussion wheel together.  Then they refer back to their vocab sheet and highlight what they know now.  The groups can then play games together with the discussion wheel cards to practise the new language.  They can play dominoes, follow-me, one student removes a card from the wheel and others have to spot which one it is, teacher calls out an English word and the one who can say the TL word wins that card.  At the end of each activity students refer back to their vocab sheet for more highlighting.

After that the students practise the vocabulary by identifying it in a text, using it in sentences or writing a paragraph using a certain number of the items.  An important part of the lesson is the learning conversation at the end: What did you learn?  How did you learn it?  What helped you?  What would you do next time?  Who taught you this language?  It hands a lot of the learning over to the students.


There wasn't time in the end for the Tarsia genius bar, but everything you need to know is here.


Hope you find something that inspires you amongst this!  I could also mention KidBlog.org, Group Talk Poker, Kirikou et la Sorcière, using Google Forms to make interactive quizzes, poo in Catalonia and more!

Silent Peer Assessment

In this guest post, Sylvie Bartlett-Rawlings describes Silent Peer Assessment and how she has used it in one of her language lessons.

This was inspired by attending a workshop presented by Paul Dix (@pivotalPaul) on Classroom Assessment and by reading The Lazy Teacher's Handbook, an excellent book by Jim Smith (@thelazyteacher) which had been recommended to me on #mfltwitterers by @MadameChatty. 

Silent Peer Assessment, a form of collaborative classroom assessment, worked extremely well with my small Year 6 class. The children were excited about this, as I had told them that it was done in secondary school and that I felt that as a class they were ready to try it.

This assessment was carried out as an end of topic activity. It enabled me to monitor individual progress effectively.

The children had covered: means of transport, the present of aller in all its forms, places in town (in year 5 but recapped earlier in the year), planets (year 4, but recapped orally earlier in the topic of transport with 'funky' means of transport), weather (at the start of each class) and expressing view points (worked on over the last two years orally mainly in spontaneous group speaking activities) and simple link words are posted around the classroom. 

The children had plenty of practice on this topic, orally and via reading and listening comprehensions. We had also played Cluedo using @dominic_mcg's version of the game presented at #ililc3. 

Today's class had a written emphasis. Last week we looked at some letters written by French children about the means of transport they use to attend school and various venues according to the weather and to where they live. They had also worked out the composition of these letters: contrasting weather, change of means of transport according to weather, change of venue, expressing viewpoint. These clear instructions were then listed on a PowerPoint for them to refer back to if needed (a tick sheet would have been fine or the original wording from last class if used on a Smartboard) and each child had their personal file to refer back to the work covered in the past if needed. 

The silent peer assessment was then explained: 

1. Reflect on task individually for 4-5 minutes (timer on screen)

2. When time is up and instructed by the teacher, with partner conduct silent conversation on Post-it notes provided (7-10 minutes) (timer on screen).

A5 Post-it notes were used. 

Comments and corrections were made by children in pairs with no other intervention.  They used different colour pens: one child writes in blue, one in black or with a pencil): 

For example: 

Add 'quand' (in front of il fait beau)

Correction on the spelling of 'je vais' by partner

Partner added other form of verb 

Some added a colour to means of transport

Then I asked the children to go round the class looking at other people's work and see if they could add more to their own writing. 

Once back in their place I asked them individually to write on a new Post-it their final sentences (referencing back to their pair work) and put them in their exercise books.  This worked really well with this particular class and I will use this method again as they gained so much from it.

Here are pictures of some of the completed pieces of work:

Sylvie is from Montpellier and trained as a 14+ teacher. After 20 years in the secondary sector teaching and examining at GCSE, AS and A2 level she became MFL coordinator in two local primary schools. She now teaches French in KS1 and KS2 but has kept an Adult French Literature class. She also teaches for the Petite Ecole Kentoise, a charity that provides a Saturday morning school to multilingual children.

#MFLSAT+ at Cramlington

It's been a week of extremes for MFL teaching.  The Bishop of Bradford said that language teaching in this country is "deplorable".  And then today #MFLSAT+ happened.


#MFLSAT+ was the fourth MFL Show and Tell, following on from the previous ones in Coventry, Nottingham and Oldham.  It was invigorating, exciting, inspirational, exhilarating, challenging....  Don't believe me?  Then have a read of some of the tweets from the event.  If the esteemed Bishop of Bradford could hear about the language teaching that was described here, he would have to climb down pretty rapidly.


The event was well attended, with plenty of local support, which was good to see.  It made a nice change for me to only have to drive for 30 mins to get to a Show and Tell!  Admittedly Northumberland is a long way for some, and so for those who couldn't attend but would still like to find out what went on, here are the notes that I made.  You can also watch the video replay here.

Mark Purves

The Singing Tribe - MFL group dynamics

Mark showed us some warm-up exercises for the beginning of the lesson – warming up the voice, and also as children are copying what you do they are all focussed.

Use a backing track with a good beat to do this

Use rhythm, actions and tune for giving praise to individuals.

Samantha Lunn

Routines in the MFL Classroom

¿Puedo ser voluntario por favor?

¿Puedo cronometrar por favor?

¿Puedo pasar lista?

¿Puedo cronometrar?

¿Puedo ser voluntario por favor? – to the tune of Coming round the Mountain

One pupil calls the register, another times them with the stopwatch

Pupils then have to guess how many seconds the register took using an opinion phrase.

Then they express an opinion of the whole process  -“Fue + mal, super, bien” etc

Then porque fue + adj e.g. interesante

Expanding spontaneous language

Could build on this, for example "how long will the register take?"

Forfeits for people who speak English by mistake!

Using cognates, mimes and visuals to facilitate understanding


Read more about Sam's presentation on her blog.

Lynn Smith

Thinking Skills

Reading images – pretend you are a person and then say positive/negative sentences about them, say what they should do to be more healthy etc

Create a mindmap of what you have learned in the lesson

Draw round your hand – write how you’ve learned in palm, write what you’ve learned in fingers

Emma Bains
Small changes to the curriculum to improve motivation

Emma has been designing a new curriculum for KS3.

Creating own satnav using ppt and audacity

Language with purpose early in Y7

Complex language produced

Pupil assessment of the process

Fashion rather than clothes

Lots of opinion work with adjectives

1^st week of Spanish, mixed experience groups:
find cognates, use common sense, guess what things mean

Lesson 2 adapting the patterns

Cluedo can be adapted in lots of ways

Rights and responsibilities in Spanish Y7

Endangered species -  animals but in a different way.

“Soy un mamifero, vivo en Africa, soy amarillo” etc

20 statements for others to try to guess which animal it is.

Advertising – looking at videos – questions before start

“If the HT walked into the room during this, how would he know that you were learning?”

Simon McLoughlin

Audioboo

Audioboo.fm is an online application, and is also available as an app for Android / iphone.

Set up a free account

Record children speaking in class, can listen to the "boos" via the web interface straightaway.


Can embed "boos" in blogs

Children can listen at home and also reflect on how successful they were

(Put phone on airplane mode in class!!)

Alex Blagona

Getting students to 'mark' our lessons

“I thought this lesson was ….. because….”  Establishing dialogue with students

Teacher comments on the pupil comments – getting students to think about their learning and the usefulness of their comments to the teacher.

Informs marking, gives ideas of points to address next time

Personalises the experience for each child

Comments are good for showing to parents

Need to explain to students what constitutes a good and useful comment

Students can express problems privately

Gives teacher a very good idea of which level students are at, good for differentiation

Joe Dale

QR codes

QR codes video by Common Craft has just come out

Open URLs quickly

Link to audio or video files to play straightaway

Link to Google Form for students have to fill in information

There are some apps which will make QR of page you’re looking at on mobile device

QR Coder bookmarklet – whatever webpage you’re on, it’ll make a code for that page.  You put it in your bar on browser

Use in classroom:

QR treasure hunt

Qwikvotes – surveys etc

Kath Holton has made QR codes for Zondle games

“Make your classroom 4D” – QR codes of students' blogposts stuck in exercise books

SnipURL – can change link URL for your QR

Find out more on Joe's blog.

Suzi Bewell

Vocaroo

Free, and you don’t need to set up account

Record, click “send to a friend” to email the recording to someone

Receiver listens but can also save it as .wav file

Good for homeworks – individual speaking tasks

Opportunities for peer assessment

Pupils enjoy it – something a bit different and reaches the students who may not want to speak out in class

Avoids having to do it all in class – saves time. Instant.

Students can explain something for others, such as how to make tenses perhaps.

Mailvu.com – good for FLAs – videos with audio, can be sent to students for homework.

Also consider Voicethread, Ipadio.  Ipadio also provides an embeddable widget.


Read Suzi's blogpost about #mflsat.

Isabelle Jones

Music and art, creative partnerships

Isabelle gave her presentation via Skype!

Rap project for boys.  Girls reluctant to be involved as don’t identify readily with rap.  We heard a clip where the boys were rapping using simple language (their name, what pets they have etc)

Rene Koglbauer

Social Media and improving boys’ achievement

Emailing work to teacher – 1^st step  Teacher can comment easily, more personalised

Started to get a bit cumbersome with the number of emails

Looked for next step, pupils suggested Facebook

Created pages for classes in KS4 and KS5

Profiles in German

Alex Bellars

A trio of tools

Class Dojo – real time behaviour and rewards in class

Create a class group, select individual avatars for each one

Give awards to students as the lesson goes along, at the end of the class you can see who has what

Can PDF the resulting graphic and forward to colleagues, parents etc

Android app too

Lingro

Turns any webpage into a clickable resource

Students can access reading material which may be out of their reach ordinarily

Triptico

Fridge Magnets excellent for sentence manipulation work

Random group generator

Resource for putting things in order

“What’s the question” – bit like jeopardy where you give them the answers and they have to provide the question.  Can be done as a team game.




Thomas Snell
Language learning resources from Newcastle University

Thomas described the Linguacast and Universed projects at Newcastle University.


Schools can also book to use the facilities at the university, and this can be accessed via the Routes into Languages website.




Terri Dunne
Blockbusters

The scope of Blockbusters as an activity for the classroom is broader than we might think.  
For example, put a sport word in English on each square.  Starting at word level, students have to give the sport in the target language.  Then, using the same game, they have to give the sport with an opinion.
Another idea is using time phrases.  What tense do you have to use with it?  Give an example of a sentence that includes that time phrase.
It's good for plenaries, though you could easily use one slide for the whole lesson in lots of different ways.




Dominic McGladdery
10 ideas

1. Wallwisher
2. Fakebook on Classtools.net - make a fake Facebook page
3. Twister on Classtools.net - make a fake Twitter page
4. Random name generators.  PowerPoint one can also be adapted as random question generator for starters.
5. Random letter sequence generator - generate the letters, the student to find the longest word containing those letters wins.
6. Wikis
7. Blogs - everyone has something to say that other people haven't heard before.
8. Clea.nr for YouTube.  It gets rid of all the "stuff" on the YouTube page, but only works in Chrome and Firefox.
9. Puppets
10. Mug of Misery / Pot of Participation

Amanda Salt
Speak, eat, sleep Spanish - an immersion residential


Amanda takes 6th formers on an immersion residential where no English is spoken in the presence of teachers.
Activities such as Dragons Den and Which Teacher.


The videos that the students produce during the weekend are used to promote Spanish around the school.


Find out more on Amanda's blog.






And here is my presentation from the day, including audio:

Reading Books with KS1 and KS2

View another webinar from Clare Seccombe


All of these have been really useful ideas in the face of uncertain and unsettling times for MFL teachers at the moment.


In the words of Steven Fawkes - "Subvert creatively".  


In the words of Adam, when he was with The Ants - "Don't you ever, don't you ever, lower yourself, forgetting all your standards."


And in the words of the great Chris Harte - "If you do what you've always done, you'll get what you've always got."