It gives me great pleasure to present.......new vocabulary

In a couple of weeks' time I'm going to be giving two workshops at my local authority's annual PMFL conference. One of them is "Joining in a poem", which is based on the poem "Le retour du printemps" from Unit 17 of the KS2 QCDA scheme of work for French. I prepared that workshop some time ago, and the PowerPoint that I have made can be downloaded from the TalkaboutPrimaryMFL wiki. I'm now working on the second - "Presenting new vocabulary" - which is also one of the sections of the same unit of the KS2 QCDA Scheme of Work.

I didn't feel that the suggested activities in the unit would give me the sort of presentation that I was after and that I am accustomed to give. I always try to cram as many ideas as I can into the time that I have so that delegates have something that they can take away with them to use the next day in their lessons. Personally, I think a conference or workshop has been successful if it has given me ideas that I can take away and use straightaway. (I think that's why I like Twitter so much !) Therefore I set to researching ideas for presenting new vocabulary to students.

Straightaway my perception of "presenting new vocabulary" was challenged. I had always thought that you present the new vocabulary and then you practise it. However, it became clear that when we talk about “presentation” we’re actually talking about the introduction and practice of new lexical items.

So what part does this presentation play in a lesson or as part of the bigger picture ? The presentation of single lexical items is the first step of a longer process leading to our students being able to operate confidently at phrase and sentence level. We need to consider what a pupil needs to know about a word in order to use it successfully. They need to know:

• What it means
• Its part of speech
• How it’s pronounced
• How it’s written
• How the word is related to other words

So any presentation activities that we choose to do in our lessons have to enable our students to gather this information, and build their confidence in the oral, aural and written aspects of the vocabulary.

To help me in my quest I tweeted a request for people to tell me their favourite and most successful ways of presenting new vocabulary. Here are some of the replies that I received:

Marie-France Perkins recommends using realia and passing them round while repeating the word. Connected with this is playing pass the parcel, where the student holding the parcel (or bag) when the music stops takes out an object and says the right word. She also suggests using online tools such as Task Magic and Quia to reinforce vocabulary.

Fiona Joyce says that one of her most successful lessons was presenting clothes using toddler clothes. Fiona is also mistress of the MFL Storybird Wiki. Storybird is excellent for creating simple stories which can be used to present vocabulary.

Isabelle Jones uses odd and interesting pictures as a visual stimulus and also sings words to get her students to focus on the pronunciation. (It was Isabelle who suggested I blog this topic !)

Joanna Pickering uses Noughts and Crosses and sorting activities, with a range of activities based on the sorting activities. Jo also favours using songs, either published ones or ones she has made up herself. I also really like Jo's speed reading idea: "I put a text on the board or a list of words, we read it together then the students have to read it aloud, either in pairs or as a whole class. They have to read it against the clock, and if they make a mistake they then have to start again but the stopwatch carries on timing. Each pair of students has a bell and dings the bell if a mistake in pronunciation is made. Great fun, very loud but really effective."

Stephan Rinke, a man after my own heart, like to use the OHP with cut-out pictures to play Kim's game.

Dominic McGladdery commented that "we should only ever introduce 5 items of vocab and then give the kids a dictionary". This reminds me of one of the best pieces of advice that I have ever been given - when introducing new vocabulary, always bear in mind "The magic number 7, plus or minus two". In other words, though it may be tempting to do, for example, all eleven colours in one lesson, the average learner can only retain seven new items at once. The less able or younger learner can retain seven minus two, the more gifted or experienced learner can retain seven plus two.

Here are some more of the ideas that I have found, in no particular order:

Introduction of new vocabulary:

• Choral repetition with flashcards

• Vary the repetition, saying the word in different ways, or different groups, boys, girls….


• Focus on sound-spelling links, and the relationship between phonemes and graphemes.


• Students give a physical response when they hear a certain word or phoneme – they hold up a card, say a number or do a certain action when they hear a certain word. Students are taking an active role in the process early on and are "developing listening acuity".

• Successful presentation involves Oracy and Literacy. Students need a good model of pronunciation. They need to recreate the sounds accurately if they are to use them effectively and confidently later on. Literacy skills are supported by and reinforce the development of Oracy.


• Knowledge about Language (KAL) – awareness of rules and patterns in language, and imitating pronunciation of words.

• Language Learning Strategies (LLS) - Children have opportunities to think about the best way for them to learn a new language and employ a range of strategies to help them to do this.


• LLS – use mental associations to help remember words

• This introduction can be a mixture of whole-class, small group and pair work.

• Visual aids include real objects, puppets, DVDs, IWB, flashcards and gesture.

• Present new words gradually, 4-8 at a time.

• Present the easiest and most useful words or cognates first, or words of the same gender.


• Suggested steps for presenting new vocabulary: Listen and respond physically; respond verbally as a class; respond verbally individually; listen to the word incorporated in a phrase or sentence; introduce the written word.


Practice / Reinforcement

Teacher-led:

• Use flashcards to practise the vocabulary, gradually building up from closed to more open questions: "¿Es un gato?" Students answer Yes or No; ¿Es un gato o un perro? Students give the correct answer; ¿Eso, qué es? Students give the correct answer

• Sing a song containing the words

• Show the pictures on the board, where each picture has a number (a PowerPoint slide is ideal for this). First ask "C'est quel numéro le chat ?" so that students have to recognise the word and identify it by its number. Then move on to "Qu'est-ce que c'est le numéro cinq ?"


• Games: Simon says, Bingo, True-False, Slaps, Pictionary (stop after each stroke drawn to make it more difficult)

• Finger writing in the air

• Mime the words

• Flashpast (there's an example here using colours)

• To practise and embed gender: tap your head for masculine, click your fingers for feminine.

• Clap out the number of syllables or the pattern of the word. Students say the right word.

• Odd one out, using pictures or words.

• "Répétez si c’est vrai". Make it competitive by giving points to yourself when the students get it wrong and to the students if they all get it right.

• Kim’s game

• Use flashcards to play "C'est quelle carte ?" with a twist, students vs teacher. Give them the choice of two cards. If they’re right they get a point. If they're wrong, you do. You can also keep score of the points by playing “Pull the teeth”. Draw two mouths on the board with teeth in. If the students are correct they get to "pull a tooth" from the teacher’s mouth. This could also be played as a team game.

• Guessing games – say a word that begins with a certain letter / that rhymes with.... / that has 3 syllables

• In my basket I have…

• Listening games – tick, touch or show a picture to demonstrate understanding

• Follow-me cards


• Number fans



In groups or pairs:

• Use small cards to play pelmanism

• Put words and pictures in order against the clock

• LLS - practise new language with a friend

• Dominoes

• Battleships

• Hangman


Individual:

• Work through activities on the school blog

• Online flashcards and games, such as StudyStack.com


Introducing the written word:

• Labelling a work sheet

• Calligrams

• Shape puzzles to match up the vocabulary. More information here. These can also be used to find out new vocabulary. In matching up the vocabulary that they already know, students discover more and are able to fill in an information-gap style worksheet.


• Match up cards which have halves of words

• Crosswords

• Give pairs of students a set of pictures and a set of letters. Say the word, and they have to find the picture and spell out the word with the letters.

• Put cards with words on the board. Call out the English word and they have to find and copy the correct TL word. This is good for use with mini-whiteboards.


So those are all the ideas that I have so far. I would be really interested to hear any other ideas that you have.

UPDATE:
Here is the presentation that I have on March 9th to Primary MFL teachers in Sunderland.

March 9 presentation new vocab

View more webinars from cseccombe.

Things I want to try which I haven't tried before, part 2

Here are some more ideas which I have found since my previous post:

1. Which card ?
Several children stand at the front of the classroom holding a flashcard, with the picture side facing them. The others have to find out who has which card by asking "¿Tienes ....?" or "¿Te gusta...?" The children with the cards can only answer yes or no.

2. Join up the words
Give children or pairs of children sets of words which have been cut in half. Ask them to reconstruct the words by putting the halves together correctly.

3. Alphabetical order
Give children a set of word cards and ask them to sort them into alphabetical order. Alternatively, with words that follow a specific order like the months, children can race to put them in the right order.

4. Phonics
Make a set of word cards with single words which have the same sounds in them. Highlight the graphemes in a different colour. Use the cards to practise reading out loud, then children can classify the cards according to the phonemes or graphemes.

5. Stand up sit down
Give each group of children a sound, word or phrase. Tell them that when they hear it they all have to stand up together. The faster the activity goes, the more they will enjoy it. As an alternative you could say the word or phrase in English so that the children have to recognise their own phrase and then stand up.

6. Stand up sit down 2
Take your seat, and say a word in the language, for example "español". Then repeat it, standing up and sitting down when you say the final, stressed syllable. Ask pupils if they can explain what you did. Give another example if necessary. When they have worked it out, say a word to them, which they have to repeat, standing up and sitting down at the right time, i.e. on the stressed syllable.

7. Find your group
Give each child a card with 3 pictures on it. These pictures could be hobbies, animals, colours... The idea is that they are things about which opinions can be expressed. The children circulate around the room asking each other questions about what they like, and they answer according to what's on their card. Once a child has found someone with the same like as them, they stay together and find someone else to add to their group. The game continues until everyone is in a group. Ask each group the relevant question and they reply in unison. A simpler version would be for each child to have one word or picture, and for several children to have the same word or picture.

8. Find the sweets
Put the images for the words you are practising on the IWB. Behind one of the images hide a virtual sweet. Ask a child to name one of the images, move it aside and see if it reveals the sweet. If it does, ask the winner to jumble up the images so that the sweet is hidden somewhere else.

9. Spell it out
Give pairs of pupils a set of pictures and a set of individual letters on cards. Call out a word and the pairs race to find the right picture and make the word correctly.

10. Mexican wave
Choose some of the words that you have been learning and want to practise. The children help you to decide on the order in which they will be said. They go round the circle saying one word each, in the right order. They could stand up or kneel up to achieve the wave effect. You could clap your hands to change the direction of the wave. This could be fun with adjectives, where the children have to say, for example, "triste" in a sad way. Alternatively, they could use a sequence such as days of the week for the main words, but you make it more interesting by periodically calling out an adjective so that they have to say the words in a certain way. A Mexican Wave would be a good way to embed short phrases or sentences, or anything where word order is important.

Things I want to try which I haven't tried before

In 2002, when I'd been in the teaching game for seven years, teachers were given a £500 bursary to spend on their own personal CPD. Some of my Science and Geography colleagues, and MFLers come to that, managed to spend it on holidays under the guise of "looking at igneous rock formations" and the like. I, however, always the geek, spent mine on books. Lots of them. To give me lots of ideas for things to do in the classroom.

I became an AST later in 2002, and decided to go down that route rather than the HoD route because essentially I am a teaching and learning person. I like finding out and trying new ideas in the classroom to enhance my teaching and pupils' learning. I also have a pretty low boredom threshold, and get fed up teaching the same thing the same way year after year.

So in 2002, I took my new books and read through them, writing down all my favourite things and saving them in a document called "Ideas". Today I had to start preparing a training session for our FLAs, and my first port of call was this document, to find things which FLAs could usefully do in the classroom. To my surprise, I found that I have actually tried out a lot of these ideas, and some of them are part of my core repertoire.

Since then I've acquired a lot of new books, with yet more ideas, and I'm reading through those too, as much for the FLAs' benefit as for my own CPD as a newbie primary practitioner.

Now I'm guessing that if I haven't tried these things before, then there'll be others too who haven't tried them, so I thought I'd share them.

Here's the first instalment. There is a primary bias, but I'm sure that some of these could be done with KS3 too.

1. Crazy Talk with pupils (I have had it for a while and have used it in resource making, but have never let pupils loose with it)

2. Wordle with pupils

3. Making comics with pupils. Again I've made comics myself for resources but I'd like to see what the children can do with them.

4. Mini-books - an excellent way to unleash creativity.

5. Good taste, bad taste: Arrange opinion phrases in descending order along the wall (Me encanta to odio) Play snippets of music (get lots of different music styles) and pupils stand in front of the poster that reflects their opinion. They are creating a living graph (and not in the Thinking Skills sense !) Ask one or two children for their opinion, and they should say the same opinion as is on the card behind them. Quickly change music and repeat

6. Stick ‘em up: Show a set of pictures on one side of the IWB (or board) with corresponding labels on the other side. Two pupils come to the front and match them up while the rest of the class time them by counting in the TL in unison. If they think they’ve finished but some are wrong, tell them in TL how many are wrong and they try to put them right. When they’ve finished shout Stop in the TL, and the number that the others have counted to is noted as the record to be broken.

7. In the bag: Find a series of objects and put them in a bag. In teams pupils ask "¿Tienes un(a) ...?" and you reply "Sí, tengo ...." or "No, no tengo..." If you do have it, it’s given to that team. The team with the most correct guesses wins.

8. Lily pads: A variation on the writing grid theme. Arrange words on lily pad shapes in columns on a big pond on the IWB. A frog has to jump across safely by jumping on the lily pads one from each column, to make a correct sentence.

9. Choral repetition - I need to increase my repertoire.
Say the word in a different way, such as quickly, slowly, angrily, sadly, happily, quietly, loudly, lightly, heavily, strongly, calmly, lazily, sleepily, fearfully, proudly, secretly, silently, painfully, lightly, seriously, dramatically, gracefully, decisively, worriedly, thoughtfully, stiffly, jerkily, childishly, drunkenly.
Have one half of the class say it then the other.
Say the words row by row or table by table.
All the girls or all the boys

10. Pass me the salt please: Show pupils a selection of objects. Ask different pupils to ask for one of the objects "Pásame el/la....por favor" until all the objects have been given out. Then a pupil who doesn’t have an object asks for one and pupil who has it has to hand it over. This can be done with word or picture cards as well, and obliges pupils to listen in case their card is chosen, and listen to all the available options in case they have to do the asking.

11. Matching sentences with pictures: Give each pair a different picture (e.g. fashion picture from magazine) and about 10 statements about the picture. Some of the statements are true, others are red herrings. The pair read the statements and place the correct ones on the picture and put the rest back in the envelope. You check it, then they swap with another pair to get lots of practice. As a follow-on they can find their own picture and write their own sentences. They could also put into sentences into chronological order if appropriate

12. Weather: Give pairs of pupils sets of picture cards, for example weather symbols and activities. They pair the cards up to make sentences which they can present orally or in writing.
You could also use maps with weather symbols “In the north it’s rainy” or different countries in the world, as well as different animals for different climates.

13. What did I have for breakfast ?: Another way to practise vocabulary. Put a big picture of a whale on the IWB, with some small pictures inside Drag the pictures out and say “For breakfast I ate….” Then put them back and pupils have to guess which one will be pulled out first, by repeating the sentence. You could also use a cat by a dustbin

14. Freetime activities: Show pupils a group of aliens which are all different. Add a speech bubble in which pupils can say what activities the aliens do. Go for some obvious characteristics like couch potatoes, brainboxes, sporty ones, blobs.

15. Action listening: Pupils all stand up to listen. They have to do the correct action when they hear a certain word, and have to sit down if they are wrong. To avoid some sitting down and being bored you can time games and give a point to those left in at the end of the time before starting again.
Give pairs of pupils a sheet with pictures on and they have to listen and point to the right picture.
Or you can give out cards, which they hold up when they hear theirs. Then swap cards over to make it more difficult.


So there's 15 ideas for starters, 15 things that I want to try that I haven't tried before. I'll let you know how I get on !

Let's Flash(card) !

I sometimes feel that I should blog more often. But then I don't know what I would blog about. So I wait until blogs find me, if you like. And on Saturday, one did.

I received a link to ProProfs, which is an online poll, quiz and flashcard maker. It was the poll bit that caught my eye, as I have dabbled in online surveys for MFL Sunderland using questionform, which I really like.

I was then sidetracked by the flashcard bit. When I did my PGCE in the mid-nineties, we were taught to use picture flashcards to present and practise new vocabulary, but not a lot else. For KS3 I always preferred OHTs, as they were smaller and a bit easier to manipulate. Then a few years ago, presenting vocabulary via PowerPoint crept in. I have to say that I have never got to grips with that, and there are reasons why I don't like it.

PowerPoint seems a bit remote. Your pictures are always in the same order and fixed in place. Flashcards, on the other hand, are tactile, kinesthetic, portable and immensely versatile. It's sad but true that today's students aren't really exposed to the low-tech methods anymore, and so using flashcards might actually make a refreshing change for them. No more Death by PowerPoint.

So this all got me thinking: What can we use flashcards for ? What are the online flashcards all about ? I set about some research, and here are the ideas that I found:
Teacher-led activities:

1. Use flashcards for choral repetition, to introduce and practice vocabulary.
2. Show students the flashcard and say '¿Es una manzana?' (etc) and they say 'sí' or 'no'.

3. Show students the flashcard and say '¿Es una manzana o una pera?' and they call out the correct one.

4. Show students the flashcard and say '¿Qué es?' and they have to say the answer.

5. Put the flashcards around the room and they point at the right one when you say it, or eventually say the right one when you point.

6. Place flashcards all around the room - on walls, hidden and stuck under tables and chairs etc. Have the TL word on the flashcard as well. Give students the list of new words, either in English or TL, and they have to go round the room and use the flashcards to find the correct translation. Make it a race to get all the words.

7. Cover and slowly reveal the flashcard, asking students to say the correct word when they think they know what it is.

8. Quickly flash the flashcard and see if students can say the correct word or phrase.

9. Students have a set of the flashcards and they hold them up to demonstrate their understanding.

10. Students have a set of flashcards. You tell a story which includes these words and they put the cards in the order in which they hear them.

11. Write some random numbers, including negatives, on the board and stick flashcards over them. Organise your students in teams. They tell you a phrase, you take off the flashcard and that is the number of points they get.

12. Guess which card / Beat the teacher Hold the pile of flashcards with the facing you. Students have to guess which one is at the top of the pile. They have to listen carefully to each others’ guesses to eliminate wrong answers and work out what the right answer is. Whoever gets it right could come to the front to take your place.

13. Slaps Stick the flashcards randomly on the board. Divide the students into teams and invite one of each team up to the board. Say one of the words or phrases and the winner is the player who can slap the right card first. Slapping the board with a fly swatter adds to the fun.

14. Noughts and crosses / Snakes and Ladders Students have to say the correct word or phrase for the flashcard to be able to draw in their nought or cross or to advance along the game board.

15. Loto / Bingo Use small flashcards, and give each student or pair of students a set. They choose a certain number (say 6 or 9) of cards and lay them on the desk, face up. You call out the words and they turn over each card as they hear it. The winner is the one who has turned over all his cards. An extra test could then be for the winner to read back to you all the cards he has turned over !

16. Pass the parcel Find a box, bag or envelope that can be passed around the room to music. When the music stops the student holding the box must pick out a flashcard) and say whatever goes with the card. If you have a large class you can add in more boxes or have groups with their own boxes.

17. Les quatre coins Stick flashcards around the room. Turn your back to the class and play some music. When the music stops (or when you call 'arretez!'), the students have to go and stand by one of the flashcards. The winners are the students standing by the one you have called out.

18. Round the World Students sit in a circle. Choose a starting person. This student stands behind the next student in the circle. The teacher holds up a flashcard. The first student to say the answer stands behind the next person in the circle. If a sitting student says the answer first, the standing student sits down in the winner’s chair. This process continues until at least one student makes it completely around the circle.

19. Team Tag Divide students into two groups. Have them form two single file lines facing forward. The first student should be about 3 metres from the front of the room. Put two equal stacks of flashcards on a desk in the front of the room. When play starts, the first person in the line races to the desk, takes the first card in his or her pile, holds it up, announces the answer to the class, places the card in a discard pile, and then races to tag the next person in line. If the student does not know the answer or gives the wrong answer, he or she puts the card on the bottom of the pile and selects the next card. This student keeps selecting cards until he or she knows the answer to one or until five cards have been selected. The two teams play simultaneously. The first team to correctly give the answer to all the cards in its pile wins.

20. Flashcards at the door As the students line up at the beginning of the class, hold up a flashcard for each of them to solve in turn. The answer to the flashcard is their "pass" into the classroom. If a student answers wrongly, they must step to the side and work it out before they can come into the room. You will want to choose flashcards according to individual student's ability or you could be standing there all day with some of them!

21. I'm going on a picnic Students sit in a circle. The first one takes a flashcard from a bag. They say the word in target language. The next pupil takes another flashcard and has to say the word of the first person, plus their own, and so on around the circle, until all words are used. Words can be duplicated.

22. Monsieur Intelligent Ask the students to stand up. Show the flashcard, model and the students repeat. Except sometimes you use the wrong word and then they don't say anything. Those who speak when they shouldn't are out and sit down.

23. For moving them on to the written word: Have a set of flashcards with the vocabulary in the target language blu-tacked at the front of the class. Students have a mini whiteboard each. Call out the English word and they have to find and write the appropriate Spanish word from the list, onto their whiteboard. You can choose a student to be teacher and call out the words. And you can reverse it - you call out the Spanish word, they have to write the English word.

24. Kim’s game Stick the flashcards to the board. Ask students to close their eyes, remove one, then they have to work out and say the one that is missing. Alternatively, students put small picture cards on their table. They study them for a few seconds and then, at a signal, turn them over (but keeping them in the same order). Call out a card and invite them to try to select this from memory. They hold it to their chest until you say Show me. If they have guessed correctly, they put the card to one side. If not, they return the card, face down, to the same place. The first child to have guessed them all correctly is the winner. The winner can be the caller in the next round.

25. Odd one out Use the pictures to make some Thinking Skills-style odd ones out. For example, put together pictures of un crayon, une règle and un sac. Which one is the odd one out ?

26. Stand up sit down Set the students up in two teams and get the teams to line up in rows. Walk up the middle of the two teams and show a flashcard to each member in turn. The student that is shown the card should then say what is on the card. If the student is successful then he or she is able to stay standing. If the student is incorrect or then he or she should sit down on the floor where they are standing, and remain sitting until the end of the exercise. When the teacher has shown the flashcards to all of the students and they have all had the chance to take part in the activity the teacher then allocates one point for each student standing.

27. Board memory game Place all of the flashcards on the board that in a line so that all of the flashcards can be seen. Re-drill the vocabulary. Turn one of the cards over and then drill the line of flashcards again with the students saying what is on each card, including the one that has been turned over. The process is then repeated until all of the cards are turned the wrong way up. By this time all of the students should be able to say what is on each card even though they are unable to see the pictures on each card.

28. Use them to build up sentences. Use a structure such as J'ai or As-tu..? and add the nouns to it using the flashcards to illustrate the sentence. You can also add an adjective, the cards and their position making the word order clear.

29. Human sentences Students hold flashcards and make 'human sentences'. They can also work in pairs or groups with mini-flashcards to do the same. They are learning to read and write without using a pencil.

30. Sound-spelling link Have a set of phoneme cards and a corresponding set of picture cards. Say the sound and the students have to identify the word (picture) containing that sound.

31. Avalanche Stick 5 cards going vertically down the board for team 1 and 5 cards going vertically down the board for team 2. Team 1 line up behind the first set of cards and team 2 line up behind the second set of cards. The teams start at the same time and the first person in each line writes the French next to the first flashcard. Then the second person writes the French next to the second flashcard and so on. Each member of the team gets 2 points for a correct answer and 1 point for an attempted but incorrect answer. If there is an avalanche due to a wrong answer, all is erased and the next person in line starts with the first card again.

In pairs or groups:
1. Pelmanism Each pair or group has a set of flashcards showing, for example, pictures and the corresponding words. They have to find the pairs by turning over pairs of cards in turn, and remembering where each card is.

2. Classification Students sort the cards into groups and explain why they have grouped certain words together.

3. Dance mats / Hopscotch Put the flashcards on the floor, and students take it in turns to call out the order in which their partner must jump to the cards.

Private study:Students can make their own flashcards, with a picture on one side and the word on the other side, or the English on one side and the TL on the other side. They can then use them to help them to learn the vocabulary or structures. The electronic flashcards from online activity makers like ProProfs and Quia can provide an alternative to paper versions.


I'm looking forward to trying out some of these ideas with KS1 and KS2 next year. I've already started to make some flashcards, which I have uploaded to MFL Sunderland, and will add more as I make them.

Do you have any other flashcard activities ? I'd love to hear about them. ¡Viva el low-tech! Let's all flash(card)!