Dialogues

 

In September I began teaching unit 1 of Cycle A of my mixed age Spanish scheme of work (we started with Cycle B last year - don't ask).  Lesson 1 was all about saying hola and adiós, saying our name using soy... and introducing the question ¿Quién eres? 

The learning was brought together towards the end of the lesson using a simple dialogue, as seen above.

Here's how we used it:

• Using escuchad y repetid (listen and repeat) we practised each line several times, going through the whole thing twice.  When I use more complex dialogues I split some lines into chunks to start with.  The children were very good at copying my intonation.
• We discussed the meaning of each part.
• We read all the dialogue all together three times.
• We split the class in half - by tables and then girls/boys - and performed the dialogue in teams, half the class being person A and the other half person B, then swapping roles.
• I asked the children to practise the dialogue with their partner.  We talked about what they might change in the dialogue when speaking as themselves.
• While they were practising (I only gave them a few minutes) I circulated to help as necessary and to listen in.
• Quite a few pairs of children in each class volunteered to perform their dialogue in front of the class.

Practising a dialogue enables children to ask and answer questions, engage in conversations, speak in sentences and speak with increasing confidence, as required by the Key Stage 2 national curriculum for Languages.  It also enables children to speak an extended passage of the language, in this case at the end of the first lesson of the term.  

We revisited the dialogue in the following two lessons.  A highlight was a Year 3 beginner reciting the entire dialogue perfectly to his class teacher and me in the corridor, with excellent pronunciation and intonation.

Dialogues like this will work with most topic areas and most levels of language.  I recommend giving them a try!

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.

Post-It grids with a twist

Last week I saw this tweet from the Twitter account @Geog_HA:

It occurred to me that this great activity is a twist on Post-It grids, that I've blogged about before and which I use often in the classroom.  In fact today I did the weather one with a Year 5 class.

I had a go at doing this activity with a languages twist with one of my Year 6 classes this morning.

We've been working on infinitives in Spanish - what they are, how to identify them and how to use them.  We read them in school rules, using the book Ya voy a la escuela, sang them in a song ('Ahora vamos a cantar' from Diez Deditos) and last week used them in opinion sentences.

This morning I gave each pair of students a copy of the crowd-sourced texts using opinions and infinitives:

On the board there were 12 questions in a grid:

I gave each pair 12 post-it tabs.  I asked them to read the texts, work out the answers to the questions (using prior knowledge, their books and knowledge of cognates), write their answer (person 1-5) on their post-it tab and stick it on the question.  The board in that classroom is one of the ones like a giant TV, and one of the boys reminded me that it's very sensitive, so instead I drew a big grid on the ordinary whiteboard and we stuck the post-it tabs on there.  This turned out well as the questions weren't obscured.

I stopped the activity when all the groups had done most of them and we went through the answers.  I looked at the range of answers in each square on the board while we were going through.

Afterwards I explained to the children that this was the first time doing this activity for me, and asked them if they had enjoyed it.  They said they had - many said, "It was fun!" and added, "It was different!"  One of the boys said that he enjoyed it because he got to be out of his seat.  They were certainly all very engaged with finding the answers, and I overheard some good learning conversations about the answers.

When I do this kind of activity again, I'll find some stickier post-its (these ones had a tendency to flutter off the board!) and will also try having questions that need to be answered with a phrase or sentence rather than a number.

Pointing and Flicking

The Pointing activity is something that students can do individually or in pairs. 

• They have in front of them a copy of the Pointing sheet (for example the colours one above), and the teacher has a copy on the board.  
• As the teacher says each word, the students touch the correct image on the sheet.  
• First of all the teacher says the words in order, then randomly. 
• Finally, the teacher points to the words without speaking and the students say the words.  
• Students will be able to think of other ways that they can use the sheet to help each other to practise, for example giving each other sequences to find.

The physical act of finding and pointing to the right image makes students listen, think and focus.  A variation on the Pointing activity is the Flicking activity:

• Students work in pairs. 
• Each pair will need a coin or counter, a whiteboard marker and a laminated copy of the Flicking card. 
• Students take it in turns to put their coin or counter on the black circle and push or flick it onto one of the images. 
• If they can say the correct word for that image, they can write their initial on the square with the marker. 
• The winner is the first student to mark his initial on all the images.  (Each image can potentially have both students' initials on.) 

A more challenging version has an extra spider and star:

If students land on the spider, they have to erase their initials on one of the squares they have already 'won'.  If they land on the star, they get another turn. 

All these resources are available here http://www.lightbulblanguages.co.uk/resources-gen-pz.htm

5 in a row

Yesterday afternoon I had an enjoyable lesson with my new Year 6 Spanish class.  At the moment we are learning about sports, mainly to introduce opinions which they haven't done before, being new to Spanish in September. 

The whole-class speaking and listening, and the individual writing, was followed by this 5 in a row activity, which is from this lesson pack. 

• The children played in pairs, and there was one group of three.
• The 5 in a row grid has 64 squares, and the aim of the game is to win by getting 5 squares in a row, either horizontally, vertically or diagonally.  
• Each team member will need a different coloured pen or pencil.
• The children take it in turns to point to the square that they want and then say the right sentence to go with it.  
• If their partner agrees that they are correct, they colour in the square with their colour.  Alternatively they could write their initials in the square.
• The winner is the one who has five squares in a row in their colour.

To say it got a little competitive is an understatement!  There was plenty of target language being used and they were very good at playing tactically to block their opponents.  The group of three found it especially hard to get a line of 5 and had to use nearly all the squares.

This grid could also be used for a Blockbusters-style game, with one student moving vertically and the other horizontally.

It could also be used for a Knights game.  Students move in an L-shape, like the knight in chess, colouring in the square that they reach, as long as they can say the word or phrase correctly.  The student with the most squares coloured in their colour before both players get stuck wins.

If you would like to have a go at 5 in a row, there are quite a few games to try on Light Bulb Languages:

French - numbers to 15

French - numbers to 64

French - colours

French - fruit and vegetables

French - aller (present tense)

French - avoir (present tense)

French - être (present tense)

French - telling the time

Spanish - numbers to 15

Spanish - fruit and vegetables

Spanish - numbers to 64

Spanish - colours

Spanish - places in town

Spanish  - ir (present tense)

Spanish - ser/estar (present tense)

Spanish - tener (present tense)

Spanish - telling the time

German - numbers to 15

German - numbers to 64

German - colours

German - telling the time

Italian - numbers to 15

Italian - numbers to 64

Italian - colours

Italian - telling the time

If there is a 5 in a row game that you think would be useful to your classes and which isn't already mentioned here, please get in touch.  I already have the grid made and it's easy to adapt for a new game.

Gender and number: Trash or Treasure?

This year I inherited a Year 6 class who have done three years of French but no Spanish.  As they have done lots of French I am able to move them on pretty quickly, showing them how the grammatical notions that they know from English and French - number and gender - work in Spanish.

At the moment we are working on adjectival agreement with plural nouns.  So we know how to identify a masculine noun and a feminine noun and how we need to change some of our adjectives when describing something feminine.  We have read Los limones no son rojos which has lots of examples of plural adjectival agreement in action.  The children can explain to me why there is an extra s on some of the adjectives and why some of them also have an a instead of an o on the end.

I have designed the above Trash or Treasure? activity for the first lesson back after half term to make them think about what exactly shows that a word is masculine or feminine, singular or plural.  The words are a collection of nouns, adjectives and articles/determiners.  It’s not vital for students to understand the meanings of all the words - you are training them here to look for the clues that tell you about a word’s gender and number.

Each pair of students will need a set of the words and a Trash or Treasure board.  The following sorts are suggested:

• Words that are definitely masculine
• Words that are definitely feminine
• Words that could potentially be either masculine or feminine
• Words that are singular
• Words that are plural
• Masculine singular words
• Feminine singular words
• Masculine plural words
• Feminine plural words

Which words would you put in these different groups?  Can you think of any other sorts that could be done using these words?

You can find out more about Trash or Treasure here and the board can be found here. 

After this activity we will do the Spanish version of this French adjectival agreement activity, which I have also prepared and which is available here.

UPDATE 23.2.18:  I used both these resources in my Year 6 lesson yesterday.  We re-read Los limones no son rojos first, talking about why the colours are spelt differently to the ones we originally learned.  The Trash or Treasure? activity consolidated their knowledge about gender and number, and I enjoyed hearing them saying things to each other like "We need to find anything with an s on" or "Find all the words with an a on the end".  They then found the sentence-building activity quite straightforward, and were able to put right independently any errors.  Some pairs chose to use the "son" cards to extend their sentences in the same way as the book had, for example "Las fresas no son negras, son rojas."

Looking for feminine singular nouns

Looking for masculine singular nouns

Kagan Rally Table: a variation on the theme

A couple of summers ago I blogged about Kagan Structures for Spanish, which I have been experimenting with since then.  

I have been using a variation on the idea of the Rally Table, where students work in pairs, each writing in a different colour to complete a task.

I have given double-sided worksheets to pairs of children, often mixed-ability pairs, for them to complete together.  They each choose a different colour to write in (it's the only time I will allow technicolour gel pens!).  They write their names at the top with their colours to show me who has written what.

Here is a copy of one such activity that Year 5 Spanish did on Thursday.  I made it using Pictotraductor:

Most pairs completed the activity - they seem to get more work done when they are working with a partner - and the activity was generally completed more accurately than usual.  One of the children, who is generally apathetic and loathe to complete work, said at the end "I know how to do those sentences now", with a real sense of achievement.

With Year 4 a couple of weeks ago, I gave the pairs a worksheet that had spaces for Spanish sentences and the translated English sentences.  They had to compose as many sentences as they could using the different parts of the present tense of tener, then translate the sentences into English.  The old adage of "two heads are better than one" was certainly true in this case.  The children said in their feedback that they enjoyed sharing ideas with someone they don't usually work with. 

Why not give it a try?  You don't have to have a special worksheet for it, any will do.

Trapdoor and Cluedo

Trapdoor is one of those language activities which is really useful and very beneficial to learners, but which takes ages to explain!

The above is a simple version designed for lower Key Stage 2.  If you're doing one for Key Stage 3 or upwards, you could have three or four options each time.  Trapdoor is a pair activity which models good sentence structure, which will stand the children in good stead when they come to write their own sentences later.

You will need:
One copy of the grid for each child
Children organised into pairs

Method:

1. Child A chooses an option from each pair, but doesn't tell Child B what they've chosen.  Let's say for example that in the top sentence Child A chooses Me gusta / la limonada / me encanta / la pizza.
2. Child B starts to read the first sentence, choosing one of the options each time as they do so.
   "Me gusta el queso..."  Now Child B hasn't chosen the correct option from the second box, so Child A says "Trapdoor!".  Child B has to go back to the beginning and start the sentence again.
3. Repeat the process until Child B can say both sentences correctly according to Child A's choices.
4. Child A and Child B swap roles and begin the activity again.

Cluedo is a game which works along similar lines.  The above is an example of a Cluedo grid, which, again, can be as simple or as complex as you like.

This activity is teacher-led, at least to start with.  Children need to listen to each other and to you, and to think carefully about the answer.

You will need:

A copy of the grid on the whiteboard 

Optional: a mini-copy of the grid for children to use to help them

Method:

1. The teacher chooses one option from each column, but doesn't tell the children.  I usually note my choices in my planner as I have been known to forget what I chose!  For example, let's say I've chosen boca / enorme / roja.
2. The children take it in turns to guess your three choices by reading the whole phrase or sentence.  You can tell them how many parts they have got right, but not which parts.
   Child 1 says "una nariz pequeña y gris".  They have got no parts right so I say "Cero".
   Child 2 says "una oreja enorme y marrón".  They have one part right so I say "Uno".
3. Keep going until someone works out all three parts and you are able to say "Tres".

Good memories?

Last month I was working on colours with my Year 3 (age 7-8) Spaniards.  They have been learning and using the colours since Year 1, but this was the first time we had used them in writing.  Inspired by Bartolomé Bermejo from our recent Take One Picture project, they created characters using first names and colours, a bit like these ones:

When marking their work, I noticed more than a few spelling errors, nearly always of the colour words, despite the children having had the correct spellings on their reference sheets.

The Key Stage 2 Curriculum for Languages requires children to "write phrases from memory, and adapt these to create new sentences".  I have to confess that this particular objective has always bothered me.  My Year 6 children are good at putting sentences together, often complex ones, but have the support of the materials and examples in their exercise books.  They will be writing words from memory but not necessarily phrases.  In any case, it was clear from Year 3's work that we needed to spend some time working on memorisation strategies, to help them with their spellings of colours in the short term, and with other language areas in the long term.

I already had some ideas, from Heather Rendall, and posted on the Languages in Primary Schools Facebook group to see if anyone had other tried and tested ideas.

The ideas I had to start off were:

• Air writing - children spell out the words in the air using their finger as the pencil
• Writing on backs - children write the words on their partner's back
• Word shapes - children work out the word from the shape of its letters
• Using small cut out letters to make words
• Worksheet with short, simple activities to practise writing and understanding the words

Very many thanks to Fatima, Vicky, Jenny, Lou, Katie, Annabel, Louise, Joanna, Sylvie, Nathalie and Sue for the following:

• Spell the word out and children tell you the word you have chosen
• Children write the word on their forearm, spelling it out to their partner
• Anagrams and crosswords
• Practise word sequences and use a "pause button", or delay, before the children repeat it back to you.  The children therefore rehearse in their head during the pause.  This is like "don't repeat until I click my fingers" when presenting and practising new vocabulary.
• Use the musical memory by using song or rhythm to help the words or spelling to go in
• Show words with vowels or consonants missing, and the children have to replace them
• Print the word on a large piece of paper and hold it up for as many seconds as there are letters in the word.  The children can't write while the card is in the air and use that time to memorise the word.  When you put the word down, the children write it on their whiteboard.  As an alternative you could use the fade-out animation on PowerPoint.
• Hangman
• Show a word on the board.  The children look at it for, say, 30 seconds.  Then take away some of the letters and the children have to say which letters are missing.  Then take all the letters away and ask the children to spell the whole word.
• Running dictation
•  Pair game: children have a set of word cards.  Partner A takes a card away, and, to get it, Partner B needs to spell the word correctly, either speaking or writing.
• Examine the combination of sounds and silent letters that make up the word as this gives the children more ownership of the spelling

I had a go at some of these strategies with Year 3.  First of all,  I gave them a Post-It each and we did a quick test where they had to write the colour words.  Then their partners marked them while I wrote the answers on the board.  The aim was to see if the memorisation activities that we did would help them to improve their score at the end of the lesson.

• First of all we looked at the words on the whiteboard and wrote them in the air together, saying the letters out loud in English as we did so.
• Next I gave them each a small card with the colours on, and they used this to help them to write the words on their forearms with their fingers, spelling it out for their partners.
• Then we looked at colour words with either the vowels or the consonants missing.  The children had to tell me which word it was and which letters were missing.
• We looked at the word shapes of the colours to see if we could identify them.  We spelled the letters out as they were filled in.
• Finally we did a multiple choice quiz using ClassPOPs.
• (All the resources I used are here.)

At the end of the lesson I handed out more Post-Its and we did another test, making sure that the previous test and the colour cards were hidden.  One child achieved full marks on both tests.  Of the remaining 28 children, 24 improved their score.

I asked the class which activities they had found most useful, and there appeared to be a pretty even split between the five activities.  

So a promising start, and something I think I will try again with different year groups and different language.

Kagan structures for Spanish

There was some discussion recently on the Languages in Primary School Facebook group about the book Cooperative Learning and French, with quite a few group members purchasing it for some holiday reading.  I found the Spanish equivalent (pictured above).  I made notes as I read it and then amused myself on rainy days in Spain by sketchnoting those notes.  I sketchnoted in an A4 sketch book, and so have uploaded the pages to Youblisher for ease of reading.

There are a lot of activities that are transferable to the primary classroom and of course to other languages.  This book has photocopiable resources for carrying out the activities in basic Spanish.

Click on the picture below to take you to the complete sketchnote.

Behind your back

I am endeavouring this year to get more structured speaking activities and pair or group work into my Spanish lessons, in preparation for September 2014.  During the summer I went through all my (many) books to find new ideas.  Yesterday Year 3 and I were revising the numbers 1 to 15 with a view to moving on to saying your age.  I used this activity that I found in Juguemos Todos Juntos and slightly adapted.

In preparation I made some grids (above) with the numbers 1 to 15 on and laminated them.  The children worked in pairs, armed with a grid and a whiteboard marker between two.  One child chose one of the numbers, and then tapped their partner on the back that number of times.  Their partner had to count the taps, then point to the right number on the grid and say that number in Spanish.  If their partner agreed that they were correct, they wrote their initial on that square with the whiteboard marker.  You can see above the grid that Luke and Abbie were using.  Then they swapped over.  The aim of the game was to see who could get their initial on the most numbers.

This was the first time I had tried the activity.  I was very pleased with how engaged the children were, and when I stopped the activity quite a few pairs were on their second game.  I asked them for their feedback, and they said that they had enjoyed it and that it had helped them to remember the numbers better.  Some pairs had come up with their own twists and adaptations.  Two of the girls decided that they were going to tap each other on the head and not on the back.  Apparently that made it easier to count!  Other pairs decided that they would keep repeating the tapping till their partner got it right.

While Year 3 were working I thought of a way of using this activity for other topic areas and for other vocabulary.  For Places in Town, for example, with Year 6, you could prepare a grid with fifteen squares, numbered 1 to 15 in the corners, and with an image of a place in town in each square.  They select one of the squares and tap that number.  Their partner has to point to the right square and say the correct place in town.  I'm sure it could work for other things too.

#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!

Trash or Treasure?

Here is my presentation from the MFL Show and Tell in York yesterday:

Trash or Treasure from Clare Seccombe

We're familiar now with Thinking Skills classification activities (examples here) where students are given a list of words or phrases which they then have to sort into categories.  They decide what the categories are going to be and what the category "headings" are.

Sometimes we choose to guide the sorting by giving students a Venn diagram into which to sort the words or phrases.  These have the added dimension of obliging students to think about the intersections.

Trash or Treasure originated in the National Literacy Strategy, and is used in EYFS and KS1 for Phonics and things like identifying sight words and nonsense words.  It's a quicker, pacier activity than classifying, enabling you to do many quick sorts rather than one big one.  Students are given a selection of words or phrases from which they find one category.  All the words from this category go in the Treasure, everything else is Trash.  Each subsequent sort will be quicker as the students become more familiar with the group of words that they have in front of them.  It's good to have words on the list which can go into more than one category.  An example of one I do, about Spanish dates, is here, and you can also download the "¿Tesoro o basura?" sheet from here.  

This activity can also be used to aid comprehension, by sorting relevant from irrelevant information, or for reading for information which answers a specific question.  It could be used to assess how well a piece of speaking or writing answers the question.

For kinesthetic learners or for a carousel activity, try filling a bin with scrumpled-up pieces of paper on which you have written the words or phrases for the sort.  Students unscrumple them and then write the words into the correct section of a Trash or Treasure sheet.  They can then be rescrumpled and put back in the bin for the next people.

The saying goes that "One man's trash is another man's treasure".  Can you think of a way of planning a Trash or Treasure activity so that students will each make a different sort, and will have to explain to a partner why they have sorted them in that way?

Paper chains aren't just for Christmas

I've seen a lot of paper chains in the classrooms of my schools recently.  In one school, each classroom has a paper chain made of links decorated with the children's names.  In the other, one of the Year 4 classes has made a chain out of their work about Jacob Marley in A Christmas Carol.

Then today, when I should have been doing something else, I saw an interesting tweet from the TES appear in Tweetdeck and retweeted it together with a little thought about how it might work in MFL:

I had a chat about it on Twitter this afternoon with @kscapp, and after that thought I'd give it a try to see how it would work.

I tried it out with the sentences that my Year 6 Spaniards did recently, about where they go and how they get there.  The sentences have four "chunks" and so to start with I cut strips in four different colours.  Blue for time phrases, green for parts of the verb ir, orange for places in town, pink for transports.

Then I made three paper chains, using one of each colour for each chain.  You can see the results in the photo at the top of this post.

Students could work in pairs to make chains like this from a given selection of "chunks".  They could check each other's and translate them into English.  Putting the colours into the right order reinforces the word order and will increase pupil confidence when it comes to writing their own sentences later.  And of course they are an instant display.  The activity works in a similar way to using different coloured Lego blocks or multilinks, but is a bit longer-lasting.

I've had another idea for how I might plan this into a lesson:

• Give students the strips on white paper with the words in an outline font or with an outline border around them.
• Students sort the strips into the different groups or chunks (Thinking Skills classification exercise)
• Once they are happy that they have sorted the strips into the correct groups, they colour in the letters or borders of each one a different colour.
• They stick the strips together to make chains as before.

Post it!

While looking for something else yesterday, I came across this post on the Number Loving blog.  It's all about Post-its and different ways that you can use them.  I was inspired by the first idea in the post, which I thought could be adapted easily for use in the languages classroom.  I particularly liked it because it promotes pair work and is also good for the repetition of vocabulary and structures.  

The aim of the game is to claim squares on the grid by writing the answer on a Post-it and sticking the Post-it on that square.  Each one in the pair needs to have a different colour or shape of Post-it so that you can see who has claimed which square.  Once the squares are all covered, pairs remove the Post-its and give them and the grid to another pair, who match the post-its to the correct squares.

I've made a French maths version, to go with my numeracy resources, and also a Spanish weather one, which I am planning to use with Year 5.  I'll make three different ones, so that, on tables of six, no pair is doing the same one, and laminate them.

Weather Postit Grid

Number Postit Grid

Off to find some small, cheap Post-its!

UPDATE 12.01.13:

Year 5 have had their first session of writing on the Post-its this week.  I purchased a big pack of 51mm x 38mm Post-its from my local Staples (soon to be closing down - I obviously haven't bought quite enough there).  I made three different versions of the grid so that each pair on the tables of 6 was doing a different one, and you can download all the grids from MFL Sunderland now.  Below are some pictures of the grids in action.  Next week, as a starter, they will be given another pair's grid and Post-its to match up.  If you are trying this yourself, I'd recommend doing a demonstration first.  Some of my class didn't quite understand what they had to do to start with.

UPDATE 2 16.02.13: Read about how @mflgirl has adapted this idea for use with her AS French class to work on speaking.