I'm on the Language Lab podcast!

 

In October last year I was the guest on an episode of the Language Lab podcast.  From today you can listen to it!

It's available on the Language Lab website and also on Spotify.

In the podcast I describe my language teaching journey, from secondary to primary, and discuss issues like transition, writing in Key Stage 2 languages and the importance of collaborating and sharing in the language teacher community.

Enjoy!

One year on......

I published my first blog post here on 28th June 2009. Over the last week or so I've been thinking about the things I have learned over the last year, and I thought I would share them with you here. These are not only things that I have learned about, but also things that I have used either in the classroom or elsewhere in my work this year.

• Storybird and Storyjumper:  First of all, two tools which almost need no introduction, such has been their success amongst the language teachers in my PLN and beyond.  All of the Storybirds that I have created appear on the fantastic MFL Storybird Wiki, the brainchild of Fiona Joyce, and you can see my Storyjumpers on this very blog (look at the tabs at the top).  I have found the programs invaluable for presenting appropriate text-level work to my KS2 pupils, but they haven't been able to try it out for themselves for ICT reasons, if you know what I mean....  
    
• Mini-books:  I discovered mini-books quite by accident while looking for something else.  I knew that it was something that I wanted to try, but determined to find the right occasion.  My KS2 pupils created mini-books containing their own stories based on a mini-book that we read together called "¿Qué veo?"  You can see the results here.  Mini-books are small and so the children know that they don't have to write very much.  They enjoy illustrating their work as well.  And their size also makes them ideal for the children to take home to show to their families.
• Wordle and Tagxedo: I wrote a post in April comparing all the different word cloud generators that are out there at the moment. Of all the ones I mentioned on that occasion, I use Wordle and Tagxedo the most. I find them particularly useful for displaying objectives at the beginning of a presentation (I paste in all my notes from the presentation and fortunately the words that come out biggest are the ones I want!) and also for helping pupils to see which are the important words amongst all the ones we are studying - the high-frequency core words come out biggest. Here is a Wordle of my Delicious tags (see below) and a Tagxedo of my World Cup resources page:


• Podcasting and Audacity: I've been using Audacity for a few years, but, as I discovered after a course with Joe Dale in December, only on a basic level. Joe really opened my eyes to the possibilities offered by Audacity for producing professional-sounding podcasts. I produced some secondary-level podcasts with our language assistants and then started podcasting in earnest when I undertook on behalf of the LA to provide a series of upskilling podcasts for non-specialist primary teachers of French. The technology side of it is straightforward for me now, and it's the scripting that takes the time. While I'm talking about podcasts, I'll recommend JamStudio for creating your own loops, and for making guitar accompaniments for your songs if, like me, you don't play the guitar.
• The RecorderPen: This was my purchase from the Gadget Show Live. I wrote a blog post after I had played with it for the first time and before I had used it in class. This term I have been incorporating Y1's theme of "Seaside" into their Spanish lessons. I wanted to show them how to describe things using colours. I picked four masculine sea creatures, made A5 flashcards of them, added recorded stickers and laminated the whole thing. I also made, recorded and laminated cards for 6 colours. When we were working in our groups of about 10, I said something like "un tiburón amarillo", and the children took it in turns to make the cards say the same thing by using the RecorderPen to make them speak the right words in the right order. They found it fascinating and were very interested to know how it works. Their class teacher was interested to see it and is thinking about buying a set for the class to use elsewhere in their curriculum.
• Wallwisher: Wallwisher has turned out to be very popular with my KS2 pupils. I think they like it particularly because they can see their contribution and other peoples'. It has encouraged them to engage with Spanish in their own time and, therefore, to explore the rest of the blog (see below) while they are there. One of our walls shows our collection of Spanish food nouns, something we haven't studied in class since before May half term, but which they are still adding to regularly. Our latest wall is about flags - please feel free to contribute.

• Calligrams: I've mentioned Calligrams a fair bit this year. Just see for yourself. I think I like them so much because they are a combination of words and doodles. I have also tried them out, and plan to do more in the future. What I am most chuffed about is that they have captured other peoples' imaginations too, and they are trying them with their classes. There is a place for low-tech, or, in this case, no-tech.

• Blogging: Before I started teaching in my current school, I had seen examples of effective school blogs. It was something I was very interested in setting up for the children at my school, especially as I am only there for a day and a half a week. I wanted Spanish to have a presence in the school even when I wasn't there, to publish and celebrate the good work that the children were doing, and give the children activities that they could access at home to help them with their Spanish. Fortunately, the Head agreed, and thus http://www.spanishstpauls.blogspot.com/ was born. The children love it, and are always telling me about what they have accessed on it at home. The school governors are impressed, as are some of the parents to whom I've spoken. It's also proving useful at the moment during this time of Y6-Y7 transition - the secondary teachers can see exactly what the Y6s have been doing without my having to send them loads of bits of paper.
• Google Reader: When I first started to use Twitter I was seeing a lot of links to people's blogposts. And many of them were interesting reads. Problem was that if I didn't follow the tweeted link there and then, I probably missed it. Following tips from Joe Dale and Graham Davies I started to subscribe to the blogs using Google Reader. I have the Google Reader widget displayed alongside the Gmail widget on my iGoogle, ready for my viewing and reading pleasure each morning.
• Delicious: I blogged about Delicious last August when I first discovered its usefulness for storing and tagging all the useful websites that I came across. I now have over 1000 links on my Delicious. I think now that I have it, I bookmark more sites than I used to paste into my Word document, but, more importantly, I actually use them.
• Slideshare: In my new role I do a fair bit of training, and in my continuing role on the international education side I give quite a few presentations. I used to upload some of the presentations to the website or offer to email them to interested parties. But as my presentation style is becoming more and more minimalist - more pictures, less text - the presentations were becoming less and less useful by themselves. I had followed links to other people's Slideshare presentations and was intrigued to see that some had the audio commentary attached and linked into the presentation. This seemed like an ideal way to go, especially as these slidecasts can be embedded in blogs. I've used it to share my presentations, but also to put songs onto my school blog as YouTube embeds and Podbean mp3s don't work at school. You can view all my Slideshare presentations here. Well, almost all - there are 3 that for some reason don't appear on this list but which you can see here.
• SurveyMonkey: In October last year I set about auditing Primary Languages in Sunderland. We only have 85 primary schools, but it was still an onerous task. Headteachers are busy people, and it was unrealistic to expect them all to respond to and post a paper survey. The audit needed to be short and quick and easy to complete. I had completed some surveys for the British Council which used SurveyMonkey and decided that it would be a good way of gathering the information I needed. I emailed all the HTs the link to the seven questions which it would take them about two minutes to complete. And then watched the responses flood in. Well, trickle in actually. But that's another story. SurveyMonkey proved to be easy to use and certainly preferable to having to collate and manipulate dozens of pieces of paper.
  
  My KS2s had whole-heartedly embraced Wallwisher and so I thought I would capitalise on this enthusiasm to carry out a survey via the blog. I set up a SurveyMonkey about likes and dislikes of the foods that we had been learning. There haven't been too many responses though. Partly, I think, because there were too many questions, and partly because they couldn't see their contribution straightaway on the blog. I think it's something to try again at a later date, in class maybe where the results can be seen immediately.
• Pop-ups in Dreamweaver: MFL Sunderland was 6 years old at the end of April. When I started it I was a complete website novice. Everything you see on the website and its sister sites now is something that I have learned along the way. When I was creating the interactive map for the World Cup over the Easter holidays, I knew how I wanted it to look, but didn't know how to do it. I didn't even know what the thing I wanted to do was called! Much googling and researching and experimenting and HTMLing later I achieved the effect I was after - the information for each country popped up as a little separate window which didn't obscure the main continent page. This may be small potatoes to some people, but for me it was a sense of achievement equalled only by the discovery of roll-over buttons several years ago!

And finally..... why the picture at the top ? Well, as language teachers we are all different, with different styles and with different tools at our disposal. But we are all progressing and moving forward together towards a common goal.  These are my tools at the moment.  Doubtless I will have some new ones this time next year!

Primary Languages Show 2010

Last night at 8.30pm I arrived home after driving back from the Primary Languages Show, which started at the ACC in Liverpool yesterday, 12th March, and continues today, 13th March.  Despite a 3.5 hour journey and White Van Man trying to drive me off the road on the M62, I was still buzzing with the presentations that I had seen and the ideas they had given me.

The day began with an introduction from Therese Comfort from CILT, and a keynote address from Dr Dan Tierney, who spoke about his philosophy for Primary Languages and research that he has been carrying out.

The first workshop I attended was Language Upskilling, led by Carmel O'Hagan from CILT.  I wasn't able to attend the meeting about this in Newcastle last week, and so used this as an opportunity to learn about the new specification for Upskilling for primary teachers.  We have identified Upskilling as a training need in Sunderland, and it was useful to gain an insight into the new specification.

After this workshop, I walked briskly round to the other side of the ACC, hoping to catch Helen Myers, who had been leading a workshop and with whom I have been corresponding virtually for many years.  Despite texting each other with what we were wearing (!) and our locations in the building, we missed each other.  We'll meet one day, Helen !  It was just after this that I bumped into Joe Dale, with whom I enjoyed coffee, and lunch later on.  Speaking of virtual friends who I finally got to meet, I had a long chat with Martin Lapworth of Task Magic fame, Jan Lewandowski, who said some very nice things about MFL Sunderland, and I finally got to meet Lisa Stevens.  I also caught up with fellow north-easterner Steve Mulgrew, who was showing off his new primary French materials.

The second workshop I went to was "Exploring non-fiction: All about animals", presented by Louise Harty, languages adviser for Northumberland.  She took us through the sequence of activities for the latest materials from Northumberland - "Tout à propos des Animaux".  It is a series of thinking skills lessons which enables pupils to discover and manipulate both basic and more complex French.  It's aimed Y6 and Y7 and would make an excellent transition unit.  It would give those Y7s who have done French before a new focus and some new challenges, while enabling those new to the language to find out about gender, adjectival agreement, regular verb paradigms....  I really enjoyed Louise's presentation, and being able to actually do all the activities !

After lunch (a tasty chicken tagine) I went to "Podcasting to upskill primary teachers", presented by Phil Wood from Lancashire LA.  He described the programme of podcasts that they have made to help classroom teachers to become more confident in their use of French and in their MFL teaching methodology.  Primary teachers are able to study in small, 5-minute chunks in their own time and at their own pace.  Sunderland teachers are very keen to have some help with their own skills in French, and I am very interested in looking at this as a way forward.  It would certainly be pretty easy for me to put together using the sound files that we already have on MFL Sunderland and which were recorded by our FLAs.  Anything is easier than trying to get them all in the same room at the same time, and we are a much smaller LA than Lancashire !

I finished my day with "La main dans la bouche - using puppets for teaching French", which was presented by Stephen Novy.  We found out how to make basic rod and sock puppets, and how best to operate them so as to make them the focus of the lesson.  I use a puppet with Reception and Nursery, and I got some good ideas for how to use him and develop his character.

I had a fantastic time at the Primary Languages Show, and am looking forward to trying out all the new things I learnt and saw.  Next year I will have to save up and go for both days !