Ofsted has spoken!

Over the last year I think I have written to Ofsted three times, to ask them what they are looking for when they inspect Key Stage 2 Languages.  The only information I had was from 2014, prior to Languages becoming statutory at Key Stage 2.  I didn't receive a reply to any of these emails.  Then in December Ofsted carried out a survey of Languages provision in Key Stage 2.  Since the survey closed at the beginning of January, we have been waiting for some news.  Finally, yesterday, March 8th 2016, it arrived.  Julie Yarwood, the new Languages subject lead for Ofsted, appears in two brief videos, outlining expectations for language learning in Key Stages 2 and 3.

I have embedded the videos below and also provided a transcription, which I'm sure will be useful to some:

Primary:
The teaching of a foreign language in primary schools forms part of the National Curriculum for Key Stage 2 in maintained primary schools.  However, Ofsted does not have a view on which foreign language should be taught.  It can be any ancient or modern language.  It does not have a view on how it should be taught or the amount of time that's allocated to learning the foreign language.  What Ofsted does do, in visiting the school and in evaluating the provision, is it looks at the effectiveness of the provision, on making sure that children are able to progress in the four skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing in a foreign language.  

So how do we assess this?  Well, we look at children's work, we look at work in books, we observe lessons, we look at work that's displayed on walls, we talk to the pupils and we talk to teachers.  We look for evidence that pupils are given increasing opportunities to develop their language skills and are able to develop accurate pronunciation, able to develop simple sentences, moving into joining those sentences together.  Are they encouraged to use resources to support their language learning, such as dictionaries?  Do they access resources, books and written material appropriate to their age which helps to develop their learning skills and their progression in the language that they're studying?  

There is an expectation in the National Curriculum that pupils should focus on one foreign language and this forms part of what we look at.  How well are pupils able to develop their skills in the foreign language that they're studying, and how well placed are they to move on to further study at Key Stage 3 and beyond?  How well are their skills developed, the early language learning skills, to be able to equip them with the necessary linguistic skills for their future study?



Secondary:
Colleagues in school often ask "How does Ofsted evaluate the provision for Modern Languages in schools?"  And in answering this question the first thing to point out is that Ofsted does not have a particular view on what Modern Languages lessons should look like in a school, how much time is allocated to learning a foreign language, which language is studied and how that's assessed.  What we do is we look at the effectiveness of the provision in terms of the impact on learning for the pupils.  The decisions about languages, whether the target language is used by the teacher and things like that, they're decisions for the individual schools.  

So how do we actually evaluate how effective the provision is for a modern language?  Well we look at pupils' progress from their starting points, and we look at the progress in the four skills of listening, speaking, ,reading and writing, and we look to see whether pupils are able to develop their skills effectively and develop spontaneity in their responses.  Are they able to increasingly use accurate pronunciation, accurate written language?  Can they say what they want to say, and give their opinions?  Are they able to use resources such as dictionaries to support their work and do they have an increasingly good grasp of grammar to help them not only in their work at Key Stage 3 but also to prepare them for Key Stage 4 and beyond, to be able to build their own sentences, their own opinions, their own paragraphs?  

Now in moving pupils from their starting points, it's particularly important in the secondary school not only to consider the progress within the school but also to be cognisant of any progress the children may have made when they joined the school, in their language learning at primary school.  So we look at progress over time and we evaluate that progress by talking to the students, by talking to staff, by looking at the work, work in books and of course by observing in lessons.


There is no clarification on the "substantial progress" that Ofsted might be looking for, but we are pleased with the explicit mention of secondary colleagues needing to take into account children's Key Stage 2 experience.

I also tweeted Ofsted to ask when we might see the results of their survey:

During further discussions on the Languages in Primary Schools Facebook group today, colleagues have reported that questions about enjoyment of language learning have been included in Ofsted pupil questionnaires.

Things are on the up.

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.

Christmas Balls

In the summer, @dominic_mcg described to me some poetry balls that he had seen.  I found a picture of them and filed it away on Pinterest for a later date.  Then earlier this week I was thinking about things to do with Year 6 over the next couple of weeks, bearing in mind that they have already done most of my Christmas stuff.  I remembered the poetry balls, and while my daughters were in the swimming pool this evening I had a go at making one.

Here are my instructions:

1.  Halve a piece of A4 card.  You'll end up with a piece of card 15cm x 21cm.

2.  Carefully measure and mark out 1cm strips, each 15cm long.  I started out with 21 strips, but found that was too many for one ball.  My ball on the left has 10 strips and the right one has 11 strips.  That's about the right number I think.

3.  Decorate each strip.  I wrote and illustrated Spanish Christmas words from my Spanish Christmas mat.  This will take the children some time!

4.  Using a single hole punch or the Blue Peter "sharp pencil into Plasticine" method, punch a hole in each end of each strip.  This needs to be done with care so that the holes are not on the edges of the strips.

5.  Cut the strips out and stack them in a pile.

6. Put a butterfly pin through the holes at each end.  (Check beforehand the the head of the butterfly pin is not smaller that the hole!)

7.  Carefully fan out the separate strips to make the ball shape.

It would be easy to fix a loop to the head of the butterfly pin with which to hang the ball.

UPDATE 27.11.15

Here's a template (2 to a sheet) to make it easier to make for those who might find the measuring tricky.

Christmas Ball Template

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.

More new French books

Earlier this month I spent a week in France, which of course involved a trip to the Espace Culturel at the local Leclerc as well as the local Maison de la Presse.  Some books I purchased, others I photographed for purchase later on or requesting for my birthday.

This book was my best find.  Bonjour by Nathalie Dieterlé is ideal for using with very new learners.  Petit Loup says bonjour to everyone, until he gets tired and his mummy puts him to bed and says bonne nuit.  Then he shouts bonne nuit to everyone.  There is plenty for the children to join in with.

I couldn't decide which of these animal books to get, so I got both!  They have nice short texts about each animal, great for some non-fiction reading.  I'm going to be using the farm animals one with Year 6 over the next few weeks.

I found this one in the Rentrée section of the local Intermarché.  It makes a change from colouring by numbers, and I particularly like this colour by e, ê, é and è.  It will make children really look at the accented letters.

As it was still les grandes vacances, the Maison de la Presse had lots of magazines "Spécial Vacances".  I could have got more of these but was thinking about space in my luggage....  I bought this art one for the article on prehistoric art.  Regular readers may spot a pattern emerging.  I also enjoyed reading the interview with Botticelli, which might suit KS3 and KS4.

This is the first book that I photographed.  It's too complex for Key Stage 2, but would suit Key Stage 3 students who are starting to learn the Passé Composé. It's beautifully imaginative and amusing, with great illustrations.  There is another called "Je suis en retard pour l'école parce que...."

I also liked these Trotro books.  In L'âne Trotro fait du vélo, Trotro experiments with riding his bike with no hands, then no feet.  You can imagine what happens.  L'âne Trotro s'habille is good for simple clothes vocabulary, and children would love to join in with L'âne Trotro répète tout ce qu'on lui dit.