Facing the currently unknown

Say it with feeling! – Raising attainment and cultural understanding in MFL

When I present at sessions I like to make sure that I include as many ideas from as many sources as possible. After all, although I have my ideas, there are lots of people out there with lots more (and invariably far better) ideas as well. One of the people I often end up mentioning is Neil Jones, a SSAT Lead Practitioner working in South East London. Now, to put it bluntly, Neil is an inspiration. His resources are of the highest, highest quality. His ideas are so simple yet so effective, but crucially it was Neil who really got me thinking a few years ago about the nature of the content that we teach. His work completely changed the way I think about language teaching, about the need for cognitive challenge and beyond that the need for pupils to learn more than just language. As such, it was with great delight that I agreed to present at his Lead Practitioner seminar day which will take place at Barclays Capital, Canary Wharf on Friday 3rd December. I'll be presenting on using ICT to enhance the re-envisioning of topic and theme work which is somethintg I'm really looking forward to. Anyway, if you're in London or anywhere nearby then I can guarantee you a really thought-provoking day so please, please come along!

Download SSAT Lead Practitioner event DECEMBER 2010

Spontaneity, challenge and, above all, fun

On Friday I was delighted to be involved with the training day run for Plymouth schools under the PASH banner. I hope that it was a useful day for everyone involved and that some of my comments generated the odd bit of interest and thought. The day was focused on 2 main threads- the roles of spontaneity in our teaching and also that of the actual content that we are delivering. My main goal was to encourage people to think again about why they are delivering certain topics- is it because they always have and because that's what the text book tells them to do or is it because it's the most effective way to teach certain structures, to challenge our pupils and to really make them think. After all, in what other subject can pupils leave an hour's lesson having learnt nothing about the world around them but now being the proud understander of 10 new nouns?

Anyway, a large amount of the day was based on the concept indicated by this video- fun is good!

Spontaneous talk slideshare

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Step away from the textbook

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Download Topics and approaches for reappraisal

Encouraging creativity at UIMP, Santander

Last Thursday it was an absolute pleasure to spend a day in Santander, northern Spain at Universidad Internacional Menéndez-Pelayo. I had been invited to take part in a week's course about learning from recent advances in English education. All of the teachers are in some way involved in using English as part of their teaching, either as the central subject or to enhance their main subject, such as part of a psychology course. As such they were spared me presenting in Spanish... phew. My focus was on encouraging creativity and to demonstrate that it is possible to move away from "traditional" approaches and acceptances.

A huge thank you to everyone who contributed ideas to these presentations. I tried to attribute as much as I could remember to, but if I've missed anyone out then yell and I'll alter things! A huge thank you to José Antonio del Tejo for organising the event as well, it was great fun. And thanks for organising a La Oreja de Van Gogh gig for that night too!!

What can ICT do for us?

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Creative Assessment

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Thinking about creativity

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Thinking again about the traditional MFL topics

Howdy y'all,

well, with more time on my hands at the moment in my role as a consultant rather than a full-time teacher I've been thinking. Some of you who know me might scoff at that concept, but yes, I've been thinking. And reappraising.

Meanings that matter. Thinking differently. However we brand it I remain convinced that we need to add cognitive challenge to the MFL curriculum. It's such a hard subject and yet do we actually make our pupils THINK? Yes, the PLTS movement is, thankfully, gathering pace (for further inspiration please please have a look at the great Isabelle Jones' presentation on the theme here). But to truly capture the brains of our pupils we also need to ensure that our content is right as well. We cannot expect, longterm, our pupils to walk down a corridor from discussing the dangers of deforestation to chanting ten animals in our room and expect them to be stimulated. Stimulation, enjoyment and confidence are, in my eyes, the route to long lasting motivation and passion. Passion got me through my education and I love it when I see that fire in a pupil's eyes. And that passion's what makes me want to teach.

As a result of that mini-rant, combined with the increased time that I have on my hands, I've been able to spend a couple of days thinking about twists that we can put on those traditional MFL topics in order to increase that level of relevancy. I'm not looking at cross-curricularism here, that's something that has to be worked out in schools according to the practitioners' expertise and interests. What I am talking about is finding a way that a department who's either worried about taking the full plunge, who hasn't got the opportunity to sit down with other departments or even whose other departments have said no (crazy fools!) can make changes. Our (no longer quite so new) KS3 curriculum gives us the chance- please please let's keep seizing it, even though the initial burst might now be behind us.

At this point can I just thank @bibitybob, @dominic_mcg, @valleseco and @joedale and @zaragozalass for some MFL ideas. Can I also say a big thank you to @moodlefairy @olliebray and @geoblogs for contributing some really idea-provoking Geography advice. You're all stars and made the hunt far more enjoyable, thank you.

Anyway, what I now need is advice, on a couple of levels

1) this is NOT a complete list, in fact it's not even that detailed a list- please please help me to grown this list and as such help us all to get it out to departments who aren't sure of where to go. So many people can't get out to training sessions now so the more we can do...

2) how should these ideas be presented? I don't feel like this word document does the job, but am really not sure what's best? A GoogleDoc? Etherpad? Please help!

Righty-ho, I'll stop blathering on- but please do get in touch to answer me. Pretty pretty please. I hope someone actually manages to make it this far down the post to find this, at last...

Download Topics and approaches for reappraisal

Cheers guys, I'm looking forward to hearing your responses soon. Hopefully.

Thinking differently

Yesterday was another fun day out for Carlos and I. A 5am start allowed us to head up to High Wycombe and get to the home of everyone's favourite, www.languagesonline.org.uk more or less by the start of a Links into Languages event organsied at RGS Wycombe. I had planned on talking about games to support learning, similar to the presentation I gave a few weeks ago at Fernhill in Farnborough. However, a last minute e-mail lead me to radically alter things (ensuring I was NEVER going to finish on time, whoops!) and really go into the topic of thinking differently. This is something that seems to have really got under my skin recently, fanned by the words of wisdom of John Connor and Chris Harte, and seeking to add meaning and cognitive challenge to our pupils' learning. Anyway, I'll write more about that at some point very soon...

I've decided to embed both a slidecast, with audio, and a slideshow without the audio that you can just click through, thus not having to spend an hour listening to me drone on! I'm intrigued as to which version people find more useful!

With audio (slidecast)

Cross Curricular At RGS Wycombe For Slidecast

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Without audio

Cross Curricular At RGS Wycombe

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For more about MYLO, the joint DCSF / CILT project, see www.hellomylo.com or a post I wrote about a month ago here.

Climate zones

Download Los dominios bioclimáticos- paises with map but mountains

Download Los grandes dominios bioclimáticos- for map with mountains

 

Development

Download Devpt factors cards

 

Pocket money (would really value any feedback on these, just knocked them up as a response to a line of thought I was having...)

Download Pocket money Bolivia

Download Pocket money (powerpoint to reinforce key verbs, looking at the conditional and basic imperfect subjunctives)

 

Goldilocks

Download Goldilocks Manual - Spanish

 

Buzz Lightyear grammar display- Spanish

Download The Infinitive timeline

Download Future timeline

Download Conditional timeline

Download Irreg future

Download Preterite tense timeline

Download Irreg preterites

Download Imperfect tense timeline

Download Perfect tense timeline

Download Pluperfect tense timeline

Download Timeline

Languages and sport- just for Torres

As many people know, I'm a huge Liverpool fan. I also love any excuse to use things that are going to make me smile, my pupils smile and enhance their learning in any way possible. And so it was quite appropriate timing that I checked my Google Reader account this morning to find a video on Lesley Welsh's blog, which I remember blogging about a goodly while ago on my old school blog- Fernando Torres' Nike advert.

The reason why the timing is so appropriate is that yesterday I was re-reading a fascinating booklet called "The Language of Sport, raising achievement in Languages using sport" (read it here). One of the things that really stood out for me was a project by Lymm High School in Warrington. They taught their year 7s all about handball, in PE but in Spanish. I could imagine this project looking at the impact of communication in sport, allowing them to reflect on its crucial role in sporting success. The opportunity to analyse what key vocab the pupils actually need would be fascinating, but would also provide transferrable phrases for use into the classroom. Even silly things like being able to complain at each other for not passing, congratulating each other and celebrating. Now THAT excites me.

So yes, I do look for any opportunity to get Nando involved in education- but in this case he really is speaking sense!