Facing the currently unknown

Are we underselling our subject?

I do sometimes wonder. I blogged about FLAME earlier on today, and have just had my first chance in a while to flick through my Feedly feed of other blogs that I enjoy reading. As always, Alan Parkinson (@geoblogs) leaves me marvelling at some of the fantastic, thought-provoking materials being developed and made available to Geography teachers. From map-overlays to Mission Explore fun to examining Facebook check-ins, Alan has an amazing ability to bring our wider world to life, as do many Geography teachers that I've been fortunate to come into contact with over the years. How often do we do that as language teachers? Flicking through a lot of our MFL blogs, written by great teachers, it struck me how often we carry on teaching the same things which have, well, always been taught. Maybe with slight tweaks in the delivery of the content, but nevertheless the same content. Healthy living. School. Local area. You know the rest. Are we really pushing our students enough? When they get to deal with fascinating topic material, substance that really affects how our world works, is it a wonder why in many cases they don't choose languages for post-16- the time when our exam boards finally expect us to be analysing the wider world? In MFL I know teachers create fascinating lesson content at this stage- bye ek, I've said many a time before how much I imagine I'd have learned in, for example, Neil Jones' classroom- the man creates fascinating resources, such as this one. So why can't we, and publishers, and exam boards, and everyone involved, think again about WHAT we are teaching lower down the scale, not just HOW we are teaching it?

Just a thought...

AQA AS and A2 Spanish grammar workbooks

Before Christmas I spent a few months hidden away with my laptop writing about Spanish grammar. Oh, come on, I heard some of you sigh there. But I'm feeling a tad proud (yeah, I know, I'm a saddo) that you can now buy the 2 workbooks I've written on Amazon- an AS grammar book (already out) and an A2 book, which is due to be published on 29th April. The books mirror the content of the AQA text books, but hopefully with my own additional twists!

One of my traditional frustrations when teaching post-16 has always been that my students used to return from a long summer of Devonian fun with heads devoid of any of the grammar knowledge that they'd developed during the GCSE course. Yet straight away I wanted them to start comunicating spontaneously, even on a basic level. For which they'd need a certain level of grammatical knowledge. 

At the start of each book is a transition section, designed to include the kind of grammatical structures and advice to get people back up to speed for communicative purposes. It doesn't include the full details of each structure but simply the essentials to develop confidence. And hopefully the books as a whole are delivered in a happy, smiley tone to help people learn and also REMEMBER without it being dull! Grammar should not make you sigh! Anyway, I like them, and hopefully your students will too.

West of England conference 2011, #Bristall

Huge thanks are due to the fantastic Marie-France Perkins and the ALL team in the Bristol area for organising this year's West of England conference. Any conference that can cram in the ideas of Greg Horton, encouraging teachers to think about how students can say what they want to say and not just how they can jump through hoops, and then Chris Harte, with his calls for a simple rethink of how we view language teaching, gets a huge thumbs up from me. But mighty intimidating to be on the same bill, I'll tell you. Well worth the early start and the bleary eyes by the time I got home, though!

Anyway, although I was presenting about developing independence at post-16 level I wanted to engage delegates about why we currently leave so many of the skills that we want to develop for the AS and A2 exams for that manic year 12 period rather than addressing them from the outset of year 7. After all, our pupils want to be able to say what they think, even if we consider what they are saying to be... odd. With the wonders of Intercultural Understanding growing in departments across the country and with PLTS becoming embedded we need to find ways to facilitate debate, comment and query- in exactly the same way as we have always tried to do, and need to do, for post-16 success. So why wait?

Anyway, see what you think and I'd love your comments / suggestions!

  

West of england conference 2011 #Bristall

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Let creativity be the key- KS5 at Aston University

It was good to see new faces and great pleasure to see a known and well-respected face from the past yesterday at Aston University. In a slightly changed presentation from last week's version at Birmingham University I wanted to engage delegates in a discussion about the options for encouraging creativity at KS5. It turned out to be a really interesting session (even though I was being filmed by the Aston media dept, terrifying), even touching on widespread frustrations at the new GCSE's lack of target language and the fact that in some boards listening has become a severely neglected skill at post-16 level. Grr. Anyway there's nothing revoultionary in the presentation which includes mentions of great work done by Alex Blagona, Chris Harte and a few mentions of José Picardo.

Creative 6th form ideas aston uni

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Ringwood Creative 6th form event

Howdy folks,

I was very privileged to be involved in a really thought-provoking Links into Languages day dealing with encouraging creativity at 6th form. My presentation's below, but if you ever get the chance to hear Gab Hernandez present, from the Holt School, Wokingham, then I thoroughly recommend that you take up the opportunity. Her words about how she structures her course were fascinating, giving her pupils confidence through knowing exactly what the expectations were and the steps they needed to get there. Oh, and the importance of stickers- something I wholeheartedly agree with!

Got more ideas about creative 6th form approaches? Please please share them through a comment because after all these are just some of my ideas and those of other creative practitioners such as Alex Blagona, Chris Harte, José Picardo and Isabelle Jones, all of whom were kind enough to contribute to these slides. To them a huge thank you, and here's hoping I can thank others for further contributions...

Creative 6th form ideas

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