Facing the currently unknown

Practical Pedagogies conference, Toulouse- Doing things differently in languages

It was an absolute honour to be invited to present at the International School in Toulouse this weekend as part of the Practical Pedagogies conference. After 3 years of hard work there are a huge number of ideas that I could have shared in terms of methods we have implemented to try to stimulate, challenge and encourage curiosity in language learning. We're a long, long way from having cracked things, but hopefully we're on the right path- it's definitely an interesting one!

With huge thanks for all of those people who came along to my session, I really enjoyed the conversations we all had. If you want to try any of these things get in touch and I'll try to help as much as I can. 

 

Doing things differently- Practical Pedagogies conference, Toulouse from Route39MFL

ShelterBox Spanish Challenge 2016- THE WINNERS!

It's with great pleasure that I can announce the winners of this year's ShelterBox Spanish Challenge- with huge thanks to the wonderful Caroline Grant and Nina Elliott for helping me with the judging this year. The entries were really creative and well put-together again this year and showed that HUGE amounts of work had gone into their making. However, despite all 3 of us initially having different ideas, the combined points mean that we have the following outcome:

1st = Lauren, Laura and Emily from Route 39 Academy, Clovelly (Devon). Judges thought that the "quality of Spanish was excellent" and that it was "really creative".

2nd = Lawlor from Royal Grammar School, Newcastle. Judges thought that there were "Very well chosen emotive images and authentic footage" and it was also "the most professional" whilst the quality of language was also very impressive.

Huge apologies for the music that has been used on these videos, however it would be a real shame not to share them in order to celebrate the huge efforts that have gone into their development.

Route 39 Academy- Lauren, Laura and Emily (who are all actually year 7s)

 

RGS Newcastle

Newton Abbot / ALL Devon languages conference, Feb 12th 2016

Hola a todos,

it's with great delight that I can finally launch on here the flyer for this academic year's Newton Abbot / ALL Devon languages conference. The last 2 years have been fantastic days, and we're delighted that this year we can continue to offer both a primary AND secondary thread- although this year's primary event will be run as a masterclass with the inspirational Sylvie Bartlett-Rawlings, a prominent primary language expert who will be joining us for the day, coming down from her school in Kent.

The secondary sessions will be keynoted by Juliet Park, a former SSAT Lead Practitioner and frequent conference presenter who has also been heavily involved with developing the new GCSE with AQA. Also joining us, and with a pleasing local emphasis this year, are Nina Elliot, Ben Rowe, Chris Wakely and myself. Chris and I will both be leading sessions which address transition and the start of secondary learning, whilst Ben, Nina and Juliet will all examine strategies to prepare students for life at the new GCSE. Juliet will also be offering a fantastic session on KS5 languages, which so often sadly gets neglected in terms of support offered.

I really look forward to this event every year as the sessions are great and the buzz and conversation is always dynamic and inspirational. So please, please come and join us for some superb learning and fun, which also happens to be fairly cheap too!

ShelterBox Spanish Challenge 2015-16, come join the creativity!

Hola,

 

with half term approaching (wow, that's gone quickly, I hope it's been productive!) I thought I'd just write a quick post to say that the ShelterBox Spanish Challenge 2015-16 is open for entrants and it would be great to have you involved! 

https://www.smore.com/5j3b-the-shelterbox-spanish-challenge (I've embedded this below as well)

 

Some of the entries last year were fantastic and really showcased the great creativity that are students are capable of. The winner was from The Burgate School and Sixth Form in Hampshire and is well worth a watch- https://www.dropbox.com/s/wj5btmdqf68yoj0/Luke%20Woodward%208x%20Spanish%20Shelter%20Box%20Project.mov?oref=e&n=22457083

 

Looking forward to hearing from you soon!

 

The details:

 

ShelterBox Spanish Challenge 2014-15: the winner!

Hola a todos,

it's with great delight that I'm now able to share the winner of this year's ShelterBox Spanish Challenge, Luke from the Burgate School and Sixth Form in Hampshire. The judges considered it to be an incredibly different approach to the task and the hard work and creativity is clear to all.

Feedback from staff and students about engagement and creativity levels has been really positive, so if you're looking at next year's Schemes of Work then please think about getting involved! For more details please see https://www.smore.com/5j3b-the-shelterbox-mfl-challenge . And remember that half of the entry fee goes directly to ShelterBox itself!

 

 

ALL London Webinar, Thursday 30th April- Doing things differently, building engagement with languages

Last night it was a real pleasure to present a webinar for ALL London, organised by the lovely Helen Myers. It was a nerve-racking experience, as one of the main points that I enjoy about presenting is normally the sense of interaction with the other people involved, but the feedback and responses seemed really positive, so many, many thanks to everyone who was involved. As I was presenting about our efforts down here at ROute 39, and as it's therefore incredibly personal, it was a very odd, but ultimately enjoyable experience!

Along with the presentation, which I have embedded below, please find uploaded a few documents which people requested. 

Peer-leveling example:  Download Environment assessment levels peer feedback

Tallying peer-assessment example:  Download Presentation feedback sheet points scoring

Learning Habits with Learning Objectives slide:  Download LH LO slide

 

Language World 2015- doing it differently, building engagement from Route39MFL

Language World 2015- Doing it differently, building engagement

Language World is a real highlight of the annual calendar for me. Yes the range of sessions are always great. But more than that it's an amazing opportunity to catch up with colleagues and friends from across the country to discover their ideas and successes.

This year I was asked to present about our efforts at Route 39 Academy to develop a language provision with genuine real-world meaning and which is far more student-driven than anything I've been involved in before. I confess (and I confessed before the session) that I felt really, really nervous presenting this year as the work shown in the slides has been well and truly produced at the cost of, well, definitely sweat and at times verging on tears (mainly of exhaustion). 

The main threads really are:

- students need to be engaged by the real-world content

- students need to know how to take responsibility for their own learning and how to develop their own progress

- students need to develop their skills, both of decoding new language and then starting to piece it together in a creative, risk-taking way (it was great to hear the emphasis put on these by all of the presenters talking about the new GCSE)

We're a long, long way from where we'd like to be still (does anyone else find that no matter how many jobs you get done there are always a thousand more that you can think of which need doing!). However, we're absolutely delighted to have appointed a fantastic new teacher to join us in teaching Spanish (both in and out of the classroom) next year, Luke Webb, and can't wait to make the most of his skills and ideas!

 

Smore.com- multimedia reading / listening creator

At the moment my Stretch phase students are working on a project, alongside STEM and Geography, to develop an eco waterpark. As part of the project launch we had a session with Richard Hammond, founder of the green traveller website and a writer for the Guardian, where students began to map out waterparks packed with environmental features, albeit they were working on squared paper and with a strict budget for their designs. 

 

 

Recently in Spanish students have looked at the massive issue of forest fires in Spain and reflected on the importance of wise water usage. This week a number of my groups then used bit.ly/ParqueParaiso to discover the waterpark which I had "proposed" for development near Valencia,which they have been examining in a web-quest style of task- responding to questions, matching elements and finding key phrases before debating whether they feel we ought to approve the park or not.

However, the cool thing about Smore is that a) it's free and b) you can include, thanks to soundcloud.com , not only text, but also audio- creating a truly multidimensional task, absolutely ideal for both in session work and homework. 

Newton Abbot conference 2015- a review

There's something very special, and very enjoyable, about being in a room packed with determined, enthusiastic language teachers. Friday was one of those special days for the second (now annual!) Newton Abbot language conference. With about 65 language teachers in the room from across the area, including both primary and secondary colleagues (and 2 head teachers) there was a really positive, determined attitude. In most cases teachers had requested to come on the course, something which I always find sets a great tone for the day.

 

I had been asked to present 2 sessions- 1 about how we have built engagement at Route 39 Academy, principally stemming from conversations that my Principal, governors and I had with a number of students before I began actually teaching in the school in order to find out how they viewed languages and how we could then improve their attitudes to the subject and to their learning.

Doing it differently, building engagement with languages (Newton Abbot conference) from Route39MFL

 

 

I was also then asked to run a session on the "new" National Curriculum, which, for me, is more about freeing up teachers than restraining them- trusting the professionals to develop an effective system for their own schools. Anyway, if there are any things that you'd like to see in more detail then yell and I'll add the relevant documents to the post.

 

 

 

Newton Abbot conference- 13th February 2015