Facing the currently unknown

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!

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

Newton Abbot conference- 13th February 2015

Learning Habits- Building Learning Power at Route 39 Academy

With thanks to the amazing Hattie.

A large element of the academic side of our school life is built on the TLO's concepts of Building Learning Power. Having recently spoken to another Head of Department, who I trust and whose practice I fully respect, who has recently received training from the company, it is something which a lot of MFL departments do already, to a certain degree. We encourage our students to reflect on HOW they learn, not just what they are learning. We ask our students to reflect on the skills that they have used to come to their answers. With BLP these are known as Learning Habits. A simplified explanation, but...

Anyway, at the start of each session students are encouraged to reflect on what Habits they feel they will need to do in order to best reach the stated objectives. Lots of useful language to exploit there, so I've attached the Objectives and Habits slide that I use.

However, the crucial thing that I've done at the start of this term is to tape to all of my tables a learning mat containing all of the crucial language to suggest what Habits students feel they will need to use and then which they feel they did use or need to work at. It also contains the key phonics grid provided by the amazing Rachel Hawkes. And was has been fascinating is how even beginners have found the grid easy to start building reflective sentences, self-differentiating using the extension column at the end. All in all, it's been darned useful- and will hopefully only get more so as students become familiar with the core language.

Anyway, I know that some people out there already adopt the BLP stance in their schools, so I thought it might be useful for some people!

Download LH LO slide

Download Los hábitos de aprendizaje table mat

Duplo sentence building

A while ago I read a cracking blog post by the fantastic @dominic_mcg, who was describing an idea that he had learned from the wonderful @bellaale in this post. Duplo. Something that I spend a massive amount of my time playing with at home with my kids. And sentence building. Something that I spend a massive amount of time working on with my students at work. At the time I read it I put it to the back of my head. In most classroom settings that I've been in the idea would've been nigh on impossible.

Bam!

Thank you, gents.

At school we are encouraged to really push our practice, to get students exploring rather than us explaining. So when I was stuck for how to get new students building their Target Language usage in the classroom, and as such building short sentences, Duplo popped up. And I love it. Please, please go buy some Duplo blocks.

OK, the way it works...

1) Colour code the language you want students to use (our first week was spent working on key verbs in order to start sentence building from the outset).

 

2) Print it (in colour) for each table / group.

3) Each table needs the word sheets, some whiteboard pens and some baby wipes.

4) Get building!

 

Initially I challenged the students to build as many 4 word towers as they could- basic requests. I then gave them 10 minutes to build as tall a tower as possible (1st word at the top then build down). You write the Spanish on one side and the English on the other (which also then helps when we look at word order). 

Next stage: peer feedback on how to improve- write "La frase fue"+ an opinion and then tell the other team how to improve it on a post-it for them to respond to, using the spontaneous language mats in each table box (see a screenshot below)

And then get building again. The biggest tower? 54 blocks- almost as tall as one of its makers! Way to go for week 2 of Spanish learning! 

I love it, I love it, I love it- and so did the students, who all felt that they were now able to create and develop short sentences. In fact, the only colour of block that we ran out of was orange- connectives!

 

MFL Cornwall- Teachmeet MFL, Bodmin College 13.2.13

Following the success of recent events over here in Devon the good folks over the border in Cornwall are looking to get a bit more active themselves and have some of the fun for themselves. 

So I've been delighted to get involved with the organisation of an MFL Teachmeet at Bodmin College on Thursday 13th February from 5pm until 7.30pm. It is being held as an Association for Language Learning event and is sponsored by Vocab Express, with the kind support of Bodmin College itself.

                  

For those of you who have never been to a Teachmeet before, their format is very simple. Firstly, they're free. Secondly, they're very informal, based on the concept of sharing. You can stand up and do a 7 minute presentation, a 2 minute presentation or, equally, just sit and soak it all up. There'll be tea, coffee, some wine and hopefully some cake, as well as plenty of opportunities to chat with other MFL teachers and find out what's going well in their classrooms, as well as sharing and discussing any concerns that people might have. Most importantly, they really are not threatening at all- if even the slightest thing has gone well, please please share- if it can help somebody else to help their students learn better, to create a better atmosphere, to build the profile, to help with behaviour management, anything at all, please, please stand up and share- even if you've never presented at a "CPD" event before.

To sign up to come in any capacity at all please add your name and any relevant details to the page here

 

Wespeke- dating software to match language learners

I've been contacted by a company in the USA who are looking to expand into the UK, and would love your feedback on it, pretty, pretty please!

Wespeke is a very, very clever site which uses software traditionally associated with dating sites to match registered language students. It looks at their interests in order to generate topics that the students will actually want to learn about- we all know how difficult it can be to talk to people we don't know and who, invariably, we have nothing in common with. Traditional communication exchanges, usually done via letters, invariably fell down because the students didn't necessarily share enough common ground to genuinely want to interact. Wespeke seeks to overcome that- and I really like it, not least because it also provides a social media experience allowing language learners to find people from all over the globe to match with! Plus, it's designed with language learners and language teachers very much in mind, providing 2 levels of membership according to your role.

At the moment I know that Wespeke is brimming with users in North America and has really started to pick up users across South America, Spain and now bit by bit in France. As my invitations screen below shows I've already been contacted by people in both Spain and Mexico- intercultural opportunities abound!

But they've only just started to turn to our delightful shores. So whilst I've been talking to the team over in Pittsburgh I've also had a few messages from one of their team who's based in Madrid asking if any schools over here are looking to pair with any Spanish schools- anyone interested? As I said earlier, I'd love to hear your feedback both so I can pass it over to the team in the States but also to be able to better support the schools that I already work directly with. 

 

Rachel Hawkes is coming to Devon!

Dr Rachel Hawkes is, without doubt, one of the most inspirational, influential,kind and generous MFL teachers in this country. She's the queen of the TES, she's the President of ALL this year and her resources are used by pretty much every department across the country at one time or another.

And she's coming to Devon.

On Friday 14th February Rachel will be presenting 2 keynotes at an Association for Language Learning conference I have had the pleasure of organising with Newton Abbot College. She will also be presenting a workshop session on "Classroom Talk- spontaneity and challenge". We are delighted that Caroline Grant and Nina Elliot, truly inspirational figures, will also be running workshops. As will I.

The focus of the day is about finding ways to empower students. How to give them the tools to interact and use language creatively, but also ideas to get the students doing the work rather than the teacher, developing their independence. Crucially, Caroline will also be running a session on differentiation to enable every student to maximise their learning potential.

It's also pretty cheap (which I like!), especially if you're already a member of ALL. It will be £90 for non-members and £30 for members, whilst for students it will be £30 for non-members and £10 for members. Non-members will receive a year's membership for signing up.

For more details and a booking form please e-mail [email protected] who has done a great job in organising the day!

Download Newton Abbot College conference February 14th 2014

  

ALL Devon- Rapid-fire CPD in Plymouth: Do more!

39 language teachers all together, buzzing, sharing ideas and reinvigorating each other. On a wet, dark Thursday evening. Absolutely blinking amazing. Sorry, I should say 38 language teachers and a senior manager coming to see what all the noise he'd been hearing was actually about!

We'd decided upon 4 topics for 30 minutes of discussion as a result of the suggestions given by teachers attending previous events. And so it was that engaging boys, effective ideas for Controlled Assessments, using technology effectively and differentiation were decided upon. Not the easiest things to discuss as all of them are at the very core of what language teachers are constantly trying to develop. 

I have to say that I found writing a presentation on engaging boys and trying to encourage spontaneity both incredibly frustrating and incredibly thought-provoking in equal measures- especially as I was desperately trying to fight off generalisations and presumptions even whilst talking about generalised issues. I think I failed on that one, but hey ho. I also fear that a large number of the slides deal with very basic ideas which we all do automatically- sorry for teaching great teachers to suck eggs, it was most definitely not my intention. I'd love your additional thoughts on engaging boys, please please get in touch.

Before you even think about looking through the presentation below, please read the fantastic blog post on the subject by Jo Quatsch- a lovely person and a great teacher.

 

Adding deeper meaning- making language learning relevant and engaging, Plymouth schools, October 2013

Last Friday I was privileged to work with MFL teachers from across Plymouth on a subject that is very close to my heart. Those of you who have ever had the misfortune of chatting to me or attending any of my sessions will know that I think that we generally undersell ourselves in the MFL community.

 

How engaged would you be in discussing something which you already know about? My most pertinent anecdote deals with my first week of university (after another birthday this week that feels like a long, long time ago!). In my first small group Spanish session we were asked to introduce ourselves to the person sat next to us. We duly chatted and discovered that my new friend Nats and I came from only a few miles down the road from each other- in fact, our shared attitude to life has now lead us to still be good friends many years later. But when we walked down the corridor to our first small group French class we naturally sat next to each other. When we were told to introduce ourselves to each other again we pretty much sat in silence. Not because of any linguistic issues but simply because it felt like now we had nothing to talk about- any words we uttered felt pointless. I fear that's often the case in many MFL classrooms. So much of our teaching time is spent focusing on words and constructions to describe subjects that our students already know about- the "old school" subjects like house and home, healthy living, local area. Subjects that get dealt with at KS2 in many cases, then again at KS3 and are finally flogged to death at KS3. I know that I've always struggled to vary the content and approaches hugely between the revisitings when I've been expected to deal with them in their traditional forms. If we are to encourage engagement we need, need, need to engage our students with the content that we are dealing with- demonstrating the intercultural elements that undoubtedly grabbed all of us language teachers when we were first learning the language. When we've done that we need to actually give them the tools to get their hands dirty with the content. Language of discussion, of debate, of disagreement, of approval. 

The session also looks at a few ways to build the profile of MFL departments, following 2 strands. The first is my old drum of providing audience through blogs, podcasts, Twitter feeds and even guerrilla QR codes around the school / community. The second is something that in my current freelance role is occupying far more of my time, and which I'm incredibly passionate about- developing projects to motivate students and demonstrate how language really can be used creatively for a real world purpose. If any of the bullet points make sense and you'd like to know any more then please, please get in touch. Equally, if you've got your own ideas washing around in there, I'd love to hear them and see if we can make them become reality!