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

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. 

Uruguay legalisation- a lesson update

Sometimes you teach a lesson and it restores your... hope. It reminds you of why you love doing the job that you do.

Pleasingly, I had one of those lessons last week- the last session I taught on the Thursday- ideal timing given that I was out of school on Friday for the Newton Abbot conference. 

As such, I thought I'd share it. 

It was an updated version of a session that I love- discussing the legalisation of marijuana in Uruguay with a group of mostly year 9s. The number of misconceptions that I could challenge was fascinating (in TL), their cultural knowledge soared and they were really drawn in to the central debate- should we legalise or not, and what might the arguments be? To add to this, when students realised that the very first slide was from a real governmental campaign really left them surprised (this was a fairly low ability group) and buoyed.

The fact that after the session, as I was walking a few students up the lane to their next session, they wanted to carry on the discussion (including using elements of TL), demonstrated the success of the session. So please feel free to use the materials below, and let me know what changes you make so that I can add them myself!

Download 3- Uruguay drug legalisation C1

Download Drug opinions speaking frame

Download Uruguay highlighting deductions C1

Download Uruguay highlighting deductions diff C1

Newton Abbot conference- 13th February 2015

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!

 

ShelterBox Spanish Challenge- a competition for schools across the country!

Last year it was a pleasure to team up with the fantastic charity ShelterBox to develop the ShelterBox Challenge. We've made some key changes in 2014 to make it more user-friendly, more effective and, hopefully, better for departments and for students during the year ahead! 

So please have a read of the details below, which are also available at www.smore.com/5j3b   and then share it with as many people as you can before getting involved yourself!

 

Making good on a promise- cyberbullying lesson (in Spanish)

As per my promise to myself and on the blog to try to share more resources and ideas, please find below the materials that I used a few weeks ago for a 90minute lesson with year 6 students. Boy was it a whirlwind, but great learning and creativity took place all 3 times that I ran the session, thus suggesting that it works!

The main principles for me were to get students to work out new language but then to be able to convert that into short sentences, realising how simple it can be to make this leap. I also wanted students to begin to understand a little bit about grammar, hence Buzz Lightyear made an appearance to explain infinitives (TO infinitive and beyond, given how that's how we form an infinitive in English). But also I wanted students to be able to have some phonics and then write and record some sentences to give their opinions on the subject- a massive sense of satisfaction for the students involved, who will now know exactly what to expect in September.

Anyway, I hope it's useful for someone!

Download Student induction June 2014

Download Student induction word list

Download NAME CARDS

Developing spontaneity- table boxes

One of my main priorities in February when I started teaching part time at Route 39 was to increase both the ability and desire of students to use the Target Language. Taking over part way through a year adds massive challenges to this in terms of developing the right mentality for this, but we're getting there...

Along with wall support, an emphasis on using key verbs to springboard into sentences, a group talk variant and thinking skills tasks such as reading images, each table (4 students) now has their own spontaneity and support box. I share the classroom with an English and Humanities teacher, so can't tape things to desks or leave things out permanently, but this solution actually brings students back a bit closer to their primary school days where table boxes tend to be a norm. 

Each box contains:

• 2 x dictionaries- it takes a strong learner to stand up and walk across a room to find a dictionary, grabbing the attention of everyone in the class. This way they just reach across and look things up.
• 4 x red / yellow / green flicker cards. Students are becoming familiar (still a way to go for it to be fully integrated) with the need to indicate their comprehension and confidence levels with the appropriate colour card. They also know to support their team group, so if someone has a red card out they should receive immediate attention from someone with a green card on their table. Only if that doesn't work during a task should things fly up the chart to me. I want my students to be thoughtful, not dependent, learners, and sharing knowledge reinforces new learning.
• A-D cards for voting
• 2 x spontaneity mats- although I want to get students to redraft these themselves next term.
• Download Spontaneous language mat May 2014
• 2 feedback mats- to try to develop feedback in the target language peer-to-peer and also to allow me to then develop the level of TL that I can use myself for feedback, which at the moment (5 months in) tends to be predominantly in English as we develop students understanding of my expectations and how they need to develop themselves.
• Download Oral feedback form (massive thanks to Nina Elliot for this idea and the original grid)

However, with summer ahead, I'd love to reflect on how to improve the boxes- any ideas, folks?

 

Gifted and Talented event- some resources and thoughts

I was delighted to be invited a few months ago to run a Gifted and Talented event for selected Key Stage 3 students in a local school, Chulmleigh Community College. All of the students learn only French and the Head of Department was keen to get them reflecting on HOW they learn and how they can begin to take more responsibility for their own learning, thus allowing them to become more independent moving forward.

And so we decided to teach them some Spanish. I needed very little persuasion with this, as those of you who know me won't be surprised to hear.

However, I also wanted to learn from the fantastic Alex Blagona, who I consider to be the King of Gifted and Talented, having run numerous sessions over the years in Suffolk to really stretch his learners. He advised that we just give students some language and allow them to mould it into something productive- he recommended to create a campaign on cyberbullying. 

I took that concept and ran with it, but wanted to get students reflecting on the nature of how a language fits together and how you can take responsiblity for progressing your own knowledge base.

So we looked at...

• language patterns, in particular standard suffixes
• memory skills
• developing accuracy
• logic and deduction
• reworking language into personalised sentences
• risk taking and redrafting

All of which, in my eyes, help to make fantastic language learners.

Now, and I might be doing myself out of future gainful employment, but I've spoken up about sharing recently, so I'm going to stick to that. Please find the resources that I used below- I hope they help!

Download Chulmleigh G&T running dictation

Download Chulmleigh G&T word cloud

Download Chulmleigh G&T May 2014

Download NAME CARDS

 

Chulmleigh g&t may 2014 from Chris Fuller