Facing the currently unknown: PSME

Wednesday, February 18, 2015

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

Feb 18, 2015 8:54:59 PM | CLIL, cross-curricular, Engaging boys, Lesson ideas, PSME, Putting words into action, Route 39 MFL, Shifting the emphasis

Sunday, August 03, 2014

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

Aug 3, 2014 8:53:51 PM | KS3 curriculum, Lesson ideas, Primary languages, PSME, Putting words into action, Route 39 MFL

Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Shelterbox for year 8

What do you really need to live contentedly?

What would you do after a disaster? How would you cope and how would you feel?

To be honest those were my basic premises for putting together a unit about the Chilean earthquake of 2010- a disaster that struck a beautiful part of the country that I'd visited only a few months before. I'd put together a unit on Haiti a few years ago for French so wanted to see if I could do something similar in Spanish and really challenge my year 8s to think about how fortunate they really are, even just to have a solid roof over their heads, decent food and, although they often don't accept the point, a good education provision.

Again I wanted to focus on discussion and debate in this unit as well as creativity and empathy- hence why the unit was building up to a reading image task to be shared on Voicethread - a site which I often feel is very underrated simply because it doesn't offer all the whizzbangs but which is great for sharing discussions and encouraging peer assessment.

So here it is. Nothing special but hopefully a tad thought-provoking...

Download 2- Shelterbox

Jul 24, 2012 3:06:43 PM | CLIL, cross-curricular, KS3 curriculum, Lesson ideas, Projects, PSME, Putting words into action, School, Thinking differently, Thinking skills

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

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

View more presentations from Chris Fuller.

Without audio

Cross Curricular At RGS Wycombe

View more presentations from Chris Fuller.

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...)