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

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!

 

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

PE in Spanish- a reflection of our ongoing programme

I've just been playing around adding some videos to my departmental blog, www.route39.typepad.com/spanish and it's made me reflect that I haven't really written any updates for a while. Like so many of us, I've hardly stopped for a pause at all since Christmas, so half term gives a suitable opportunity to think about how things have been going, and what changes I need to be making moving forward. Being a 1 person department has a lot of massive positives, but I'm really looking forward to having some company to talk things through with from September. Let's just hope the recruitment process works out well- and from early signs I'm sure it will!

 

Anyway, one of the main things that every visitor to school (we have lots, be they DfE, Mocksted, or other agencies interested in the tack that we're taking) wants to ask me about is the way that we are using PE as a medium to drive communication both for our higher ability students and some of our lower ability students. So far we've covered football, rugby, table tennis, health and fitness and now gymnastics. Sessions are pretty much exclusively in the target language, enabled by the physical elements of the sessions. Crucially, during the course of the units students build familiarity with the feedback grids that we use, both for peer to peer praise and feedback but also in self target setting. 

 

Positives so far

• really strong engagement- the type of students who normally protest at both TL use and at using the TL themselves use it and accept it as a standard part of the sessions. In fact, the lower ability group has recently requested classroom sessions as well in order to develop their PE in Spanish sessions- demonstrating that they're viewing the active sessions as more important, a real vindication of the policy.
• lower ability students in particular are really using their physical Spanish sessions to develop their sentence making abilities (neatly dovetailing with the work they are doing in their morning literacy sessions- every student has 30 minutes per day, Monday to Thursday).
• higher ability students see the session as a really fun part of their week- giving languages a great profile. They are then really transferring the language (in particular the grammatical elements that we use for feedback and also for peer and self target setting.

 

To develop

• More interaction / banter language for during sessions
• Opportunities for higher ability students to transfer their classroom knowledge across. A number already exploit their existing knowledge throughout sessions, but I need to find ways to structure this more adequately.
• I'm still desperately trying to get the school in Madrid that I've been having discussions with to tie down a date for a football / netball tour. When done I think this will really cement the motivational elements of the programme.

PE in Spanish- an update

The last few weeks of implementing PE in Spanish have been a steep learning curve, but fascinating with them. Of our 6 classes in school we currently have 4 who are receiving some or all of their PE in Spanish. It really is a fantastic opportunity to be able to grow this from nothing- this is a massive chance to do something differently, something which it would be virtually impossible to do with an established PE department. Our high quality (he's the coach of the GB U20 Ultimate Frisbee team) PE teacher has committed to trying to learn Spanish alongside our students and using it to deliver sessions alongside myself. 

Our main goals / methods at the moment. I'm writing this because we'd really love some feedback, please!!

• a determination not to compromise on the quality of the PE skill development. I, however, still need to do a lot of learning for myself in order to become a really high quality PE teacher in my own right. Plans are in place and observation trips planned!
• a focus on developing student to student interaction in the Target Language, using their language for a real purpose.
• Independent Study (homework within the extended school day) videos to highlight key techniques, vocab + develop Spanish listening skills, shared with students through Google Drive accounts.
• an emphasis on peer feedback in the target language. Even students who are "off games" are expected to use the learning mats for each skill to provide feedback to their peers, in Spanish.
• in line with the school's policy of reflecting on Learning Habits, students are supported to do this every lesson, with a Learning Habits grid on each skill mat and a phonics chart to support students.
• Download Shooting feedback grid + LH
• Download Shooting interaction vocab
• Download El fútbol feedback mat
• Download Skipping interaction vocab
• phonics, phonics, phonics. All students work on this every session.
• Lots of repetition from week to week and sport / skill to sport / skill to build up knowledge through familiarity.
• an openness that Sam, our PE teacher, is not a Spanish speaker, but is a Spanish learner. As part of his planning we work on the key language for each session (leading to him being able to run sections of sessions without my input). However, there is then an expectation that people can challenge him with his language outside of sessions- but he can also challenge them to remember key phonics or new words / phrases. Seeing students testing each other and him whilst eating their lunch, students who might traditionally be disconnected with language learning, has been incredibly uplifting.
• differentiation and groupings partially based on student reflections on their own ability and confidence. Students have completed the Google Doc below as part of their Independent Study during the course of the week and will be completing it again regularly to track their progress and attitudes.

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!

 

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