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

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

 

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- getting a bit more CPD old school in Plymouth

Howdy all,

after the immense success of the last #MFLDevon event in Exeter at the start of October, it's time to shift back down to Plymouth. Having run 2 MFL Teachmeets in the area we felt teachers might appreciate a slightly calmer approach this time round. So, having taken comments from delegates during the last 2 events, Caroline Grant and I have put together an evening on Thursday 7th November at Eggbuckland Community College, Plymouth of 4 x 30 minute sessions with topics to hopefully stimulate and help. Most importantly, tickets are free. And available from http://bit.ly/PlymouthNov13 . This probably won't be such a big event as the previous 2, but absolutely the more the merrier- as part of the success of the evening won't just be down to the presentations themselves but the interactions and follow-up discussions which will hopefully allow everyone present to go away with plenty of practical ideas to implement.

OK, the course of the evening...

5pm- arrive and drink tea / wine. And hopefully munch on a few biscuits.

5.15- presentation 1: me (darn it, was hoping not to this time!). Approaches to help develop spontaneity, but leaning towards focusing on getting boys involved and active

5.45- presentation 2: Sophie Nicholson (South Dartmoor Community College)- ideas for improving the conduct of Controlled Assessments

6.15- break to refill glasses / mugs / biscuit supplies

6.25- presentation 3: Ben Rowe (Saltash.net)- embedding technology and not just for the sake of it

7.00- presentation 4: Caroline Grant (Eggbuckland Community College)- differentiation that works for everyone

If you can't make it on the evening but would like to follow along online then please feel free to. We'll be using the Twitter hashtag #MFLDevon again. The more interactions the richer the evening will be for one and all.

Finally, a big thank you yet again to Vocab Express for helping to make this event a reality!

 

More than words- languages in the world of work

I was recently invited to present at an event in Plymouth at Devonport High School for Girls. For once this wasn't me talking about pedagogy or methodology but about the actual end point that languages can take you to in the real world- how do languages contribute to getting a job? What can you really do with them?

I've told so many of the students that I've taught that languages are useful. That they help you get a job. But do they? When I'd agreed to do the presentation it suddenly struck me that I needed some actual information, not just me waffling. So I tweeted and I used Facebook and wondered what would turn up...

The Prezi below was what I used on the day before we launched into an exciting day of "language journalism". The year 8s I was presenting to were working in groups to translate Target Language articles in a variety of languages and collate them into a newspaper, using their own devices and a Language Lab. The groups then also had to prepare a "live" news report, including a foreign language interview from the scene. Alas, as so often happens, technology scuppered some of our plans (the USB ports on the computer we were using decided to malfunction), the students created some great pieces- and did some great ad-libbing as well!

My main focus was that languages are a vital transferrable skill in a world where few people stay in the same career throughout their working lives. What do you have to offer to a potential employer? Which could a business do more rapidly, train you to speak a language or to operate in their business environment? A real no brainer there. But what surprised me from the responses I received to my social media messages was how varied the careers are of my friends, in many cases people I've studied with at school or university. Many of them would not consider themselves fluent, yet have got ahead in their chosen fields as a result of being able to offer language skills.  A powerful motivator, as clearly demonstrated by the impressive statements in the evaluation document below. Journalists, lawyers, accountants, marketing agents, engineers, Human Resources, translators and diplomats. People whose job titles I don't understand but whose jobs look amazing (and terrifying in equal measures!). Generally people who have used their languages- and not just to be a language teacher!

Download Students comments on evaluations 

 

My Torquay presentation- blogs, podcasts and all sorts of fun

Howdy everyone and a big thank you again for last Thursday to those who were down in Torbay. I've now created the slidecast of my presentation which I hope will be useful to refresh any thoughts and also for cascading to other members of your department. And remember, if I can help at any time, feel free to get in touch!

As the podcasts weren't playing on the TBGS system, you can download a few examples below as well, I hope they spark off some creativity. Everything's on itunes and can be found by searching for Edgehill or ChrisFuller. I think!

Blogs, Podcasts And All Sorts Of Fun

View more presentations from MrF.

Download Future (from grammar series)

Download Lost Property (a role-play rap)

SSAT Lead Practitioner interview day

On Thursday I had the fantastic experience of taking part inthe SSAT's Lead Practitioner interview process. Fantastic both because it took place at Stamford Bridge, allowing me to show my true red colours, but also because it gave me the opportunity to hear some really interesting people share their fascinating ideas for how we can improve language teaching. It also gave me the chance to grill Nick Brown about his belly dancing at Language World, but that's a completely different story.

Anyway, here's my slidecast of my presentation...

| View | Upload your own

SSAT day in Putney

Download its_a_bloggers_life.ppt

Many, many thanks to everyone who came to Putney on Friday for Neil Jones' fascinating SSAT day on future pathways for languages. I have to say that Neil's presentation was one of the most enlightening that I've ever experienced. My train journey back to Devon flew by as I got to play with the mind-blowing resources he'd so kindly presented us with.

Content and Language Integrated Learning is designed to up both the cultural and mental stimulation involved in teaching languages, by focusing on, to some degree, supporting the learning going on in other subject areas- for example his year 9s study about plate tectonics- in French.

My head is so full of ideas for using Music, History, Art and Geography modules in my teaching during the months to come... just need the time to sit down and play around!!!

Many thanks have to go to Neil for organising a great day, to Lesley Walsh for being far too complementary (when she wasn't being rude to me, anyway!!!!) and to everyone involved for some very kind comments.