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

Saltash.net's Olympic Minecraft project

 

 

 

 

 

 

I love it when teachers get creative. So it was with great delight that I received the flyer above from Elodie Tremellat at Saltash (those of you who came to the Newton Abbot conference in February may well have had the opportunity to listen to her Head of Department, Ben Rowe, who is a true tech inspiration to me). I love the idea of the project above and will definitely be sitting down with a few people at school to see if they might be interested in getting involved. Elodie's still on the hunt for more participants, both from the UK and abroad, so please please carry on sharing this flyer! 

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!

ShelterBox Spanish Challenge 2015-16, come join the creativity!

Hola,

 

with half term approaching (wow, that's gone quickly, I hope it's been productive!) I thought I'd just write a quick post to say that the ShelterBox Spanish Challenge 2015-16 is open for entrants and it would be great to have you involved! 

https://www.smore.com/5j3b-the-shelterbox-spanish-challenge (I've embedded this below as well)

 

Some of the entries last year were fantastic and really showcased the great creativity that are students are capable of. The winner was from The Burgate School and Sixth Form in Hampshire and is well worth a watch- https://www.dropbox.com/s/wj5btmdqf68yoj0/Luke%20Woodward%208x%20Spanish%20Shelter%20Box%20Project.mov?oref=e&n=22457083

 

Looking forward to hearing from you soon!

 

The details:

 

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!

 

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. 

Newton Abbot conference- 13th February 2015

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.