After seeing @dominic_mcg and @bonjour_miss mention Only Connect on Twitter, I read @dominic_mgs' blog and loved his ideas which are here. So, I decided to try it out and here's my adaptation.  However, credit is due to them both.

For those that don't know Only Connect, it is a TV programme where contestants have to guess the connections between words or groups of words.

I've picked two rounds and going to use them as a starter with a mixed-ability Y9 French class.

Photos were taken from Google Images.

I decided to sign up for the Secondary Education Show and Tell session at Language World 2012, but no-one there had prepared to show or tell, so it was down to a few people to spontaneously present.

I'm sure that many people know about Prezi already, however I decided to show the results of a Y8 top set class who had 15mins Prezi teaching from me and 45mins to prepare the presentations.  And for the record, I'm a Prezi novice!  So any tips or recommendations, please pass them onto me!

Here is an example of a Prezi which I used for my Y9 class when I taught them about Berufe.  The class really liked the presentation because I think it adds a bit more excitment and interest into the lesson.  Looking back, I have presentated the language as a stereotypical language lesson, however, please see Eva Lamb's thoughts in my previous post on presenting new language!

<div class="prezi-player"><style type="text/css" media="screen">.prezi-player { width: 550px; } .prezi-player-links { text-align: center; }</style><div class="prezi-player-links"><p>Y9 Berufe on Prezi</p></div></div>

 

Here is an example of a Prezi completed by a Y8 student in 45mins.

<div class="prezi-player"><style type="text/css" media="screen">.prezi-player { width: 550px; } .prezi-player-links { text-align: center; }</style><div class="prezi-player-links"><p>Berlin 8tDe1 on Prezi</p></div></div>

 

At my first placement school, I prepared a quick How To sheet on registering to, using and creating a Prezi.  I offered to email it during the Show & Tell session, however for everyone else, here it is.

This weekend saw the annual CPD-filled event, Language World 2012 hosted by the ALL.  I was unable to attend both days, however despite this, I still learnt so many new techniques!

My sessions were:

Communication in the Classroom by Steven Fawkes and Colin Christie.

Grammar... and communication? Friends - not foes by Martine Pillette.

Mixed ability AND mixed experience classes: mission impossible? by Eva Lamb.

I have to give a mention to the other sessions which I know are fantastic, however I didn't attend as we, at York Uni, have already experienced them through Uni sessions.

John Connor (@bootleian) is absolutely brilliant at giving ready-made, easy and fun techniques which will incorporate students with SEN into the MFL classroom.  From his sac magique to his velcro apron - you are sure to leave with ideas coming out of your ears!

Suzi Bewell (suzibewell) gave a presentation on the importance of Intercultural Understanding in the classroom.  As my Uni lecturer, I know her ideas are fun and exciting!

 

So what were the main ideas from each session?

Communication in the classroom is important to build confidence and understanding of the target language.  Teacher should be there to engineer spontaneity and provide opportunities for students to give language at certain times in the lesson.  Students need to be aware of when to give the language though - otherwise chaos may ensue with a constant barrage of trivial language!  Visual clues, mime or gestures should be used to scaffold correct for things such as missing auxillary verbs and infinitives or incorrect syntax.  Usually it is the case that the students want to talk about the trivial.  It might seem counter-productive to talk about things which are not included in the SoW or POS, however the main point is that the students are talking and manipulating language to suit their needs.  Surely this is more important than producing simple sentences about the ages/professions of their parents?

Grammar and communication go hand in hand.  As an ITT, I am often told that I need to make sure we are covering the correct grammatical points and the students are able to reproduce the rules when asked.  I often find that even after spending an hour on "depuis" in French, the students still struggle to reproduce the sentence "j'habite in York depuis 10 ans" because they want to follow the English past tense structure.  This really frustrates me and I am so pleased I was able to attend this session!  Martine's main point was that grammar should be taught through context before explicitly explaining or giving the rules/ideas.  Why hasn't anyone said this to me before?  It's simple and brilliant!  Martine provided us with 7 main activities which can be adapted and used in any language with any ability.  By teaching grammar in terms of syntax instead of morphology, students can see rules in use and therefore there is a purpose to learning it.  She also pressed the point that grammar needs to be taught and practised through Listening, Reading and Speaking as well as Writing.  Instead of writing practice sentences over and over, students should be exposed to the other skills because it is proven that these skills aid memorisation (and it provides an interesting variety of activities!)

Mixed ability and mixed experience classes are not impossible to teach.  Eva Lamb demonstrated to us how a new, exciting curriculum can really change our teaching of languages and help with integrating all abilities and all students into one classroom.  The learning, however, must change from being teacher-led to being pupil-led.  This is vital to ensure progress and learning of all students.  The students need to learn from each other and develop life-long learning skills.  The best idea from the session was about "presenting" language in the classroom.  She believes, noun-dominated lessons are the death of secondary MFL and I thoroughly agree.  Eva simply demonstrated how learning mats have significantly changed her teaching.  Students are given a learning mat at the beginning of a module (which they stick into the exercise books).  The mat is jam-packed with nouns, conjugated verbs and expressions which the students will encounter throughout the module.  Instead of presenting key words at the beginning, Eva teaches the words within a context.  Students then take control of their learning and cross-reference unknown words with their learning mats.  They encounter the words so often, that there is no need for the explicit teaching of nouns.  This results in more time for complex ideas and fun activities!  Certainly doesn't seem impossible to me.

Finally, I don’t want to forget to mention all of the stalls, colleagues and information available at Language World.  Similar to the Language Show Live in London, there are representatives from many different companies and businesses.  Two which I gained a lot from were: British Council who were providing information about their Language Assistants programme, funding available for new initiatives and teacher exchanges in America; and The Language Point is a new website which is dedicated to the sharing of resources for MFL – it’s free to join, free to upload and you get to keep the rights to your own resources!

After spending hours thinking how to teach "was ist dir wichtig" creatively, I found a brilliant website where people upload photos of their favourite things but it's now unfortunately null and void!

I set homework to take 4 photos of what is important, mega important, most important and not important to the student to a group of unmotivated Y9s.

One lesson of "Was ist dir wichtig" and one pupil does their homework in one night at such a high standard!!

Really puts a smile on my and pride in my stomach!

You can check screen shots of the website and my lesson on TES. Search HerrT.

So before finishing Uni, Suzi gave us a task to set two pieces of homework.

1.  Plan how to set "label 6 pets" homework.

2.  Plan how to set TWO homeworks for Y7 on the topic of family - one must result in written homework, the other a learning homework.

 

1.  I decided to use zoo animals in German as I think this would create more of a reaction with the students and interest them more.  The students in the lesson will have already learnt 9 animals which can be found in a zoo and the following animals are done at home.

I would set the homework after giving the objectives to the class at the beginning of the lesson.  This is to make sure that there is enough time for questions and problems, and secondly to the students can see that the homework has a real connection to the lesson and curriculum.  I would go through the worksheet and explain how to complete it - this will including eliciting the English names of the animals in the pictures.

 

2.  I decided to mix both writing and learning together for this homework.  The students will write out each word several times and there they will stick a litte better in their heads!  I used current celebrities so that the students will have a close connection to the work (and I included two French personalities for IU).  The second section of the homework is supported by the first activity.  The students are given a choice of either writing about themselves or a fake family - this is because some students do not feel comfortable talking about themselves and also by giving the choice to the students they are in control of their own learning.  In addition, this fosters creativity!

Again, I would set this homework immediately after the lesson objectives for the same reasons as above!

In all the homework activities I have included "I must:" and "To be successful:" so that the students (and parents) are fully aware of the task instructions and the success criteria, therefore, they can use these to support their learning and to proof read and check over their work once they have finished.  These also give me the opportunity to self- or peer-assess the work in class if I decide so.  Each activity also includes an example to scaffold the students' learning.  And finally, I have included an "Extension" activity after each activity in order to differentiate and challenge AG&T students.

After rejecting my blog for a while I thought I'd write about my first few weeks working full time in school.  When I was told that the time would fly by - they weren't wrong.  Before I knew it, I had finished and already back in Uni for a busy final week before Christmas.

My favourite class was without a doubt my top set, year 8 German.  They were truely unbelievable and I've been told I'll struggle to find another class like them.  With 20 AG&T and 1 SEN out of 34, they were my biggest challenge but most fun.  I tried many different techniques, strategies and ideas on them, all of which were successful and went down really well with them!

I made some flashcards with indivdiual words to teach modal verbs and word order - human sentencing in groups as a competition really worked well.

<div class="prezi-player"><style type="text/css" media="screen">.prezi-player { width: 550px; } .prezi-player-links { text-align: center; }</style><div class="prezi-player-links"><p>Berlin 8tDe1 on Prezi</p></div></div>

Over a period of three weeks I was given the opportunity to teach this class in an ICT suite.  The class get 1/4 lessons in the ICT suite and they usually just follow the same Linguascope, Mylo route, however I thought of something different.  Some lessons were dedicated to research and the final two were dedicated to Prezi.  The students were fantastic - after 15 mins explaining Prezi to the whole class, some had finished in 45 mins!  If you would like to see more, please click here >> http://prezi.com/explore/search/page/1/?search=berlin%208tde1

This is an example of a Learning Hook I used in school.  Every half-term all teachers attend meetings called Teaching and Learning Communities where they discuss and share cross curricular ideas which they can use in the classroom.  Before I was there full-time, they did a session on learning hooks which are used to re-engage the students and inject some enjoyment into the subject/lesson.  They can take any form: video, quote, photo...  Here, I had the tables split into two - Ost and West.  And the students had to decide which they would like to buy.  They then moved to a corner of the classroom depending on their location and car.  A discussion followed about the Trabbi in East Germany.

 

A TL&C session which I did attend was about Progression, and how students can see and reflect on their progression.  Some great ideas I really liked and used are below:

 

Some things which I would love to get involved in, in the future, perhaps even in my next placement school:

- International Film Club.  I think this would be excellent for ALL students, not just those studying an MFL.  And perhaps, with new, interesting, engaging films, it may help with uptake at KS4 and KS5.

- QuadBlogging.  I've seen this on Twitter from @Deputymichtell and I think it's a great idea.  Perhaps with 2 German (or French schools) and 2 UK schools - show how others are learning languages, get ideas, real audiences for students' work, improve L, R, W, and S skills!

- Using Google (and it's tools).  #GTAUK  Let's hope there's another course next year!

- Group talk.  Using the ideas from this year's ALL conferences in Sheffield.

- Using the outside to get students to learn and remember.  Just because it will be Spring/Summer.

If you can help or have ideas, please let me know.  And vice-versa!

Information and Communication Technology or ICT is something we all take for granted nowadays.  From creating posters with Publisher to sending and receiving our emails from our mobile phones - we all use one form of ICT or another everyday. 

Today's children are what most researchers call 'digital natives' and the adults 'digitial immigrants'.  Children have been brought up with technology and the internet since birth; whilst they were being borne, the adults were fearing the Millenium Bug which was thought to bring down every computer across the world.

In the classroom, using ICT is often debated and is constantly in academic discourse.  In order to keep our students engaged and interested in our lessons, I believe, we need to tap into what they are good at, what they enjoy and what they need to improve.  Today, students are probably more comfortable with ICT than many current teachers and being in front of a computer screen is certainly not alien to the majority.  By using ICT, we can challenge their minds and foster learning whilst keeping them within their comfort zone.

I class myself to be neither a digital native, nor a digital immigrant - I grew up with a Commodore 64 with its blue screen and flashing cursor and those infamous BBC computers (which I only used once in a maths lesson). 

Whilst I was at school, ICT was never used to engage me, and never used to help my learning.  However, as I was coming to the end of my school career, ICT started to be taught in school and I, thankfully, learnt the basics - how to create a poster selling Christmas trees with Publisher.

This week Suzi has introduced to some of her favourite website, tools and facilities to support language learning.  All of which were interative, exciting, fun with strong pedagogical reasons behind them.  To experiement (which I think is vital when using ICT) I have created an alternative version to PowerPoint, a slideshow with www.Prezi.com, to show my thoughts and ideas from the session.

Suzi introduced us to www.storybird.com last week when we were learning about teaching Reading (AT3) in the MFL classroom and she gave us a target of creating our own Storybird story.

Storybird is fool-proof, collaborative storytelling for everyone.  I believe stories are key to language learning in particular, they show real-life use of the target language, stimulate creativity and they can be manipulated and recycled over and over with analysing grammar points.

By using a central story on, for example, an interactive whiteboard, the class are brought together to experience the story and emotions together; the automatic full screen function of Storybird shows that the makers of Storybird believe this to be an integral part of the experience.  The story connects, not only the artist to the writer electronically, but a reader to other peer-readers, and therefore, children to other children.  The quick links and speedy emailing functions allow the readers to (near enough) instantaneously send the emotive e-story onto other.  This is superb for the language classroom; pupils can return home and show their parents the foreign language story which they read in school that day.  This would certainly be the case for younger pupils as, for them, stories are associated with home-life, bed-time and their relationship with their parents; it would be strange for them to read a story and not tell their parents all about it.  What is more statisfying than being able to read a foreign language story and to teach others the meaning of it?

When it comes to creating a Storybird, it's extremely simple.  The artwork is beautiful and the format is dummy-proof.  What I struggled with was my creativity.  We are often told to think about the Learning Objectives before creating activities, therefore I tried to concentrate so much on a particular grammar point that my creativity was stilted.  After a break of a few days I returned to Storybird and decided to let the creative juices flow and see what happened...

Here is the result:

<span style="display:block;font-family:Georgia,Times New Roman,serif;font-size:14px;margin:5px 0 10px 0;">Qu'est-ce que Charlotte espère?

Here is a quick YouTube video commercial on YouTube:

Today I completed my first (and I think only) microteaching lesson with peers as pretend students and Suzi watching my every  pedagogical move.

I decided to do the lesson in French, despite it being my second language, mainly for the challenge and to also give me an opportunity to learn the everyday classroom language needed.

I never had a good experience of learning weather - it was either straight from the text book (say 'neblig' to me and I immediately see a man with a green, guey fog in front of his face!) or just by using basic flashcards.  Nick Mair in his session Memoring and Memorising at #LSLive2011 explained how memory is dependent on the morale of the learner.  I wanted to do a flashcard lesson to, not only test my ability in making them engaging and physically using them, but to also make the lesson memorable for the students. 

To introduce the lesson, I completed a short PowerPoint presentation just to remind and recall the vocabulary from the previous lesson.  It was a quick-fire, short activity to get the students stimulated and engaged with not so much mental thought (some peers didn't like the militant-like timings). I didn't thoroughly enjoy this activity, however I did not want to jump straight into the next activity without any scaffolding, so I needed to create something.

As a result of Memoring and Memorising seminar I came up with the idea of mixing both kinesthetic learning (I felt I had involved the visual learners with the flashcards and the audio learners with reading aloud) with intercultural understanding in the form of a 'weather TV show' style starter using a map of France.  I wanted to get the students to place the weather symbols on the map themselves to engage those kinesthetic learners but, more importantly, I wanted them to remember their experience of being there.  Therefore, they had to personify the image in a physical action in front of the class before tacking the flashcards to the board.  This had some fantastic results: my favourite being http://rickyg.posterous.com's gangster style of 'il fait beau à Limoges'.  Reflecting on this activity: for some classes I think the personification of the images would be challenging and daunting and for others too kinesthetic, keeping them hyped up all lesson.

After this activity I presented the lesson objectives, both orally and visually, in French.  I then gave the class the opportunity to discuss, in pairs, the objectives in English; after a short discussion I assessed their understanding by asking for the meanings of each objective in English.  This encourgaged them to read, understand and comprehend the objectives and therefore taking control of their learning.  The reason why I did this was because I saw it being used in a TTV video and wanted to experiement and see what my peers thought of it. The feedback was mixed - some felt they should have been more in English, some felt they took up too much time, others liked it.  I think I'm still more of a fan, just because it's another change to use the target language without compromising the understanding.  But here's the video...

http://bcove.me/2rnbhxe0

From the brilliant feedback I've recieved from my peers and Suzi, here are my targets for next time (ie in the actual classroom):

• Try not to speak too loudly, too aggresively or too quickly.
• Allow more whole class participation (eg. chanting for flashcards)
• Try to make the instructions more clear
• Check for typos
• More praise

 

 

So yesterday was the Languages Show Live in London and what a day it was!

I thoroughly enjoyed all of the seminars and it was fastastic to have real teachers sharing their advice, ideas and resources with everyone.

No brainer blooding with Joe Dale was the first seminar and he explained how to use Posterous in an easy and quick way!  It's simples: send an email to 'post@posterous.com' and you're done!  Excellent to hear from an ICT genius who shows you exactly how simple it is to embed a YouTube vido, home video or photos onto your blog.

Décourez les sports olympiques with Juliet Park was brilliant!  Something we will most definitely be using next year during the run up to the games.  Her ideas were superb and simple to do!  Intergrating Intercultural Understanding, cross-curricular activites, fun and engaging ideas into simple lesson plans which lend themselves perfect to real-time events.

Youth Olympic Games 2012 Innsbruck: here we have I.U, relatable people to our students and something which is cool, fun, and engaging for today.

Key figues and personalities from the past.  This can focus on anyone who is a hero of any past Olympic Games, eg Jessie Owens 1936, Kip Keino 1968.  Excellent idea for cross-curriculum with Citizenship and History.

Injuries - we've seen this already from Suzi but disgusting and stomach-wrenching photos from sports is a magnificant in gaining the attention of the students, and more significantly, creating strong memories!

Extreme Sports lends itself well to gaining attention, motivating students as well as teaching extended vocabulary and specific grammar points.

Other seminars include Memory and Memorising, Gems on the web and using ICT in the MFL classroom - all most likely to be on the wiki!