The Langwitch Chronicles

The end of an era

Yesterday was the end of an important chapter in my life.

Eight years ago, whilst looking for a teaching job with less hours, it was suggested to me that, maybe instead of reducing my hours I should apply to be Head of German/2nd in Area at Ian Ramsey C of E School in Stockton. “OK”, I thought…after all it was much closer to home and the school I attended where I gained my passion for Languages. I applied and was successful so started in the following January.

I’ve certainly had my ups and downs and highs and lows over the last 71/2 years. I went from 2nd in Area to 2 days a week for 2 years after Dan was born and enjoyed that, although I found sharing all of my classes very difficult and when a full-time member of the department was promoted elsewhere I offered to return to work full-time. After some to-ing and fro-ing it was agreed that I would and was thrown in at the deep end  with a difficult timetable and finding out (by accidenet) the day before term started I was to inherit a Year 8 Tutor Group. However, having got over the initial hurdles I achieved and “outstanding” in our OfSted Inspection and began blogging and Tweeting.

Since then my career has gone from strength to strength with, with me having the opportunity to speak at various locations on a range of topics becoming a Links into Languages trainer this year. At work I compiled our (succesfull) International School Award portfolio last year and have set up many international projects and even had the opportunity to teach ICT this year (heehee). Over the last 3 years I also became very fond of my surprise Tutor Group!

Earlier this year I applied for and was appointed to a new post which begins in September, so yesterday ended 8 years of my life…in fact more like 14 years if we include the 5 years I spend there as a pupils and the 5 years that my sister spent there too (she’s 2 years younger than me). I was very sad to leave yesterday as I have made some great friends who I will be friends with for many years to come, I was given loads of support and guidance by some very special people who I feel very priviledged to have worked with and I got to work with some fantastic pupils-mainly from my Tutor Group.

So, whilst I look forward with anticipation and excitement to the challenges of my new post as Head of Languages at St. Michael’s RC School in Billingham I also want to say thank you to all those who made my time at Ian Ramsey such an unforgettable experience.

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Busy Weekend

It’s been a while since I’ve been so busy over one weekend. However this weekend I shall be speaking in 3 different venues between Friday and Monday evening plus I am even going out with my husband!!

Tomorrow I am at the Northeast Regional ATLAS Conference at the Radisson Hotel in Durham. Myself and 7 of my best Year 10 eTwinners are talking about our school’s eTwinning activities

Tomorrow evening the Links into Languages Northeast Secondary Residential begins at Redworth Hall and I am to give a presentation on International Online Collaboration.

On Monday I am in Birmingham at my old stomping ground of Aston University for a Links into Languages West Midlands ICT event where I am speaking about eTwinning.

I will share all presentations next week…although 2 have the possibilitiy of being very, very similar…!

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Encouraging Independent Learners

A few months ago I wrote about an exciting project that I’m involved in through the LinkedUp funding scheme. The was idea to develop a substantial resource based around use of digital video and thinking skills to help teachers of MFL to encourage their pupils to become more independent at KS4/KS5. Interestingly for me, we are working on Yannick Noah‘s “Aux Arbres Citoyens” which covers the topic of environment. I find this interesting on 2 levels, firstly I think the environment can be a difficult topic to teach as there are lots of complicated structures to learn to use and pupils themselves are not always sure about what environmental issues there are (or maybe that’s just the one’s I have taught in recent years) and secondly, although French and German are equal “strengths” (or weaknesses, whichever you prefer) of mine I feel a lot more confident covering this kind of topic in German so it is fantastic for my French!!

Since beginning to work on the project with the other members of the Networks in Stockton and Middlesbrough, I have noticed a real change in my teaching approach not only when working on this particular topic but also in all areas of my teaching from Year 7 to Year 10 (I have no Y11 this year). I always thought that I was pretty good at encouraging my pupils to become independent learners  but I now feel I have moved up a gear. I have become much more aware of the kind of activities I set my pupils and readily come up with activities aimed at developing independent learning and using Higher Order Thinking Skills. These kinds of activities seem to come much more naturally to me now and, although they do take a little more preparation I’m finding it really worthwhile. I even don’t mind cutting up the little bits of paper for those kinaesthetic activities so much anymore (I usually end up getting in a right muddle with bits missing / to many bits in one envelope…I know, I’m hopeless!) I am currently a big fan of Mysteries, Inference Squares, Living Graphs, Venn Diagrams, Sorting and Quiz Quiz Trade activities however, my big favourite of the moment is creating a domino-type activity but as a jigsaw instead so that the pupils find out the meanings of words and phrases buy matching meanings and they know they’ve got them right because they all fit together to make a shape connected with the topic we are learning about. I have to admit that this is not the quickest or easiest resource to make but my classes really enjoy the activity and they learn a lot better than if I just gave them a list of words to copy out!

A while ago there was a discussion on the TES MFL Forum about Bloom’s Taxonomy and MFL and how they were difficult to do in MFL teaching. Chris Harte wrote this blogpost at the time in response to the discussion, pointing out how we can and do use Higher Order Thinking Skills in MFL all the time. I have to agree with him and I think benefits to our pupils are temendous. Too often we, as MFL teachers feel we must “spoon feed” our classes for fear of our results suffering, however,  if done well out pupils can do just as well learning through more independent activities, with the added benefit of our learners being able to communicate effectively, without needing their teacher stood next to them all the time (I for one can’t afford to go on holiday with all of my pupils!!).

Things to consider when setting pupils independent activities:

• Who are they working with?
• How is your classroom organised? (I like groups but if you prefer rows  or a horseshoe, maybe you will have to think about pupil movement within the lesson so that they can work together)
• How big are the groups going to be? ( I like 3 but no more than 4 otherwise I always end up with someone in the group taking a backseat)
• What kind of noise level do you expect from your pupils? (This kind of activity is bound to be noiser than individual work but if you are noise-sensitive like me, maybe you will want to talk to your pupils about noise-level expectations!)
• Are your pupils used to this kind of activity?(When I first began doing this, my pupils kept asking me whether they had the right answer, when with many of these activities there is no right or wrong answer-my pupils didn’t like this at first, as they were so used to there being only one possible answer!)
• Finally, pupils need practice at independent activities. To begin with they might not be used to working in groups and may think it’s actually gossip time. As with anything, training, practise and perseverence they will benefit from this!

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Happy 5th Birthday eTwinning

This week marks the 5th Anniversary of eTwinning.

For those of you who haven’t heard of eTwinning, it is the European Commission’s partner-finding and online collaboration tool. Schools and colleges (working with pupils and students between the ages of 3 and 20) can register their details, create a profile, search for partners and engage in online partnerships – all free of charge. Teachers and their students can form short or long term partnerships and collaborate on a whole range of curriculum based projects in any subject area using a variety of exciting and innovative ICT tools.

Photograph courtesy of Tony Barraclough Photography

I became involved with eTwinning 3 years ago when looking for a French partner school. I was inundated with schools wanting to set up projects with my school and we set up many successful projects. Since then I haven’t really looked back and run 1 or 2 projects every year, not just in MFL but also through PSHE with my lovely tutor group. In additions, it was our eTwinning work that really created the backbone of our International School Award last year.

Today is when schools are celebrating the 5th Year of eTwinning and to mark the occasion, thousands of schools around Europe had some kind of European

Photograph courtesy of Tony Barracough Photography

Celebration. Many school planted blue and yellow flowers but, always wanting to be different, we decided to have a “balloon release” with a birthday cake! After all of the environmental safety checks had taken place to make sure our balloons were eco-friendly we were good to go on Friday at midday. We released our balloons (blue and yellow of course), with a tag on them asking people who found them to email us to let us know where they found them. It was very effective and the balloons looked very happy bobbing away in the wind. I’m sure the hail storm 10 mins later helped them on their way no end!

Oh and the cake…it was delicious.

You can find our what other school have been doing to celebrate here.

Happy 5th Birthday, eTwinning!

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Race for Life

It has become a bit of tradition for me (and Alice) now to do the Race for Life in aid of Cancer Research UK. This year is no different so I’ve just signed up. We would like to raise as much money as possible, obviously. If you would like to sponsor us you can do so by following this link or by clicking on the widget in the sidebar.
Thank you in advance for supporting the work of Cancer Research UK. )

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The Wall of Language

The Wall of Language is a website that has been created by Nick Mair and Nick Friend with support of the Association for Language Learning and CILT for you to email prospective MPs questions about Language Learning. The website states

“Our aim is to make all political parties include a statement about the importance of languages in their manifesto.”

It’s easy to take part, just go to the website and follow the instructions on the Home Page. There are plenty of letters that have already been written that you can use and there’s even a link for you to find out who your Parliamentary Candidates are.

This is a great opportunity to see what importance our prospective MPs place on Languages, with falling numbers at KS4 and so few University students opting to take a Language degree.

I’ve written to the Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat candidates for my constituency, however unfortunately I couldn’t contact the Independent and UKIP candidates as they appeared to have no contact details. If someone could help me with that I would be very grateful )

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TeachMeetNE10

I was really pleased to read a tweet from Chris Harte that there is to be another TeachMeet in Newcastle on Thursday 29th April. This will be the third Northeastern TeachMeet and I’m really looking forward to being inspired again by some fantastic teachers from the local area and to meeting up with like minded teachers and old and new friends.

There is a change of venue for this TeachMeet – The North of England Institute of Mining and Mechanical Engineers – it’s near Central Station so should be pretty easy for people to get to.

If you’ve never been to a TeachMeet before, this is an ideal opportunity to come along and find out what all the fuss is about. For more information and to sign up here: TeachMeetNE10

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Online International Collaboration

The second CPD session that I ran for Links into Languages was about Online International Collaboration. Here is the presentation I gave for that session…

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(My) Top Ten Tools for Digital Creativity in MFL

On the 23rd and 30th March Routes into Languages ran 2 International Festivals for Northeast schools at the Universities of Newcastle and Teesside. Alongside these 2 events, Links into Languages offered CPD for teachers who had accompanied pupils and asked me of I could run 2 sessions.

The first of these sessions was about online tools that we as MFL teachers can use to encourage creativity in our pupils and that we can use in our teaching to spice up our lessons. Below is the presentation I gave with my personal top 10 favourites. One day I’ll get as prefessional as Joe Dale and Lisa Stevens and take lots of photographs as well, altough that would involve remembering to take the photos in the first place!

Please feel free to contribute with other tools that you like to use…

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There’s a world outside my classroom…blogs and wikis in MFL

When I was asked to run a workshop as a Links into Languages trainer it was the beginning of December and one song kept being played on the radio. I wonder if you can guess what it was by the title of this post?
Anyway, putting that to one side, March 18th came round rather more quickly than I had intended and all of a sudden I had my first ever workshop to run after school. Me being me, I didn’t advertise the event particularly well but nevertheless I had 5 willing participants all keen to learn about using and creating blogs and wikis.
The presentation is below with many links to useful MFL blogs and wikis. In addition I will add the links below the presentation later in the week but felt it important to get the presentation on here like I promised. I apololgise if I have missed out your blog or wiki, please tell me if I have any glaring omissions or you would like to have your blog or wiki linked to in this post as well.

Here’s a fantastic blog that’s been brought to my attention by Steve Smith. It’s the blog that he uses with his pupils and really shows how a teacher-pupil should work. It’s great! Blogalpha RGS You can of course also visit Steve’s blog French Teacher which I’ve now added to my blogroll and his fab website Frenchteacher.net from the French teachers at Ripon Grammar School.

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