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…!

Share on Facebook

Possibly Related Posts:

• The end of an era
• Encouraging Independent Learners
• Happy 5th Birthday eTwinning
• The Wall of Language
• TeachMeetNE10

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!

Share on Facebook

Possibly Related Posts:

• The end of an era
• Busy Weekend
• The Wall of Language
• TeachMeetNE10
• Online International Collaboration

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…

Share on Facebook

Possibly Related Posts:

• Busy Weekend
• Encouraging Independent Learners
• Happy 5th Birthday eTwinning
• TeachMeetNE10
• (My) Top Ten Tools for Digital Creativity in MFL

Enquiry based learning

Image: Danilo Rizzuti / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

As part of the preparation for the LinkedUp Project that we’re working on, I was invited to take part in a training day at Bedlington High School in December.

In conjuction with Newcastle University, the school have been running a programme in KS3 to promote and develop independent learning and thinking skills, which will equipe their pupils with the tools that they need to do well not only in the classroom but also that they can transfer into their lives outside of school. As our 14-19 project is based around developing  independent learning and transferable skills this was a fantastic opportunity to see these kind of activities in action across the curriculum.

The project is based around Habits of Mind which are essential skills that pupils can transfer to use outside of the classroom, whilst also improving their languages skills. Many of the tools involved are Thinking Skills, with the “Tool Kit” including such activities as diamond ranking, odd one out, venn diagrams, 8 Qs and, my current favourite, inference squares. What I particulary liked was they way the plenaries centered around which “Habits of Mind” pupils used and how they used them.

We watched 3 lessons, Food Technology, Maths and PE all at different levels- an education in itself, as I don’t think I’ve observed many lessons outside of my own subject area in the last 15 years. It was amazing to see how independent these pupils were. They were, not only able to work on their own far better than my own pupils but also able to articulate themselves so well! The confidence they had when speaking to adults was very impressive! Not only could they talk about the “Habits of Mind”, but they could also express how they used them in lessons and outside of lessons, why they were important but also how they felt that they made a lot more progress using enquiry-based learning. One thing that did concern me was a comment from an MFL teacher about not being able to do it properly in Languages!

Feeling inspired and determinded to show you can use enquiry-based learning in MFL I returned to my school on a mission. As ever, I’ve started small, introducing the Habits of Mind to my classes. We’ve talked about the Habits of Mind and how they apply to Language Learning and in many lessons we have focussed on these through the lesson, with the plenary focussing on which Habits of Mind the pupils have used and, more importantly, HOW. It’s been interesting to see that just about all pupils recognise the need to be persistent learners (something I’ve been very pleased to see!) and now I’d like to see them recognise some of the other skills they use on a daily basis – not only in MFL lessons but in all lesson.

For me, I want to develop this are as follows:

• Encourage pupils to discuss in groups how they use Habits of Mind
• Integrate “Habits of Mind” into more of my lessons
• Look at how I can combine the Habits of Mind with Learning to Learn
• Use Chris Harte‘s session on Debriefs, which he delivered at the lauch of our LinkedUp project , to help me taylor these strategies more towards MFL teaching – particularly in the Target Language aspect, to encourage more use of TL from my pupils.

I will keep you updated…

Share on Facebook

Possibly Related Posts:

• The end of an era
• Busy Weekend
• Encouraging Independent Learners
• The Wall of Language
• TeachMeetNE10

TeachMeetNE09-02

On Wednesday 2nd December Chris Harte and team organised the second TeachMeetNE of the year at the Tyneside Cinema in Newcastle.
After a hectic journey up the A19 (with a huge delay due to a broken down car!!!) we arrived in good time for the start of proceedings.
Then event was extremely well attended and, as ever the Tyneside Cinema proved to be an excellent location, with wine flowing freely throughout the evening.
There were some amazing presentations by some very amusing and knowledgeable colleagues from the local area and we also had colleagues join us from around the world via Flashmeeting.
I spoke about my top tools to get pupils talking and the presentation is below. Underneath the presentation you will also find links to examples of the tools that I spoke about. It’s so important for we linguists to get our pupils talking and improving their foereign accents but it was really interesting to see that non-linguists were also interested in how they could use some of these tools with their pupils.

Voki: from our eTwinning Project

Voicethread: Very basic-I’m sure you could come up with something much better!

Songsmith: Haben chants

Slideshare: My French Jolly Phoniques Slidecast

Podcasts: Langwitch Radio (German) Radio Langwitch (French)

More information about the TeachMeet09-02 event can be found on the Ning.

Finally I’d like to say thank you to Rosemary for giving me a lift, thus making sure I didn’t need to drive into central Newcastle!

Share on Facebook

Possibly Related Posts:

• Busy Weekend
• Encouraging Independent Learners
• TeachMeetNE10
• Online International Collaboration
• (My) Top Ten Tools for Digital Creativity in MFL

eTwinning workshop at Stockton CLC

eTwinning

Today, I was privileged to be invited to our local CLC to speak to Stockton’s GTP (Graduate Trainee Programme) trainee teachers about our school’s eTwinning experiences.  It was nice to work with Jenny Compton of the British Council and Val Brooks, Deputy of the Stockton CLC and fellow eTwinning Ambassador as well as to meet some of the new talent coming through from our local LEA Graduate Trainee Programme.

I promised that I’d upload my presentation onto this blog for the participants to look at in more detail at their own leisure and thought it would also be good to put down some of the areas that I ellaborated more on, as I spoke.

I covered how I got involved in eTwinning initially, as a part-time teacher to give me some focus and how now it has become an integral part of my teaching life.  I think it’s important to stress, particularly for Secondary teachers who don’t seem as widely involved in eTwinning across the UK as they are in the rest of Europe, that it is quite easy to mould your eTwinning projects into the curriculum without it being onerous and without it impacting negatively on exam results.  Infact, I firmly believe that eTwinning can enhance exam results as well as enhancing enjoyments of subjects.  It is also something that is ideal when thinking about ways of delivering the new KS3 curriculum and it can be cross-curricular and be something where pupils really can try out their creativity and love of the internet and all things computer-based.

I think that the presentation probably speaks for itself.  There are links to our highly successful prject from last year, Je blogue, tu blogues…let’s blog! as well as various projects that our pupils did whilst involved in the project.  In addition there are links to one of our current projects that involved no MFL at all “How green is your world?” .

I think it’s really important to remember that, whilst ideal for the MFL teacher as a way of stimulating real contact with native speakers of a similar age, eTwinning can be used in many creative ways using English as the means of communication (just about everyone wants to got their pupils practising English if at all possible).   One of our most successful international projects is one with a school in the Netherlands that covers Victorian England and the First World War through our History department and doesn’t involve the use of Languages at all.   Also, a little idea I have in my head for cross-curricular links…to work with a department in school on a project from that curriculum area but work in French or German or Spanish (maybe with schools from across Europe, whose language learning is on the same level as our pupils).  That’s just my sneaky way of getting pupils to use the language they learn without even knowing that their doing it!

Here is the presentation…

I have also add this presentation to my Langwitch Wiki  and you can find it here.

Share on Facebook

Possibly Related Posts:

• Busy Weekend
• Encouraging Independent Learners
• Happy 5th Birthday eTwinning
• TeachMeetNE10
• Online International Collaboration