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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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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LinkedUp

At the end of September I was approached by Zahida Hammond to work with her on an application for one of the new LinkedUp grants that are being funded around the UK, to promote language learning. The idea was to continue to build on work that local 14-19 MFL Networks had begun last year, creating resources and activities for KS4 and KS5 that use new technologies and  develop pupils independence.

After much hard work from Zahida, we learnt in November that the application had been successful and now it’s full steam ahead. We have 3 14-19 Networks working together on the project-Stockton, Middlesbrough and Whitley Bay with about 10 members across the network. We will all work on different aspects of the resources and they will all be shared together at the end. The idea is that we will use some technologies that will be new to some colleagues in the groups and also develop activities that encourage pupils to become independent language learners.

I’m very excited about this project and am looking forward to being able to use the resources created through the Networks and also to adapting the activities we create to being used in other topic areas and in other year groups too.

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ALL Language World

This year I was lucky enough to be able to attend part of the Language World event “Grasping the Nettle” run by ALL. The event took place in Leicester, so at 6.00 am on Saturday morning I got into my husband’s car (how posh) and headed off down the M1. Three hours later I arrived in at a sunny Leicester University after following some rather dubious directions!

I was really good to see familiar faces and attend some inspiring workshops. However, I must apologise to those who I did see, due to the events mentioned in my last post, I was not in the most communicative of moods and was actually wondering why on earth I was there and not at some “how to be a better teacher” course!

I was really curious about CLIL. I’d seen the intials but had no idea what it was about, so I chose to attend two workshops covering this topic. CLIL stands for “Content and Language Integrated Learning”, which is basically teaching other subjects in French / German etc… I have always been fascinated by this idea and thought it a fantastic opportunity to get pupils using TL in real contexts. I am also aware of several school in other parts of Europe that have a bilingual section so listened and made notes intently.

Firstly I went to a workshop run by Mike Ullman of Hockerill Anglo-European College. He spoke about how the idea of teaching History in French had come about at Hockerill and the success that they had seen both in History and in French as the course developped. He commented in how attainment was not affected in History by the bilingual lessons ( something about which most Headteachers would be concerned), in fact the opposite was true and attainment actually improved! He also spoke about how it was important to start small and get bigger, quite rightly pointing out that it had taken a decade to get to the postition that they are now in. Altogether a really thought provoking workshop, which left me wanting to know more. So…

I headed to another workshop on CLIL to get a slightly different approach. This was led by Judith Woodfield of Chenderit School, who is Geography teacher. This session looked at the practicalities of CLIL and Judith took us through a typical series of lessons on Tropical Rain Forests  for Year 7. It really was amazing the level of language the pupils could understand and produce even at such an early stage in Yr7. We took part in activities that Judith uses with her classes and watched some of the videos that she and the pupils watch. What fascinates me is that Judith isn’t even a Modern Linguist, yet she is still happy teaching Geography in French. Chenderit are also beginning to teach ICT in German, which really interested me, as someone who is about to embark upon teaching some ICT next year (but that’s a topic for another post when things are more concrete!).

I can’t see my Headteacher wanting to go right down the CLIL route at the moment but what I could see is the possiblities for cross-curricular Units of Work that couldfit right in with the new KS3 Curriculum. In fact I’m currently thinking about something on the French Revolution or similar for later on in the school year.

In addtion to my CLIL-filled day, I also attended a workshop run by Rachel Hawkes of Comberton Village College. She took us through her new Yr7 Curriculum looking at the cross-curricular features and their phonics activities. I have to say that I was thoroughly inspired by her. After my “less from hell” on Thursday, Rachel’s workshop gave me renewed motivation and I really felt that I could go away and use some of her ideas to enthuse my pupils (although I’ll have to translate it into German!). Rather than duplicate what Rachel talked about, here is a link to her blog post  about the conference where you can see the resources she used and read about it “straight from the horses mouth”, as it were!

The conference finished on a high with a speech from Steven Fawkes. He was hilarious and inspiring at the same time. I can’t even begin to describe it, as I couldn’t do it justice. Needless to say, after an awful week, Steven’s speech was just the tonic I needed to pick me up…and this time the tears were of laughter! (Good job my mascara was waterproof-ish!)

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A very busy week

I think the the next few days will be full of blog posts from me, as I seem to have done so much in a very short space of time. I’ve done so much, met so many people and had such a great time that I really don’t know where to begin. I think maybe, I’ll just go for it and apologise in advance for poor spelling and typing (no surprises there, then) and some rather mixed up time-lines. In no particular order I’m intending to blog about:

• my all new Ning that I set up last Wednesday and changed the name of yesterday
• the Isle of Wight Conference (of course)…hopefully individual posts about various aspects and how much I learnt etc..
• a chance encounter with a trainee life coach (aahhh…bet no-one expected that one – least of all me!)
• going to train MFL PGCE students at Durham University last week and the hazards that brought with it.

So, I’m now going to go and get busy…I even have emails to answer, somewhere!

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How to get A* in MFL?

Pray for a miracle, I think )
After a journey by rail to Manchester Airport that ressembled a bad dream I arrived at a conference led byn Terry Murray about how to get more A* grades. It was very useful – if just to remind me of strategies etc that I already know but had forgotten (ie don’t send someone in with coursework marks of 104 when A* is 105). He also suggested giving sweets at the end of oral exams and having something for pupils to fiddle with when they’re nervous and don’t know what to do with their hands.
Well lo-and-behold it was our mock orals today. So last night I tripped off to Tesco’s to buy a big box of roses and a cuddly teddy. I can safely say that the chocolates made them smile (and realise that maybe I’m not the witch they think I am), as did the teddy. It’s lovely soft (cheap) doggy from Tesco. Some actually used it too – included that lad who got the highest mark over all. Of course there were the usual sceptical looks from colleagues – particulary out Head of Area elect who was in today, who looked at me as as if I was a complete lunatic – however, the kids seemed to like it (and find it useful) and that’s what counts at the end of the day )

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