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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Déjeuner du matin

Yesterday we had a borough-wide CPD Day. I was lucky enough to be able to choose what I wanted to do, rather than have a day of workshops thrust upon me, so I chose to go to our local CLC for a day of creativity on Apples.

We were given the task of making a film, using iMovie and we had to include a flashback. So, we got into groups of 4 – we were 3 linguists and an ICT teacher (unfortunately for the ICT teacher!). We quickly decided to go all French and arty, planning to use Déjeuner du matin by Jacques Prévert. The final result can be seen below and we were all very pleased with the outcome. We would have liked to have added some piano music in the background for that true arty feel but, unfortunately we ran out of time!

I’m now buzzing with ideas as to how I can use what I learnt with my pupils – just need the time to be able to do it…

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The French Exchange Finally Happened

Took this at the NRM and thought it was funny!

Many moons ago (so it seems)…well, 3 years, just when I was starting on this adventure into new technologies and discovering the possibilities for MFL teachers, such as myself, in terms of getting pupils using language for real, I was asked by my then Head of Area to find a French school in order to establish a link for exchanges. We already had an extremely successful link with Meppen in Germany and an equally successful link with Cheste in Spain but French was most certainly the poor relation in terms of links and opportunities for exchanges.

I had just discovered eTwinning via Joe Dale‘s marvellous blog and decided to find out what all of the fuss was about. Having registered with eTwinning, I quickly found a partner and established a project with a view to setting up an exchange the following year. The project “Je blogue, tu blogues…let’s blog!” was very successful with pupils from both schools develping frienships and helping one another with their language learning. However unfortunately for many reasons the link didn’t develop into an exchange and the hunt was on again.

One of my colleagues in the MFL Department had a link with a teacher in Caussade near Toulouse. I contacted her and things looked positive. We worked together on an eTwinning project (in English only, this time, as there were several schools involved) and my class exchanged letters every half-term or so with a class from her school and set things in motion for an exchange.

There were hurdles to overcome, as with any new link. The biggest hurdle being that our partner school wanted to bring 27 pupils!!! This was unheard of in Ian Ramsey history of exchanges…we are normally over joyed if we get to 20 (as I think most schools would be). Nevertheless, we persevered and, with a plan to house some pupils in a local hotel got plans underway. I was over-joyed when I managed to persuade the final 2 pupils to host French people, meaning that no-one was to stay in a hotel!

The week itself arrived and we had an action-packed programme, hightlights included a visit to Durham, the Angel of the North and the Metro Centre, a whole group trip to York and the National Railway Museum, project work at Teesside CLC and a visit to meet the Mayor of Stockton. The funny thing was, I got stick all week for organising the visit to Mayor and in fact our French friends loved it – telling me to definintely keep in on the programme for the future! As part of their CLC project, pupils started to work on a wiki as a diary of their week, to which I will add their presentations and leaflets about the history of the railways and York tourist leaflets as soon as I can. You can see what has been done so far here (still needs a bit of work!).

What of the future? Well things look very rosy. In 3 weeks time our pupils will return to France. Again, a record of 21 pupils (some of whom were so enthused by the whole event that they asked if they could come eventhough they didn’t take part in the home-leg!). In addition we will carry this through to another eTwinning Project specifically aimed at improving Speaking and Writing Skills for GCSEs.

Sadly I’m unable to go on the return leg – I’ve been off gallavanting around Europe too often already this year, so am indebted to my colleagues, Fiona and Julie for taking the return trip and for their invaluable support during the exchange week itself.

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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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Guest Author

Image: Gregory Szarkiewicz / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Last week I received a message from José Picardo, asking whether I would contribute to a series of posts written by guest authors that he was planning for his blog Box of Tricks. As it’s the Christmas holidays and I’m low on ideas, I decided that it was a good opportunity to expand on a post that I’d already written on this blog and give more information about what I’d written about in the previous post, so I chose to write about my Top Tools for getting pupils Talking.
The post I wrote on Box of Tricks can be found here: Tools to get pupils talking

There are several other MFL bloggers who have already contributed to this interesting series or are to write something in the near future. So far you can read posts on there from Amanda Salt, Isabelle Jones, Simon Howells, Dominic McGladdery and Marie-France Perkins with many more to come.

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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!

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Holidays and High Hopes

Naturally, we had our usual visit to Eastbourne to visit my sister and watch the airshow. We saw the Red Arrows an all of the days we attended the event and enjoyed many other thrilling displays.
After that work seemed inevitable and I began to contemplate the year ahead of me. Where am I going? What am I doing (and why)?
There are some exciting things happening this year – none less so than the fact that I am to teach ICT for 6hrs a fortnight to Y7, Y8 and Y9. In order to do this I am going to have to learn how do use some applications quite quickly. Can’t wait! In particular it will be interesting to see my job from the perspective of another subject area. How do they teach in ICT? Is it really different from teaching MFL? In addition ICT is taught in Tutor Groups throughout KS3, whereas MFL is taught in sets from Christmas of Y7, what will that be like? I already like teaching ICT before I’ve even had one class, as I already have all of the lessons and resources!
Added to that I have acquired a “new” job title, that of “International School Co-ordinator”. Basically it means I just continue doing what I’m doing already. Continuing with that theme, we will re-apply for a Comenius Grant, after failing to gain funding last year. I’m currently trying to organise a preparation visit for January which will be entertaining! Also we have an all new French exchange with a school in Caussade near Toulouse.
As far as my MFL teaching is concerned, I have to admit to feeling a little stale, so I want to focus on injecting some enthusiasm into things. Naturally I’ll continue to use ICT to motivate pupils and also lead some staff CPD within the department to encourage colleagues to follow suit. I’m also going to do some work on Phonics with my classes. After seeing Rachel Hawkes speak at Grasping the Nettle and being in touch with Suzi Bewell, I’ve bought a Jolly Phonics French book and a lovely Frieze and am going to spend time focusing on pronunciation with many of my pupils.
So not much then, in the year ahead. It should keep me out of trouble anyway!

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Eurovision – IRS Style

Yesterday I had the dubious priviledge of being involved in the organisation of my first ever whole year group event.

I chose Year 8 as the unwilling victims of this activity and we labelled it “EUROVISION”. Now if truth be told it didn’t really end up anything like the real Eurovision, it was more of a day that involved Year 8 finding out “stuff” about Europe and the EU. They did Internet Research, Geography, Art, Music and Languages in a kind of carousel. As far as I can tell, initial responses from Year 8 were very favourable.

In Art, they set to work designing new flags for EU Nations and even for the EU itself (well the stars are a bit boring…) and I’ve seen some wonderful designs that really the capture the nature of Europe, bringing in flavours of many member countries.

Music involved comparing various European National Anthems and, in particular listening to two very different versions of Ode an die Freiheit, the traditional version and this one:

They were then charged with the task of creating their own EU Anthems on the keyboards. All of which was really enjoyed by many Year 8s.

Geography saw them learning the names of key European countries and doing some Independent Learning in groups, researching physical and economic geography of chosen countries. Pupils found it fascinating to learn that the UK is so small in comparison to many other countries. I think some were quite surprised at just how big some countries are.

For Languages they had two possible activities, one involving learning about the origins of European Languages, which went down really well with the pupils and the other involving Spanish and designers. Both activities were really well received by the Year 8s.

The ICT Research project was rather chaotic, being the first activity of the day and involving lots of shared computers. Oh, and of course the old “blocked” problems (which was curious, as I’d checked them on Friday!).

I made a little plenary activity at the end. The pupils had to watch the video below and list which countries they recognised as being represented. There are 14…go on, see how many you get!

www: pupils seemed to like it and most staff seemed positive by the end of the day.

ebi: better organisation of the first ICT activity and don’t put them all in to do that at once, don’t get so stressed, check websites again and again and again.

Will it happen again? I hope so! (I believe so, with the introduction of project weeks next year!)

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