BRINGING TWITTER TO THE CLASSROOM

So we were told last week that we would have visitors from China in school this week and so I set to work for my 3 observation lessons. The #MFLTwitterati came to the rescue as usual when I tweeted questions about bedroom descriptions, birthdays and favourite days.

With one Form 2 class (12-13 yr olds) we made up a rap for the positions and then used Triptico to sort the class into groups. The groups were given a sentence in English and all had to translate it correctly into Spanish on their individual mini whiteboards. The first two groups to get it 100% correct got a point each, again using the Triptico team score tool. At the end of the lesson, they got ballot tickets equating to the number of points they had won. These tickets go into the draw for a selection box for each class in December.
With the other Form 2 class, I used the tweets re bedrooms, which I had collated onto photocopied sheets, Each pupil had to work on their own for 5 mins with a highlighter, marking the vocabulary they knew. They then worked with their partner to exchange knowledge for 4 minutes before going to groups at their table. After these 3 stages, I then read the tweets. Pupils had to shout stop if I read a word they didn't know. There were pupils who were able to translate for others at this stage and only a few words that I had to help with. As a plenary, pupils wrote their names on post-its and stuck them to a massive arrow on the board to indicate their grasp of house and position vocabulary in Spanish.

Pupils were very taken with the tweets and were fully engaged throughout the activity which was pleasing. 

Form 1 have done greetings, numbers and names but little else. After a PPT about the days, we then looked at the tweets about favourite days which I displayed on the IWB as well as giving to the pupils to stick into their books with the reading comprehension questions. http://linoit.com/users/asalt518/canvases/D%C3%8DA%20PREFERIDO

Some pupils launched straight into the activity, others panicked at the sight of so much Spanish that they didn't know. However some reassurance and guidance re looking for cognates, plus a translation of Me gusta and off they went in groups to tackle the task before coming together to check the answers. A quick AFL quick with closed eyes and holding fingers up between 1 and 10 to indicate how proud they were of their work that period finished the lesson. 

Whilst there is part of me that despairs when I am told I am being observed, at the thought of the extra work, there is also a big part of me that enjoys the challenge of planning a detailed lesson and evaluating my own teaching and the pupil learning. These lessons allowed me to bring 'real' Spanish into the classroom and move pupils along the path of independent learning and self evaluation. 

WHITEBOARD CHALLENGE TASK 1

Well, classes are well and truely started so I decided it was time to meet the Whiteboard Challenge head-on, and tackle Task 1, which involved using sound on the IWB. This toned in well with recent posts on the forum I belong to, http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mflresources/, about recording and the Modern Languages classroom.
I decided to target my new Lower 6 class, for a variety of reasons, not least because I have taught them for so many years now, that if it all went pear-shaped, at least we could have a good laugh about it! Also, it can be hard to use technology efficiently at this level. Here's what I did..

This was only my second lesson with Lower 6 this year, and we had just started with descriptions the previous day. I selected 12 celebrities, and I used the software to record a series of descriptions, both physical and otherwise, about 6 of the celebrities. The pupils had to listen to the descriptions, and select the appropriate person from the list of 12 each time. After we had checked the answers, the pupils then worked in small groups to write descriptions about the remaining 6 celebrities. For homework for next week, pupils have to prepare a presentation about someone they admire. They can either hand this in in written form, or record themselves using their mobiles and save it in LearningNI (virtual learning environment in Northern Ireland).
Now for the technical bit.. and as it is wont to do, the technology played me up a bit when I needed it, in that the internet was so slow, it took me about an hour to view Jess' video about the first task. Howver it was definitely worth it, as I then found it easy to follow her instructions about using Audacity with IWB software. We use Activstudio 3 in school, and it was very straightforward to record my own voice reading the descriptions, using only the inbuilt microphone on my laptop, and then export the mp3 files to the Resource Library in Activstudio.
I thoroughly enjoyed this first foray into the world of voice recording, and starting from these humble beginnings, I look forward to incorporating it much more widely in the future. No more complaints about a lack of vocabulary-specific listenings!

IF IT AINT BROKE, DON'T FIX IT?

As I mentioned before, I had the privilege to go to Boston this summer to attend the Building Learning Communities 3 day conference, where each day there was a keynote speaker, as well as a choice of around 10 workshops for each of the sessions. It was truely amazing and I got so much out of it.

I have of course been evangelising ever since ~I got back and some people (teachers) have been asking the question "But do you really think that their teaching, using these technologies, is better?" Well, the best way I can explain it is to pull together what some of the brilliant presenters said at BLC 08.The pupils we are teaching are like no other generation we have taught before. They are digital natives, whereas we are digital immigrants. We expose them to around 60 minutes a week of ICT/Web 2.0 tools, whereas at home they can spend up to 400 minutes plus on the computer. When a pupil takes more pride in their BEBO page than their English coursework, then we need to look at the way we are teaching and communicating with our pupils. Of course, it can all seem a bit too mind-boggling to even know where to start, but for me, the key is actually starting, no matter how small..
To this end, aside from starting this blog (a pretty major aside, I guess!), I have signed up for The Whiteboard Challenge on http://whiteboardchallenge.wikispaces.com/ The idea is that the Interactive Whiteboard Challenge will run for 14 weeks initially, starting on Friday August 15th. Each fortnight there will be a new task set by someone who is an experienced whiteboard user. They will present their challenge in whatever way they like - it might be a short video, a screen cast a podcast. I then need to go and use whatever they have presented in my classroom that week. Ergo, at the end of the challenge I will have 7 blog posts about mywhiteboard practice, and lots of other blog posts on similar topics available to me to read.
Despite not having pupils until Monday 1st September, I am going to give this a go, and will post on this blog how I get on.