GIVING A NEW TWIST TO THE CURRICULUM

This is the second time I have heard Emma Bains (@bains_1 on Twitter) talking and she is so inspirational. She started with KS3 talking about speaking. For her first lesson, pupils have to process a lesson in Dutch on the seed, filling in the missing line. The pupils as a rule rise to the challenge so Emma then questioned if they are able to do this, why are we teaching pencil case items?  With Year 7 some of the topics include UNICEF and Angels and Demons. The latter is actually about school but brings in behaviour with rights and responsibilities. There are still lots of ways to teach gender, nouns, plurals, etc.

Key points and ideas Emma talked about include:

• Pupils like getting up and moving round. 
• Give them longer texts with loads of cognates 
• Being able to give opinions enables them 
• Get them to highlight the words they know. Let them realise that they don't need to know everything to understand text/gist 
• 2nd lesson - same text. Change key verbs to green. They copy verbs, replace the content 
• Even with new topics, you can still teach vocabulary etc 
• Cluedo - add opinions at the start of the slide.Teacher picks person, item and place then they guess.   "Que yo sepa" makes it excellent to teach the subjunctive 
• UNICEF tenemos el derecho a + noun Choose cognates Work through masc, fem, etc Tenemos la responsabilidad de + verb Watch video and pupils tick off list as they hear words Tienes el derecho a video 
• Listening material is generally hard to find 
• Advertising topic: Fernando Torres. What do you expect this video to advertise? Questions in advance - eg how many times will we see it? Listening box to make notes rather than questions. Vanessa Burns suggested using Pinterest to get resources. What makes a good advert etc? Anuncios which sounds different to what pupils expect. 
• Get pupils to use Audioboo and Vocaroo to record themselves. They can get texts out of Spanish magazines (check the back for nudity!) 
• Give them questions with answers to be found on  texts stuck up round the room 
• Fashion Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety nine per cent inspiration The Factory Game (online) gives them10 mins to make hats, you then buy the acceptable ones off them. Then they need to buy products. 
• Trip to Barcelona activity - Show the pupils a slide "Contents of my handbag" with taxi receipts, metro etc. They need to tell you what you did for your day according to the tickets etc You can strategically place times on it.

I came home inspired and after seeing an exchange between Emma and @pelado on Twitter last week, I have made a first attempt at rejigging our KS3 SOW. I'll let you know how it goes...

#ILIC3, "When ideas are shared, the result is always greater than the sum of the parts" Rich Willis

Those who follow me on Twitter or have read previous posts on this blog will know that I am a huge fan of the annual ICT Links into Languages conference (ILILC) held in Southampton. And not without cause. This event is a superb form of CPD, no matter what your level of ICT proficiency or years of teaching experience. There are a wide variety of talks and workshops, offering delegates the opportunity to put new ideas into practice and ask for help if needed. Over the next week or so, I will blog about the workshops I attended as well as the two I delivered. There are also two keynote speeches as well as the now legendary Show and Tell on the Saturday night.
Joe Dale's keynote looked at ICT and the need to move on. He talked about the use of iPads in the classroom, referring to @elearninglaura as well as pointing us towards www2.hull.ac.uk/ifl/ipadresearchinschools.aspx with research into the use of iPads in education. Pupils learn best when there is a perfect balance between "have to", "need to" and "want to" Joe also pointed out how information overload is affecting our learning and that it is important to have time off. There are 10 million active Twitter users in UK - as educators, we must consider the importance of how we move education on in light of this. Should we ban or embrace mobile technology? There is an issue of kids with no home Internet, even with lunchtime access and we must remember this. At this moment in time, there is a lot of stress on teachers, lack of professional consultation although Joe did point out that Gove is pro MFL.
Joe tied his talk together by mentioning crowdsourcing to get ideas and feedback, such as #mflstar by @bellaale It is important to "harvest"your own CPD and go for authenticity in the classroom. We have to stick together, ask for help, share ideas.
Of course as the affable "Godfather" of the MFL Twitterati, Joe Dale knows better than most the value of sharing ideas and inspiration. The ILILC conference once again proved that the MFL Twitterati are as close in real life as on Twitter, that as teachers we have so much to offer each other in terms of ideas and support, and that a little bit of love and shared enthusiasm can take you a long way. People are already talking about #ililc4..

#ILIlC3

For the past two years I have been fortunate enough to talk at the ICT Links into Languages conference in Southampton. It is a weekend of learning, sharing, collaborating and sheer unadulterated joy. This year's conference will be taking place on 9th-10th February 2013 and you can sign up for it here This year's theme is ‘Jail breaking the MFL Classroom’ and the keynote speakers are the fabulous duo of Joe Dale and Isabelle Jones. I am delivering two talks/workshops. The first is called "Triptico Tips to jailbreak the languages classroom" This session will illustrate how to use the Triptico resource application to liven up your classroom and turn learning on its head. There will be practical demonstrations of the organisational tools such as the group sorter, timer and score board. I will also demonstrate the higher order thinking tools such as the hexagonal Think Link resource and show how it can be used for promoting Solo taxonomy. The session will give specific examples from my own classroom practice as listed here and here as well as feedback from the pupils. There will also be plenty of time for participants to create their own resources which they can then take away with them, as well as showing them how to access the files already created in the likes of the Twitterati Dropbox. The second session is entitled "LITERALLY JAILBREAKING THE LANGUAGES CLASSROOM" This session will look at how to move the pupils' learning outside the languages classroom with practical examples which I have done with my own pupils including using Posterous to moblog a language trip, Voicethread to collaborate with other language learners around the world, Animoto to create videos such as the videos my pupils made on why our school should be the venue for the 2020 Olympics and QR codes to create a speaking wall with videos created by pupils on a variety of topics which other pupils can then access using their mobile phones to scan the QR code. This conference is an excellent opportunity to meet like-minded language teachers, learn some new stuff, share ideas and enjoy the excellent atmosphere. The Show and Tell event last year had us tweeting for months afterwards! If you want to catch some of the buzz in advance, search for #ililc3 on Twitter or join the MFL Twitterati