Network for Languages Philip Campagna Group Talk

The second session at the Network for Languages event was led by Philip Campagna on Group Talk. Brain child of Greg Horton, we have been playing around with the idea of Group Talk for a while now so I was keen to hear what Philip had to say. Here are my notes: 

Developing independent learners 

Barriers to effective speaking: 

How do I monitor it? As opposed to other skills where I collect the answers in. 

Nature of the tasks - often mundane, transactional and predictable. Non-engaging stimuli. 

Often confined to pair work, lack of collaborative group work. 

Poor pronunciation due to lack of coverage of basic phonics. 

Talking cards round the room, pupils went round, pressed the button and answered the question. Made them think on their feet. This is something I could do with the iPads. 

Phonics 

a e i o u   Do a point and repeat exercise 

Do a chopping sign for acute / accent 

Give them mini flashcards with the sounds oi, ui etc and one person in group holds up the sound card as the teacher calls the sound. 

Phonic trains - join in as lead pupil in each train moves round class making the noise of their card. 

Sheets with image groups eg trois, poisson, oiseau etc. 

Restricted meaningful use of TL impacts negatively. Make it meaningful and purposeful. 

Peer pressure, not cool to speak out in class

3 names on slide, ¿cuántos años tienen? 

Opinions, speculative language . Give them this language. 

Rules of engagement 

Stage 1 

Groups of 5, first turns card over, says something and turns it back over. Next person does the same. No comment from others in group. 

Stage 2 

Give opinion (positive or negative) 

Stage 3 

Add adjectives, or justifying statements, 

Stage 4 

Others respond to the statement with agreement or disagreement 

Turn photos face up. First person says something. Only one person at a time, if two speak at once then one backs off. Tell them to have three responses to their comment in the group then move on to next photo. 

Give me one phrase from each table that you would have liked to have had 

Do the Group Talk sheet as a levelled framework 

Develop speaking activities which move away from role play activities 

Talk to the pupils about what they want to study eg past tense? 

Step away and don't comment when they are talking. 

MAKE A GROUP TALK DISPLAY BOARD 

Note to self: Bring photos back in at start of lesson as a starter, use the Guardian Eye Witness app

COMBATTING END OF TERM-ITIS

The school year in Northern Ireland ends at the end of June so our internal summer exams are long over and reports written and checked. SMT rightly tell us to keep the pupils working until the end of the year. The problem is that there are so many different trips out and activities going on with different groups of pupils that it can be hard to find activities to do that are both fun and meaningful to engage tired and oft excited pupils who are counting down the days to the long summer break. To add to this, I have picked up two classes from a colleague who has gone on maternity leave whom I have never taught before, so I am trying to learn their names too. So what to do?

Form 2 have been learning about sports and pastimes so they are off to make short video clips of themselves talking about what they like to do in their free time. I am then intending to make a Talking Wall like the one Kelda Richards tweeted and blogged about, inspiring many of the #mfltwitterati to think about how we can do the same. I am also pricing Talking Postcards to add another facet to the Talking Wall. Said wall name prompted much discussion on Twitter in terms of how to translate it into Spanish. Any ideas? La pared que habla or La pared hablante seem most popular..

 Form 3 have been learning about the Olympics so I decided to let them work on a project whereby the groups are preparing videos promoting our school Grosvenor Grammar as a possible venue for the 2020 Olympics. They have been very focused, with some off recording clips round the school including teachers saying Me gusta plus their favourite sport, whilst others were creating the logo and slogan, as well as pulling the clips together. Some are using Movie Maker and Photo Story, some have stuck to Powerpoint whilst others have favoured Animoto as there is now a facility to incorporate video clips. The projects are due in this Tuesday, and I will upload the finished videos to our http://spanishingrosvenormoblog.posterous.com/ and our wiki as well as playing them on the plasma screens in school.

 Form 4 produced scripts on their work experience last week. Some have chosen to record them using Audacity and upload them to our class page on Edmodo. Others have elected to record them on their phone and then email them to our blog by Tuesday. I tried to use both Vocaroo and Lingt Language but we had temporary connection issues due to the school network so I will try again in the new academic year with these two promising sites. The whole school focus for the next academic year is oracy which ties in perfectly with our departmental decision to concentrate on speaking confidence using the likes of the Group Talk strategy by Greg Horton. These projects dovetail perfectly with this. Speaking the language with confidence is what all pupils yearn to do and what can knock their confidence most so the more activities like this we do, the more they will see Spanish in action.

#ILILC2 LANGUAGES AND THE OLYMPICS

Here is my presentation on how we will incorporate the Olympics into our teaching at KS3. I am heavily indebted to Rachel Hawkes, Neil Jones and Greg Horton amongst others, who kindly gave permission for me to adapt resources they have made

Los juegos olímpicos ililc 2

View more PowerPoint from Amanda Salt

#LW2011 Greg Horton Active learning and Raising achievement

This was a more active session than I had anticipated, yet I should have guessed from the title, and from what I had heard about Greg in advance. We started with PE warm ups, with instructions in the target language. Greg suggested that pupils adapt their own model and lead future warm-up sessions. He also said that he uses this at any time to re-engage pupils in a lesson eg he walks round the room and will randomly shout an instruction to anyone not paying attention.

Kagan Timed Pair Share
Greg had a slide with pictures of different coloured eyes and the Spanish beside it: Tienes los ojos.. with colours. Put the music on, pupils circulate, having agreed in advance who talks first when the music stops eg the person with the biggest right hand, highest playing card, tallest person. Another option is to either do word lists when the music stops or person B gives feedback in TL to what person A says eg A gives personal details, B repeats it back to them in the 'you' form.

Greg's approach is making a physical response a routine part of the learning in his classroom. In this sense, it ties in closely with Rachel Hawkes' approach to teaching phonics, subject pronouns and verbs. Greg talked about levels of active learning:
o Word level (fun but..)
o Sentence level (manipulation and creativity)
o Conceptual (tense and grammar)

He teaches connectives with gestures in Form 1/Year 7, early on. Anytime anyone uses one, the whole class has to do the action. If you teach with gestures then read a text, they should do the actions.

Human word chains
These are particularly effective for a starter or a plenary. Give teams pieces of paper, so that each pupil has one word. Pupils can repeat their word but not show it, and the teams have to organise themselves into a sentence which makes sense. This activity reinforces basic sentence structure. If you wish to repeat the activity in the next lesson, make pupils guardians of their word, so that they need to remember their word and where they were in the line. At a higher level, the tecaher can add detail such as "I’d like the two adjectives to sit down” Then you can have runners run down the back of the line and shout the missing word(s) out in the appropriate gap in the sentence as the remaining 'sentence' pupils shout out their word in order. To take this to a higher lecel, construct, deconstruct, adapt and extend – invite the rest of the class to be extra words or punctuation. Kids can also choose the words they want to be.
Add gestures to this activity to make it more active; eg someone acting a connective or sequencing word does windmill action. The last person needs to be punctuation, eg the full stop sits on the floor, whilst the first person stands on a chair to illustrate that they are a capital letter.

PRONOUNS
Greg teaches his pupils Subject pronouns gestures, eg ointing to himself with one hand for I, pointing with two hands in front for You plural. To add to this, he suggests you use these with We Will Rock You music, where the teacher says the word on one beat and the pupils then do the gestures. Once pupils have got this, you can mime the pronoun and the verb, adding past or future once advanced, and pupils shout out the answer.

The clock times ballet
This is done to classical music, where Greg says the time, then pupils use their arms to represent the time on the second beat. This proved quite hilarious for our group, some of whom lacked the coordination to become a prima ballerina.

All in all, this was a really really useful session in terms of practical, immediate methodology which you could do at any time with little or no preparation, but which I think will prove to have a maasive impact on learning in the classroom.