Using technology for assessment, marking and feedback

GCSE Spanish Leisure Deck Toys - copy for teachers

 

Deck.Toys delight

Within a day of starting to use Deck.Toys I had already decided that the potential was so great that it was worth investing in the Pro account.  So far I have made KS3 sets on shopping, house and clothes, a GCSE set for daily routine and an A level set for subjunctive phrases. 

Esmeralda Salgado has made a really useful Youtube video about creating your decks.  You can choose different templates, from linear to a boardgame. 

We have all the vocab for KS3 and GCSE on our Quizlet so I was easily able to export the vocab sets to Deck Toys to use as the study set within each deck.  I also exported them to Blooket, Gimkit and Flippity as well as quickly creating activities on Wordwall and and Learning Apps. I was then able to embed those activities into my Deck as well as using the plethora of activities available within the deck. 

It's easy to assign a deck to a classroom or share with other teachers. I'm also sharing the decks I make via a Wakelet collection 

To my mind, Deck Toys has the ability to pull together some of my favourite websites for practising and embedding vocabulary. I look forward to getting feedback from the pupils once they have had a go at working through them on their own. 

Checking out Deck Toys

I have heard a lot about Deck Toys recently so decided to check it out, using @botonessalgado's very useful video on how to create a new deck I have all the vocab for the units we teach in Quizlet which means that it is very easy to import it into Deck Toys and set up a new deck. Here's a very basic one I have made for KS3 Spanish on shops and quantities. Now that I've got the basic concept, I'm off to make some with my sentence builders 

Site smashing with vocab lists

The joy of a busy languages teacher when you realise that one humble vocabulary list can be used multiple times and join up pupil learning 😍

•  Create your word or sentence list, tabbing from the target language to the English. Copy it all and paste it into a new course on Quizlet. Pupils enjoy Quizlet for the flashcards and games as well as playing Quizlet Live in individual or team mode. 
  
  
  
  
  
• Go to Memrise and sign in. Select the Courses tab, create a course, fill in the details and set it up. When the empty vocab list appears, click on advanced and select bulk add words then paste your vocabulary list.  My pupils like the fact that they can gain points for each vocab set they learn. 

• Go to Gimkit and select New kit then select Create with flashcards and paste the vocabulary list. This is always a favourite either in team mode or individual. 

•  Go to Blooket and create a new set, pasting the same vocabulary into the set. The games on Blooket include the classic game which is like Kahoot, the race and the Battle Royal game. The graphics are cool and the pupils love choosing their animal icon.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         

• Go to Carousel Learning and download the template to create the question bank. Paste the vocabulary and complete the final column for the topic/s. Upload the question bank spreadsheet and then create a quiz using this question bank and allocate it to a class. This is new to us this week and the pupils have found it really useful to test their learning and retrieval of vocabulary. @Carousel_Learn posted this on Twitter:

      "Also worth noting: REVISE QUESTIONS = students see flashcards of the questions in the quiz only REVISE TOPICS = students see flashcards for every question in every topic included in the quiz"

In these very busy days of school, it is so heartening and pleasing to find websites which are so easy to use and with time-saving uploads of the same vocabulary. Pupils can see links in learning and a sense of satisfaction at their progress. 

Quizlet

So I'm sure most of you have heard of Quizlet as it's been around for ages. But we in the languages department have really only tapped into its huge potential in the last year or two. We have all the vocab for each year group loaded so that pupils can learn the vocabulary in a fun and competitive way. It's also an excellent way of promoting independent learning at home. 

https://quizlet.com/spanishingrosvenor

However, it's only in the last few months that excitement has reached unseen levels with the introduction of Quizlet Live. NB You need access to a class set of PCs or tablets / phones. As a teacher, you go to quizlet.com and select the set of vocabulary you want to drill / test. You select the Live option and then create the game in the new browser window with a mere click of a button. Share the code with the pupils who have gone directly to Quizlet.live, they enter their names and you start the game. You can randomly assign teams or select them. The website cleverly picks up on the language so the team names will be in Spanish, etc. 

The pupils work in their teams to answer the questions / translate the language. Each pupil has 3 or 4 possibilities but only one will have the correct option. If they get it wrong, the team loses all their points and has to start again. The first team to gain 12 points wins. All my classes love Quizlet Live and clamour to play it every lesson, no matter what age they are. As a teacher, apart from the massive engagement factor, the benefits are that they are drilling the vocabulary if they get it wrong and at the end, it shows you what pupils were consistently getting wrong so this informs your planning for the next lesson. 

I cannot recommend Quizlet enough, I really look back a year or two and wonder what I did pre-Quizlet! 

Reflections of an iPad classroom 26/9/14

Oh blog, it's been a while. Apologies but I'm sure I'm just like the rest of you, hitting the ground running after the summer. 

So the iPads are still with me for the foreseeable future and the HODs and SMT in school have all got one each too. It's been weird for me trying to think about how to use one iPad in a classroom when I'm used to at least one between two, one each at A level. There are certain apps which lend themselves to it of course, from the fabulous Explain Everything to my two of my favourites for starters,  Decide Now and Make Dice Lite. 

I have been using Explain Everything in three main ways. Firstly, I have made some videos, using old PPTs and recording audio with them, as a way to flip the classroom. The videos are uploaded to Edmodo and the pupils can access them there in advance of the lesson, which frees up the lesson time to consolidate learning. Secondly, I have marked pupil work which they uploaded to Edmodo, talking through mistakes as I circled them using the pen tool and then I uploaded the video back onto Edmodo for them to watch and correct their work. Lastly, I have taken pictures of pupils' work in class as we have worked through translation work. It is easier for them to see corrections if they can see the base model on the screen and we talk through the different options they have too. I am finding that they are contributing more than they would otherwise. 

With the set of 17 iPads, we have been using Quizlet in bursts within the lesson to consolidate vocabulary acquisition. The pupils love it and feel it has really helped them learn the vocab. I set up a departmental account that they all log in to, which means that the tailored vocabulary is there waiting for them. Interestingly, we find the website better than the app, if you choose to use it. 

Finally, today I used Plickers for the first time. I had read about it on Twitter but hadn't done anything with it yet. It's a way of using one iPad in the classroom to assess pupil understanding and record answers. I'll do a separate blogpost on it soon.