This session was led by Rachel Hawkes, Jane Driver and Sarah Schechter and gave me so many ideas, my head was buzzing.
Routes into Languages promotes universities working with schools to enthuse and encourage young people to study languages from KS3 onwards.Sarah talked about the Supporter to reporter scheme, where the university has trained up journalists for the Olympics in the 3 languages. This made me think about doing something similar but on a much smaller scale, with our own Media Studies department.
We also learnt about Student language ambassadors and Language Leader awards within Rachel and Jane's school, Comberton Village College. Pupils learn how to teach primary pupils over the course of the academic year, although you could do it with younger pupils within your own school. This is something that we are definitely going to look at within our department in Septemberm most likely with Fifth Years and Sixth Years. As Rachel pointed out, the scheme is practical, it rewards language learning, it develops general communication and leadership skills and it teaches pupils empathy, self-esteem and confidence. The pupils practise their skills in peer groups in weekly lessons, develop lessons, create resources, trialling them with peers then they teach finally. At CVC, there are 3 visits – Autumn, Spring, Summer. Pupils plan in pairs or trios for a 1 hour lesson in the primary school, divided into 3 x 20mins, each pupil teaching their own 20 minute slot.
The following are the practicalities:
o Launch assembly
o Parent letter
o Completion/submission of application form
o Selection for September
o Carousel activity for younger LLs
o http://rilanguageleaderaward.wikispaces.com
Foreign Language Spelling Beeo www.flspellingbee.co.uk
Jane talked us through the phenomenon that is the Foreign Language Spelling Bee, with the following as the basics:
o 1 minute competition
o Stage 1- Class competition
o Stage 2- School competition
o Stage 3 Regional competition
o Stage 4 National competition
The benefits of the the spelling bee are in terms of memory, phonics, pronunciation, alphabet and awareness of articles. In terms of the actual format on the day, the pupil stands with their back to the board, where the words are displayed. The teacher says the word in English, the pupil says it in the TL and then spells it in the TL alphabet. They spell as many possible in 1 minute. CVC's ML department runs it weekly with language student leaders (Year 9 pupils). They run training sessions, help organise the event and produce and manage the website.
Language on Film/Language from Film
This film-making project is another extra-curricular activity that the staff run for pupils at CVC. Expertise is brought in from the university with a group of teachers being trained up. Pupils need to approach this task exactly as the professionals would:
o Proposal and pitch
o Pre-production
o Production
o Post production
o Exhibition
In terms of other schools adapting this, it was suggested that it could take many different formats, eg collapsed curriculum, exchange day (in one language with subtitles in other language, making it periods 1-4 then watch them after lunch), with a lower ability group. I wonder if we could tie in to the Belfast Film Festival, maybe ask the A level Media Studies pupils to mentor re the technical side. Sarah has a DVD to show how to do it all and was happy to share with all.
This was one of the most inspiring yet most exhausting sessions I attended over the course of the two days. There were so many ideas here, yet it would be difficult to run them on a large scale without the support of an organisation such as Routes into Languages. I already knew how hard-working Rachel was, but to spend time in the company of these three ladies, as I had the opportunity to do on Friday, was to be awed, inspired and a little bit overcome. I asked Jane when she ate lunch, and she laughed..
I am unsure what we will take on board, I so want to do it all, yet bear in mind that my head was already buzzing from Rachel's previous talks and how we want to change our schemes of work. And there are other changes I want to make too, from other inspirational speakers. I'll keep you posted...
Sunday, 10 July 2011
Saturday, 9 July 2011
#LW2011 CPD: teachers working collaboratively
The first talk I went to was by Rachel Hawkes who recently came to Belfast to deliver a highly successful training day in conjunction with NICILT. Rachel covers so much ground in her talks that it was good to hear her again so soon after the last talk and process her many great ideas again.
Through LinkedUp , Northgate High School (Vincent Everett) and Comberton Village College trialled a scheme of mixed age language learning. Amongst the many advantages, Rachel commented that adults ask higher order questions, have high literacy levels, spot links and gently prompt younger learners to the right answer.Their pronunciation is better in that they try harder. By their presence, adults send a powerful message about language learning as they are giving up their own time. In terms of ICT they are behind the pupils, generally, but they generated competition and gave excellent feedback re clarity of teaching. Given their appetite for learning, Rachel and the CVC staff observed more learning outside the classroom.
Spontaneous Talk
This is where speaking in the language classroom is unplanned, where there is no script, where the questions and answers are unknown. Whilst as teachers we may worry about scaring the pupils, the CVC pupils commented that it‘shows what we really know’, and that they can talk ‘off the top of our heads’ There are many ways to promote Spontaneous Talk, according to Rachel, including:
o question routines
o 20 questions (Have you..? Do you like..? How..? Where..? Is..?)
o What are the questions? (give pupils a ppt with a series of answers, and they suggest the questions)
o Find someone who (great for practising the familiar 'you' form)
o using Piensas que…? for any statement, where their partner has to answer
o Elaborating
o Say something else
o Pimp my language! (eg Juego al tenis – what can you do to soup it up?)
o Have I got news for you (blankfill) NB Personalising it makes it work better
o CLIL
Pure or impure (impure CLIL = still has the focus on the linguistic aim, language, but using new and interesting topics)
o Focus on ‘new knowledge’
o Authentic materials
o Challenging texts
o High use of TL
There are a vast quantity of resources available on Rachel's website, including her CLIL water module in Spanish, with resources from the Western Sahara. She suggests using BBC Clips which has loads of clips on different themes which you can use to make T/F and gapfills.
As always, this was an inspiring journey through ideas and resources which are immediately available to use in the language classroom. Since Rachel's talk in Belfast, we have already overhauled our KS3 Scheme of Work, but looking at her website would encourage me to go even further.
Through LinkedUp , Northgate High School (Vincent Everett) and Comberton Village College trialled a scheme of mixed age language learning. Amongst the many advantages, Rachel commented that adults ask higher order questions, have high literacy levels, spot links and gently prompt younger learners to the right answer.Their pronunciation is better in that they try harder. By their presence, adults send a powerful message about language learning as they are giving up their own time. In terms of ICT they are behind the pupils, generally, but they generated competition and gave excellent feedback re clarity of teaching. Given their appetite for learning, Rachel and the CVC staff observed more learning outside the classroom.
Spontaneous Talk
This is where speaking in the language classroom is unplanned, where there is no script, where the questions and answers are unknown. Whilst as teachers we may worry about scaring the pupils, the CVC pupils commented that it‘shows what we really know’, and that they can talk ‘off the top of our heads’ There are many ways to promote Spontaneous Talk, according to Rachel, including:
o question routines
o 20 questions (Have you..? Do you like..? How..? Where..? Is..?)
o What are the questions? (give pupils a ppt with a series of answers, and they suggest the questions)
o Find someone who (great for practising the familiar 'you' form)
o using Piensas que…? for any statement, where their partner has to answer
o Elaborating
o Say something else
o Pimp my language! (eg Juego al tenis – what can you do to soup it up?)
o Have I got news for you (blankfill) NB Personalising it makes it work better
o CLIL
Pure or impure (impure CLIL = still has the focus on the linguistic aim, language, but using new and interesting topics)
o Focus on ‘new knowledge’
o Authentic materials
o Challenging texts
o High use of TL
There are a vast quantity of resources available on Rachel's website, including her CLIL water module in Spanish, with resources from the Western Sahara. She suggests using BBC Clips which has loads of clips on different themes which you can use to make T/F and gapfills.
As always, this was an inspiring journey through ideas and resources which are immediately available to use in the language classroom. Since Rachel's talk in Belfast, we have already overhauled our KS3 Scheme of Work, but looking at her website would encourage me to go even further.
LANGUAGES AND THE 2012 OLYMPICS
OPENING PLENARY OLYMPICS
Anna Turney opened proceedings telling us of her journey; a Paralympic Alpine Ski Racer, Anna Turney, finished 6th in the Vancouver Paralympics only 4 years after becoming paralysed whilst snowboard racing.
Nick Fuller, Head of Education, LOCOG, then went on to speak about the values of the Olympics and how we can bring them into our classrooms in the runup to the London 2012 Olympics. has free resources, including opportunities for blogging, cross-curricular language use re cooking, communication, enterprise etc, information about competing teams and the pre-games training camps available.
As a department, we had already decided to include a unit on the Olympics and this gives us the impetus to gather ideas and resources, as well as Jo Rhys-Jones' brilliant site
LANGUAGE WORLD 2011
Tsk, tsk, I have just noticed that it has been too long since I last blogged here, though I did start up a Posterous blog for our school trip to Spain However, excuses over, many blogposts coming up soon, including a flurry to match the lovely Lisa's There is nothing like a language conference for that rush of blood to your head, with all the inspirational talks, and the ultimate feel-good factor of meeting the MFL Twitterati again for blogging again.
Wednesday, 18 May 2011
GOING SOLO AT PRIMARY LEVEL
After hearing Chris Harte talking about Solo taxonomy at ILILC in Southampton earlier this year, , I have been trying to get pupils to think more about language, its formation and the patterns they can see.
Having already done a similar exercise with Lower 6 a while ago, I decided to experiment today with my two Primary 6 classes in the local primary school. They have been doing half an hour Spanish a week with me since Christmas.
I divided the class into pairs or groups of 3, and distributed the sheets to the pupils. After a frenzied 5 minutes of cutting, the pupils were ready to go. I told them I wanted them to group the hexagons into honeycombs by putting linking words together. The bigger the honeycomb, the more links they would have found.
It was particularly interesting to see the difference in the two classes, in terms of those who found most links. The pupils chose their groups and the majority were same sex. In one class, two groups of girls 'got it' best whilst in the second class, it was two groups of boys. Perhaps obviously, it was those who generally contribute most verbally in Spanish class who made the most links, but oleasingly the activity drew in others who have not been so vocal or engaged.
It was fascinating to see pupils with a fairly limited amount of Spanish talk through reasons for their groupings, and see connections in language. It has enthused me to start using this activity more with my own pupils.
Tuesday, 17 May 2011
FOR THE LOVE OF LEARNING?
Today our Head of Department turned the tables on us, delivering a 10 minute slot in Japanese entirely in the target language. The lesson included a handout, IWB and miniwhiteboards, with whole class and group work included.
It proved to be a bit of a double-edged sword. On one hand, he was happy to point out that we had coped with some fairly in-depth grammar including tenses, althouhg of course we are all linguists. Yet the discussion after the 'lesson' raised some interesting points about what it must be like to be a pupil in the language classroom, especially when we use target language.
I have no Japanese, and found the whole-class intro stressful, particularly when some others appeared to know a lot or 'get it' quicker than me. I was far happier and indeed quite enjoyed the challenge when presented with key vocab and a sentence to translate.
The reaction from the department was mixed in terms of how we felt as pupils, with some really enjoying it (including those who had a little previous experience of Japanese) and others sharing my feelings of stress. We all agreed that having some knowledge of pronunciation and basic vocabulary would have aided our comprehension and learnig.
Would I like to be a pupil in my classroom? I'm not sure, actually. I think I may be one of those who prefers to take things at their own pace, and process systems and patterns for myself. But at the very least, today's experiment has reminded me of the range of emotions felt by my pupils, and to tailor my teaching accordingly.
It proved to be a bit of a double-edged sword. On one hand, he was happy to point out that we had coped with some fairly in-depth grammar including tenses, althouhg of course we are all linguists. Yet the discussion after the 'lesson' raised some interesting points about what it must be like to be a pupil in the language classroom, especially when we use target language.
I have no Japanese, and found the whole-class intro stressful, particularly when some others appeared to know a lot or 'get it' quicker than me. I was far happier and indeed quite enjoyed the challenge when presented with key vocab and a sentence to translate.
The reaction from the department was mixed in terms of how we felt as pupils, with some really enjoying it (including those who had a little previous experience of Japanese) and others sharing my feelings of stress. We all agreed that having some knowledge of pronunciation and basic vocabulary would have aided our comprehension and learnig.
Would I like to be a pupil in my classroom? I'm not sure, actually. I think I may be one of those who prefers to take things at their own pace, and process systems and patterns for myself. But at the very least, today's experiment has reminded me of the range of emotions felt by my pupils, and to tailor my teaching accordingly.
Tuesday, 19 April 2011
A LEVEL SPANISH IMMERSION EXPERIENCE
The end of term also saw the advent of what has now become an annual A level Spanish Immersion 'Weekend' albeit not always at the weekend. This year, 21 Grosvenor pupils, along with 3 teachers, our assistants Vicent and Cristina, our student and a past pupil all spent 2 idyllic days at the residential centre in the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum in Cultra, Holywood.
Activities included a series of workshops focusing on listening, reading and speaking, as well as activities such as Dragon's Den, a treasure hunt, a quiz, DVDs and songs. The Dragon's Den activity this year was by far the best yet, with very imaginative ideas from all groups.
Group 1
Group 3
Here is the winning group with their product 'Ele-fuente'
Some new activities included a group discussion of survival items after their boat sinking in the ocean, as well as a quiz where pupils had to pair up the teachers with the unknown facts which included a diverse range of topics from an all-Ireland rower to two false teeeth!
Pupils embraced the Spanish as never before, and all staff were delighted by efforts and enthusiasm. To give up 2 days' holiday as staff was part of the job, but for pupils to do the same was a big ask, yet those who came were a joy to work with and left us all energised for what remains of the academic year as well as being a good preparation for the pupils for the looming oral examination.
Here are some photos from the residential
A LEVEL SPANISH IMMERSION WEEKEND from Amanda Salt on Vimeo.
Activities included a series of workshops focusing on listening, reading and speaking, as well as activities such as Dragon's Den, a treasure hunt, a quiz, DVDs and songs. The Dragon's Den activity this year was by far the best yet, with very imaginative ideas from all groups.
Group 1
LA GUARIDA DEL DRAGÓN 1 from Amanda Salt on Vimeo.
Group 3
LA GUARIDA DEL DRAGÓN 3 from Amanda Salt on Vimeo.
Here is the winning group with their product 'Ele-fuente'
LA GUARIDA DEL DRAGÓN 4 from Amanda Salt on Vimeo.
Some new activities included a group discussion of survival items after their boat sinking in the ocean, as well as a quiz where pupils had to pair up the teachers with the unknown facts which included a diverse range of topics from an all-Ireland rower to two false teeeth!
Pupils embraced the Spanish as never before, and all staff were delighted by efforts and enthusiasm. To give up 2 days' holiday as staff was part of the job, but for pupils to do the same was a big ask, yet those who came were a joy to work with and left us all energised for what remains of the academic year as well as being a good preparation for the pupils for the looming oral examination.
Here are some photos from the residential
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