#ililc4 @elvisrunner In at the deep end

@elvisrunner aka Eleanor Abrahams has recently come into a department as HOD, where possibly the biggest issue was that the kids were not engaged. In this session, she talked about the different targets she has had and the strategies she has employed to help the department move forward, bringing the pupils on board as they go. 

Improve ethos 

Engagement 

Reward

Project-based SOW

Parental involvement 

Target 1 engagement 

Create a dance routine with commands (drama strong in school so she decided to tap into this) 

Watched Ashleigh and Pudsey routine from Britain's Got Talent, and got pupils to say what would Ashleigh say, then they had to shout commands as Pudsey moved. Much hilarity ensued as we tried this ourselves... 

Target 2 accurate assessment data 

Standard tests for all brought in

Joint moderation 

Standardised level calculator 

Reliable tracking 

Visual aids for pupils to see improvement as their name moves up the ladder 

Target 3 Improve the image 

Company logo and teacher name in each room 

Resources onto the wikis 

Performing Arts department strong. 

Lyrics to Summer Nights, sort according to the order they think lyrics should be in 

Starter - 4 words one pic idea for 4 different musicals. 

Subtitle bingo - subtitles mixed on each pupil page, they tick as they see it in subtitles. 

Character analysis followed, based on the film and they created a poster using the imperative to advertise it. 

Lead the department 

Leadership is not a position or a title, it is action and example 

Move away from the textbook but keep their assessments, vocab can guide you as you write your SOWs (this is what we do) 

Venn diagram of key topics, with words to place on the circles - makes them think of how they can apply vocabulary in more than one area

Cluedo

Connect 4 

Strip bingo

Colours - buzz word bingo. Differentiation 

Check out all the ideas on the amazing http://elvisrunner.blogspot.com/

Start with your colour then try the next colour if you can manage it 

Eleanor decided to allow pupils exposure to past and future tenses . She recognised that she could allow the kids to be better by exposure to it and using it. 

This was a brilliant, interactive and inspiring session and gave me so many ideas to take away. The full presentation is on Eleanor's blog http://elvisrunner.blogspot.co.uk where she explains it all much better than me

#ililc4 @dominic_mcg Talking Tools

NB I have decided to leave these blogposts as more or less the notes I took at the time, as sometimes lists are easier to digest and quicker to find key ideas. 

Traditional talking tools 

Dice - name number of words acc to dice roll for a given topic 

Cooperative learning structures Kagan - quiz quiz trade 

Hats masks and disguises (I think it was Sadie McLachlan who talked about having a moustache stuck to a pencil and the pupil in the group talked when they had the pencil in front of them) 

Technologies 

Audacity - see also José Picardo's guide to podcasting. Kids like changing their voices 

Audioboo - up to 3 mins 

Fotobabble 

Blabberize 

Crazy talk - expensive PC programme but £0.69 on iTunes 

Voki (you can save them into Publisher file) 

Goanimate (make voice files on audacity) 

Talking Tom Cat (cartoon) 

Dubbler 

Puppetpals 2 

Songify - see songify in action with the hilarious video "this reality hits you hard bro" on YouTube 

Rory's Story Cubes 

cueprompter.com great for CA practice Visoprompt free does the same job 

Duolingo 

Yakit kids 

Line learner lite 

Tellagami - some say it is better than Voki 

There were lots of fab ideas in Dom's session plus we had time to play about with the apps and create different speaking activities and examples. He is putting his two talks on his blog http://domsmflpage.blogspot.co.uk

#ILILC4 @icpjones More than words

NB I have decided to leave these blogposts as more or less the notes I took at the time, as sometimes lists are easier to digest and quicker to find key ideas. 

The way words look

Visuals to support language you introduce 

Get pupils to visualise new language 

Think about presentation of work 

The way words sound

TL sounds different to different learners 

Response to sounds (boys self-conscious that French sounds girly) 

Differences without stereotyping 

Pure listening without reference to MT is nearly impossible 

Rhymes 

Reading out loud - old fashioned but pupils enjoy 

Jacques Prévert Spectacle poem - mix of translation and play on words 

Jacques Prévert L'amiral - like a tongue twister . Pupils have a set idea that poetry has to rhyme and this shows them it doesn't.

Ana Tijoux: Las horas rap  (one of her songs is in FIFA game so lots of kids recognise her, she has loads of songs on YouTube) 

See Isabelle's YouTube account for playlists 

The way words interact with each other 

Etymology: prefixes & suffixes 

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php

idioms (lost in translation language) 

<<awkward English>>

Teach them set phrases and expressions - I really liked this idea and am going to get them to create photos eg ponerse rojo como un tomate 

Look on Youtube 

Use Blabberize.com to animate a photo

Fluency of learning words and phrases? Not necessarily part and parcel of the fluency but nice to have and good for pushing more interested/ able pupils 

Kit Brett book with podcasts for French 

Be aware of languages words have been borrowed from eg piano from Italian 

Rhyming words dictionaries 

Text types

Think about the type of connectives you teach them. (Last column) Helps you focus on that when preparing your lessons

 

Playful with the links between languages 

http://trabalenguasenespanol.com Tongue twisters 

Chistes de Lepe www.1000chistes.com/chistes-de-lepe jokes website 

Poetry links 

Le message - pupils can copy the structure to do their own poetry 

Give them recipe list above for writing poetry. 

Un verbe: Aimer (on YouTube) kind of rap, about the excitement of meeting somebody new 

Colour poem "what is blue? The sky is blue" idea 

Word clouds and calligrammes 

Wordle and Tagxedo (import your own picture) 

Diamond poems eg to reinforce grammar

Haikus - great for speaking 

Kennings - form of metaphor, 2 word phrase. eg whale-road for sea

http://text-to-speech.imtranslator.net Use this, it's not perfect but it models it for them 

ivona.com also for text to speech 

Storybirds 

Decide Now app

Made-up songs for specific purpose eg Soy Una pizza on YouTube 

Musical translation - eg Kevin, Karla y la Banda Wrecking Ball. Show them parallel texts of the song lyrics. Don't show them the video if it's a distraction. 

Muy interesante website has lots of great stuff on it. 

Segundamano.es

Guía de reciclaje para móvil 

Guardia Civil medio ambiente page 

Warner Bros add .es etc to go to the Warner Bros website for that language 

Copy the page you want them to read, paste it into Lingro and Lingro acts as a dictionary 

Isabelle uses the following to decide if she will use technology or not.. 

As always, this was a great session by the ever-creative and inspirational Isabelle Jones. Her original presentation will be in her blog http://isabellejones.blogspot.co.uk

#ililc4 @joedale keynote Putting the Pedagogy into the Technology

This year was the fourth ICT Links into Languages conference at the university of Southampton, brought about by the hard work of Zena Hilton and her team.  King of the #mfltwitterati, Joe Dale, kicked off proceedings for the weekend with his keynote. The theme of this year's ICT Links into Languages was putting the pedagogy into the technology. In a breakneck race through a multitude of slides, Joe showed us a lot of links and information to support this. 

The key message I took out of the Carol Dweck video was that pupils need to see setbacks as opportunities to learn.  As teachers, we need to see the pedagogy in using the technology and recognise the fact that technology is a tool not a learning outcome. Another key idea to remember is that pupils are technology comfy not technology savvy. 

Joe showed us a video which talked about the Tpack: that sweet spot where technology, pedagogy and content knowledge all come together. He also showed us slides on the SAMR model of Substitution augmentation modification and redefinition. I really liked the way the video explained it: 

Substitution is using Google docs as a word processor. 

Augmentation is sharing the Google doc. 

Modification is using the Google doc for collaboration and comment. 

Redefinition is sharing the Google doc across the world, speaking comments and embedding the final text into your class website. 

We all should aim for the top two levels of modification and redefinition and Joe had zillions of links to teachers doing amazing things in terms of flipping their classrooms, sharing good practice and improving the learning. You will get a chance to check them out on his blog http://joedale.typepad.com

With Joe having set the tone for the weekend, we then set off excitedly in search of our talks and workshops, iPads, tablets, pens and paper at the ready.. 

Reflections of an iPad classroom 12/12/13

 This past week or so we have been dabbling in lots of different things. Form 1 who are absolute beginners at Spanish thoroughly enjoyed creating cartoon dialogues using the Puppet Pals app to practise their oral questions and answers. They only had 30 mins so I bribed them (I prefer to call it focusing) that whoever created and uploaded their video to Edmodo would get positive behaviour points on Lesson Monitor. Intense activity followed. What pleases me most is the intuitive nature of all this, as they selected, saved, published, uploaded, etc.. Only one couple struggled and were aided by another who had finished. 

Form 4 used Voice Record Pro to record their oral answers and uploaded them to Edmodo so I could check pronunciation. 

Lower 6 used Kidblog as part of their target setting, incorporating their marginal learning gains wheel into the blogpost. Today, they used the Educreations app in conjunction with Apple TV as we moved round the class, each pupil displaying their translation for a specific sentence and the rest offering feedback re grammatical accuracy. It was amazing to watch as each iPad took control of Apple TV and then sentences were corrected as we contributed feedback. 

Finally, our student and past pupil Megan created our first Aura using augmented reality app Aurasma. We videoed some Form 1 pupils talking about Spanish in Grosvenor then snapped their photo. Megan assures me it is easy to create the marvel that is the talking photo we ended up with, so tomorrow I become the pupil and my past pupil becomes the teacher! 

Reflections of an iPad classroom 3/12/13

Today was a spur of the moment iPad lesson with my AS Spanish class which proved very beneficial and produced the comment "Miss, you've made me love iPads" from a former paper-and-pencil declaree. 

I wanted to conclude the topic of technology by looking at the advantages and disadvantages of the internet, social networks and mobile phones. I set up 3 separate Linoit pages, posting the link each time onto the Lower 6 class page on Edmodo. The pupils each had an iPad and jumped on to the sites, posting advantages on yellow post-its and disadvantages on red post-its. They moved between the three separate pages. I took screen shots of the pages and dropped them into a PowerPoint which I then uploaded onto Edmodo; some pupils are happy with the Linoit links whereas others will want to print the PowerPoint off. 

We then took a past paper essay with its 3 bullet points. Again, I set up three Linoit pages and put the links on Edmodo. They typed up ideas for each bullet point and we then went through the points, correcting the grammar as we went (they told me the mistakes and/or how to fix them) Again the pupils were fully engaged, the level of the language was high and there were many more contributions than if we had planned at the board as a class. I am moving the class from high dependency for essay planning towards the ultimate goal of planning the essay themselves under pressure during the exam. This was an excellent halfway step and the pupils felt it really helped them. 

This lesson required no preparation in advance and yet it was one of the best lessons we have had this year in AS Spanish. The pupils were fully engaged and the quality of ideas and language was much better than in previous essay planning lessons. 

Reflections of an iPad classroom 2/12/13

Today Lower 6 and Form 5 used the teacher app for Socrative to create quizzes. They logged in using our Spanish departmental email and password and created their quizzes on the Present tense for L6 and Leisure for Form 5. We created a list of sub-topics for each and pupils signed up on the board for which one they wanted to do. They saved their quiz with the subtopic name plus #5 or #L6 followed by the number of their iPad (they always use the same one)
We then used some of the quizzes with the pupils using the student app for Socrative this time. I ran teacher-paced quizzes, student-paced quizzes and the extremely popular Space Race.
This was a great way of getting the pupils to look at their learning by creating questions and then showing their knowledge in the quiz stage.