National Poetry Day

A colleague sent everyone an email saying that last Thursday was national poetry day so I wanted to incorporate writing poems in French and German into my lessons. Here are some ideas that I've picked up over the years:
1. Shape poems. Think of a shape and fill it with your poem or single words. Here is one I created on wordfoto app.

2. Comparisons poems. Using personality adjectives and comme/wie: Gefährlich wie ein Tiger. Using comparatives: Tu es plus jolie qu'une fleur.

3. Using the model of Rudyard Kipling's famous poem 'If'. For this, you need to use the imperfect and the conditional tenses: si j'étais riche, j'achèterais une voiture.

4. Hello and goodbye poems: 

Guten Tag die Sonne, Auf Wiedersehen der Regen.  

Listening Ideas

With the GCSE course having a heavy focus on speaking and writing, I sometimes feel listening practice gets pushed to one side apart from students listening to me or their peers. This year I aim to not neglect this particular skill so I've been digging around for ideas on how to involve listening tasks more in my lessons. Here are a few ideas: 

1. Gap fill. Sentences could be in the foreign language or English so students have to translate the answer first. 

2. Bingo. Give out grids with words or phrases. This task could be differentiated easily. Higher ability could have more to listen out for or more difficult language/structures. 

3. Order the words. Students put key words or phrases in the order they hear them.

4. Bash the table. Students bang the table every time they hear a sport etc. For a quieter activity they could stand up and sit down instead. 

5. Tick or add. Ask students to brainstorm key words from a particular topic (sports/hobbies for example). During the listening they either tick the hobby as they hear it or add it to their list if they don't have it. 

6. Music videos. I used to include lots of music in my lessons and aim to do so again. Top 10 is good for finding out what's current, Disney songs on YouTube. 

7. Are my answers correct? Students are marking questions that are already answered. Or get them to predict their own answers before listening. 

8. Dictation. Good old fashioned dictation or letter by letter to practise the alphabet and students have to work out where to put the gaps. 

9. Draw answers. Instead of writing students can give answers with pictures. 

10. Spontaneous speaking in the target language in the classroom is listening (I know - that's listening to me and their peers but I wanted to add it to the list!)

11. Get them to answer in pencil or on mini whiteboards. It will feel less like a test. 

12. Use the reading time. Work through the question with them so they know what kind of answer they are listening for. 

13. Think, pair, share. 

14. Use the transcript to harvest new vocabulary and structures. 

Read and toss

This was posted on Twitter which I thought would be a great starter. I'm going to use it this week by asking students to write their own sentences on strips of paper that they then screw up and throw. Maybe a word limit for each sentence so all teams have similar length sentences. The activity could then be a competition. 

Pound shop challenge!

A colleague of mine gave all staff at my school the challenge of going to a pound shop over the holidays to find a teaching and learning resource. Here is what I found and have come up with:

Soft Ball

1. Throw the ball to a student and they must answer a question. Then throw it back for me to throw to another. I ask the questions.

2. Same as above but students throw the ball to each other asking their own questions.

3. Divide the class into two teams. They ask the other team a question. If the team gets it right, one student is allowed to try to get the ball in the bin/ box. The team with the most goals wins.

4. Musical ball - students pass the ball around the class and when the music stops, the student holding it answers a question.

5. 2 lines facing each other about 2m apart. The ball is passed back and forth zigzagging down the two lines. Students have to say a keyword before they throw it to the next person. This could be timed.

Playing Cards

1. Students take a card as they enter. Hearts must do one starter, clubs another etc.

2. Random way of putting students into groups.

3. Students take a card as they enter. Code on the board gives them a letter and they have to think of 5 keywords beginning with that letter.

4. Writing activity with 4 categories (eg school subjects, opinions, snacks, past tense). Each team picks 4 cards which corresponds to each category. The cards they pick will determine how many of each category they will need to include in their writing. This could be done as a competition.

5. Students take a card as they enter. Each suit and each letter corresponds to a category. Students have one minute to think of as many keywords as possible for that category or they have one minute to talk about the category

Race whispers or silent spelling

Choose three sentences for the race. Get students into teams of 6-7 students. All students need to say the whole sentence. Teams have to race to be the first to finish. It works well when students are sitting across the room so you can see and hear everything. I asked the last person to stand when they had finished so I could clearly see who had won. It gets quite loud even though they were supposed to be whispering!

Instead of whispering, students at the back of each team are given a word which they spell out using their finger on the back of the person in front. The word is passed on through the team in this way and the front person writes it down on a piece of paper.

Teachmeet - North Petherton 29th January

Here are some ideas that I picked up at tmsomerset.

1. Writing through blogging - set a word limit challenge or give students prompts (...it wasn’t my fault...), picture prompts or 5 words as prompts.

 2. For a different way of presenting, get an educational account for Prezi

 3. Build with crome - digital lego

 4. Video FX live - use for greenscreening

 5. Hamilton trust website for ideas with planning

 6. www.purplemash.co.uk 

 7. Heads up charades

 8. Hand books in for marking with a traffic light system to show how students think they have done in the topic

 9. wee mee - create avatars

 10. make waves - school blogs and secure social networking

 11. Barefoot World Atlas app

 12. Use soundcloud to record audio

Revision ideas for Year 11

Ideas from my colleagues of revision activities for GCSE classes:



-GCSE vocab cards: students make cards with German phrases, blank on the other side. In groups, they put a card down, person who says it fastest in English keeps the card (good for 8-10 phrases). After a while: write the English on reverse side and play other way round. Make sure pupils initial their cards in case you mix groups.

- Ask studens to draw a grid, each grid covering a topic (could be grammar e.g. tenses and/or modules e.g school/health etc). Read out phrases or words in TL; students group them in English under correct topic.Works great for tenses.

- Mini-whiteboards: Draw in 10 seconds what teacher said in TL.



- I have been using the 12 game but in multiples of 10 at the end of lessons…students count up to 120, they can say one number at a time, or two, or three, but whoever says 120 is out. So one student might say 10, the next 20, 30, 40, the next 50, 60, 70, the next , 80, 90, the next 100, 110…then the student who would have to say 120 is out/loses a life. Works for whole class or small groups.

Fake texts

Just found this website for making fake texts. Endless possibilities! 

Human Dominoes

Thanks to @tomhockaday for reminding me of this at #ililc4.

There are many names for this activity and I've called it a round robin in the past. As students enter the classroom, get them to take a slip of paper with an English sentence on and a different sentence in the target language. Someone else in the room will have a matching English sentence and someone else a matching TL one. 

One student reads out their TL sentence and the student who has the matching English sentence stands up. They then read out their TL one and it continues until the whole class has read out theirs. 

I wanted to get the whole class involved so I did it slightly differently yesterday. Each student had their slips of paper and I asked them to get in a circle around the room. I left them to it and they had to find the two students that would stand either side of them. After they had finished, we read out the phrases to check they were in the right place. 

As an extension, I asked them to write the English of their target language sentence. Ignoring the other typed English sentences, they then played Quiz, Quiz, Trade. 

As a final activity, in groups, they had to write a paragraph using the sentences they had in their hands and not their original. I got them to write on mini white boards and took a photo. Next lesson, we will peer assess as a class and in pairs. 

Human Guess Who

Thanks to a colleague at my school for this idea. It worked really well with my Year 7s. This is based on the board game - Guess Who? Ask for a volunteer to leave the room while the class pick someone for them to guess. It's a good idea to clarify what colour eyes they have etc. before you invite the student back in. When they come back in, everyone stands up and they ask questions in the target language to determine who the person is. C'est une fille? Elle a les cheveux bruns? Elle est grande? As a question is asked, the rest of the class answer with oui or non and students sit down if they don't fit the bill. As we got more confident, we also added personality phrases and wearing glasses. 

Trichez!

Students compete against each other in small groups. Each student starts with 5 counters and try to win as many as possible from the other members of their group. Each student picks up a card from the pile with a phrase on. I got students to make their own to save me some time. The group then has to translate the sentence. If they get it right, they keep their counters but if they get it wrong, they each have to give one of their counters to the student that read it out. Amongst the deck will be some cards with 'trichez!' on. If they pick one of these, they have to make up a phrase without the rest of the group realising what they are doing. If they can bluff their way though until after the group has translated, the rest of the group will have to give them a counter each even if they translated the phrase correctly. 

I did this with the topic of daily routine and time but it could also be used as a revision activity for an assessment. If you have time, you could prepare the sentences but I allowed students to make up 4 of their own with the help of their books. I also got students to think about a reserve phrase in case they picked up a trichez card. 

Thanks to someone on twitter for the original idea. Sorry but I can't remember who! 

Passing notes!

I've been thinking about revision activities for assessments and remembered something I hadn't used for a while - only because I caught a student passing a note! Each student writes a note - it could be a phrase, question or item of vocabulary. They pass their notes while music is playing which adds an element of excitement and buzz in the room! When the music stops, they open the note and have to answer the question or translate the word or phrase. You could check students' understanding by using a random name generator. This could also be done using paper aeroplanes or snowball fight depending on your class. 

MFL department INSET on differentiation

We had the time today to sit and discuss teaching and learning for about 45 minutes! Lovely! Here are a few ideas that came about. 

•  Learning buddies and experts
• Seating plans (e.g. B grade girl with C grade boy)
• Group/ Peer work
• Create own activities or teach somebody something
• Reading games - race reading, shout out next word where teacher stops, cloud text, running dictation, paragraphs around room with question sheets for students, group work with different paragraphs - students make another group to answer questions, groups have same text but 4 sets of questions
• Coloured slides not black text on white background
• Structured questions
• Vocab sheets with key words for new topics
• Think of 3 adjectives, 3 verbs, 3 nouns for topic so far, if partner can guess meaning, they get a point but if not, I get one. Move to next partner. 
• Translate sentences but mix the order so doesn’t go from easy to hard
• Put cards in correct order to build sentences. Instead of giving to students ask them to come and pick to build up their own - throw them on the floor!!
• Listening activities - peer support in answering questions together on MWB, bang the table when you hear the keyword, predict the answer, multiple choice. 
• Homework - think of an interesting sentence, create a starter for partner based on...
• Varied use of target language
• Carousel activities
• Use of MFL assistants or TA in lessons