It was an absolute honour to be invited to present at the International School in Toulouse this weekend as part of the Practical Pedagogies conference. After 3 years of hard work there are a huge number of ideas that I could have shared in terms of methods we have implemented to try to stimulate, challenge and encourage curiosity in language learning. We're a long, long way from having cracked things, but hopefully we're on the right path- it's definitely an interesting one!
With huge thanks for all of those people who came along to my session, I really enjoyed the conversations we all had. If you want to try any of these things get in touch and I'll try to help as much as I can.
ShelterBox Spanish Challenge 2016- THE WINNERS!
1st = Lauren, Laura and Emily from Route 39 Academy, Clovelly (Devon). Judges thought that the "quality of Spanish was excellent" and that it was "really creative".
2nd = Lawlor from Royal Grammar School, Newcastle. Judges thought that there were "Very well chosen emotive images and authentic footage" and it was also "the most professional" whilst the quality of language was also very impressive.
Huge apologies for the music that has been used on these videos, however it would be a real shame not to share them in order to celebrate the huge efforts that have gone into their development.
I love it when teachers get creative. So it was with great delight that I received the flyer above from Elodie Tremellat at Saltash (those of you who came to the Newton Abbot conference in February may well have had the opportunity to listen to her Head of Department, Ben Rowe, who is a true tech inspiration to me). I love the idea of the project above and will definitely be sitting down with a few people at school to see if they might be interested in getting involved. Elodie's still on the hunt for more participants, both from the UK and abroad, so please please carry on sharing this flyer!
ShelterBox Spanish Challenge 2015-16, come join the creativity!
with half term approaching (wow, that's gone quickly, I hope it's been productive!) I thought I'd just write a quick post to say that the ShelterBox Spanish Challenge 2015-16 is open for entrants and it would be great to have you involved!
ShelterBox Spanish Challenge 2014-15: the winner!
it's with great delight that I'm now able to share the winner of this year's ShelterBox Spanish Challenge, Luke from the Burgate School and Sixth Form in Hampshire. The judges considered it to be an incredibly different approach to the task and the hard work and creativity is clear to all.
Feedback from staff and students about engagement and creativity levels has been really positive, so if you're looking at next year's Schemes of Work then please think about getting involved! For more details please see https://www.smore.com/5j3b-the-shelterbox-mfl-challenge . And remember that half of the entry fee goes directly to ShelterBox itself!
Language World is a real highlight of the annual calendar for me. Yes the range of sessions are always great. But more than that it's an amazing opportunity to catch up with colleagues and friends from across the country to discover their ideas and successes.
This year I was asked to present about our efforts at Route 39 Academy to develop a language provision with genuine real-world meaning and which is far more student-driven than anything I've been involved in before. I confess (and I confessed before the session) that I felt really, really nervous presenting this year as the work shown in the slides has been well and truly produced at the cost of, well, definitely sweat and at times verging on tears (mainly of exhaustion).
We're a long, long way from where we'd like to be still (does anyone else find that no matter how many jobs you get done there are always a thousand more that you can think of which need doing!). However, we're absolutely delighted to have appointed a fantastic new teacher to join us in teaching Spanish (both in and out of the classroom) next year, Luke Webb, and can't wait to make the most of his skills and ideas!
At the moment my Stretch phase students are working on a project, alongside STEM and Geography, to develop an eco waterpark. As part of the project launch we had a session with Richard Hammond, founder of the green traveller website and a writer for the Guardian, where students began to map out waterparks packed with environmental features, albeit they were working on squared paper and with a strict budget for their designs.
Recently in Spanish students have looked at the massive issue of forest fires in Spain and reflected on the importance of wise water usage. This week a number of my groups then used bit.ly/ParqueParaiso to discover the waterpark which I had "proposed" for development near Valencia,which they have been examining in a web-quest style of task- responding to questions, matching elements and finding key phrases before debating whether they feel we ought to approve the park or not.
However, the cool thing about Smore is that a) it's free and b) you can include, thanks to soundcloud.com , not only text, but also audio- creating a truly multidimensional task, absolutely ideal for both in session work and homework.
ShelterBox Spanish Challenge- a competition for schools across the country!
Last year it was a pleasure to team up with the fantastic charity ShelterBox to develop the ShelterBox Challenge. We've made some key changes in 2014 to make it more user-friendly, more effective and, hopefully, better for departments and for students during the year ahead!
So please have a read of the details below, which are also available at www.smore.com/5j3b and then share it with as many people as you can before getting involved yourself!
I was delighted to be invited a few months ago to run a Gifted and Talented event for selected Key Stage 3 students in a local school, Chulmleigh Community College. All of the students learn only French and the Head of Department was keen to get them reflecting on HOW they learn and how they can begin to take more responsibility for their own learning, thus allowing them to become more independent moving forward.
And so we decided to teach them some Spanish. I needed very little persuasion with this, as those of you who know me won't be surprised to hear.
However, I also wanted to learn from the fantastic Alex Blagona, who I consider to be the King of Gifted and Talented, having run numerous sessions over the years in Suffolk to really stretch his learners. He advised that we just give students some language and allow them to mould it into something productive- he recommended to create a campaign on cyberbullying.
I took that concept and ran with it, but wanted to get students reflecting on the nature of how a language fits together and how you can take responsiblity for progressing your own knowledge base.
All of which, in my eyes, help to make fantastic language learners.
Now, and I might be doing myself out of future gainful employment, but I've spoken up about sharing recently, so I'm going to stick to that. Please find the resources that I used below- I hope they help!
Aim of the day: To inspire, to have fun and to show that languages DO have a genuine purpose, all whilst allowing students to be creative with language. The only request is that teachers be as hands-off as possible!
Target group: Year 9 grade C / D borderline students. We have not yet confirmed whether we will stick just to French or allow a variety of languages this year. Teams work in groups of 6. Each team has 2 iPads. In order to avoid it becoming unmanageable we restricted the number of teams to 10 in Exeter this year.
9am: welcome and brief to students. Please look through the slides below to see the brief. At this point students will complete an initial attitudes Google Doc form.
1pm students present their pitch in their teams. All videos must be completed and submitted before this deadline.
After the pitches the Google Doc of attitudes is repeated.
Prizes (small) will be awarded on the day for the best pitches (a balance of effort and quality) by the teachers in the room.
The overall first prize will be awarded to the team whose video receives the most views during the course of 7 days after the event- thus ensuring that students have to return to school and their community and publicise their work, thus really building the profile of the event.
a venue- if possible in a local football club to emphasise the real world elements of the project.
iPads- sufficient for 2 per team. Ideally provided by a coordinating school. We will provide all of the necessary materials through an iTunes U course (except photos of your local area which you will have to provide).
Ideally we need to try to keep costs at an absolute minimum- this is not run for profit but because it works. Unfortunately funds are needed (invariably) for venues and prizes, unless appropriate organisations come forward who are keen to sponsor!