With over 15 years’ experience teaching modern foreign languages (MFL), and increasingly training and supporting other teachers, I see first-hand the understandable gaps that exist in primary schools.

At the heart of this is confidence: for children, of course, but critically for teachers – both trainees to experienced pros. But what are the ingredients for that special something? 

Practical application of language, developing effective speaking, listening, reading and writing skills and where these fit within the curriculum, remain a stumbling block for many.

Effective coordination of teaching and learning, celebrating languages, and the school ethos and community reach are all necessary, too.  

All the while, of course, we can’t lose sight of targets, and what children need to move on to the next stage of their MFL schooling.

So here are six creative ways to incorporate DfE attainment targets into your planning, improve your confidence, and make your lessons sparkle… 

1. Promote ‘having a go’

With languages, we all make mistakes all the time. I will often have to double check a spelling in a bilingual dictionary or play a phrase back using an audio file to check pronunciation.

It is crucial the children see this as a strength to improvement and not a weakness. Rewarding strategies, skills and a positive attitude to learning are really important for fostering a growth mindset (and that seismic shift from ‘I can’t do it’ to ‘I will do it’). 

A culture of ‘having a go’, and of recognising children who have stepped out of their comfort zone to try something new and learn from it, is something we should all be encouraging in our language lessons and beyond. 

2. Discuss metacognition

We use language learning strategies all the time in our MFL lessons. But do you discuss why we use them, and how they help, with the children?  

When we put our ‘silly’ actions to new words, there is a scientific reason behind it. It is called a Total Physical Response or TPR – by linking something physical with language, the connection can strengthen within the brain.

I wow the children with this nugget of science and, for some who are initially reluctant to keep up with all the physicality, when you explain that next week when we play a competitive game, those joining in with actions might have a chance of winning, they are usually swayed to join. 

In fact, when the next week comes and children are focusing on recall, it is often the action they remember first, but soon after the language follows. 

3. Encourage active learning

We know children learn through a combination of styles, and it is useful for them to work out how they learn best. 

Some of my Year 6s like to take notes in language lessons and I am all for that. Some bring a little notebook in from home, some like to practise spelling patterns over and over on a whiteboard, and some like to annotate their tracking clouds (in which children can write a number of words that relate to a certain topic) with target language they know or remember.

For others, dual coding supports them and luckily, again, we always accompany new vocabulary with clear pictures, photos, flashcards, etc. 

Active learners thrive in games like Simon Says, drama and mime activities, and of course MFL appeals to the auditory senses too, teaching by songs, rhymes, poems and the richness of sound when focusing on phonics and speaking tasks.

They lead to the fun, joy and laughter that is also key for that all-important motivation. 

4. Use memory hooks

Mnemonics, sound similarities, links with other words and concepts… whatever the word makes you think of can help in remembering its spelling and meaning.

What makes these hooks even more powerful is sharing them. 

I award ‘language detective’ points to those who tell the rest of the class what their memory hooks are and allow others to ‘magpie’ them if they work for them too.

As an example, gamers might link the French word for tired, fatigue, with the fatigue level meter on their computer games, working out that it means a lack of energy.  

One of my favourites recently was how to remember the difference between the pronouns for he and she (il and elle). 

A Year 5 child told me if you put a B in front of both you would get Bill and Belle helping you to remember which is which. 

5. Practice, practice, practice

Ideally, your warm-up/starter should be a retrieval task recapping previous learning. And then, why not make use of those two minutes here, five minutes there during the week – such as at transition times – to re-visit language?

Try listening and joining in with a song during tidy-up time, choosing who lines up for break or lunch by listing vocabulary or answering a target language question, using your PE warm-up time to recap new words in a game of corners.

In fact, little and often is most effective with language. 

I always say registrations are the most under-used time for learning.

Think about it, the two-and-a-half minutes it takes to do the register, twice a day, can be a great opportunity to use the target language.

Answer with the name of a sport or an opinion phrase, for example. 

6. Language detective superpowers

In adult speak, ‘language detective superpowers’ are the transferable skills that will go with pupils to KS3 and beyond:

• The ability to identify foreign language words and phrases learned previously, and apply that knowledge to an unfamiliar context.
• Being able to spot cognates and near-cognates (words which are the same or similar in English as in the target language).
• Using all clues to decipher meaning often with an educated guess if needed (pictures, diagrams, context).
• Using a bilingual dictionary or online reference tool to look up words that may be key to meaning.  

Alongside these linguistic ‘superpowers’, of course, are the further skills of problem-solving, communication, appreciation of culture and diversity and collaborative learning.

All of this will prepare learners for secondary school – they can apply these skills to any language and be on the path to success! 

Low-prep activities

Mind-readers  

Write a target word or phrase on a piece of paper or mini whiteboard, but keep it hidden. Give the children a go at guessing what you’re thinking of. That’s really all there is to it!  

You can have recent vocabulary or phrases on the screen as support, or make this a true recall activity where pupils retrieve the language recently learned from memory (obviously give your class a clue as to which topic area it is).

The magic really happens when a child guesses correctly; they truly think they can read your mind!  

Head-to-head 

Select two children to stand up and challenge each other. You (or another member of the class) say a target word or phrase, and the first person out of the two who correctly translates it gets to stay standing and take on another member of the class.

This can be done both working from target language to English and vice-versa of course.

Set a timer and whoever is still standing at the end of the time wins a prize! 

Kate Percival is a primary school teacher, primary MFL consultant at Primary Languages Network, and associate subject consultant for primary languages at the NASBTT, where she supports subject development resources. 

The post KS2 MFL – Incorporate DfE targets without boring pupils appeared first on Teachwire.

The topic of food and drink is great for motivating children, as well as encouraging them to think about healthy eating.

It can be pretty low-prep if you use actual food and drink items as a change to showing a PowerPoint, and you might want to hand out some of the goodies as rewards.

The examples in this plan are given in French, but the activities for this unit can be done in any language.  

Use this six-lesson plan and the accompanying worksheets to explore food and drink in KS2 French (or whatever modern foreign language you’re teaching).

Dr Amanda Barton is a freelance writer and teacher trainer who has taught MFL in primary and secondary schools. She is co-author of Teaching Primary French and Teaching Primary Spanish (Bloomsbury). Follow Amanda on Twitter @amandabook2

The post French KS2 – food & drink medium-term plan with resources appeared first on Teachwire.

The Lowdown

The THIS IS ME series and online support provide carefully paced language acquisition experience.

Child-centred spreads, with Evgenia Malina’s wonderful illustrations, bring that experience alive. So far, books for English-French and English-Chinese are available.

THIS IS ME books do not tell a single, linear story. A glance around what’s available on the market shows that long stories can quickly get ‘out of control’ and start to use language that is too difficult at the early stage.

The language in this series, however, is very carefully paced, using QAN (question, affirmative, and negative conversational sentences) as an underlying rationale, and with plenty of essential spirality.

The spreads are linked by the characters – DongDong in Book One – and by familiar scenarios, including going to school, watching the birds, eating noodles.

Why start to learn a new language before the age of seven? There is, of course, the usefulness of conversational skill, and also the awareness that one’s own first language is not necessarily at the centre of the Universe.

But there’s more, relating to wider cognitive ability and creativity:

“The results showed that groups who received foreign language scored significantly higher* than the control group”

Foster and Reeves in ‘Foreign Languages in Elementary School’

*This included ‘total score of all cognitive functions on the Ross test’

“Second language learning appears, therefore, not only to provide children with the ability to depart from the traditional approaches to a problem, but also to supply them with possible rich resources for new and different ideas.”

R.G. Landry in The enhancement of figural creativity through second language learning at the elementary school level. Foreign Language Annals, 7(1), 111-115. from Linguistics and Language Behavior

The post This Is Me – Language books for under-7s with free online audio appeared first on Teachwire.

I experienced this in Italy in my early 20s, and found it both bewildering and exhilarating. You become someone slightly different – not the articulate, funny, or measured person you might be when speaking your home language, but a paler version of yourself.

I can only imagine how challenging this must be for students with English as an acquired language, who are trying to work out who they are, and learn in a language that’s unknown to them, all at the same time. But there are steps we can all take to help them.

Keywords as footholds

First, model a fascination with language. Whether you’re a science, art, PE or maths teacher, there will be all sorts of wonderful language passing through each of your lessons, – be it by virtue of the subject matter, or simply via interactions with your students. But how often do you stop to pay attention to an interesting phrase and break it open for the whole class?

For example, what does ‘per cent’ mean? This can open up discussion of currency, cricket and Latin prepositions all in one go, whilst also reinforcing an important mathematical concept. Linger on a keyword and your enthusiasm will rub off. Nurturing a culture of being exploratory with language will enable positive peer support to develop between English and non-English speakers.

As an early learner of a new language, one of the hardest things can be distinguishing between the start and end of words. Try to therefore slow down your delivery and clearly punctuate your speech, so that there’s a little more space between your words – especially when highlighting keywords.

See any keywords as the footholds to your lesson. If you’re teaching nutrition, for instance, then don’t rattle off a string of sentences at the start. Instead, provide a toolbox of vocabulary, working through the words slowly – ideally teaching them multi-modally (with pictures, reading, speaking and writing) before proceeding.

You may well find that many of your English speakers haven’t used the words ‘protein’, ‘carbohydrate’, ‘amino’, ‘macro’, et al. very often themselves, so it won’t do any harm to pick these words out until everyone is confident in their meaning and use. Have them be the leitmotif of the lesson by making sure you hear them resonate around the room. By letting them ring out, you’re providing your EAL learners with vital footholds, without which they may be completely lost.

Note the connections

If you teach a subject that lends itself to mind mapping, or if there are any opportunities for self-led exploratory work, let your students to take notes in their language of choice – hopefully they’ll have access to a dictionary (traditional or electronic). Whilst the ‘full immersion’ approach of learning English is proven to be very effective, you won’t be holding anyone back if, for 20 minutes or so, your learners gets to stretch themselves in their own language.

In any case, this means there’s valuable work to be done later, translating their notes into English. This will grant them access a higher level of vocabulary, and help them make connections between their language and English. Have them then share some of the words or phrases with the rest of the class. Note any similarities, and show their peers how valuable their bilingualism can be.

Finally, technology can be a great resource for support outside of your lessons. By regularly setting Google quizzes, or using platforms like Show My Homework, you can set up rapid tasks for pre-teaching or reinforcing key language from previous lessons. This could also be done more discreetly, by setting individualised tasks and giving private feedback, away from the gaze of the whole cohort.

Remember that your EAL learners are going to be better linguists than many of us. Celebrate what they’re doing and encourage their successes. Who knows – celebrating our polyglot students’ achievements might even inspire some of our monoglot teenagers to take up another language…

Rebecca Leek (@RebeccaLeek_) has been a secondary and primary classroom teacher, head of department, SENCo and headteacher; she is currently the CEO of SEAMAT – a trust of three schools in South Essex

The post EAL students – How to teach them (and what they can teach their peers) appeared first on Teachwire.

However, that distance has now shortened for some of us, due to the arrival of new students from Ukraine in many classrooms – including my own.

Sadly, the presence of refugees in schools across England is nothing new. I recall welcoming new classmates from Serbia back when I was a pupil myself, and more recently we’ve seen children arrive from Iran, Iraq and Syria, as well as many other countries.

Whether you’ve become used to welcoming the children of displaced families, or are educating a refugee in your class for the first time, there are some key approaches that we can all take.

1. The practicalities

Firstly, we need to make the practical elements of being in school as simple as possible. After all, if we don’t support refugees in managing their day-to-day lives at school, we’re setting them up with an extra layer of difficulty right from the beginning. To help them get off to a good start, pay attention to the following:

Pronounciation of names

You may need to record some names phonetically, at first. I’ve found that many students choose to simplify their names, but this should always be their choice. If in doubt, see if your English or MFL teachers can assist you with any pronunciation issues rather than the student themselves, as such enquiries may make them feel self-conscious.

Religion

Make sure you know not just which religion – if indeed any – they follow, but how they practice. We understand that the Catholic church and the CofE are different, so apply that same mindset to all other faiths. As part of their settling in, ask the student to note down anything that might need to be facilitated for them for religious reasons, such as dietary requirements, adjustments to uniform or prayer spaces.

Orientation

See to it that maps of your school are clearly presented, and also easily available as digital versions that will allow admin staff to add notes in the student’s own language. There’s no point labelling the toilets in English only if their English is poor.

Equipment

Many will have arrived in this country with nothing. Make sure there’s a lead member of staff responsible for them, who can provide them with the necessary stationary, uniform items and so forth.

Use picture labels

Take a walk around your school. Is there any signage that could use a picture label? This is a fairly common practice in primary schools designed to help pupils with emerging English skills, and it can be applied here. Note that it can be especially useful in lessons where specialised equipment will be used, such as art and science.

Buddy system

Above all, give the student a ready-made friend. This should be a respected and acknowledged role to give it status. While there may be other refugees at your school, perhaps from the same country, it’s generally best for a ‘buddy’ to be an established student with a good set of friends, so that all students can mix freely.

2. Their emotional needs

Now that they’re able to find their way and establish links with other students, you’ll need to consider their emotional needs. We all know that relaxed and positive students achieve well, and refugees will be no different – so make sure the below areas don’t escape your attention.

Help them make links

Make space in the day for any refugees from the same country to meet. They may be in different year groups, but just having a chance to talk in your own language to someone else about experiences common to both of you can be an important source of relief.

As new refugees join your school, make sure they’re linked in with others already attending. This activity should be discrete from the school timetable – i.e. taking place at lunchtimes or at after-school clubs – since it’s important that they’re able to become part of the wider school for the majority of the day.

Say ‘hello’ their way

Encourage a basic use of the student’s first language across the group, such as the words for ‘hello’ and ‘goodbye’. This should be embedded and said without fanfare. Don’t draw attention to the fact, as it may embarrass the student or make them feel singled out. Just drop it in casually where you can.

Focus on strengths and achievements

Bear in mind that these students will be settling into a whole new way of learning. I’ve been interested to finding how out my subject, art and design, is typically delivered in Ukraine. Much of what we do isn’t actually covered in their specifications, with the upshot that Ukrainian students can initially find themselves resistant or confused in lessons. What areas or skills do they excel in? Make sure to celebrate and acknowledge these.

Share common experiences

While very few of us will have been forced to leave our homes with little or no warning, we can all relate to the idea of experiencing change we haven’t welcomed and what it’s like to endure times of stress.

Don’t be afraid to talk about this. Simple opening statements, such as ‘I don’t know what you’re experiencing or feeling, but I do remember when…’ are a good way of making an emotional connection without belittling their experiences, or comparing them to yours.

Celebrate what they bring to the school

As you get to know them, consider how you can incorporate their knowledge and experiences into your lessons. Our Ukrainian students have excellent technical skills, which is why we’ve asked them to help their fellow students with various tools via our digital editing programs. That way, I even get to learn some new skills myself.

Make the process of welcoming new people to your school part of its ethos and a core value. Explicitly communicate this to students, staff and parents, clarifying how refugees should be welcomed both in school and throughout the wider community. Make sure the school is setting the tone.

3. During lessons

Now that your student has settled in in both practically and emotionally, you can start to teach them. Education is our game, but we should recognise that the two pastoral stages outlined above must come first. Rush, and you may experience a range of unexpected problems.

Pre-translate key vocabulary

Make sure you’ve prepared a glossary of key words with translations. Ask them to work on a number each week. They may need support staff to assist them – don’t expect them to be able to do it all alone.

Avoid idioms

Yes, they’ll be ‘in at the deep end’ at first, but phrases like that won’t translate. Keep it simple.

Communicate purpose and targets

Try doing this as simply and as clearly as possible, translating just a few key points. If the student can know why they’re being asked to complete a particular lesson activity, it will help with buy-in – particularly when the educational approaches you’re using are vastly different to what they might have experienced previously.

Web translator apps

Finally, there’s no shame in getting some help from an app. Download one and use whenever all else fails.

With these practical suggestions, refugee students should be able to manage the school day easily, and soon become as much a part of your school as any other student.

External assistance

If you’re struggling with broader communication issues, it may be that the student requires specialist intervention beyond what your school is able to offer. Here are some potential sources of support that may be able to help…

PACE
Developed by Dr Dan Hughes, this approach is well-suited to children who have experienced stress. The name stands for Playfulness, Acceptance, Curiosity and Empathy, and the aim is to build trust and relationships which will lead to better outcomes.
ddpnetwork.org

Zones of Regulation
If you’re finding that your new students are presenting disruptive emotions, then this strategy can be used to help them categorise and understand how they’re feeling, ultimately leading to scaffolding supportive measures.
zonesofregualtion.com

Harvard University – Reliance
Getting children to draw or list both the challenges they face and their ways of coping as two sides of a see-saw can help them see which is more heavily weighted. You can then help them manage each side one by one.
developingchild.harvard.edu

Hannah Day is head of visual arts, media and film at Herefordshire and Ludlow Sixth Form College, where she has responsibility for overseeing the department’s teaching and strategic development. Browse resources for Refugee Week.

The post Refugee students – How can you help a teen who’s lost everything? appeared first on Teachwire.

As an International Baccalaureate (IB) World School, learning about different cultures is embedded in our daily learning at Impington Village College, where we encourage our students to develop international mindsets. On top of this, our international visits to countries in Europe, India and beyond help to consolidate student learning and enable them to put lessons into practice.

Back on track

Learning in a foreign country directly improves our students’ understanding of languages by giving them the opportunity to practise their language skills with native speakers. It’s no surprise to me that research has shown how foreign language skills enhance students’ empathy and understanding of different perspectives. Spending time abroad also plays a huge role in developing students’ self-confidence by equipping them with the skillset to feel confident in new environments.

When I first joined the College nine years ago, there was a well-established foreign exchange programme in place with a partner school in Tours, France. Our international visits have, of course, been suspended for the past two years, but the appetite for travel has definitely returned – to the extent that we have planned a robust programme of international visits for our students during this academic year.

The benefits of international travel for students are clear – but how can a school provide a programme of foreign visits in the wake of not just Brexit, but also a pandemic, resource shortages and budget cuts?

1. Forge relationships

After choosing where you’ll be going, establish links with a school in the destination country so that you’ll have on-the-ground recommendations and support when planning the visit. This also opens up the possibility of future exchange trips.

Our teachers have worked and volunteered across Africa, India and Europe, forging strong connections with other teachers across the world. By leveraging our colleagues’ networks of connections, we have been able to deliver visits to schools such as the IES Santiago Hernandez in Zaragoza, Spain, the SKSN in Jodphur, India, and Gymnasium School in Gernsheim, Germany.

2. Secure funding

Since Brexit and the pandemic there has been a noticeable increase in the costs of flights, but being flexible with our travel dates has enabled us to benefit from the best prices available. Thanks to community and charity funding, government grants and school fundraising, there are multiple avenues schools can explore to alleviate the financial pressures of international travel. Previously, we’ve been lucky enough to receive funding from both the British Council’s Connecting Classrooms scheme, and The Turing Scheme.

3. Allow enough time

Safeguarding legislation requires us to ask all the host families assisting with our exchange programme to complete a DBS check. We have appointed a dedicated administrator to coordinate the necessary documentation, which has facilitated the planning process enormously.

While we’ve managed to successfully plan an international trip in just six months, I’d recommend starting the process a year in advance. This will allow time to secure your partner school, research and book activities, arrange student and staff accommodation and, most importantly, overcome students’ natural anxiety about stepping outside of their comfort zone.

We have successfully managed this through our pen-pal scheme, where students exchange regular letters with a student in the destination country ahead of their visit. Students who have previously taken part in an international trip are our most powerful ambassadors – by sharing photos and stories about their experiences, they help persuade their peers to take part in future visits.

Allowing sufficient time for planning, maintaining your professional contacts around the world and exploring all funding avenues will let you harness the renewed appetite for foreign travel, and help deliver a strong programme of educational visits abroad for your students.

Sylvia Holland is lead practitioner (KS4) at Impington Village College and Impington International College (@ImpingtonIntCol)

The post MFL trips abroad – How to expand your students’ learning horizons appeared first on Teachwire.

It was therefore something I brought in gradually. By the time I completed my second year of teaching, I’d resolved to use an authentic and topical news article in my classroom at least once a week.

This impulse initially grew out of my frustration with the textbooks we’d been using. I could tell that they would have been perfectly fine when first published, but that their contents had very quickly gone out of date. Teaching students with the help of material that they could also see had visibly dated was quite difficult, because it was hard for them to engage with.

Refining the process

Incorporating various media materials into lessons is something you would expect all MFL teachers to be doing to a certain extent, but in my experience, it rarely involved direct collaboration. When using a particularly good article, I might possibly share it with a departmental colleague – though at my last school, I’d typically be teaching one topic while my colleagues taught something else, or a different language entirely, so a media clipping that was useful for my lesson might not have been as relevant for what they were doing.

That said, we did find that centrally posting the articles we planning to use in class was quite useful. It soon got me wondering why I wasn’t seeing other language teachers consistently sharing article finds of their own online and via social media, which is what eventually inspired me to start sending out a regular newsletter (see ‘Inspiration to your inbox’).

Ultimately, it helped having just one topic per week that I needed to focus on. As someone who generally consumes news quite often, I’d usually be up on buzzwords and have a fairly good sense of what was going on. Combining up-to-the-minute and trending keyphrases with Google’s ‘News’ filter meant that sooner or later, I’d usually come across something appropriate that I could use.

At first, these searches could take quite a long time. Fairly soon, however, I developed a feel for which foreign news outlets and media channels were going to have useful material, and which would be less helpful. I began conducting larger scale, but less time consuming searches, and got into the habit of saving multiple articles to a hard drive so that I could refer back to them and use them in class when needed. There were many different ways of refining the process.

Endless options

Back when we were still using those dated textbooks, I remember how we once covered the topic of ‘everyday idols’ in our Spanish lessons – these being singers, musicians, actors and fashion models, the latter of whom were now of significantly less interest to young people than perhaps they once were.

I wanted to instead find something involving YouTubers and influencers, since they feature in young people’s lives far more prominently, and ended up using an article that discussed how some young content creators had become extremely rich during social media’s early growth years.

This was helpful for bringing the classroom discussion round to something students could relate to more closely. It turned out to be a good conversation prompt, while also being highly relevant to the topic we were studying.

There are many ways to approach using media materials in class, since they’re essentially base texts that you haven’t had to produce yourself. I’d sometime use written news media by way of a starter activity, and task students with hunting for examples of certain grammatical items.

There’s also the potential to create translation activities using the vocabulary drawn from certain example texts, or summary activities – different A Level exam boards will often set tasks that require students to read longer texts and attempt to summarise them in, say, 90 words. If you can find a media outlet that’s a reliable producer of audiovisual material, you could try creating your own listening activities – the options are pretty much endless.

Palpable enthusiasm

Over time, I saw how regular use of media helped to improve students’ engagement levels, but also the chances of productive spontaneity occurring within lessons. By using our own selections of up-to-date media examples and written materials, we could base activities around absorbing topics that were relevant to what was going on in our students’ lives, and things they’d already be talking about with their peers outside of class.

This had a noticeable impact on their willingness and ability to take part in speaking activities and wider class discussions. Unsurprisingly, they were much more likely to engage with lessons and contribute their opinions when not referring to news, fashions or developments that were last considered ‘current’ some five years ago…

It’s also worth pointing out that many teachers assume A Level language topics have to be quite dry, but that’s not the case. Don’t be afraid to search for and use material that actually interests you, as well as your students. Your resulting enthusiasm for the material will be palpable, and help to motivate them.

More broadly, this can usefully feed in to the requirement for A Level MFL students to complete an element of independent research. Ideally, they’ll want to choose an area they’re actively interested in learning and writing about. By introducing them to more diverse conversation topics and examples of foreign culture, you’ll be broadening their horizons and introducing them to concepts and ideas they might otherwise have never known existed.

Properly engage

When it comes to specific sources, in my case there are the obvious mainstream media outlets operating in France and Spain that come up a lot – Le Monde and El País for news, France 24 for rolling video news. But whichever sources you use, you should never find an article, quickly read the headline and think ‘That’ll do.’

You always need to have thoroughly read through and understood any media examples yourself, and properly engage with the material before deciding whether or not you can use it at a level that’s appropriate for the students you have.

You might have a class of three kids, all of whom are native speakers aiming for A*s, or you may have a group of 13 spanning a wide range of abilities. It’s down to the teacher to make sure that any media material you use is relevant, age appropriate and pitched at the right level.

Inspiration to your inbox

A while ago I started The MFL A Level News project – a weekly newsletter aimed at MFL teachers containing several links to news articles that could be effectively used to support your lessons. The project is still going, but has temporarily changed to a biweekly newsletter, owing to my work and study commitments.

When putting the newsletters together, I’ll cycle through a selection of different topics, pick one for a given week and share three to four links to news articles, each accompanied by a short description of the article in question, and frequently an idea or suggestion as to how it might be used effectively in a lesson.

I’ve received really positive feedback from readers thus far. It’s been nice to give something back to the MFL learning community, while hopefully also saving teachers valuable time.

Fiona Easton is an A Level teacher of French and Spanish, and currently head of A Level for the MFL resource provider Languagenut; for more information, visit languagenut.com

For details of how to sign up for MFL A Level News, follow @NewsMfl

The post MFL teaching – Use foreign media to create brilliant bespoke resources appeared first on Teachwire.

For me, the work starts from day one in Y7, through creating a safe, supportive environment where pupils know they will never be judged when speaking in the target language.

Let them get a word in

Who speaks in the target language most during your lessons – you or your students? Speaking skills can only be enhanced if students are given adequate opportunities to speak.

From their very first lesson, it’s crucial that pupils learn how to produce new sounds as accurately as possible. Developing speaking thus goes hand-in-hand with listening. Try beginning each lesson with a brief, low-pressure speaking activity. As pupils become accustomed to this ritual, they’ll soon start to feel more comfortable with the expectation of regularly speaking in another language, even if it’s just in service of a short, low-risk activity.

From my experience, it’s important to create as many opportunities as possible for pupils to speak in each MFL lesson. It’s therefore worth teaching pupils classroom language and vocabulary at the beginning of Y7, so that they can tell you when they’ve forgotten their book or need to go to the toilet.

Start by using phrases such as ‘Can I have…’, as well as high frequency core language that you can use with the class when doing the register and throughout the lesson. Plan opportunities for pupils to not only speak to you, but also to their peers by using pair work activities and/or some Kagan co-operative learning strategies such as ‘Quiz-Quiz-Trade’, ‘Talking Chips’ and ‘Think Pair Share’, so that pupils can practise speaking the language you’re teaching them. The interaction language they’ll be picking up in the process will help to develop their spontaneity over time.

Exploit everyday moments

As teachers, we can easily monitor what pupils are saying, how the language is being used and how pupils are developing their spoken language skills collaboratively, providing appropriate support when needed and correcting misconceptions as they arise. By providing as many opportunities as possible for pupils to speak at KS3, things will become considerably easier at KS4, since your pupils will already possess a degree of speaking confidence.

Teach pupils chunks of vocabulary they can reuse in different contexts. Think about situations that crop up naturally and regularly in the course of a classroom lesson, which can be exploited in the target language for linguistic purposes. Pupils arriving late; pupil absence; other teachers entering the room whilst the lesson is in progress; classroom discussions following group work – exploit such moments, and guide pupils to reuse vocabulary and structures from other contexts by showing how they can be extended and adapted. Over time, this will help them say what they want to say.

It’s important that pupils are encouraged to ask for language they want to know, but make sure you reuse them lesson after lesson to help them stick. I would strongly advise reading James Stubbs’ blog on his use of target language.

Keep them engaged

Looking at the topics covered at KS3 is also key. Are you teaching topics that interest your pupils and will make them want to speak? As much as possible, present them with material they’ll actually want to talk about.

We know that the principles of effective speaking practice begin with modelling through listening, before developing speed and accuracy of production through extensive practice, and then moving from structured practice to spontaneity. For pupils to speak spontaneously, we need a lot of structured practice first – through using target language as explained previously, but also via regular speaking activities suited to the different topics we teach.

The stages outlined in Greg Horton’s Group Talk Progression chart provide an example of how such speaking might develop, with the aim of having pupils be able to use the language over time:

Stage 1
Introductions and responses to simple opinions

Stage 2
Participation in short discussions

Stage 3
Exchanges of reasons and preferences; talking across time frames.

Stage 4
Developing lines of thought; sharing points of view; balancing an argument.

Start talking

To illustrate what this looks like in practice, consider the following classroom activity. The teacher prepares two printouts, both showing images of a mobile phone, and gives them to pupils sitting at opposite ends of the classroom. The teacher then plays some music, while the mobile phone images are passed round the class. When the music stops,
the two pupils holding the printouts speak to each other in the target language.

In Y7, this exchange can start with ‘Bonjour, comment ça va?’ Over time, you could add a list of core questions you want the class to answer, based on the vocabulary, grammar and key structures they’ve learnt, and increase the length of time they’re speaking for. It’s all about practice!

To encourage less confident speakers, you could use ‘recordable speech bubbles’, whereby pupils write their answers onto paper shaped like a speech bubble and record it afterwards.

For homework, pupils could be tasked with using Snapchat to record themselves answering questions, or online services such as Flipgrid, Padlet or Vocaroo to record their answers. You can then give them personalised feedback on their pronunciation, vocabulary and use of grammar.

You could even ask them to create videos that describe themselves, their town or their school and send these
to partner schools abroad, thus giving the exercise a specific purpose.

Encouraging pupils to speak in another language is key to MFL teaching, but let’s not forget that we also need to help pupils build their confidence – ideally by creating environments where they feel safe, where they won’t be judged, and will be rewarded for making the effort to speak.

Try this

Further ideas for classroom speaking activities might include…

• Describing a photo using genuine family snaps or famous paintings

• The utilisation of role play, ‘speed dating’ partner work or puppetry

• Mock interviews in which pupils pretend to interview celebrities – for example, actors, footballers and other high profile figures from French-speaking countries

• Place four photos on the board and have the pupils decide which is the odd one out. They must then explain the reasons behind their decision in the target language.

• Pupils work in pairs with a stimulus and time limit to come up with as many statements and utterances as they can, using one or more pictures or verbal prompts

• The ‘Catch the spy’ game devised by French and Spanish teacher Vincent Everett (@Veverettmfl) – pupils have to interview others in the class by asking them a range of questions to try and identify an impostor; download the instructions here.

• Invite your headteacher to come into a lesson and witness a performance

Jennifer Wozniak-Rush (@MissWozniak) is an assistant headteacher for teaching and learning, and an SLE in MFL

The post Verbal practice – How to get students speaking in MFL lessons appeared first on Teachwire.

We initially offered Japanese as an extracurricular activity a number of years ago, on behalf of one student with SEND who was particularly interested in the Japanese language and culture. At Ninestiles we’re committed to encouraging students to pursue their passions, so were happy to facilitate a Japanese Club in order to allow him to develop this interest.

We soon saw other students asking to join, some of whom it turned out had already been learning Japanese in their own time – their love of Manga and anime motivating and spurring them on to understand the language.

Japanese basics

In 2019 the school applied for a grant from the Japan Foundation to help to set up a Beginners’ Japanese Club, which we proceeded to run weekly during term time throughout the academic year. The sessions were led by a specialist Japanese tutor, and saw students begin learning the basics of the Japanese language.

Those attending were also given insights into wider Japanese culture, geography and history, so that in addition to practising writing hiragana and calligraphy, they were able to, for example, make rice balls in our food tech rooms.

After a small cohort expressed wanting to continue their studies at GCSE level we were again kindly given financial support from the Japan Foundation, and now have eight students in Y10 who are due to sit their Japanese exams at the end of this academic year – most of whom are also studying GCSE French or Spanish.

Due to the overwhelmingly positive feedback from students since introducing Japanese at Ninestiles, we now run the club for Y8 – and it’s so oversubscribed that there’s currently a waiting list for places!

International cultural exchange

I’d strongly recommend that other MFL teachers investigate the work of the Japan Foundation for themselves, since they’ve been such a help to us. Its primary function is to promote international cultural exchange between Japan and the rest of the world, and provide financial support for a range of international cultural exchange programmes.

The Foundation runs school taster sessions via its Japanese Taster for Schools (JTS) Programme, allowing teachers and students to discover first- hand what it’s like to learn the language in practice, at which volunteers will introduce the fundamentals of Japanese language, such as counting and greetings, in a fun and interactive manner.

I believe that learning Japanese helps our students stand out, since it’s still somewhat unusual for young people in the UK to study non-European languages. Learning Japanese could also be a great career asset, given that Japan remains one of the world’s largest economies, and is home to numerous highly successful companies, such as Toyota, Honda, Sony, Toshiba and Panasonic.

Ikimasho!

Japanese may be predominantly spoken in Japan, but is increasingly being heard across the globe, with nearly 36 million people learning it worldwide. That so many people are choosing to learn Japanese should help to allay the fears of those who might like to try it themselves, but assume doing so will be too difficult.

It can certainly seem very different at first to other European languages one might have previously studied, but in some ways it can actually be simpler. There are no genders for nouns, for instance, and word order within the language can be flexible.

I hope our success in encouraging students to get excited about learning Japanese will inspire other schools to look into setting up similar clubs of their own – and that the next curriculum research review series on languages will see the number of students taking Japanese at GCSE on the up…

Dafydd Francis is the head of MFL at Ninestiles, An Academy in Birmingham, and a modern languages tutor at the University of Birmingham; follow him at @dfrancismfl

The post MFL and beyond – Why learning Japanese helps our students stand out appeared first on Teachwire.

Want to give your students more exam practice?

We store our past papers on Centre Services.

Past exam papers are ideal for use as mock exams once students have covered enough of the course, have done some revision and practised the skills associated with the course.

Using our past papers can be a great way to help give students the experience of a timed, balanced exam paper which mimics the real thing. Mark schemes can either be used by teachers, or by students to help support self-assessment.

For GCSE science, English and maths, you can also use MERiT to analyse the data that comes from these mocks.

This can help you to plan interventions to support specific groups of students, including those that need to develop specific exam techniques.

MERiT for GCSE French, German, Spanish, geography and history are all available now.

Need to identify gaps in your students’ learning and encourage self-assessment?

Try topic tests on Exampro.

Exampro topic tests have been created by subject-specialists to support your assessment of student knowledge in a range of different areas. Each topic test includes a student and teacher feedback form and the mark scheme can be shared separately.

Your students can complete an assessment, evaluate their confidence on each question then use the mark scheme to check their work.

The feedback form enables students to identify what they know and what they need to do next. You can then use the teacher feedback form to review your students’ work and comments to plan their next steps.

Looking to improve your grade forecasts?

Become an examiner.

You’ll be part of a team of specialists who are trained and developed to apply the mark scheme to ensure every student gets the result they deserve.

With this training and experience, you’ll be that expert that’s able to provide more-specific detail around students’ potential since you know exactly what the examiner is looking for.

Examiners have insight into a range of student responses from schools around the country, which can truly inspire your teaching and promote new thinking in your interventions and exam preparation techniques.

Want to hear from a teacher?

Watch our YouTube playlist.

Using fun tasks and team exercises, you can help prepare your students for their assessments by reinforcing key skills and revisiting any areas or topics that need further attention.

Ramender, an English teacher in Bradford, shares how she works with her students, in-class and online, to address these learning gaps.

The post Guide students’ learning with AQA appeared first on Teachwire.