Jackie Howis MFL Blog

It was great to meet with some like-minded colleagues at the conference on Wednesday and, as promised, here is my presentation on student voice for you to download.

I personally found out some interesting stuff during the day and was disappointed, as a presenter, not to be able to get along to other workshops. Oh well! I did hear they were great.

 Those few secondary teachers who were there should all aim – I reckon – to bring a friend next time! The transition theme is so important, it would be good to see more of us there!

Jackie

languages conference June 10

The final question topic is available on the GCSE speaking exam page.

Remember that these are only example answers and you should use them to help you create your own work. Remember to include at least 3 tenses!!

Don’t be put off by the length – you know to adjust them to your own needs

Mme H x

I thought it was probably time to log in, turn off the snow (but not if you’re in Scotland!) and update the blog.
I’ve been rolling out Edexcel training to my own colleagues and this could be useful to those of you who haven’t managed to get along to an Edexcel event. This PowerPoint sets out the basics: the different types of assessment and some fundamental principles about how to plan and run the assessment.
I realise that many schools will have made a start at conducting assessment already, although the third round of training events, concerned with the assessment procedure itself, has only recently got off the ground. I’m hoping to get along to one of these events soon and will update some information relating to assessment when I’ve managed to do so.

Jackie

The new GCSE presents all teachers of MFL with a very pressing need to teach spontaneous talk in the classroom.
Rachel Hawkes’s presentation contains many excellent ideas. Thanks, Rachel!

Thanks to those of you who came to event 2 for the new Edexcel GCSE in MFL. As promised I attach a resource for teaching questioning. In fact, it is a can of worms! More resources to follow! (‘vous’ / ‘je’ / the negative etc – I’m working on it!).

Jackie x

asking questions ppt

Toondoo is a cartoon strip / book making software passage which is entirely free, like Wordle. Links to both sites are down on the right of this page. Here’s an example of Toondoo which took about 5 minutes to create:

You can imagine how the kids will love it! Nothing new in terms of language, but it’s another way of presenting to engage the students. There is an area of this website which is just for schools, for which there is a subscription to pay. You can save these images in exactly the same way as a Wordle document; centre the image you have created, press PRINT SCREEN, open a blank PowerPoint slide and simply paste it in. What you get is basically a screen shot which then has to be cropped, then right click to save the image. (click the link in the previous post for more detail).
Now, what to do with Wordle? I have a few ideas, but I’m sure there are better ones out there. I tend to use it as a starter activity. Students are instructed to pick out particular kinds of words / reconstruct sentences or questions, hypothesise about the content of the passage etc etc. Depending how the word input is managed, the Wordle image can also be used as the basis for building a text. I’d be interested to know how other teachers are using this creative programme!
Jackie

I have finally found how to place wordle clouds into a document! Thanks so much to Ollie Bray! Click here if you’d like to find out how to do it yourself:

http://olliebray.typepad.com/olliebraycom/2008/11/getting-wordle-into-powerpoint-a-two-minute-guide.html“>

Some year 7 students are certainly coming into secondary education with some good prior learning in French, whilst others appear to know very little at all. It’s very mixed. I’d be interested to hear how other teachers are finding this?
Anyway, the problem is how do we teach the basic stuff in a way in which all learners will find it engaging – even those who think they’ve ‘done this before’?
My year 7 class (set 3 of 4 this year) have been learning family via a Harry Potter theme. I had great fun myself teaching them whilst dressed as a witch!
Anyway, here are some resources for anyone who’d like to share!
Jackie
La famille – HP reading and thinking skills
L’ARBRE GÉNÉALOGIQUE
Stand up sit down text
Complète les mots
harry potter starter
Starter activity Découpez les phrases et faites correspondre l

This morning I was revising role-play A with my year 11 group. The structures are easy, but it’s amazing just how much they forget when it comes to some fairly basic lexical items. This PowerPoint is a bit repetitive, so it does need to be broken down. My group have found it useful for revision, though.
Role Play A – Les questions et les phrases nécesssaires pour les

Well, the seminar went well. It’s some time ago now, but here are some resources and very straightforward (virtually no planning!) ideas to liven up your lessons: they all make great starter activities, some are also very good plenaries.  I like to throw in a quick game or two mid lesson to liven things up and keep them on their toes! Thanks to C Harte for one or two slides.
I think there’s probably something useful to everyone. Not much is new, but there may be a couple of things busy teachers have forgotten about! Enjoy!

Practical ideas to increase engagement and develop speaking

There follows a short presentation on the new MFL Framework which ‘went live’ in September. The focus is on improving transition from KS2 to KS3. It’s brief, but may be of use to some!

The Renewed KS3 Framework for Languages