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Sticky Grammar!
It’s been a great day at The Schools Network (formerly Specialist Schools & Academies Trust) MFL Conference today at University of Warwick, “What’s Next For Languages?”. Thank you very much to...
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Where’s the dog? Stage 1
As promised to those who attended my second session at this Saturday’s day of workshops at the Instituto Cañada Blanch in London, organised by the Consejería de Educación, here goes with the...
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Where’s the dog? Stage 2
Stage 2: And here’s the powerpoint for this second version of the game (Powerpoint 2011) Dónde está el perro 2 I save this stage for the first time a pupil pipes up, “Can we play that game with the...
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Where’s the dog? Stage 3
Stage 3: Powerpoint for this version (Powerpoint 2011): Dónde está el perro 3 We’re not done yet. As pupils get used to the game and how it’s played, and their appreciation of how lessons run and what...
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Where’s the dog? Stage 4
Stage 4: Powerpoint for this stage (Powerpoint 2011): Dónde está el perro 4 Surely it’s over now?! Well, nearly. You can tag this on to the last stage if you want, but be careful of overload – you’ll...
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All Together Now… Speak! Multiple-choice & Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?
Lo prometido es deuda, as they say. So, as promised to those lovely people who came to my session on Saturday at the Association for Language Learning Conference in Nottingham, here goes with a full...
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Classroom Language Visuals in French
It’s the night before the morning after! Tomorrow I start in a new school in East Anglia, teaching French & Spanish in an 11-16 mixed comprehensive. I’m very much looking forward to it, all mixed...
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Classroom Language Visuals in Spanish … and how to keep track!
Following on from last week’s post containing some visuals I’m using with my French classes for setting up classroom language, here goes with some for Spanish: Bless you Can I How do you say in English...
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Sowing Seeds for Spontaneous Speaking #2: Planting routines
About a year and a half ago I gave a presentation at the ALL London Branch June Event called Sowing Seeds for Spontaneous Speaking. The thrust of that presentation was that in order for pupils to be...
View ArticleThe Register Routine: ¡Ahora viene! / Il arrive !
For this post, I’m assuming that the basic Register Routine has been in place for at least a few lessons. In my case, it’s usually a few weeks. That is: Pupils answer their name with présent / présente...
View ArticleThe Register Routine: Timing is everything…!
Here’s an example of how a lesson can get off to an involving, interactive start with little more than the register, a stopwatch and a sheet under the visualiser. It also ties in well with the Ongoing...
View ArticleThe Ongoing Team Competition #1
This is the first in a new series of posts on one of my favourite language interaction routines, the Ongoing Team Competition. Like many of the routines I use, credit is due to the hugely inspirational...
View ArticleThe Ongoing Team Competition #2: Who?
The Team Competition as I describe it here is generally a whole-class affair but there is a definite and deliberate overlap with pair-work activities and interaction. More on that later. Like most...
View ArticleThe Ongoing Team Competition #3: Why?
Some teachers take the view that games and routines devalue language learning in the eyes of pupils, that they deny them the opportunity to develop a love of studying a language by appreciating its...
View ArticleThe Ongoing Team Competition #4: How? (Est-ce que je peux …?)
Let’s get down to the nitty-gritty of how an Ongoing Team Competition can be set up and run. As I’ve said before, there are many different ways of going about it and we each have to work out what we...
View Article“Please don’t make me speak in front of everyone!”
Let’s pause for a second and think about the rights and wrongs of getting a pupil to speak in front of their peers before we consider any more details about the Ongoing Team Competition. Some pupils...
View ArticleThe Ongoing Team Competition #5: Nous avons gagné !
This is where we got up to at the end of my last post on the Ongoing Team Competition: we’ve established with the class that there is a competition going on and we’ve introduced the phrase, Est-ce que...
View ArticleThe Ongoing Team Competition #6: Spanish is not French
When I run the Ongoing Team Competition in French, the phrase Est-ce que je peux avoir un point, s’il vous plait ? to ask for a point is a very useful phrase. (For non-Francophones: Can I have a point,...
View ArticleThe Ongoing Team Competition #7: Avoiding disincentives
The Ongoing Team Competition is all about increasing involvement and creating situations where pupils feel a real need to chip in and comment on what’s going on around them. That ‘need’ is prompted in...
View ArticleDiary of a Target Language Classroom: Day #1
This is (hopefully) the start of a series of posts looking at setting up interaction with a beginners’ class of Spanish in Year 7. My plan is to blog fairly briefly after each lesson for this half-term...
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