European Day of Languages

Today has been a busy day for some of us at school, with our annual EDL activities.
As usuul, we hosted an LEA event for Y8 G&T pupils. Fortunately, unlike last year, I was not involved in the organisation of the event this year.
We had 3 schools and ours involved this morning and then another 4 schools came along this afternoon. Each group took part in 3 activities, a European Awareness quiz, hosted by yours truely, learning Dutch with our Dutch teacher and an activity using Swedish to find out how good they were at language learning. Once the activities were over, pupils added up the points that they gained throughout their activities to find out who won. Prizes were issued (these of course were chocolate!).
Whilst I was busy sorting things out and quizzing ,I left my classes a postcard competition. They had to create a postcard with the motto "Learning a language is..." (completing the sentence). Some were hilarious-"Learning a Language is a right lark" and "Learning a Language is like have an extra member of your family" were my favourites probably because these two pupils are clearly as crazy as I am!
Time to relax for the weekend now...busy week ahead with a PD Day, an eTwinning Workshop to help run, cover work to set for the week after next when I'm in the Netherlands, Open Evening and Blood Brothers (just have to be mentally prepared for that, the tears have already started to flow just thinking about the opening scene!).

First visit to Primary - I survived!

I was delighted at the end of the last academic year when I learnt that I was to be let loose on one of our feeder Primary schools. It's something I've always wanted to do but somehow, never managed to get the opportunity. All I knew was that I would be teaching Spanish (estupendo - one of my 2 words of praise in Spanish - fenominal being the other) to various year groups.
After a meeting with the MFL co-ordinator of the school I'm going to, I learned more details...25 mins to 2 Yr6 classes and 20 mins to 2 Yr4 classes, every fortnight - my colleague would be doing the other week. Oh my! 4 lessons in 2 hours, would I have the stamina?
Yesterday, I discovered whether I could handle the pressure! As the day approached I got more and more nervous, worried I'd be too boring/not game playing enough/just generally rubbish and by 12.30 was shaking as I left school to eat my lunch in the car since I had to be at the school to teach at 1.00. Well, I survived..just.
The main trauma was getting used to a new computer system and ActivPrimary rather than our ActivStudio 3 and finding my way around the school! I was very worried also that I might damage something with the throwing of my Haribo cuddly toy around the room. However, nothing too dreadful happened, I didn't make any small children cry (shame) and everyone seemed to enjoy my lessons.
My tasks for next time (which will be in about a month, as I'm going to the Netherlands in a little over a week) will be to not be as scared (!), to relax, to find out the names of the class teachers I'm working with and also to raise a smile from one of them!

Sock puppets

There was a time when, if someone had said "sock puppets" to me, I would have recoiled in horror, thinking that "that kind of stuff" was for primary schools only. However, I 've come a long way since then and having seen a post by Lisa Stevens about Puppets a while ago it got me wondering about their potential for me.
I am currently blessed to have been given a well-balanced timetable and amongst my well-balanced classes, I am very lucky to have a gorgeous Yr8 class of 12 (with absences on a regular basis). We have French 4 times one week and twice the other, so I imagine that by period 4 on a Friday they're pretty tired of my voice droning on at them. Well, I hit upon an idea this week...sock puppets! We would spend some Friday afternoons creating our puppets and scenery and them write a script to perform to camera. This would be good for their French in the long run when they got to doing the speech and also it meant that I could put the film on my blog with no fear of worrying about getting permissions to use said children's faces etc...
So today we began. Last night on my daily visit to a local supermarket I bought socks (OK, 14 too many as I forgot in my fervour that socks were sold in PAIRS, so bought 14 PAIRS of socks) and googly eyes, felt, glue etc... and tok them all to work today. I explained what we were going to do...basically get very messy and expected a cry of how babyish but no...their faces were a glow with anticipation. It was fab!!! I flet like the perfect mother that I can never be. Of course it was all done in a very controlling fashion with me not letting the glue out of my hands and not allowing too much creativity with the darling socks. However, by the end of the lesson we had beautiful puppets, all now drying on one of my tables in my room (hope they didn't scare the cleaners too much.) What remains now? Well in 2 weeks, scenery and beginning scripts. Once filming is done I think they will also do a profile of their puppets...name, age, hobbies etc. So...not much French achieved today but I often feel with classes who find language learning a challenge, enjoyment in worth 10 times more than achievement. They will remember these puppets for a long time. The lovliest thing was, as small boy saying "Thank you Miss for making the puppets today" (I nearly wept) and another small boy who went straight to his tutor to tell her all about the lesson. Priceless!

IWB Challenge: Task 1

The week was my opportunity to complete the Seven Wonders of the Whiteboard Challenge's first task. Set by Jess McCulloch it was all about using mp3 files and voice recording etc...
"How on earth" I wondered to myself, "do I get that into my first week of the new school year"and a little voice inside my head said "you can do it"...I will go to the doctor's about these voices very soon, I promise!
I have a gorgeous Yr 7 German class and decided that, since by today I would have seen them twice already and they would know about some of my little "nuances"by now, that last lesson on a Friday afternoon was the perfect time to use them as guinea pigs. Having had an induction lesson last term when they came to visit, I thought it was a pretty safe bet that they would have learnt greetings and saying their names, so I decided to launch them in at the not-so-quite deep-end. I found some pictures of celebreties (see above) and recorded myself saying hello, saying their name, asking "What is your name?" and then saying "bye". The class then had to listen to the sound-bite and drag the picture of the appropriate celebrety to the symbol of the speaker. They worked really well and they responded very positivly to this (although, I think in the future I need to stick to Simpsons characters) then moved on. We then practices a roleplay along the same lines and then I asked for volunteers to be recorded. Using my new USB microphone, I got 5 conversations recorded (some from the other side of the classroom...I was well impressed-much to the class's amusement) which they actually really enjoyed. It was really great to hear them leaving the room telling their friends that they had been recorded. I think, in the long run, that being able to hear themselves speaking will really help them improve their spoken German as they'll be able to hear their pronunciation for themselves and therefore hear when they need to make changes.
I'm hoping to be a bit more ambitious with my next stage of the challenge, as I'll have been back a work for a bit longer and will know my classes better (I hope).

We've only just begun...

Well the first week is over and done with and all of the plans for organisation have gone out of the window, as predicted. Well...actually, they're not doing too badly at the moment and I was actually able to leave my desk(s) tidy over the weekend for a change. I'm sure it can't last.
I have got the term off to a flying start and found that I like all of my classes so far...and what's more they seem to like me (although I do think they think I'm a little strange-can't imagine why!).
Everyone was more than pleased with our excellent exam results in the summer and can't wait to get back to the real task of educating our future generations. There are some exciting plans afoot, I believe, but will blog about them at a later date if anything happens. (That's actually just to get people to keep coming back on a regular basis to find out what they are!!!!)
I don't think that I've had any amazing ICT-ish stuff done this week...the pupils were only in for 3 days...but I am working on it and there is "great potential" for some fantastic work this year. Of course I got underway with, and completed, the first Whiteboard Challenge today but will blog about that in my next post.
I began work with my Yr9 class on my Langwitch blog, just asking them to introduce themselves in German in 40-50 words. I was amazed, I set the homework yesterday and by the time I'd got in from work, several of them had already completed it. They all seemed really keen to be doing stuff online plus, they liked the fact that they got immediate feedback from me at the bottom of their comment. They seemed really pleased when I saw them today in the corridor that I had already seen their work and commented on it...wow, what a motivator (for them and me).
So, there we are, a very upbeat Langwitch, with high hopes for the rest of the year :o)