Promoting Independent Learning in MFL

A few months ago I was contacted by Eva Lamb about running a session during the ALL Yorkshire winter series on independent learning. On Thursday therefore, I headed down the A1 and M1 to Sheffield to do my session.

Over the course of 90 minutes I covered a range of activities that I use with my classes in the hope of getting them to be more independent language learning. Below is a copy of the presentation and also I have linked below that to posts that I've written in the past on this blog that describe how they work. Whilst all of my examples are MFL specific, most of these activities can be adapted to any subject area.

Promoting independent learning in mfl all from Helena Butterfield

Quiz Quiz Trade  description
Read Clare Seccombe's guide to using Tarsia here
Follow me description
Show down description
Infinite scrabble description
Download a template for infinite scrabble here
Lingo bingo description
Haiku blog post

Fan n pick 
You can quite easily use your QQT cards for this activity.
You will need:
- cards
- your "manage mat" (it helps keep the pupils focused) Download my French / German versions here
-  groups of 3 or 4

How it works:
Person 1 fans out the cards, face down
Person 2 picks a card and reads / shows it to person 3 (just the question or the English / TL phrase to translate) and passes the card to person 4.
Person 3 answers the question, with coaching and praise from person 4.
When complete the card is returned to the pack, manage mat is moved round to next person and this time Person 2 does the fanning.
The best way to work out how this works it to try it as it all becomes clear then.
I've also tried this with open ended questions for speaking practice and where I used that, person 4 gave WWW/EBI feedback and praise.  This also worked really well.

Jot write
You will need lots of small bits of scrap paper for this activity.

Give each group a collection of paper / post its / scrap paper

Give pupils a topic or theme

Pupils all write their words at the same time AND say the words out loud and place their pieces of paper in the centre. The key is they all work at the same time, individually but by saying their words out loud they ensure that no one repeats the words and you get a variety in the centre to work from.

From this they could then categorise the words / peer assess – proof read / find the odd ones out / find meanings / create sentences / etc…

It you wanted to add an element of competition (not strictly cooperative learning, I know) you could give out achievement points for most words / the groups with words that no one else came up with  / etc...

Rally Robin (Talking Tennis) 

Ask a question, give 5-7 seconds thinking time, pupils take it in turns to give their answers

Round Robin 

Same as above but in a group of 4

In both of the above pupils have their go either by turn taking or by allocating time – use a timer on your board  and give 10/20/30 to talk– you could do this for speaking practice / spontaneous talk

All write round robin 

The same as above but what each person says, the whole group write down at the same time, so they have a record, probably in the back of their book…

I hope that I've covered everything here and that you find it useful.

How about a Haiku?

I can't believe it's so long since I last blogged!! Maybe I should try it more regularly, or maybe once in a blue moon is just enough for everybody!

Anyway, in one of my few moments of creativity this term, I came upon an idea which turned out to be a winner.

I discovered that it was National Poetry day earlier in October and decided to mark the occasion with my Y10 and 11 classes by writing Haikus. A Haiku is a 3 line poem that has 5 syllables in the first line, 7 in the second line and 5 in the last line (or atleast, that's what Google told me). Obviously, with the serious business of Controlled Assessments to learn off by heart to ensure GCSE grades are on or above target, we couldn't spend a whole lesson on this, neither do I think a whole lesson needs to be spent on this. However it did work really well as a starter.

After giving them their topic (descriptions for Y10 and holidays for Y11....guess our current CA topics are!) and reminding them what a Haiku was, the mini whiteboards came out and they began work. I can honestly say that I have rarely seen them work so hard! You could feel the cogs turning as they counted syllables while trying to get it all to make sense. They joy when they had finished their Haiku....that quickly turned to despair when I'd point out "don't forget, you say the "e" in German" and they had to try a different way of getting in their 5 syllables...

Needless to say, when they all did manage to get their Haiku completed, they were very proud of what they achieved and were keen for me to Tweet them on our school MFL account, which naturally I did.

Here is a link to our Twitter account, you'll be able to find all of the Y10 Haiku on descriptions (you won't have to scroll down far to find them).

@stmichaelsmfl

Co-operative Learning: Showdown

It's no secret that I am a huge fan of co-operative learning structures and one of my favourites is Quiz Quiz Trade, which I blogged about here and use it regularly for vocabulary building, review and drilling, but I have also been trialling other structures this year and one I hit upon recently has gone down a storm since trying it.
Showdown is a team activity which has pupils working together, learning from and teaching one another. This is how it works:
Each team member has a mini whiteboard and pen, one of the team is the "Showdown Captain" who is identified by a little name label(fear not this role changes on each round!).
The captain chooses a question from a set of cards. I chose the vey uninspiring "translate a sentence into French".
Once chosen, all team members write their own answers on their MWB, without showing their team.
When all are done, the captain says "showdown", then all show their answers and they must discuss them to reach a consensus.
When they are happy they all agree, the Showdown Captain, leads the team in a "unique" team celebration.
Captain hands the role over to the next person to their left and all is repeated.

I let them refer to books but it depends on how you want to use it, the class, etc...
Also, as I'm trying to cut down on paper used, rather then drawing "card" I put 12 phrases on the board and give dice, the captain rolled the dice instead of drawing the card. It still worked as well as drawing a card.

Active Learning - Clouds

I've also heard this activity called trap doors or otra vez and am sure that others call it by many other things - and my pupils probably call it something entirely different (!)
Some people have asked what it is so, although I know that many use this already, I thought I'd do a blog anyway.
The first thing to know about clouds is that it cover loads of different skills such as Speaking and Listening (literacy), Reading (literacy), active learning and lots more. It gets pupils talking in the target language straight away and I love it that as soon as I set my classes off doing this activity the classroom is buzzing with the sound of French/German and the sound of happy pupils!
So, this is how it works. You have a text and every so often you have a little cloud image / square with a choice of 3 words in it. Partner one chooses what their text will be, choosing one of the three words in the cloud/box whenever they get there. (They should not tell their partner what they have chosen). Partner 2 then tries to work out what their partner's text says by reading it aloud to their partner. When they get to a cloud/box they say 1 of the words in it. If they are correct, their partner says oui/ja/etc... and they can continue, however if they are wrong their partner says non/nein/etc... and they have to go right back to the beginning again. The best thing is when a pair really want to test each other and they get right to the end and quite deliberately say it's wrong so that the whole thing has to be read out again!
 Below is a simple screenshot of what one of my cloud activities looks like, incase you're struggling to envisage what it would look like...

Active Learning - Infinite Scrabble

Here's another one I've just recently started using again and I really like it for Key Stage 4.

This one is really simple and takes next to no preparation, another reason that I love it!

Give out a grid like the one above to pairs or trios of pupils, depending on how they're sat. The grid should be empty apart from random number in some of the squares, just like the one above. Pupils play against each other in a scrabble-like game.

Allocate a topic (this week mine have been descriptions and holidays-not at the same time, combined with connectives/opinions) and it works like this; pupil 1 starts in the middle of the square by writing a word in the TL, pupil 2 then writes another word that has to connect in some way to the first word and so on. Points are scored when a word goes through one of the squares with a number in it and that square can earn points every time a word goes through it.  You can make is as easy or hard as you want by allowing words horizontally, vertically, diagonally and sometimes backwards. I then had double point scores for letters that had accents on. The games could have lasted the whole lesson, if I'd allowed it!

I didn't know how competitive my pupils could get!

My next task is to work out how it can be less wasteful on paper, maybe laminate grids and use mini whiteboard pens...

Little update on how I'm using Infinite Scrabble to ensure more engagement (although there's already lots there!). I give rewards not only to the winner in each pair / trio and have also started to reward the highest scoring team a reward as well, so not only are they playing against each other but also against the others in the class. Who know that there could be scores of over 100! I also no longer need to explain, just hand out and the buzz starts straights away.

Active Learning - Quiz, Quiz, Trade

Since I'm on a roll, I thought I'd put together another little Active Learning post on one of my favourites.

As ever, I though "everyone" knew about Quiz, Quiz, Trade (a lovely activity taken from Kagan Structures) and I was late to jump on the band wagon. So, last Tuesday during our Active Learning INSET I mentioned it and actually found myself explaining how it works at several tables .  Anyway, I thought I'd explain it here too...it's a good way to avoid real work.

Give each child in the class a card with the TL at the top and English meaning at the bottom. Ideally, each child should have a different phrase which can prove quite difficult in a big class, I know.

Pupils stand up hand up pair up and work their partner, asking them to tell them what the TL phrase means.  If one partner can't do it, the other partner should support and coach them to help them. Once done, the other partner does the same and then they swap the cards and put their hands back up to move on to work with someone else.  This means that pupils work with a wide variety of language and also reinforce their language learning skills, whilst listening to, reading, and speaking in the TL.

For extension more able pupils could be asked to say the phrase in the TL rather than English and even...particularly if you're struggling to find enough phrases with a big class...give out a few blank cards for more able pupils to make up their own. You could also have differentiated cards of different colours and ask pupils to work with people who have the same coloured cards as them.

Instead of "stand up hand up pair up" you could play music and ask them to pair up with the nearest person when the music stops, or even have and inside and outside circle, the inside circle moves and stops when told to, then works with the person opposite them. This would work particularly well if you want to avoid certain pairings ;)

I have it on good authority that Quiz, Quiz, Trade can work in just about any subject area which is always good news.