Blog Archives - International Studies

AnswerGarden - gathering feedback

2/28/2014

http://answergarden.ch/ is free and simple to use, no sign up needed. You can pose a question to your class and they can contribute their ideas simultaneously. If an idea is suggested multiple times, it becomes larger than the rest on screen. Easy to embed and share too.

Revision ideas

2/28/2014

That's it, controlled assessments are done
and I love love love the final few weeks as we prepare for the listening and reading exams. Whilst I will regularly expose students to past papers and
develop their exam technique, what it really boils down to now is vocab. The more words they know the more accessible the exams become. I use a range of effective tasks to help students expand their vocabulary. Students do a lot of these tasks in teams and I keep score over the half term. A typical lesson will always include at least one reading and listening exercise (usually selected from past papers) combined with revision of about 20 vital vocab items using two or three of the following tasks.

Snakes and ladders
Happy families (German example here)
Spoons
Dominoes
Pirates
Whole class vocab games see templates here
Riddles (I put common riddles into TL)
Four words one pic (first team to write in TL on whiteboard gets a point)
Pictionary
Charades
Scrabble
Word race
Rapidough (students have play dough. One member of each team sees the word and students race to create the word with their play dough, first team to guess correctly in TL gets a point)
Beat the teacher (selection of vocab items/images usually on the board and I choose one secretly on my mini whiteboard. All students choose one too, we all flip boards at the same time and anyone with the same of me wins a point. Repeat several times!)
Grab cards (Small groups of students have a set of images. Teacher shouts a vocab items and the first to hold in the air wins a point)
Tarsias
Musical mindmaps
Relay race (Students work in small groups with a mini whiteboard. Teacher has 6 numbered sentences at the front. One member of each team comes to the front, read the sentence, races back to to tell their team. Once a team has held their board up with the accurate version and got the nod from the teacher, another member can come and see sentence 2. The first team to have worked through all six sentences correctly wins.)
Dictionary races (Good starter. Have 10 high frequency words on the boards and students race to translate on whiteboards)
Jenga (one from @elvisrunner of the #mfltwitterati and it's fab. Number the jenga blocks and have a number list of vocab or questions, students translate or answer in order to have their turn)
Connect4 in pairs
Memory (play it like "I went to the market and I ..." Have a range of images on the board and student 1 creates a sentence with one of the item. Player 2 repeats but adds another item etc etc)
Follow me - with thanks to Zoe Prindiville for this contribution.
Gap fills - another great example made by Zoe.

Websites and apps for revisionleaflet

Created with Padlet

Micro lessons

2/25/2014

I was really inspired by the Micro Lessons shared by Candida Gould (you can see her blog and micro lessons here).
According to the National Institute of Education micro lessons are "IT-based instructional materials that are used to teach specific objectives." (Further details here.)
For me, the appeal of micro lessons is the potential to link them
closely to marking and feedback. We have reflection time in our school where students are expected to respond to marking and to make corrections in purple pen. Where I've identified a recurring error for a student, I can request they visit the relevant micro lesson for some independent study of the grammar or vocabulary point. In addition, for those students who feel a little insecure about a point micro lessons offer the chance to independently review and practise at home.
QR coding each micro lesson will probably be time well-spent so students can quickly access the lesson they need, especially if students are studying further in class via tablets for example.
I think they will be useful for homework also, especially where a large number of students in a class appear to be receiving the same feedback.
One example would be the number of times I have recently written
"Include connectives" during marking.
As a result of this, I have created a Connectives Micro Lesson which I intend to set for homework. There is a quizlet to practise a range of connectives and students will be asked to set themselves a target identifying at least 2 connectives that they will include in their next piece of work.
I've created a few Spanish Micro Lessons so far, based on the common errors from students. To help students master the content, I have added either a video, links to interactive exercises on great sites such as www.languagesonline.org.uk or created a quizlet.
I also now have a micro lesson stamper for marking books. Happy days!

Connectives mats

2/23/2014

A mat to support students as they expand their answers in Spanish, French or English.
DOWNLOAD Spanish mat
DOWNLOAD French mat
DOWNLOAD English mat

MFL revision poster

2/21/2014

A revision poster with QR codes to allow students easy access to four useful revision sites. The sites offer French, German and Spanish resources.
DOWNLOAD

QR poster creator

2/21/2014

This is a great site for creating free QR posters. You can save then as a pdf file or image. www.posteroven.com

Skills corner

2/17/2014

Skills corner started out as a small reading area to encourage students to read freely in the target language. I made copies of cartoons and a selection of readers available for students to choose from.
As a department, we also wanted to ensure students had access to extension tasks and resources which would help them develop areas of the language identified from marking. All our languages rooms now have a skills corner.

These are kitted out with:
* a range of worksheets - grammar or vocabulary based
* cartoons and readers in the TL
* reading images sheets (I saw this in one of Rachel Hawkes' fantastic presentations and there are examples below)
* puzzles and games such as tarsia, crosswords and diamond nine tasks
* scrabble sets

What is nice about skills corner is students are able to select for themselves what to move on to. This is particularly nice for students who consistently complete tasks first, as there can sometimes be the danger of giving them more of the same. All students so far have responded very positively when told to go and select something to do next.
To satisfy the teacher-geek side of my personality, I covered a range of cereal boxed with pretty wrapping paper to store all the puzzles in - the short, wide porridge boxes are particularly useful!
This morning, I had a conversation on twitter with Dannielle Morgan
(@morganmfl ) after she blogged about her fab independent learning folders. I have a few vocabulary mats in my skills corner, but I like
the idea of linking them more closely to marking feedback.
You are free to use any of the resources below.

Reading images
Cartoons
Scrabble
Diamond nine
Vocabulary mats German
Vocab mats Spanish
Tarsia - adjectives
Tarsia - complete the sentences
Tarsia - questions and answers
Tarsia - sums
Tarsia - vital verbs

If you have any suggestions for other things we could add, I'd love to hear them.

A level speaking game

2/12/2014

In order to encourage my year 12 German students to talk in longer sentences, I have designed an AS version of gem hunt (see here for the original gem hunt game template)
Students choose a number and use the prompts to help them answer the question. They are awarded the number of gems shown if they answer successfully. Once they get the hang of the game, I plan to award bonus points linked to how successfully they meet the exam criteria.
Although the game is in German, you could alter the template to different languages.
DOWNLOAD

Ransom note generator

2/3/2014

Input your chosen text and turn it into a ransom note. Go

Fake text generator

2/1/2014

Exactly as it sounds - a free site to produce fake text conversations.
www.ifaketext.com