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.