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Using memory skills

I am very interested in promoting memory skills in all year groups.  Students need guidance on how to learn and remembering new vocabulary and grammatical structures.  

At a recent Inset day, I did the following presentation staff. These are some of the techniques that we use. Some of the ideas, I have borrowed and adapted.

 

 

Memory and learning

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Décris où tu habites

Building up confidence is important and Year 9 have been working on this.  We are starting a project on my local area.  

First step, we have looked at different areas on a map of France and researched single geographical words in the dictionary.  This helped us build a bank of vocabulary which will help us describe different areas in France.

i.e Marseilles est dans le sud.  Elle est sur la mer Méditerranée.  

     Strasbourg est dans l'est.  Elle est sur le Rhin.

We then added more details such as "elle est située", "elle se trouve", "à côté de"

      Strasbourg est située dans l'est de la France à côté de l'Allemagne. Elle se trouve sur un fleuve qui s'appelle le Rhin.

We then looked at photos about Strasbourg  and thought about what could be added.

Description:  il y a,  on trouve ...

Opinion:  Je pense que, à mon avis ....

adjectives:  historique, touristique, pittoresque, beau/belle etc.

Connectives:  parce que, mais, car, alors etc

Je pense que c'est un ville historique parce qu'il y a des bâtiments pittoresques. A mon avis, elle est aussi touristique car c'est très joli alors il y beaucoup de touristes dans les rues.

Then the students transferred what they have learnt on other towns and they produced some excellent sentences.  The feedback was very positive and the students felt they have developed their written work well.

Next lesson, we will look at the past tense perfect and imperfect and see how it can be used to improve written work further.  The students will then produce their own work on their local area.

     

 

 

My week-end in Southampton!

 

I had a wonderful week-end in Southampton.  Thanks to Joe Dale for putting together what was one of the best conferences I have attended.  All the workshops I attended were brilliant and I learnt so much.  What was great about the week-end, was that it was delivered by practising teachers and so the ideas presented had really been trialled in the classroom.  

I attended sessions with Lesley Welsh who shared her use of Authentic material with us-, Kath Holton shared her experience of using audio and recording material (very useful for CA and AFL)-

The session on Powerpoint with Jackie Berry was very interesting as I have shunned away from PPTs since having a IWB.

Lisa Stevens is so enthusiastic about e-Twinning that you come out wanting to do all the things she does. Her students have certainly got a vision on the world!!

Chris Harte really hit the question on assessment and really made us wonder about our present practice on teaching vocabulary and grammar.

Isabelle Jones introduction to PLTs was great and she shared her ideas on using texts , songs etc to address them.

Clare Seccombe did a wonderful session on Arts Smart- showing how she is using Art to create wonderful speaking and writing with her primary students but so easily transferable to KS3 -4 and beyond!!!

We must not forget the Keynotes speeches by Joe Dale and Rachel Hawkes 

Thanks everyone for being so inspiring!!

 

Using Authentik material in the Language classroom.

I can't think of "authentic" material without thinking of Jean de Florette who had after inheriting his uncle house moved in to grow "de l'authentique".  As a teacher who often disregard the textbook, authentic material is a means of allowing my student to grow more confident in developing their language.

I have always used "authentic" material in my lessons. I have often travelled from France with a car full of empty packages, newspapers and magazines.  I have raided Tourist offices, supermarket and my parents'mail for texts that I wanted to use in class.  Really nothing has changes except that all these documents are now available more readily and widely. On a daily basis, more and more material is available on the Internet.  Things haven't changed, the material is still written by native speakers for communication but the range available would certainly filled more than a car!!!!   I am no longer restricted to my little area of France but the world is opened to the language teacher at their virtual fingertips.

You can get overwhelmed by all the resources available and I try to focus on what are the goals of my lessons and what I want my students to achieve.  Also you can spend hours looking for material so you need to concentrate on the best way to locate your resource and when located, look at suitability and target audience. Once you have found your material and know that it is suitable for your students, you need to think on how you are going to use it in your lesson.  

Reading:

• Go through your text and recognise grammatical structures(highlighting verbs, adjectives etc)-  cognates, known vocabulary etc. 
• Identify the key words in the text- look for synonyms, homonyms, what do certain numbers refer to?
• Find words with the sound .......
• I am reading from a certain point in the text, finish the sentence before me
• Sequencing 

Listening  

• Give students some words from the text / song and they have to stand up when they hear it.  
• Give some students some sentences from the text (they stand at the font of the class) and they have to put themselves in the right order with help from the class.
• Find the words in the class
• Put the sentences in the right order
• Gap fill 

For these exercises, I use Teachers pet which creates the exercises for you.

Speaking

• Use Talk to discuss the text-  Je pense que le texte est facile, difficile, intéressant etc... 
• Follow up from the text-  do a role-play by putting

Writing

• Imagine the end
• Re-write the text in a different style

For me using Authentic material in the classroom, allow my students to tackle texts which open their eyes to other cultures, keep them informed on world events, show them how language works and is used by millions of people everyday.

So like Jean de Florette, look after your "Authentique" and make sure it produces productive material for our students to progress and for them to grow into confident learners!

Today, I was fortunate to attend a Modern Language Teachmeet in Manchester and did  the following presentation on my use of authentic material in lessons.  

 

Authentik material

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On se présente

Year 10 have been working on introducing themselves.  They have done this quite a lot in Year 7, 8 and 9, so I thought that it would be better if they presented a puppet each. They spent part of the lesson looking at some texts and adapting them to their character.  This allowed us also to revise dictionary skills.  Here are some of the presentation which were made.  Well done!!

C’est bientôt la rentrée!

La Rentrée-  This you will see all over France in August-  It means going back to school.  

What about you?  How prepared are you for la Rentrée?

You have bought your uniform, have a new bag, nice pencil-case and lovely pens, so you think that you are ready?  Not really!

You can forget a lot over 6 weeks and unless you have been on holidays in a French speaking country, you have not heard, read nor spoken any French since you left school.

How can you get prepared?

Have a look at my two posts :  Que faire pendant les vacances? and on recommence.

You can build your vocabulary by practising on different websites like the very good www.languagesonline.org.uk .  Have a look at the grammar as well, it is quite easy to follow and you will be well-equipped for coming back to school.

You can also download the home version of Task Magic , You will access a wealth of vocabulary and grammar resources and learn while playing. 

I have also created a few games on Quia-  This will cover most topics and are mostly vocabulary games

Look at the advice given by other teachers, this will help you getting prepared for the rest of the year.

 Remember:  Fail to prepare, prepare to fail!!

Ma journée au Parc Astérix

I have come across the website- Fotobabble while looking for inspiration on Russel Stannard's excellent website-Teacher Training Videos.

I thought that Fotobabble would be excellent for students to record their own work from year 7 up to year 13. You upload a photo or website and record directly on to the site.  You can then e-mail it, embed it on a website or send to a social network.

Year 8 have been writing about the activities that they did during their recent activity week. I have recorded my own experience of a trip to Parc Axtérix near Paris.

Listen to it and use it as listening comprehension or do a similar activity yourself.

You can follow the script from here:

Download Ma visite au Parc Axtérix

Le tabac et le tabagisme

Mon JT quotidien is a program aimed at young children in France.  It is a good source of resources for students studying French as it gives them an insight into world news in a simplified format.

I cam across this report on "Tabagisme" which I found rather chocking and I want to share it with you.  Watch the item, study the pictures to help you and answer the questions.  Remember what the news item is about to help you answer the questions.  You can also access the script and follow it this way.  Why not try to read it at the same time as the narrator or record yourself saying it.  Compare the results with a friend and see how well you have performed

le tabagisme

You can now access the script here

Download La Chine

Check and learn the following expressions:Download Un message un peu choquant

Using the Internet to spice up your lessons

It was nice to see so many people at the West of England conference yesterday.  This was a succesful conference with very positive feedback.

In my talk, I showed some of the websites and tools that I use in order to enhance and embed authentique material in my lesson.   I suggested how I have used in the past and how these could be used in the future

Spice Up Your Lessons Using Web 2

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Here is a list of the websites used in this presentation

Websites that I have used -

Looking back and forward

At the beginning of the Christmas holidays, I was asked by Jose Picardo who produces the very informative Boxoftricks blog to write a guest post about use of Technology in MFL.  You can find my post here. 

As mentioned in my post, I have progressed so much in my use of Technology in the classroom.  I could not imagine a lesson without using the Interactive Whiteboard.  This is an integral part of students learning,  with clever use of computers, you can appeal to all type of learners as well as use differentiation cleverly. 

The tools that use frequently have been mentioned by other MFL teachers who posted on Jose' blog:

 Lisa Steven ( her blog is an inspiration even if you do not teach Spanish and are a secondary teacher), Dominic McGladdery ( his sense of humour is brilliant and he shares links so willingly),Helena Butterfield (her International work is amazing!!- she has given me so many good ideas),Isabelle Jones (I have been following Isabelle's blog for a long time and I am always amazed at how much she knows ans is willing to share through social network, Amanda Salt ( Amanda has got a lot of  brilliant ideas and willingly shares resources that she has produced), Simon Howells ( his work on Google map is really great and one that I will use when working on directions), Saira Ghani ( the work that she has done with her students is worth looking at)

Everyday I discover new tools and have used them in different ways, the examples are in former post on this blog.

The person who inspired me the most this last decade has been Joe Dale-  His blog is so informative and Joe is always available to answer any questions that you may have regarding the use of Technology in the classroom.  Joe has been the investigator of the IOW conferences, Flash-meetings and teachers-meet, these have helped me progress so much and hopefully have enhanced my lessons in a way that I would not have thought possible 10 years ago. 

This year, I am looking forward to learning new skills, meeting inspiring people and sharing all this with my students.