Hampshire MFL NQT Training Day Presentation, Nov 4th, 2014

See below for an updated version of my presentation on New Technologies for the Hampshire MFL NQTs, from November 4th, 2014. Feel free to download and share.

Using VOKI in lesson... without a computer!

This week I was observed in my new school for the first time. I wanted to use some new technology in the lesson, despite the lack of iPads available in the department, as it has always been the thing that people ask me most questions about with my teaching, particularly since I made the switch from a very Apple centred school to where I am now. The problem, however, was thinking of a way to incorporate the technology into the lesson without actually having devices for each of the pupils to use.

With my year 9 mixed ability German class (pre-option group as KS3 is years 7, 8 & 9 here), we have just begun the topic of School. Having revised school subjects and basic opinions in the previous lesson, this lesson was focussing on use of varied adjectives to justify opinions and to revisit comparison structures. At the beginning of the lesson, pupils matched some new adjectives and practised these before going over the formation of a comparison structure.

I decided I wanted to do a listening activity to enable the pupils to do some self assessment (and hopefully show to my observers that progress had been made in the lesson: tick!) so I quickly created a VOKI, incorporating the structures from the lesson that we wanted to practise, so comparisons and complex 'weil' clauses. You can see the VOKI avatar here:

We completed a simple listening comprehension worksheet where the pupils had to select the correct option from three given choices for 8 questions. Once we had been through this and marked it, it was time for the pupils to move on to producing a text of their own. I gave the pupils a transcript of the listening and we came up with a checklist for their own text - things they wanted to include to make theirs better than mine. Now it was time for the tech without the tech bit!

I gave pupils mini whiteboards and a 1 minute timer. They had to draw an avatar on their whiteboard before the time ran out. Once the time was up, I played the theme tune to countdown, whilst they played 'pass the parcel' with their mini whiteboards. As soon as the music had ended, whichever whiteboard they had ended up with became their avatar. Pupils then listened to one another's texts in pairs whilst holding their avatar up in front of their faces. This was just for fun but also within this mixed ability group I think it served a real purpose - we took the emphasis away from the awkwardness of speaking a foreign language in front of our peers and moved it towards enjoying the moment of being silly. Every pupil in the room spoke their text out loud and I'm convinced that we had longer responses from some pupils than perhaps I had had before. I really enjoyed the lesson and it seemed that the pupils were motivated and engaged too - fingers crossed my company enjoyed it as much as we did!

Bringing languages to *real* life

As a department, we much prefer to create our own listening and reading materials for classes instead of using textbooks, unless something really fits a particular topic well or exploits a certain point. With my year 10 this week, covering what is perhaps usually a quite mundane topic, I tried to engage them with images and photographs instead and tailor my activities to suit. 

Reading - We are on the GCSE context of relationships and we needed to revise family and physical description, so I wrote a short description of both of my parents and showed them photos. The pupils then had some time to read the texts from the board and try to remember as much as possible. I gave them a memory test whereby they had to tell me how much they could remember about my parents from the written descriptions. I was quite honest and matched the pictures to my description for my mixed ability class - if you were testing a high ability class this would be a good way for them to prove their reading skills! It was a really nice activity for them to practise their reading as they actually cared about the answers instead of reading from a textbook about fictitious characters and they wanted to get to know me and find out more about my family. It was a also a lovely way to build positive relationships with what has been at time a tricky group to get to know. 

Speaking - We then went on to discuss what makes a good friend. After brainstorming some qualities of a good or indeed a bad friend, we did a bit of group talk about some famous people and whether they would make a good best friend. I picked people which would generate some discussion and argument for the tables - Chris Brown, Nicole Scherzinger, the Queen, Jeremy Clarkson - before summarising some key vocab that came out of our discussions as a class. It was then time to practise some listening.

Listening - I chose to use a Voki character (www.voki.com) instead of reading aloud to my class. It provides a visual animation to your voice recording, or if you don't have access to a mic on your laptop, it has a handy function where you can convert text to speech in a number of different accents. I recorded a short piece (the limit is 60s) describing my friends with a random little pink bunny rabbit character. They then had to decide which friend was which from a photo I gave them and answer some simple listening comprehension questions. Again, this was a nice way for them to find out a little bit more about me, whilst using vocabulary from the topic in a real context. I could also adapt the text to include certain structures that I wanted to exploit before setting them up with a transcript to have a go at writing their own text about their own best friends.