Online tools for MFL learning - Memrise

This academic year i have found myself trying to exploit the new technologies we have in school to boost language learning. I thought today I would share a couple of websites I have been using with various classes with some success. I should add that neither are subscription based, nor are they MFL specific, but my classes seem to really enjoy using them.

The first of which is www.memrise.com. Memrise (not a typo!) is a website dedicated to committing items of vocabulary, facts or figures to our long term memory using the neat metaphor of watering a garden. Pupils choose a course of vocab to study (handily, some kind soul has already uploaded specification lists for the AQA exam board for German, French and Spanish) and plant seedlings, which through watering, develop into flowers, and hey presto - vocab learnt forever! 

Each vocab list is learnt two words at a time which are tested immediately. Correct answers gain points; the quicker the answer, the higher the point scored. Students are encouraged to revisit topics frequently, and reminders to 'water' plants they may have planted some weeks previously ensures that old content can not be forgotten; it is always revisited. The memrise strategy is based on the three concepts of science, fun and community for 'effortless learning' and as they put it:

"we've turned learning facts and language into a game where you grow a colourful garden of memory. You grow and water your memories in a garden of memory, you zoom up the leaderboards, and you learn alongside your mempals. It's like a guiltless video-game"

www.memrise.com 

It's this video game style and the competitive element of the leaderboards which has boosted my set two year 10 class into really learning their homework. I have set up an account and I 'follow' the pupils in my class - this gives me the option to see a leaderboard, organised into weekly, monthly and 'all time' top scores. We have created quite the competition in class and prizes have been awarded for particularly impressive results - be it reaching a certain score in a certain time frame, moving a certain number of places up the leaderboard or simply gaining 10,000 points in a 30 minute lesson. 

The brilliant part is that pupils can pick a topic which matches a context of work as the lists are sorted to the exam board. I can even set up my own lists of vocab for them to learn, which I will be exploiting more nearer exam time by creating lists of tricky exam words. I can only speak from my own first hand experience but with three classes using this now, all of different abilities, pupils find it a very quick, motivating way to complete homework. There are corresponding free apps for Android and Apple devices meaning pupils can learn on the go. Points tot up very quickly, pupils can see their progress in real time and if they choose to follow one another, seeing their position on their very own leaderboard spurs them on to study for 'just another 5 more minutes' in order to beat their friends. I really recommend giving it a go - or at least telling pupils about it so they can try it out for themselves as independent study.

Fostering independence in writing in MFL

After marking 3 sets of books today (go me, how efficient, god bless PPA), I began to get increasingly frustrated with the number of homeworks I marked enhanced with a little sprinkling of Google translate. First of all, let me say that I am not against Google translate as a tool for learning - it's just simply that I haven't dared explored such capabilities with my classes yet, and let's be honest, in the majority of cases it isn't necessary to use it.

I've decided the three main reasons pupils use Google to translate for homeworks are probably 1) laziness; 2) a genuine inability to complete the task set of them and 3) a lack of confidence in their own ability. What I find most frustrating about this is that I feel as a department, and indeed as a school, we give pupils an awful lot of the tools required so that they can create meaningful pieces of work of their own accord. It seems that when it comes down to it, they either can't or won't. Our KS3 and KS4 pupils in languages are all provided with a vocabulary booklet with vocabulary and structures in for them to produce writing at home. There are grammar sections at the back. Pupils complete pre-tasks, in which they practise vocabulary, sentence structure and building paragraphs. A writing task for KS3 homework should be a culmination of classwork and previous homework - an opportunity for pupils to show themselves off, prove to me how much they have learned. Of course, that's on the basis we have a good working relationship and they want to impress, but I like to think that with most of my classes, we do have such a positive working environment. 

With the implementation of a flipped learning project, we will have a chance to experiment with homework and hopefully measure any impact on results and attitudes to out-of-class work.I really believe in our new KS3 homework set up of prep, draft & redraft so I am keen to make it work. I'll put this one down to a first attempt - iron out the creases and try again.

So in the meantime, it's back to the drawing board... a reinforcement of the idea that we don't NEED to use Google, our brains work and it's good to be in our challenge zone sometimes. A chance for me to reflect on the way I set out homework tasks - should I have differentiated more? Do I need to do more confidence building in class? How else can I encourage my learners to be (here's the Ofsted buzzword...) resilient? Or perhaps students are just overwhelmed; to expect writing to be done independently is just the straw that breaks the already-heavily-laden-with-homework-camel's back?

Hearing the Learner Voice - Reflections on a training day

A day out of school is always one well spent, not least because of the guarantee of a great lunch, but also as an opportunity to stop and take stock. Today I spent the day at a lovely school in Somerset, with a group of like minded people discussing Student Voice. The school itself was a new build... what other excuse does one need to start afresh than a brand new building to kick start it all off? The school in question was testament to that, as was shown when the students proudly showed us around, pointing out all they had achieved so far and all that they planned for the future.

The day was dedicated to hearing from a number of people involved in the student voice processes, from Assistant Head, to the students themselves, to the Local Authority contact. As a mere classroom teacher, I felt somewhat out of my depth with the bigwigs as most of the other delegates were members of SLT, but I have to admit their insight was powerful and has really helped me to understand where I need to take my role in order to satisfy the criteria that senior leaders are expecting from student leadership.

I suppose the main reflection from the day was that I am incredibly lucky. It is very easy to get lost at week 5 in the term and become that moany, miserable member of staff with nothing positive to say. But I felt that a lot of what we were discussing, we already do at our school. Not only that, I strongly feel we do it really quite well and we are in a strong position to help other schools to learn from us. Listening to SLT speak about the challenges they face implementing new ideas reminded me it's not just us that faces the daily struggles to get a project up and running. The day was a real chance to network and to share ideas - but also a time for reflection. We could all admit that none of us have 'it' quite yet, whatever that may be, but student councils, school cabinets, focus groups, student mentors, student observers of learning, whatever name you want to give them, these groups of students are meeting in schools across the country and the key is that as a group we more or less wanted the same thing - to hear their voices louder and clearer. 

We were encouraged to reflect and answer questions such as 'why are we here?' and 'what do we want to do?'. From my perspective, the reason I took a 120 mile round trip at 6:30am this morning was to find out how to make Student Voice heard... and a word of wisdom from a delegate today enabled me to take account - 'If students are getting something out of it, if they are going home and telling their parents what they have done, you have achieved something in your school.' We need to be careful that in paying lip service to a buzzword on the agenda at present doesn't make us lose sight of what we are fundamentally addressing. Student Voice should be ground upwards, not ideas that we push on to the students to tick a box. With a very supportive SLT I don't feel we are in that position thankfully, but I do feel perhaps I would be fulfilling my role as Student Voice CO-ORDINATOR better if I did just that. Co-ordinating instead of leading. 

Homework for the MFL student

As my marking pile grows ever larger just 3 and a bit weeks into the term, it's natural to query what is the point of it all. But with our prospective 'flipped learning' experiment in the pipeline, I really do need to reconsider where homework / homestudy fits in with this new model of teaching and learning.

Having read a little around the topic online (don't be silly, it couldn't possibly be extensively... where would I find the time?) it seems the great debate around homework is setting a task for the sake of it, or actually setting something that consolidates the learning in the classroom and has a measurable impact on progress. How we measure that progress is perhaps another question all together. Our school has recently redesigned our Virtual Learning Environment and with the introduction of the fancy new site this September came the chance to purge all the rubbish that had accumulated on the old one. In MFL we took it upon ourselves to not only redesign our homework tasks for KS3 (our policy is to have all tasks pre-prepared online for students to access at any time, avoiding 'finish this at home' type tasks) but also to rethink assessment of a unit of work. We came up with a three pronged approach - Learning, Preparation and Drafting. Pupils will complete 3 homework tasks each half term, in preparation for an end of unit assessment. Learning tasks will consist of learning vocabulary for an in-class mini test, Preparation tasks will require pupils to complete a worksheet of consolidation activities designed to test vocabulary recall, reading and writing skills and the Drafting tasks give pupils the opportunity to submit a practise piece of writing and receive formative feedback before the final assessment. I'm really looking forward to seeing how the process will affect the quality of the writing of our KS3 pupils because, as the department discussed, correcting adjective endings for what seems like the bazillionth time is soul destroying.

But in considering 'flipping' my teaching and learning, how am I going to approach homework? The system we have in place is working, is great preparation for our assessments and will hopefully have the desired affect on writing skills. But it won't work with the flipped learning model. Am I going to simply be able to swap this around and bring the homework tasks into my classroom for completion? I suspect this is a lazy way out and I won't get off that lightly. Likewise, flipped learning ought to provide me with more opportunity to differentiate for more able pupils and those with particular learning needs. Every pupil in my classroom needs to leave having felt a sense of achievement from the flipped learning task - I can't afford to have a pupil complain the homework was a 'waste of time' and to the same end I don't particularly want to feel the same way when marking the outcome! The problem I have with homework is probably the same one the pupils have - unless properly and carefully planned out, it feels pointless a lot of the time. We are all led to believe that it's a necessity, that it has to be done, that it proves a point. Yet all to often it achieves the opposite - nothing more than to prove that the thing you thought you had taught...  32 of your pupils didn't get it. Not a great self esteem boost for teacher or pupil. Will research based tasks feel more worthwhile? Will pupils gain more from the independent enquiry that flipped learning demands of them? Will this in turn be building those resilient learners that Ofsted beg to see in our classrooms? Time will tell, but I'm hoping it's a big fat yes. 

Focus - electing or selecting?

It's the Summer term and therefore the time of year when I need to start thinking about recruiting new members to our school Focus groups. Having taken on the role from someone else, the lovely Beth who was not precious at all about me making any changes, last year I kept the process largely the same to ease me into my new role. We ran an online Google form and asked pupils to 'apply' for a position on one of our five Focus groups by writing a short statement. We then divided the applicants into year groups. Each statement was then presented anonymously for voting by the tutor groups. The applicants who received the most votes gained a place on school council, or as we call it here, Focus. There are pros and cons to this system and I was loathe to change something that was so well established in school but for the feedback from students and staff. 

The pros were:

• Election by ones peers - pupils felt it was a fair system and that the 'favourite' pupils weren't always chosen to take part in fun projects
• It taught pupils about democracy - of utmost importance nowadays, especially to stress that students voices were heard and acted upon in school - it wasn't just the teachers who had a say in the running of the school
• Anonymous system was more inclusive - pupils didn't mind applying if they knew no one would be able to tell it was them - more applications from a wider range of pupils

However - the system itself was not entirely without flaws. The cons were as follows:

• Election took a long time - for some year groups with lots of keen applicants, the Voting Voice process where tutors had to read the statements out then establish a winner required far longer than the tutor time that was dedicated to it. Likewise in year 11 there were hardly any applicants so the voting process became entirely redundant
• Delayed start to the year - the Focus groups couldn't start until the election process had been completed which meant some groups didn't manage to have a meeting until after the October half term
• Pupils were put off - knowing that they would be judged on spelling and grammar (their words, not mine!) some pupils didn't bother to apply as they thought they weren't academic enough. Their statements were up for everyone to see, despite the fact they were anonymous.
• Pupils whose statements were at the bottom of the list were missed  off - a 25min tutor time did not prove enough to get through all statements meaning they were often not even considered.

As with any school council, throughout the course of the year people come and go. This year some groups have struggled to have enough members to get projects up and running where as others have had too many to coordinate. 

So the big plan this year? Not massive changes but hopefully a way to eliminate some of the problems we have had in the past. Pupils will still fill in a Google form as found on the front page of our Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) and they are still expected to write a statement. However, this year we are trialling applications instead of elections - the form will be live until the end of the Summer term and the results will be collated. Pupils will then be invited at the beginning of the academic year in September to join the group of their choosing and see how they get along. It is hoped this will allow for larger numbers at the beginning enabling groups with lots of members to perhaps run sub-projects by dividing pupils up and also allowing for the inevitable 'drop out' rate. I am still torn as to whether it is right to remove the whole process of election as it seems such a valuable lesson to teach pupils about politics and choosing someone to represent them as a student body - yet I also feel our Voting Voice and work as an RRR school achieves this within itself.

I will reflect on the process as it happens and welcome any feedback or comments!

Flipping the MFL classroom

As a member of our school's New Technologies School Improvement Group, I have been thinking recently about what the next step would be. We have looked at a different project each year for the past 3 and I can say that due to the action research projects we undertake as part of membership of the SIG groups I am now confident in using Twitter, blogging and QR codes in my teaching. After talking to colleagues (both in the flesh and on Twitter - follow the hashtag #mfltwitterati if you don't already), it seems Flipped classroom needs to be brought to MFL!

If you are not familiar with the concept, it's basic principle is that the learning happens outside of the classroom - freeing up class time for discussion and enabling the teacher to become the facilitator as opposed to the fountain of all knowledge. See infographic here.

There are lots of people experimenting with this at the moment and some very helpful twitterers have pointed me in the direction of some great blogs on the topic - but I thought I would trial the concept with a class from September next year. This coincides perfectly with the launch of our new VLE platform for pupils, something as staff we have been working to populate over the past few months. The new VLE has a gret number of functions which will support the Flipped classroom demands, including posting videos and enabling students to 'drop' their homework on to the Assignments page in order to hand it in.

The plan:

Class: Year 7 Spanish or German, depending in timetable

Why: Train them up early! I won't be using an accelerated set as I want to measure the results in comparison to another class. I also don't want to risk losing valuable lesson time with the dual linguists if the activity doesn't work out and I need to revisit something (timetables at Wildern mean that languages classes have 5 lessons per fortnight - if the class is accelerated, they are therefore dual linguists, meaning they have 3 lessons of their first language and 2 of their second across the fortnight).

How: A series of tutorial videos concentrating on key skills - pupils will watch these for their homework task and then complete an activity based on what they have learned in the classroom. We could then make the most of AFL opportunities and complete some peer and self assessment. 

Why this way? I'm of the opinion that this style of learning lends itself well to skills rather than vocabulary retention as I feel it is too demanding to expect pupils to learn a number of words and then reproduce them in the classroom. With grammar, we can practise and hopefully iron out any misconceptions as a class - enabling me as the teacher to become a facilitator to their learning and pick up on their train of thought once they have had time to digest the information, rather than expecting them to remember what I may have just presented to them 5 minutes before. I'm open to trying presenting vocabulary and more content to Key Stage 4, but would like to experiment with KS3 first and reflect on the progress there. 

I'm interested to hear anyone else's experience with flipped classroom particularly any top tips. Either way, watch this space come September for some reflections along the way.

Using drama within MFL

I am constantly looking for cross curricular links in MFL yet usually failing to exploit them quite to their full advantage. Today, with a top set year 7 dual linguist class and a bit of time towards the end of term, I decided to dedicate a whole hour to acting and performing (and a little bit of German too).

I certainly can't take credit for the lesson plan, as that comes from our amazing Greg, but I'm sure he wouldn't mind me passing on my reflections. We teach a fairytale unit with our year 7 classes in the Summer term and as well as making big pointy flashing sparkly links to literacy, in exploring replacing nouns, adjectives and verbs to rewrite their own version of the story, we have been looking at intonation too. Today's lesson was devoted to Rotkäppchen (Little Red Riding Hood) and creating freeze frames of some key moments of the story.

We started by discussing how we might find an important part of the story - particularly if it was in a foreign language. Pupils know their fairytales well enough from their nursery days in order to remember the key parts - so it was just a case of matching vocabulary in both languages and getting the highlighters out. I then gave pupils 20 minutes in groups of 3 - 4 to come up with 3 freeze frames from crucial moments of the story - they had to find a line in the text to narrate the scene too.

I was initially sceptical that I may have given them too much time but they seemed to use every minute to practise and refine what their initial ideas were. When they presented their mini sketches and poses, they found they had all used similar moments from the story and text but presented them slightly differently. More able and talented pupils could manipulate the German, adding bits in such as "Ich bin..." to say who they were in the story if it wasn't obvious from their poses. I found that devoting time to skimming and scanning the text to find a piece they really wanted or needed helped them to focus on their reading skills yet for another, more realistic purpose than just answering a question. They were able to bring some creativity and flair to their language lessons and those pupils with a real talent for drama could show it off proudly to their classmates and the quieter ones could find a role for themselves too. Most of all, we had a real giggle during the lesson and I have learned that letting go and having a little more time can really allow pupils to get their heads round something of their own accord without the pressure to 'achieve' in a particular way.