Day: July 9, 2011

Make it real 

Liz Fotheringham, 

Use authentic materials to make it real! All sorts of reasons why online resources are particularly useful – one might be that textbooks are out of date as soon as they’re published!

See http://lizfotheringham.wordpress.com for slides and links

Skills –

• odd one out
• skimming and scanning
• looking for similarities – cognates, near cognates
• Venn diagrams
• matching text and pictures
• statistics – making links with maths skills
• thinking skills – card sorting
• longer texts – blanking out words – you need to look at context, grammar (what part of speech is needed)
• reordering texts requiring looking at numbers, dates, sequencing words (trois ans plus tard)
• fortune lines – high and low points of a career
• colour coding texts / jigsaw reading

When using video

• using cards to match to stills from clips eg songs  (Gregoire – Toi plus moi)
• songs (on video) can be used as listening as well as audio
• McDonalds advert  – made into a sound file using RealPlayer – and then slow it down in Audacity to make it more accessible

Languages:Reboot

Chris Harte, Cramlington Learning Village

Chris’ presentation is on his website so I’m not going to recap blow by blow – just some notes! Needless to say, he was brilliant and will be missed when he goes Down Under.
3 preconditions to learning

• Ganas – WIIFM
• Belief – I can’t do it yet….
• “Do something differently – if you always do what you always did, you will always get what you always got.”

Jeff Petty – Evidence based teaching  – recommended reading

Learning is …

• social
• about making connections]
• a lifelong process

Chris has a number plate to encourage independent learning – C3B4ME – try 3 other sources of info before me

Do we want our pupils to be engaged?

Yes, but you can be engaged without being challenged.

Harry Potter clips – OWLs – watch this clip from about 2 minutes and substitute the word ‘spells’ / ‘magic’ for languages. Sound familiar?

A failed GCSE is a lost life chance so we want them to pass but how soul destroying to feel you have to stick to learning chunks of language to satisfy an examiner who wants to test what you CAN’T do.

A textbook exclusively endorsed by an exam board means that I will follow it slavishly because I want my pupils to pass. Where’s the room for creativity?

Testing what you don’t know is not fair.

Look at www.hooked-on-thinking.com to investigate SOLO taxonomy – and also  Chris’ post on SOLO taxonomy http://chrisharte.typepad.com/learner_evolution_chris_h/2011/04/solo-im-ridin-solo.html

10 words at word level is not enough in a lesson for our talented linguists

If you want learners to make connections between language, you need to provide them with something with which to make the connections, so we need to give them texta not just words.

Having taught KS3 with films, murder mystery etc, why should we have to go back at KS4 to teaching pencil sharpener!

If you want to see Chris in action presenting on the same theme a few months ago, check him out here and here.