Category: CPD

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Just been reminded that TONIGHT we are having a MFL Flashmeeting, just like the one we had on May 4th! I was sure it was next week as there had been a suggestion of possible activities for Bastille Day due to the proximity to 14th July but it seems that it is today – 8.30pm – 10.30pm.

You can check out details here on the wiki and see who else is joining. There is a waiting list for places, but do not despair as some people may be unable to attend for thw whole time and others may have had to change their plans since signing up.

So why not pop along here at some point during the 2 hours and see what we’re up to!

Heres the agenda!

AGENDA ITEMS

1. If you are a blogger, what is your favourite post and why?
2. Getting into podcasting. Where do you start?
3. Ideas for celebrating The European Day of Languages on 26th September 2009 using Web 2.0 tools or otherwise (How about a massive VoiceThread?)
4. CPD opportunities for next academic year. Would anyone want to organise a one or two day face to face event somewhere in the UK? (@josepicardo – I am not able to make it tonight, off on a staff do, however, I would like to volunteer that we might be able to use my brand new sixth form center at Nottingham High School for a one day f2f probably Easter or October 2010. Discuss if appropriate. José Picardo)
5. Cunning tips: how do you save time in blogging/podcasting/resource creating and so on, to keep work/life balance & prevent divorce/forgetting names of children, etc.?

Not a post about S Club 7 (athough I will say that my boys are big fans of Hannah who’s in Primeval now!) but about something that was reinforced in my mind last night.

The Assistant Head at school had been asked to run part of the PDM on EAL (English as an additional language) and to give some brief ideas on how to make life easier for EAL pupils at school. We don’t have many but it is an important issue – and one that is relevant in general too! On a recent course she had attended, the presenter had taught them some Welsh to put the delegates in the position of an EAL learner, and Jan had asked me to emulate this – her exact request was ‘you know an oscure Spanish dialect don’t you? Could you teach us some?’ Not sure how the Catalans would respond to hearing Catalan described as such but I took the challenge.

The idea was to teach numbers 1-12 and then do some basic maths but without using visual prompts like fingers, cards, notes, actions or mimes until about half way through the session. Thus the staff were put in the place of a learner who is capable to doing the task – all our staff can add and subtract numbers up to 12!- but don’t have the vocabulary to understand the task.

What struck me was how hard I found it to teach without using actions – I literally had to put my hands in my pockets or hold them together to stop myself gesturing. I found it really uncomfortable to see the looks on my colleagues’ faces as they tried to work out what I wanted them to do – and I think I caved in quicker than I should have done. My style is very much waving my arms around, pointing, miming and using any clue I can to enable the pupils to understand.

When asked how they’d felt, it was obvious that the exercise had hit the mark as the staff immediately pinpointed the difficulty of understanding the task being the biggest stumbling block, and how much easier it had been once actions had been introduced, or the list of numbers being written on the wall. One colleague said that she’d given up trying after a few minutes as she was so baffled; another that she’d felt so inadequate and small as others had caught on more quickly than her, and almost humiliated (once she’d understood it) by the simplicity of the task that she’d been unable to do.

So, despite my discomfort at teaching in a way that is alien to me, I think the exercise served to underline just how important gesture and mime are in enabling understanding.

We played a game from Digital Dialects as part of my mini-lesson. Well worth a look if you want to learn – or even just look at – some basics in a wide range of different languages!

I was privileged to be asked by David Noble (@parslad) to join TeachMeet ASN-SEN Online tonight and invited to speak as well! A huge privilege when you look at the other speakers!

I choose to talk briefly about using puppets and sound recording to encourage speaking skills in the classroom. As I teach languages, my examples came from my experience in the primary language learning classroom but, as I said, are equally applicable in other contexts.

If you want to catch what I said, you can watch the replay here

And here are some posts I’ve previously made about using puppets in the classroom –
Puppets! (video at the bottom of the post)
Los animales hablan
Inspired in IKEA pt 2

And about using sound recording-
5MW on Podomatic

And also moblogging –
La Primavera
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