alice’s posterous

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I was fortunate enough to attend the AGIS (Association of German International Schools) conference in Hannover last weekend. I attended several inspiring presentations about formative assessment, story telling, peer assessment and French in language B and I also delivered a presentation on how to improve speaking skills to be prepared for the IB (International Baccalaureate) oral exams. I must admit I was a bit stressed out as it was my first presentation in front of other teachers!

When I prepared the presentation I decided to go through the IB assessment criteria and see how we can improve these criteria in and outside the classroom. As I am new to the IB, I also wanted to get ideas from my audience so I prepared a 40-45 minutes presentation leaving 20-15 minutes time for discussion and sharing ideas. I told my audience that I would add their ideas in my presentation. Obviously, I advocated for some web 2.0 tools: some I have tried, some I haven't tried yet but I thought would be very helpful to use. I was a bit worried teachers would be reluctant to the idea of using technology as it can be daunting and overwhelming at first but I was very pleased to see that they were keen to learn more about it.

You can view my presentation above.
Please take time to read the speaker notes as they are full of ideas from @suzibewell, @icpjones, @josepicardo, @nikpeachey, @cjacomino, @TeachersTV
I cannot thank my Twitter PLN enough to share all those great ideas with me everyday, they help me so much in enhancing my teaching!

What did I learn form the conference?

Overall it was a very positive experience. I got to meet other wonderful teachers with who I could share my experiences and concerns with. I also got a stack of new ideas that I look forward to trying in my lessons. Having to present something made me rethink about all the fantastic web 2.0 tools we have to help our students improve. I am now willing to try voxopop with my grade 9 students and to persevere with lingt as it is a wonderful tool to create assignments online. I would also like to try tokbox maybe as a collaborative tool with another school.

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Samantha Lunn is one of my many favorite Twitter colleagues! She has created a wonderful website full of useful resources to teach French, German or Spanish. It's called The Languages Resources Website and it's great when you lack inspiration or are in desperate need of a worksheet! She also writes an inspirational blog where she shares MFL and ICT tips and ideas. One of her last post was about how she used EasiSpeak microphones and Voki with her year 8 class, which gave me lots of ideas!

We started a new topic in Spanish about shopping and the first lesson was to learn different shops and what you can buy in those shops. I got trained to do lots of choral repetition with students and to teach them a long list of words... They usually can't remember! So, I decided to change this a bit and instead of me leading the lesson, I let the students do my job!

I first gave them a set of cards related to shops and products you can buy, which I found on Samantha's website. Students needed to match them up, looking in the dictionary for the words they didn't know.
I then asked the students questions such as "¿Qué puedes comprar en ..." = "What can you buy in a....?" and "¿Dónde puedes comprar ....? = "Where can you buy...?"  So, instead of just repeating the words after me, they had to think about my question and their answer. Students then practiced the same questions and answers in pairs.

The last part of the lesson, students listened to conversations happening in different shops (from Gente Joven 1 textbook) where they had to guess in which shop the people were. Following this listening activity, I asked the students to work in pairs on a similar conversation; the rest of the class would have to guess in which shop they were. Throughout the preparation of their conversation, I could hear students speaking in Spanish, practicing their pronunciation, looking for new words in the dictionary. This was exactly what I was looking for: students actively engaged and working independently. And I think they remembered some key expressions better than if they had learnt them from me! Of course, I recorded their conversations and posted them on the school blog. I must thank Sherry Amorocho for her very kind comment on my students' work. They were very impressed by the fact a teacher in the United States listened to their work and took the time to comment on it! However, I was hoping it would be an incentive for them to add more comments, but this has not still happened!

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Shops + Products Cards.doc (234 KB)

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Next in the series on the "# movemeon" project is classroom management. I think it goes hand to hand with behaviour which was the last topic I blogged about.
Again BEING POSITIVE is the key:

" Praise, praise and re-praise the praiseworthy.
The young ‘uns like it, and the older ones
need it!" by @Hjava (I cannot find this person's twitter link! Sorry!)

" Be positive much more than (and even to the
exclusion of) negative. Tell them what they are
capable of." by @psbenson

" Don't shout over the top of students. Lower
your volume and let them come down to your
level rather than the other way round."
by @stuartridout

This is a very good point: shouting doesn't solve anything, on the contrary some students are just waiting for you to shout because it means they won, they annoyed you!

"Children will naturally push boundaries. Keep
rules simple but no matter what, always
enforce them." by @kvnmcl

"It's often more effective to talk to students 1-
to-1 about behaviour than to do it in front of
peers (especially true for teenage boys)."
by @lizbdavis

This is so very true! Some students love having an argument with the teacher in front of their mates! Avoid this kind of situation by all means!

"Lost your voice? Feeling a little hoarse? Don't
want to shout? Turn lights on and off quickly
to get students' attention!"
by @dajbelshaw

I've never tried that one, but sounds interesting!

What about you? what are your classroom management tips?

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As I mentioned earlier on in January, José Picardo asked me to write a guest post about how I use modern technologies in my practice. I was thrilled and felt truly honored... I mean it was the first time somebody invited me as a "guest blogger"!!! However at the time I was not too sure about what exactly to write about! I had a look at my previous blog posts and decided to write about how I used images on the Web to enhance my lessons. You can read more about it here.

My post is part of a series of guest post to promote and encourage the use of ICT in the MFL classroom:

Simon Howells offering was using Google maps in the mfl classroom.

is a wonderful explanation of how she uses available technology simply and effectively in her daily teaching and in her preparation.

Joe Dale outlines the many possibilities RSS has to offer educators, not only in terms of teaching and learning, but also research and professional development.

Suzi Bewell tells a wonderfully inspiring tale of language learning and international collaboration using the power of videocoferencing in the classroom.

Alex Blagona gives us a fascinating insight into how he has used wikis to provide his students with a means of learning languages which mirrors the way in which they already use technology and social networking: by sharing and collaborating online.

Clare Seccombe writes about how she uses the internet in the classroom as a window onto the world in order to better illustrate the culture of the countries whose languages students are learning.

I hope you enjoy reading those inspiring posts as well as I did!

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Filed under  //   guest post   images   internet   MFL   new technology   online   practice   series   technology   web 2.0  

Continuing my series on the "# movemeon" project, I am a bit late as I should have sent a post last Wednesday. But this past week has been very busy at school completing the report cards and taking part in the school winter concert as a member of the school choir! So I'm sending the due post today and next week, I will be back on track ;)

The next topic is behaviour. Although I am very lucky in my new school as all my students are extremely well-behaved, I have had past experiences in the UK where it was tough being a French teacher! I did learn a lot in terms of classroom management and when I read the tips shared by other educators on Twitter, I picked the ones that worked best for me:

"As often as possible greet students at the
door - this sets the tone for the lesson."
by @dajbelshaw

This is very important, even if you "hate" the students! I always find that if you keep being polite and treat your students in a civil manner, they will end up respecting you (...at some point!).

"Consistency is key - then everyone knows
where they stand, and clear boundaries can
be set in expectations of behaviour and
learning."
by @theotheralig

This is the hardest thing to maintain and we are not perfect, so at times it's a struggle to be consistent, but it's the key to good behaviour.

"Treat a pupil as he is and he will remain as he
is. Treat pupil as he can be and should be, and
he will become as he can and should be."
(Goethe)
by @johnmayo

I like this quote, especially because I live in Weimar, home of Goethe! Always have very high expectations of your pupils (even if it's hard to imagine!).

"Reward first, punish second - look for
someone to reward and do it in front of the
other students - great motivator."
by @jamesmichie

Rewards are the best motivators for difficult pupils. With challenging classes, I used to draw in a corner of the board, a column with a bad face and a column with a smiley face. The most difficult pupils would hate being on the bad side and would do anything to be on the good side.

“Thank you to those people who HAVE put
their pens down” = BETTER than telling those
off that haven’t. Positively reinforce what you
want.
by @JamiePortman

This goes with the rewards: try to always be positive!

What about you? What are your favorite tips for managing behaviour?

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A quatre-quarts is is a traditional and popular cake from the French region of Brittany and as its name implies ( "quatre-quarts" means four-quarters), you use the same quantity of the 4 ingredients: flour, sugar, butter and eggs. Some variants are made by adding chocolate or lemon juice for flavour, however I prefer the "authentic" version!

It is so easy to do and its simplicity goes well with a cup of tea or hot chocolate! yummy!

Put 3 eggs, 180g sugar, a pinch of salt, 180g melted butter and 3 tablespoons rum in a mixer equipped with kneading accessory and mix for a minute or so until well mixed. Add 180g flour and 2 tablespoons baking powder through the funnel of the lid and continue to mix for a further 30 seconds. Pour the mixture into a rectangular mould:

Bake in the oven for 40 minutes at 180 degres:

Et voila!

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I viewed this so true video on Kipta's blog and I thought I would share it on my blog:

I must admit I am still learning and I am far away from my dream lesson where students are connected to netbooks (look at Sherry Amorocho's post and you will understand what I mean!) working along independently, me playing the part of a "connector"... But I'm getting there ;)

What do you think about this video?

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I already mentioned this wonderful website for educators called Ideas to Inspire where you can view contributions from fantastic teachers whore their ideas and activities on different topics such as interesting ways to use ICT hardware in the classroom ( i.e. pocket video cameras, webcams, nintendo wii, Ipod touch...) or 34 ideas for inspiring writing and a lot more...

Now, one of my teaching goal this year is to make my students contribute to the school blog by leaving more comments and by posting their own work or a interesting video/ audio/ picture they have found on the web. In order to achieve this goal, I want first to document myself on other educators' experiences and recommendations. This presentation from Ideas to Inspire is a great starting point. It includes 14 interesting ways and tips to encourage pupils and their families to visit your school blog:

Things I am already doing:

• Adding pupil produced work, videocasts and podcasts to the blog. However I don't think parents are aware enough. I need to let them know that they can view their children's work on the blog.
• Providing links to educational resources and activities.I have already started to include links to online games but I need to provide more of them and maybe to hold a competition amongst students to see who is winning.

Things I need to implement:

• A "subscribe by email" service to bring latest news to parents' email inboxes.
• A "blog only" extra credit assignment, meaning I only tell the students about it on the blog. Then students will figure out that they should read the blog each night just in case there is something fun offered.
• Interview parents by recording the words/sentences they know in Spanish and by posting their recorded answers on the blog. Students will be curious to know how their parents sound!
• Invite parents, carers and extended family members to come along and see for themselves how children are using free online tools to enhance the school blog. Let the children do the presenting and record the event. We could even raise money by selling cakes and drinks.
• Let students arrange training for their parents in using the blog.
• Use FireStats or a cluster map to see who are our visitors. This should encourage students to contribute.

What about you? What are your tips to make students visit and contribute to your school blog?

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Doug Belshaw has been working on a fantastic collaborative project on Twitter to help develop better teaching and learning. Educators on Twitter were asked to tweet their tips, ideas and suggestions on different topics:

• Activities
• Behaviour
• Classroom management
• Environment
• Feedback
• Getting better
• Organisation
• Staffroom
• technology

When tweeting their tips, educators were asked to add the hashtag "# movemeon". This led to a free e-book that can be downloaded from here.

In the next couple of weeks, I want to start a series where each Wednesday I pick my favourite tips from each topic mentioned above.

First topic is activities and it was hard to pick out the best tips since all of them were excellent ones! However, these are my 3 best ones:

"To get higher quality oral answers try having a
"no hands up rule" and give 20 seconds
thinking time before asking for an answer." from @charte

I think this is very good tip especially when teaching a new language as students tend to say complicated and therefore confusing sentences if they have too much time to answer them.

"if you're going to read one book (and I only
read one a year) then make it The Teacher’s Toolkit - lots of practical ideas!" from @primarypete_

Now as part of my 2010 teaching goals, this should be a very useful book to read with plenty of practical ideas!

"re: 20 secs - I used to ask them to think of an
answer, reject it then give me their 2nd
answer... counters knee-jerk response." from @simfin

This is a very good point. I will try to put this "20 seconds" rule in place in my lessons and see if my students improve the quality of their answers.

What about you? What are your favorite tips in terms of activities?

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