alice’s posterous

This idea came from Sherry Amorocho (@amor8 on twitter) and from her great post on her blog about students explaining a Spanish grammar point to each other and creating a little activity for their classmates to practice.

I thought this was enticing well with the buzz word going on at the moment in my school: PLTS (= Personal, Learning and Thinking Skills) which comprises six groups of skills:

• independent enquirers

• creative thinkers

• reflective learners

• team workers

• self-managers

• effective participants.

So I tried this activity with my year 7 groups (11-12 years old). The grammar point was about the French prepositions a / a l' / a la / au / aux / (= to/at) after être (= to be) or aller (= to go).

I skipped Sherry Amorocho's first step which is about students explaining to each other the concept because I was running out of time to include it in the lesson. So I explained the concept to them first, then did two little exercises to make sure most of the group grabbed the concept.

Finally we got to the interesting part of the lesson! I asked my students to get into groups of 2-3 and create a game to practice the concept. They then had to show their game to another group so that they could play. At the end of the lesson, the class had to choose the best game and why they thought it was good.

Of course, my lesson was far too long and the students only managed to create their games. But with only 2 hours a week to deliver French, I have to squeeze a lot in a single lesson to complete all the things we have to do as part of the curriculum!

The main thing is that my students liked creating a game. I made sure that everyone in the group had an assigned job: a low ability student who likes drawing would be assigned to design the game, whereas a top ability student would write the rules. All groups came up with very good games, students were all engaged. It is just a shame we didn't have time to really test the games but it is definitely something I will try again in the future.
Thank you Sherry for inspiring me!

Below you can see my PowerPoint lesson and pictures of two games made by the students.

And you? What kind of PLTS activities have you tried yet?

   

Click here to download:

Students_creating_a_grammar_ga.zip (4658 KB)

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I am officially moving to Germany, Weimar in July to teach Spanish and French at Thuringia International School.
It is all very exciting but my German is quite basic and I have not spoken it since school years really!

So in order to refresh my German, I have found a great blog called GermanHeit (@GermanHeit on twitter). It is written by Babsi (@babsis on twitter) from Nuremberg, Germany and it is full of grammar tips and fun German media and comics. It also gives you an insight to German culture and food with key vocabulary to remember. I have suscribed to it on my Google reader and because each post is quite short, I only spend 5 minutes everyday learning or revising new German phrases and expressions.
I think it might also be useful for German teachers to show German comics or a short video clip to students.

Hope you like this blog as I do and enjoy today's comics :)

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Click here to download:

Ma_star_préférée_trouvez_les_fautes.doc (22 KB)

I thought I would share this worksheet I found on the TES website http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=3011695. I cannot thank "dbskapick" enough for creating this resource.

I have a group of year 10 students (14-15 years old) who are a bit lethargic in class... Well I guess they have the typical teenagers type attitude (not bothered, can't do French etc... type!). I had to deliver a lesson on clothes to them and of course revise adjectival agreements matching colours and clothes. The type of really dull and boring lesson and of course I had no inspiration. So I went on to TES which I cannot advertise enough, even if you are not teaching in the UK, it is full of resources for every subject shared by very kind and dedicated teachers. You have to register to view the resources but it is all free and you share your resources as well.
Actually I feel bad about not having shared a single PowerPoint or worksheet but I guess I already share all my PowerPoints on slideshare, so that makes up for it, doesn't it?

I found this great worksheet about Kate Moss and fashion. Students have to fold over backwards the correct version at the top of sheet and not look at it after reading it once. Then go through the other copies finding as many mistakes as they can. The number in brackets indicates the mistakes needed to be found.

To my amazement, students loved this activity! they loved folding the paper (yes, I know!), they loved spotting and counting the mistakes. They were all engaged even the boys for whom the topic was not that appealing.

Then I asked my students to write their own paragraph about their favourite artists and what they wear. They had to write a version without mistakes and one with mistakes and then give it to their partners. We did not have quite the time to finish this activity. But when writing their paragraphs they were much more focused on agreements and adjectives, so our lesson's objective was achieved (yeah!).

And you? have you done a grammar activity that has worked with your students?

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