alice’s posterous

This week, we have been learning members of the family in Spanish with my students and how to describe them. An activity that went well and is based from the excellent textbook Gente Joven is to ask questions about other families.

1. Students write the names of 3 members of their family on a card. They go around the class with their cards and ask each other for each name on the card "¿Es tu madre/ padre/ abuelo...?" (Is he/she your mum/ dad/ grandad...?).
2. Students then stay with a partner. The partner chooses one person from the other's card and ask different questions about this person:
   ¿Cuántos años tiene?
   ¿Cómo es?
   ¿Qué le gusta?
   Whilst asking those questions, they write the answers down.
3. Students write a paragraph using their answers about their partner's member of the family. They memorize their paragraph. They go around the class telling each other about their partner's member of the family "Ellen tiene una hermana. Tiene trece años. Es rubia, alta y delgada. Tiene los ojos azules. Le gusta mucho leer y chatear con sus amigas pero no le gusta nada estudiar."

Students enjoyed finding out about other's families and telling the class about each other. It was also a good way to use verbs and expressions in the 3rd person a not only in the first person.

What about you? Have you used an engaging activity to teach family members in another language?

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This week, in Spanish, we worked on a conversation between a mum and his son about his new girlfriend. The mum wants to know about his son's new girlfriend and keeps asking him how she looks like (description vocabulary: hair, eyes, size...). And of course, the son doesn't want to say much to her mum. This conversation can be found on Gente Joven 1, a great Spanish textbook I mentioned in an earlier post.

First students listened to the conversation and answered questions about it. Then I gave them some key phrases and expressions from the conversation. Some key expressions applied to the mum "A ver, ¡cuentame!" "¿Como es?", "¿Es guapa?"..., others applied to the son "¡Pero mama!", "si, es muy, muy guapa", "Es morena, alta y delgada"...
Students worked in pairs and had to say the phrases with the correct pronunciation and gestures. I let them repeat and repeat the phrases to really get into their roles and pretend they were Spanish people (very loud and with lots of gestures!). Despite the fact the task was quite repetitive, the students really enjoyed repeating the phrases with the correct pronunciation.

Finally, once they got into their roles, I asked students to prepare their own conversations using some of the phrases they repeated as well I using their own. I told them they were going to be recorded and marked on their pronunciation, fluency and the correct use of feminine and masculine words. Students really got engaged and worked hard to prepare and rehearse their presentations.

The following lesson, I recorded students' conversations. Whilst, they were being recorded the other groups would mark them on pronunciation, fluency and the correct use of feminine and masculine words. At the end of each recording, we would discuss the performance. I noticed students would always remain positive in their comments but would also be sharp on incorrect sentences
.
I was extremely pleased with students' performances and I could really see they enjoyed doing the task. I posted their recordings on the school blog and I have asked them to post some comments.

What about you? have you experienced a fun and engaging speaking task?

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Click here to download:

grade6.informal.doc (35 KB)

I was observed last week with a group of 15 grade 6 pupils (around 11 years old) learning Spanish. I planned a lesson mostly based on collaborative and group work. The main part of the lesson was to listen to different people talking about themselves: their name, age, nationality, if they have pets... This listening activity was quite challenging as the people on the CD are talking at normal speed (but "too fast" according to my students) and with different accents from Spain and Argentina. So I decided to make the students work in groups and help each other. First, each group had a different question about the listening, then they had to take notes, share them and collect as many details as they could.
I found they really enjoyed working as a team trying to answer a question together and then collecting all the details from the different people. It helped them coping with a challenging activity and also they had the opportunity to help each other out.
You can see details of my lesson above.

What about you? what do you do with challenging listening activities?

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This is again a brilliant animation from Ideas to Inspire.



It could be used when teaching house and bedroom in another language, as well as verbs in the present tense.
After watching it, students would have to:

• describe the bedroom/ the characters
  
• write a narration for the story in the present tense
  
• think of an alternative ending

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In 1956 while working at the University of Chicago, Benjamin Bloom developed his theory on Educational Objectives. He developed a taxonomy of activities and behaviours that exemplify higher order thinking skills (HOTS) and lower order thinking skills (LOTS). It is used to rank and structure different classroom activities and plan the learning process. In my classroom, I have this poster:

In 2001, Lorin Anderson and others revised Bloom's original work which lead to Bloom's Revised Taxonomy:

Picture from http://teachershelper.wikispaces.com/Bloom%27s+Taxonomy

One of the major changes is going from Nouns to Verbs, as the verbs imply an active process. Also the focus is now on creating.
However, I still don't have this poster in my classroom!

What are your thoughts? do you use these areas when planning a lesson?

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I am still in the process of re-learning my German!
Previously I blogged about reading GermanHeit everyday. Now, when I am in the car going to school or going home, I listen to Michel Thomas CDs. It is a fairly intensive course based on a suite of 10 to 12 lessons at a time with lots of repetition, which suits me fine especially when it comes to get used to the way the German build their sentences!
The method is interesting in that it is based on understanding patterns in a language, how sentences are built and on its links with English. I am French but fluent in English and I can really relate to the countless similarities between German and English. Instead of having to learn long lists of words and phrases, it focuses on understanding and forming your own sentences which gives you confidence to speak. Michel Thomas is also a positive teacher who encourages you to think things trough.

I came across Michel Thomas whilst doing the creativity CPD course back in November. His method was tried by a comprehensive school as a pilot project to stimulate and and engage students. At the end, it had a significant impact on a top set year 9 (13-14 years old) and a middle set year 8 (12-13 years old)  learning Spanish. Teachers at that school noticed that "pupils came to language lessons showing levels of excitement not previously observed before ... One teacher quoted the example of catching a pupil with a bar of chocolate, telling him "no es possible comerlo ahora". The pupil nodded that he understood that comment and promptly replied with "Lo siento pero tengo hambre"
Now I have never experienced that level of spontaneity with my pupils! so this is an approach I am willing to try next year.

You can read the full Michel Thomas report from Association for Language Learning here:

Michel.thomas.approach

And you? have you tried a similar approach in your lessons?

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Yesterday, I was telling you about Flickr groups.
After writing the post, I decided to create a group called Images to teach languages where you can share or use photos or videos to teach either a word, a conversation or a grammar point.

From my own experience, looking for the right picture to teach a word or a phrase is very time consuming so I thought it would be nice to have all the pictures in one place tagged by topic, i.e. animals, places in town, shops... (thanks for this tip @icpjones!). This way, it is much easier and faster when you need THE picture!
You can then copy and paste the pictures to your slideshow, or download them or print them and use them as flashcards (that might be expensive on cartridges though!)

Today, there are already 24 members (mostly from my twitter network) who have shared their own pictures (thank you :)). There are shops from Germany, France, Spain...And even pictures from as far away as Japan (thanks to @ajep). Now, this what web 2.0 is all about: collaborative work set in less than 2 days! I just find this very exciting :)

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Last week, we finished the topic about school with my year 7 classes so I took them to the computer room and asked them to type some of the topic's key words on Wordle.

I had already tried this lesson previously in the year and it had been a success, and this time because my students knew the tool already, they enjoyed it even more ;)

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Looking at affordable ways to get an Interactive Whiteboard. This video shows how to create your own with a Wii remote and a LED.

Have a look at this video. What do you think?

When choosing the right IWB, Nick Peachey's post on the British Council website is also full of useful tips:
http://teachingenglish.org.uk/blogs/nik-peachey/some-thoughts-choosing-right-iwb?mtk=20

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Following my success with year 9 (13-14 years old) using BOOKR in the IT room, I decided to get my year 8 (12-13 years old) low ability group to the IT room and use BOOKR as well.

But this time, students had to create a photo book about their last holidays. You can see some of the work they produced, it's great and this is the first time I had no behavioural issues with this group in the IT room. All the students were engaged and focused in the task, and even some of them asked me if they could email their work to themselves.
So thumbs up BOOKR :)


To view some more of my students' work, go on http://www.leprofesseur.edublogs.org/

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