Christmas Mystery

I have attached here a copy of a mystery that I designed last year to introduce a very low ability group to Los Reyes Magos. It is not a true mystery in that there is an answer, however it does provide some discussion. We had spent several weeks working with tengo / tiene and soy / es, so there is a lot of emphasis on these.

I hope you will be able to use this.

Mystery christmas

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MFL resources Ski slope

I first heard about this on MFLresources before the summer holidays. I thought I'd give it go in September. It was so good I have done it with all my GCSE and Year 9 classes. I have also done it for an observation that went well.

I would like to thank Vincent at MFLresources for this fabulous idea, and have attached a photo of one the pupil books to give an idea of how it looks.

snowball = error
tree = accurate
penguin = good
penguin on skis = fab.

I began by giving out very few trees to encourage good accuracy, then there seemed to be a fight over who would get the first penguin.

To be honest the pupils seemed to really want to see my pathetic attempts at drawing a penguin on skis rather than wanting it for its own sake.

Really positive lesson.

Christmas Taxegdo

I saw a lovely one of these from @wizendcrone in French and it inspired me to do one in Spanish.

I think I'm going to use it to start some Christmas Poems with Year 8 and as revision for GCSE.

UNICEF

Using UNICEF as the first topic in Year 7 Spanish

I decided 3 years ago that if I wanted to improve the uptake of GCSE in the school I would have to make it more interesting.  I began by asking the year 7 groups that year to tell me what they would like to learn about.  1st choice - food, 2nd choice - can we watch a film . 

I started tweaking the SoW to allow more flexibilty.  The groups were really engaged and I didn't hear any comments about "this is boring", "I hate Spanish".

I decided to begin the following year by skipping out the topic: Pencil case items and designed a short topic based on "The Rights of the Child"

I have attached a copy of the SoW & a couple of PPT.
We had 1 lesson per week in y7.

Ks3 curriculum blog

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Please feel free to use anything here, I would love to hear from you if you found it useful.

How twitter has helped me

I joined Twitter earlier in the year to keep in touch with family as they travelled the globe.  Little did I realise that it would become an addiction!

There are so many opportunities I have been able to take advantage of since joining in May.

1) I have a huge group of people who are always ready to help.
2) I have attended and spoken at MFL SAT in Newcastle
3) I have attended a flash meeting (I didn't know what one was until last week)
4) I have booked my place at ililc in February 2012
5) I have downloaded and use dropbox.
6) We use dropbox in the MFL department at school
.... I am sure there are many more.

Just thought I would share a little

MFLSAT+ Cramilington Learning Village

WOW!
I have got so many ideas from this session.  Not really quite sure where to start.

http://www.audioboo.fm/
Simon Cloughlin showed how to use this fantastic App to record pupils and post to a website.  Very personlised and nice to have feedback for parents.  Need to download app on phone from website and it's ready to go.  The recording is availble on the web pretty instantly. 


Newcastle University have lots of resources on their website to support learning. 
linguacast - podcasting materials
teacherstoolkit - a range of PowerPoint and Word files

Terri Dunne reminded us of all the different ways to use Blockbusters.  The grid format could be used for individual words and for sentences starters.  Really useful for getting pupils to extend their sentences, especially adding opinions and could be used to add different tenses. 

Dominic McGregor - 10 ideas in less than 10 minutes.  This was a whistle stop tour of some fantastic websites that can be used in a variety of ways.  I particularly like FakeBook & Twister from http://www.classtools.net/.  Others included http://clea.nr/ to clear out the advertising on Youtube.

MFLSAT+

I am really looking forward to meeting all the lovely people I have emailing and talking to on twitter.   I am doing a very short session on small curriculum changes to motivate at KS3.  This has been in the most part chosen by the pupils in my classes.  I do make changes every year, based on their evaluations. 

I am also taking with me a lesson idea that can be easily adapted to any year group on any topic.  All you need is a text and a few questions.

More ideas from MFLSAT later

I have just sorted through all my favourites on twitter and am trying to word out how to put some of the links on here.  I am just preparing some revision work with Y10 Spanish and have decided to use some resources from @ZJonesSpanish of Dali vs Gaga.  Here's the link http://zachary-jones.com/zambombazo/lady-gaga-vs-salvador-dali-comparaciones/. 

I will let you know how it goes

This blog is hopefully going to contain useful information for anyone interested in learning languages.