Snapshot of learning : Revision lesson: Personal information Q&A and colours with Year 3 at Barrowhall Primary School.

Hello,

This morning I went to observe Robert Artingstall teach Spanish to a Year 3 class at Barrowhall Primary School – the Easter holidays are just around the corner and after finishing off this term’s topics including World Book Day and the Gruffalo in Spanish today was the perfect opportunity for a revision lesson.

As I arrived Robert was doing the morning register in Spanish: ¿Comida caliente? ¿Tostada? ¿Uno, dos? Some children answering in Spanish others in English. Then Robert started chatting across the room to Gonzalo, a native speaker from the class – there was no mistake, we were here to learn Spanish!

The lesson started with a greeting song and then another ‘action’ song that got the children moving and singing in Spanish.

Robert then explained that the children were going to do some revision work today.

They started with the ‘hide and reveal’ powerpoint from the Ready-made SOW (Year 3 > Spring 2) – the instruction is to try guess the phrase or the question as it slowly appears on the screen and before it’s completely revealed. Children were asked to quietly tell their partner what they thought the phrase or the question was. They did really well and it allowed Robert to do some consolidation work on pronunciation and mention question word ‘Cómo’ in Spanish and the fact it’s used in 2 different familiar questions (Cómo te llamas? Cómo estas?). The last slide on the powerpoint is then used as a support slide for children to make up their own conversation.

Hide and Reveal 'Personal Information' powerpoint

¿Cómo..... te llamas or ... estas ? Place your bets! 

Then they moved on to colours. First Robert asked the children to recap as many colours they could think of and write them on their whiteboard, they checked their answers and Robert took the opportunity to do some phonic work particularly about the sounds ‘j’, ‘ll’, z’ which are very different to English. They practiced the colours with actions and then played ‘Simon dice’.

Lovely writing from memory.

Robert going over sound/spelling link and key sounds in Spanish.

Finally Robert used the ‘Rainbow writing sheet’ where children have to think of and draw an object that corresponds to each part/colour of the rainbow (for example a strawberry for red, a banana for yellow, etc.).

This task allows for bilingual dictionary work as children have to label the thing they are drawing. Before leaving the children to work independently or in pairs Robert checked that the children were confident using the dictionary and did a whole class example also reinforcing gender (fem/masc) recognition and understanding.

First, find the line in the middle of the dictionary, on one side it's Spanish to English, past the line it's English to Spanish - know which side you need to use.

a cherry is 'cereza' and it's feminine because it says 'fem' and 'la'.

** All the resources mentioned are either from Youtube or from the Primary Languages Network VLE.

Snapshot of learning : Easter Poem with Year 1 at Palacefield’s Primary School

Hello,

Today I went to visit Sarah Gibbons and the lovely Year 1 at Palacefield’s Primary School in Runcorn. As it is nearly Easter the focused of the lesson was an Easter Poem (in the Seasonal Specials folder on the PLN VLE) including colours, numbers and Easter vocabulary.

As the children came in and settled down, Sarah asked the children to help her display the weather on their ‘homemade’ weather chart – what a lovely idea!

Sarah started by recapping numbers to 10 using number flashcards that selected children became in charge of, then using a number song the children practiced counting up and down to 10 in Spanish. Children had to listen carefully for their number.

They, then, moved on to colours using the native speaker voice on the ‘Simply Colour’ powerpoint. The children had to first say the colour in English and then tried to remember the colour in Spanish, they were able to check if they were right by clicking on the colour. If they remembered correctly they received the matching coloured flashcard.

Finally they were ready to listen and join in the Easter Poem – they had already practiced it the week before so they were able to remember quite a lot. The children were also presented with the written word on the video clip so they were also practicing reading skills and the phoneme/grapheme link.

After a quick recap of the actions they were ready to act out the poem.

Finally after quite a long ‘carpet’ time the children went back to their table to make ‘Felices Pascuas’ cards to take home – Sarah encouraged them to think about the vocabulary from the poem and the colour work they did at the start. Whilst they were working independently Sarah walked around the class and asked children what colours (in Spanish) they had chosen

Well done Year 1 and Felices Pascuas a todos !

Snapshot of learning - Janet Wallbank

Last Friday, I went to visit Year 6 at St Andrew’s C.E Primary School learning French with Janet Wallbank. It was the end of the half-term and the class was just finishing off the topic of ‘sports and how do you play this sport?’

As I walked in, the class was just getting organised for the lesson and I noticed straight away the neatly kept French books on the children’s table and Janet’s tracking sheets – I knew it was going to be a good lesson!

Whilst Janet was getting ready for the lesson she asked the children to work with their partners and practiced as many personal information questions and answers as they could remember – I listened to a few children and heard some interesting and details statement such as ‘Ça va bien car je suis en pleine forme mais j’ai faim’ – evidence that the children are learning to extend basic language and making (huge) progress.

Then the class warmed up to a really fun song that they seemed to be really familiar with

Throughout the lesson, Janet explained EVERYTHING in the target language: going through different slides on her powerpoint presentation and revisiting various questions and opinions about sports: Qui fait un sport ? (opportunities to recap jouer / faire ) Qui veut décrire un sport? Mon sport preféré est… car…

The class had a mini-debate amongst themselves about the sports they liked and disliked reacting to one another’s statements ‘J’adore la gymnastique car….’ Ah non, je déteste la gymnastique car…’ – evidence of children being able to relate their language learning to their own lives and using it for a real purpose: talking about themselves! To support themselves some children spontaneously opened their French book to refer back to previous work and to check words or opinions phrases for example.

Janet then invited volunteers to come to the front and read out descriptions of sport they had written the week before using the written sheet for this unit available on the VLE. These sheets have had excellent feedback both from primary and secondary colleagues.

@JanetLloydnet @BetsyBelleTeach @EWoodroffe @robert_mfl this is brilliant! Could I possibly have a copy, please?

— Mr Simpson (@MrSimpsonMFL) February 14, 2017

The rest of the class had to guess which sport was being described and some children had put a lot thought into this activity, adding a lot of details to their description and so the children had to listen very carefully.

As a follow up to this activity Janet asked the children to work in pairs and play a card game describing sports to their partners who had to guess correctly which sport it was – the first step was to choose the correct verb: was it jouer or faire ? then the equipment, where to play the game, clothes, etc. The children appeared confident and fluent with the content of this unit and so the whole class was engaged, on task and …speaking French! 

Finally as it was the very last lesson of the half-term the children referred back to their assessment cloud sheet (stuck at the front of their book) and highlighted what they had been learning during the half-term and managed to tick quite a few boxes. Well done Year 6!

Year 6 ticking off their assessment clouds as they finish off the topic of sports #PLN #primaryfrench #mfltwiterrati pic.twitter.com/gxgekRHN97

— Emilie Woodroffe (@EWoodroffe) February 17, 2017

Assessment - Put flesh on the skeleton in the corner!

Yesterday eight of the thirteen associate primary language teaching colleagues and I met for our regular twilight CPD. One of the key points was to consider how we are tackling the challenges of assessment.Hope you have  spotted also the skeleton in the corner too!!

You can find out more about how we are developing assessment and tracking tools here in these blog posts: Assessment within our network and  also how we are exploring ways to share and to gather evidence of progress and success..

The associates work in 40 schools delivering languages weekly. Their experience ranges from primary classroom and language specialist teachers to  "secondary now primary" language teachers. Their work  is shared via the VLE with the  160 schools in the network. This year the associates and I are continuing to trial assessment approaches, materials and processes. We have identified already that one size does not fit all and are looking at a variety of approaches to find "best fits" for different schools in the network . It is a broad picture but we are seeing commonalities and ways forward:

• The key focus of the assessment is to look at development of language learning skills
• We use content from within the body of the SOW to populate key skill benchmark descriptors.
• Some schools select different content but keep to the same skill descriptors.
• The assessment criteria is linked to the DFE POS learning objectives and cross referenced with the KS2 Framework objectives and the CEFR A! descriptors
• We have identified opportunities where we are pushing beyond A1 and in to the early stages of  A2 in the CEFR with the children who have been learning a language for more than the four years of KS2. 
• We have schools that are committing fully to a roll out of assessment and schools that as yet still have to engage with assessment.
• This year we are looking for ways to make the assessment procedure an integral part of the creative and rich primary language learning enviornment. We are feeding this back via the VLE to our SOW Plus and MFL Coordinator folders.

At the CPD twilight we reviewed progress so far. Here are the bullet points I noted down from the contributions to the discussion by the associates. 

Assessment update

• Some of our schools want the assessment process to start this year and dovetail as best as possible  with the school  assessment processes.
• In some schools we are assessing all children in KS2 every half term.
• This half term colleagues are looking for ways to  steer assessment toward becoming small chunks within sequences of language teaching and learning and not to be perceived as one whole lesson of assessment.
• We are becoming clearer and more confident in our understanding that although content may be specific it is the skills and the development of the skills that we are tracking
• Some schools are providing TA cover to allow for focused speaking assessment
• We are in to the second half term of this academic year and feel that it is important to keep on reminding ourselves and also encouraging class teachers and SLT that assessment in languages  must not lead the learning but must help us to consider what skills have been further strengthened and enhanced.Content is interchangeable but the skill level to meet a descriptor remains constant..
• We are looking for effective ways to track and share knowledge with class teachers, coordinators and SLT. The data spread sheet which allows SLT to see term on term progress for individual children and for year groups is effective. Some SLT are now happy to use this  as a dialogue tool with staff, governors and outside parties. There is a need to explain the assessment criteria  and how we  are measuring progress. We are identifying with SLT how and why the skill descriptors have been created (nb DFE POS, KS2 Framework, CEFR).  
• Schools are generating wonderful ways to celebrate and record success and progress n.b. “Sparkling Spanish” books in Wigan are still going strong!
• Schools are asking about and creating "Pupil Record Books" and these  are being passed up year on year.We are encouraging the children to  put in to these books a  record  which may contain writing, smiley faces and comments, post its , photos, pictures, memorabilia .We feel the need to challenge the expectation that the book should be full!
• AfL clouds for the children have been created this year and are being used  to allow the children  to record if they feel they are secure, not quite secure or masters of certain language and language learning skills.These AfL clouds are proving to be useful dialogue tools between a visiting language teacher, coordinator and class teacher and pupils. 
• In some schools we are working with sample groups of children on assessment (6 pupils per class- across the ability range).This was our original model and we have found that we have needed to adapt this for schools where they wish to assess every child's progress.This year we are understanding better that a top literacy child may not be one of the best linguists and are finding ways to identify children more accurately than last year.
• In some schools the sample group children changes term by term to build a broader picture of the class progress in language learning skills
• We are working towards the least onerous system of assessment and our Puzzle It Out sheets contain guidance for the teacher and can be used as individual activities or just templates for a teacher's own preferred activities. 
• Asking children to peer assess speaking – responding to key questions for example and enables the teacher to work with a sample control group.This is helping the teacher to spend more focused time with a group and therefore explore what they children can really say etc.
• We are finding primary ways to assess progress and we discussed for example how the new blog post on Saint Nicholas shoes,  or performances at Christmas, the Come Dine with Me sketch in Y6 (songs, conversaations, short plays), our SOW Y5 messages in a bottle and Y6 draft tweets make excellent assessment  opportunities 

As the year progresses we will be: 

• Working out ways to support other schools start to engage with assessment and make it meaningful in other individual schools.
• Associates will be able to continue  learning from each other’s successes and failures this year.We will then be able to share valuable experience at our annual conference here in Warrington on 30 June 2016.
• Plus we are beginning to consider how we can share hard and soft  data with KS3 via our five KS2- KS3 transition groups.

I will blog and share more after our next associate twilight in Spring 1 on this challenging area of language learning!  

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