This weekend I was at a middle leadership conference with lots of middle leaders from different local schools.
I attended a few different sessions and I used my new school ipad (which I am using for an MFL project) to make some notes. They may not make much sense, but here they are anyway:
Middle Leaders Conference Notes:
Power Teaching Session
Team building-dont use word group
Set up teams and foster cooperation
Cooperation looks like and sounds like activity
Random reporter (post its with names and numbers)
Praise for communication-cheers, praise completion of an activity
Spreadsheet with names, seating, groups
Allow teams to name themselves
Accountability eg for doing task or completing homework
Stop one person from doing anything other than ask questions
Differentiate by not providing certain information for different groups (can use hw time to find more information?)
Outstanding Teaching & Learning Session
How to Encourage Outstanding T&L:
Model the behaviour
Trust
Encouragement
Supportive atmosphere
Give people the opportunity to develop
Use skills already available
Enjoyment
Coaching and mentoring
Understanding your staff
Share good practice
Fill in a big shape with key elements
Use post it notes to develop idea then pick one to discuss
Try to see the positive in everything we do both with staff and pupils
Negativity breeds less creativity
Behaviour Session
Low level disruption
Brain theory:
1) flight or flight-reptilian brain
2) safe and secure-limbic system
3) learn-neocortex (cognitive)
Students and teachers go through these stages
Expectations and routines are key
Behaviour and achievement are linked- impact on T&L
Staff have to be accountable – empower and support
Strategies in place are important-consistency
What we want-ownership
Look at behaviour data, is this level standardised?
See behaviour checklist for teachers
Plan for behaviour
Parents’ role-triangle of trust
One of the things that Kagan advocates is classroom seating. At my previous school I HAD to have my tables in rows. When I tried to move them into my preferred U shape I was forced to move them back into rows after a short period. So now I’m in my new school I was pleased to see that my classroom seating already looked like it was in a U shape and until today it stayed that way.
The reason why I like the U shape is that I feel I can see all my pupils from one vantage point, it enables pair work, and it allows all pupils to see the centre of my room with the visual displays – either posters or power points. I have found, however, that chattier groups take advantage of having people around them, and opposite them, I cannot access every single pupil’s desk if I have a full group of 32 in and if I want pupils to work in groups, or to do activities more suited to 4s (typically, cooperative learning structure activities) it is a bit more difficult.
I never thought I’d want tables of 4s, but this morning’s PSHE lesson lent itself to rearranging my room and I’ve decided to keep it that way for a week or so. My Year 10s responded well to it after lunch (a lesson in which they can sometimes get a bit rowdy), and my form liked it too. It also has some other admin advantages such as making it easier to get glue sticks out to stick in sheets with just 1 per table, or handing out sheets. Even team points can be linked to table teams and I think it is also a good opportunity to reassess my seating plans now I know most of the children and am used to my groups.
I’ll let you know how it goes!
This evening I have been thinking about using graphic organisers in my mfl lessons and I came cross this link which made me think about how I can use KWL in my next A Level grammar lesson. K means ‘what I already know’, W is ‘what I want to know’ and L is ‘what I have learnt’. I wouldn’t normally use something like this in my MFL lessons but with an A Level grammar group who I have only been teaching since September it will be a handy way to find out what they already know at the start of the lesson and tick a few observation criteria at the same time.
I then carried on thinking about this forthcoming grammar lesson, where I want to revise and deepen pupils’ knowledge of the future tenses. In Spanish, the immediate future is very easy to make and the simple future is actually not that difficult either, particularly if you know how verbs work in Spanish, which A Level students tend to. Anyway, the more difficult concept with this tense is the irregular stems, which happen to be shared with the stems needed to make the conditional tense. So, why not use a venn diagram to focus on the shared an unique elements of these two tenses?
Have a look at these graphic organisers or ayudas gráficas and let’s consider how else graphic organisers can be used effectively in MFL. I quite like lotus diagrams to think through schemes of work or topics.
My new school likes to use current research in education to inform it’s practice and today I had a full day of training on various areas. Firstly we looked at 21st century interdependent learners who are creative, connected, confident and cooperative (4Cs).
These for area allow the school to explore it’s religious ethos through being a caring community, to encourage the responsible use of technology and to support various teaching and learning strategies such as Kagan, which is one of the accelerated learning programs that my school subscribes to.
Interestingly, cooperative learning is something that is already very prevalent in my classroom, as it is very normal to do paired activities, either spoken or written. Cooperative learning structures tend to place students in groups of 4, with a specific mixture of abilities in the group and activities are done with a shoulder partner, a face partner or in 4s (or more if sharing information with more students). Activities include Timed Pair Share (a certain amount of time in pairs to answer a question), and Quiz Quiz Trade (two pupils ask each other a question from a card, if the don’t know the answer their partner share it with them, then they swap and do the same with a different partner). There are loads more so if you would like to read more there’s a nice scribd document available with further details.
Today I have presented at the 2011 MFL Show & Tell at Cramlington Learning Village on routines in the languages classroom. I won’t take credit for the ideas that I have as most of them come from my PGCE course at St Martins (now the University of Cumbria). There are a massive amount of pedagogical reasons behind why we do routines in the classroom and it is really hard to explain them all in one post – I might try and do this another day – but for now, have a look at James Stubb’s blog which goes into excellent detail about a lot of the reasons as to why we do all of these things. James is also a St Martin’s trained teacher, and coming across his blog just this week really made me think back to my training and the reasons for uttering the target language that I (and the pupils) do in the classroom.
For now, here are the register routine powerpoints, the forfeits powerpoints and the homework slides that I use for both French and Spanish as part of some of my classroom routines.
Spanish:
register routine spanish With song
French:
This Saturday I am really looking forward to seeing lots of MFL colleagues (aka the #twitterati) to share good practice and innovative ideas at the latest MFL Show & Tell event at Cramlington Learning Village. I plan to present on the routines I use in my classroom. Every St Martin’s trained teacher knows about the classic register routine and there are plenty of others that we do too-and they aren’t necessarily what you would expect! Be prepared for roll call on Saturday…..
Find out more about the event here: http://mflsatplus.wikispaces.com/
Today I had an induction session in my new school which focused at first on a very common school issue: behaviour management.
As a teacher now with 6 years of experience I was not in the same position as the NQTs in the meeting, but I did learn some useful tips today that I thought I would share as we are at the start of a year where any behaviour management tips are useful, particularly for someone in my position, having just started at a new school.
Top tips:
1) see 3 before me – pupils have to seek help from three others before asking me. This is an idea from Kagan structures which my school is really focussed on using and which I am still finding out more about.
2) blocking – to be used to get a pupil to do what you want, basically just repeat what it is that you want an individual to do and keep repeating it until they do it! Don’t forget to use positive language and to say thank you at the end too! Eg. Open your book and write down XYZ, thank you.
3) stop and stare – when a pupil is doing something they shouldn’t, just stop mid flow, and stare at the pupil. They will look away – keep staring! They will look back, keep staring! Let them look away one last time and by then they should have stopped whatever it was they were doing and you can carry on.
4) proximity – move closer to the offender! Don’t take over their personal space completely, but get as close as you can to male the student feel your presence and to stop the poor behaviour.
5) blatantly obvious statement – if a pupil is doing something they shouldn’t or you don’t want them to do, just state what they are doing and they will automatically stop or pause what they shouldn’t be doing. eg. You are playing with a pen, you are taking etc.
6) positive praise- try to keep an eye on everyone and praise the good behaviour you see.
7) Put a difficult pupil in ‘intensive care’ (not literally) and really focus on their good behaviour that lesson and preempt ‘I don’t understand’ statements from them by going over to them as soon as you can
8) always be busy – if you have a pupil bouncing off the walls who you have to deal with (as HoD I would have pupils referred to me), always be busy for 30secs. Find something to do so that by the time you deal with them they are less reactive.
9) follow up, follow through – referral systems are in place for the worst situations, but you, as a classroom teacher should follow up any behavioural issues and follow through with the relevant consequence for your school.
Let me know if you have any more tips that once you heard you thought ‘I wish I’d been told that earlier!’
I first came across QR Codes (Quick Response Codes) a few months ago and since then, I have seen the use of them grow and grow, and not just in education. The other day I was walking out of a Manchester Metrolink station and saw an advert for MI5 with a code to scan.
What is a QR Code then? It is, in essence, a type of bar code, which is quite easy to make using a QR code generator such as the one on QRstuff.com. The code is then scanned, using a scanner such as i-nigma, which I have on my iPhone and is also available for Android and BlackBerry (for free). There are, of course, other very good QR code readers available. A variety of information can be hidden in the code, such as website links and text.
So, how can this be used effectively in education? I have read many useful blog posts on the different ways that teachers are coming up with using these codes, many of which you will find in @tombarrett‘s Interesting Ways series.
In September, my department and I will use QR codes to try to inspire our Year 7 Spanish pupils to become confident learners of a language. The lesson plan involves encouraging pupils to come up with ways of being a confident learner in languages and then encouraging the pupils to use these key skills in the lesson. For me, a confident language learner is one who is willing to try, willing to take risks, and willing to speak in the target language. The lesson incorporates QR codes as pupils are going to have to find out 6 different Spanish words for locations around the school. These locations will have a QR code stuck on the door to the entrance. When pupils find the codes they will scan them and get both the English and the Spanish word appear on their screens. QR codes will further be used to give pupils useful revision websites (great for early finishers!) and also to direct them to an online dictionary. I’ll let you know in a few weeks if it works!
What an eventful summer! Since finishing school in July lots has happened. I’m looking forward to starting at my new school in September, I have been away to Tenerife, and there have been lots of developments in my personal life-If you follow me on twitter or Facebook then you will know I have recently moved in with my boyfriend, gotten engaged to him and I now have a puppy too! With all of this plus an MA assignment to do I haven’t had much time to update this blog, however, I have a couple of blog posts brewing in the back of my mind. Watch this space for my thoughts on QR Codes, a heads up on the new site ifttt and I might even add something about my leadership research too.
I am very pleased to announce that this year I have been nominated for the Top 100 Language Blogs 2011 competition. To vote you can click on the button below or you can visit the website here.
