Starters with impact
We’ve just had our mocks, and we’ve got a long list of
things to address on top of the content which we need to finish. We are not going to magic extra time out of
the ether, so that means that every activity we do in class needs to have
maximum impact. There are 2 main ways
for this to happen:
1. The activity
combines language skills with heightening awareness of exam formats or
requirements.
2. By doing activities
that emphasize key structures and start the process of memorising and
internalising key structures and language.
In many senses, I have been doing this already, but
sharpening this up is beginning to make a difference. What I’m going to look at in my next few
blogs are some examples of strategies I’m using in class.
Starters
These play such a crucial role. Here are some favourites of mine.
“5 a day”
Whilst stood
at the photocopier, a couple of weeks ago, I had a bad case of worksheet envy. I was admiring a starter sheet from maths, taken from
this website “5 a day”. The teacher said
it was great for highlighting misconceptions.
Now I’m not going to have time to do something for every day, but here
is one I made for my foundation French group:
Photocard:
2 photos – match the sentences to the card. Once you’ve gone through it, give them 30
seconds to memorise, then show a version with key structures blanked out. Get them to write them again on their
mini-whiteboards.
2 photos – 2 descriptions.
Match the photo to the description, then similar process to before. This allows you to model a full answer for
the speaking photo card.
Summary questions
We call our bank of speaking questions for each topic “summary
questions” so that the students don’t just think of these as questions just for
the speaking exam. We have a real task
on our hands getting them to learn them, so we’ve started giving them a couple
of key questions a week. We also
desperately need them to practise writing to a bullet point, and for them to
see the connection between the summary questions and the writing exam. They also need practice in understanding what
is required of the bullet point.
We give them 2 questions to learn, but instead of always testing
as a peer assessment, we sometimes put them as writing bullet points on the board and
give them 10 minutes to answer one of the bullet points.
Here’s an example:
Qu’est-ce que tu fais
pendant ton temps libre?
is transformed to the bullet point
- vos passe-temps préférés
My students have found this useful, and it seems to be helping them to make the links between their learning and the exam.
I’m still using my lollipop sticks starter, which I talked about here, but I now follow it up with a grid in the past, present and future that
is similar to grids seen in the reading exam specimens, which I get them to
fill in, either with or without prompts.
