Get connected! Connectives and slow writing

I've been on a mission this year - to try and coax my pupils out of their tiny comfort zone, where the reason for everything is "parce que c'est super" or "Weil es lustig ist". I swear,  a little piece of me dies when I see that. Now, I'm not talking about the pupils for whom these sentences are a real achievement, I'm talking about the pupils who hang onto the their one "weil" phrase and refuse to venture beyond them.

So, what to do?

Step 1: colour-code my connectives learning wall - I mainly teach German, and so the perfect way to order them was as follows:

This in itself has had a big impact. Firstly, my previously ignored display was suddenly noticed by the pupils.  I had beginner pupils asking how to use the red connectives.  My GCSE groups, even more reluctant learners would give them a go. Why? In part, the clarity of the display made it so much easier to use and the colour-coding scheme showed clear progression.  I also used the display regularly as a teaching tool. And it became a means of feeding back to pupils on their variety of word order. Self-assessment of variety was also made easier. It has also become a short-hand way of referring to the different word-order rules, and less of a mouthful than "subordinating conjunctions"

Of course, it doesn't happen by magic, and the usual regular teaching / reinforcement has to happen. This has also been in conjunction with a big push on group talk this year. I use speaking bingo grids like the one below quite often for ensuring that a range of language is used in the course of the group discussion.

I really felt that I needed to push things further.  Some pupils reluctantly and begrudgingly stuck in a red connective to stop me nagging them, but I felt that the quality of ideas hadn't really improved for those pupils. This is where the wonder of twitter and the blogosphere played its part.

David Didau (@learningspy) has devoted several blogs and now a book on improving writing.  Some of his ideas really resonated with me.  One of the things he writes about in his chapter on writing is the idea of producing more sophisticated responses to exam questions, and the use of discourse markers. As linguists, we know the power of words, and words can unlock ideas as well as framing them.

Take a typical starter - picture prompts to help pupils discuss their opinions of maths.  What happens if we then ask them to use obwohl (although) or deshalb (therefore) to answer the question? 

 

 I tried this with and without the prompts with my year 10 class, and the difference in the sophistication of the ideas expressed pleasantly surprised me. During the task, some pupils hunted out phrases that we had talked about from a reading comprehension so that they could say what they wanted to say. We discussed the difference as a class, and one pupil's remark I found interesting - it was like I can given them permission to use things they do in English.

And this brings to another point.  Ask your pupils about their opinions about, for example, school rules and they are opinionated and often funny and perceptive.  So, we need to harness this, rather than limit them to the "weil es ungerecht ist".

Another David Didau idea is that of Slow Writing - getting the pupils to slow down, appreciate every word, and produce beautifully crafted sentences. This is one example from a lesson on school rules.  I told the pupils we were going to play with the language we'd been learning and I was setting them a challenge. On A4 paper I asked them to create the following sentences:

They then worked in pairs either to produce a combined version, or to improve their own.  I then asked them if they wanted to re-order the sentences, and use them to produce a paragraph. The rhetorical question and the 3 word sentences produced some real crackers, and of course the boys argued over the 22-word sentences. The pupils seemed to enjoy the exercise, and it did allow them to play with the language, and got them out of the rut.  Anything that helps them do that is a good thing.