MFL show and tell York 2 - 14th June 2014 Just the morning sessions!

Oh wow!  Another day jam-packed with ideas.  60+ teachers and trainees gathered on a Saturday (yes - a Saturday) in Harrogate Grammar School to get a monster-sized chunk of CPD organised by Suzi Bewell from the University of York and William Strange.  My head is still spinning! This is the morning's whirlwind of ideas. I'll do a separate post on the afternoon.

Firstly, if you're on twitter @suzibewell, is beginning to tweet links to the presentations which the presenters gave. http://yorkmflsat2014.wordpress.com/ has some of the links to the exhibitors and some of the presentations.  Secondly, I must apologise to the presenters whose names I didn't quite catch. I think I had Saturday brainPlease let me know so I can update my blog!

There was a keynote speech shown by Rene Koglbauer, who shared a couple of great links.
http://aufdeutsch.co.uk/ is a site for German learners and although I've not explored it, it looks like it has lots of useful videos and resources.
The other great website is courtesy of Newcastle's own Tyneside Cinema, which has study guides for lots of foreign language films. https://www.tynesidecinema.co.uk/learn/14-19/resources

It was great to see so many successful PGCE students presenting the results of some of their work.  It just goes to prove the valuable work universities are still doing in teacher training, and long may that last!

Lucy presented an introductory lesson on sport in Spanish.  This was one of the activities she got them to do combining a sport (choosing between hago or juego) and a time phrase.

I liked the plenary where there was enough prompts and support for the weaker ones, but there was room for the more able to expand.

Jan McCann (@biscuitsmccann) talked about how to use a full day when the timetable is collapsed and you have a whole year group for the day. As we come close to the end of term, this may be of interest to some colleagues! She gave examples of simple projects, such as making board games, up to weekend trip to Normandy. I was impressed by the way they had made the most of the days to really enrich the learning.  I loved the idea of the joint project with the art dept about the film Kirikou, where the pupils learned about Senegal and then make lolly-stick puppets and write a dialogue to perform with them.  The stop-motion filmed commentary of football matches also really appealed.
My favourite idea was an idea for Year 10, where they learned advertising language to plan and film an advert for a German product.  She also had some valuable advice:
1.  Pace yourself- they are long days
2.  Consider using form groups, as the more able can help the less able
3.  Get ex-pupils to support
4.  Make sure the pupils have something to show for it at the end, and do a celebration show and tell at the end

The next presention (sorry - I think it was @MFLCanonLee but I'm not sure!) had a topical world cup theme.  Find "sticker" images, make a fantasy team, setting them out like the in the coverage on the TV before the game and then use as a basis for talking about the players.

William Strange (@GermanGLS) demonstrated something for all busy teachers - the joys of mail merge. I liked the way it could work for giving pupils good feedback from CAs without having to write everything out again and again.

The next presenter had us in giggles as she presented some cultural knowledge of Switzerland she had done with her pupils before setting up a penpal exchange.  Getting us to say Chäschueche (cheese cake). The serious point about cultural awareness, however, was really important.

Dominic McGladdery (@dominic_mcg) showed us how to reanimate a corpse..or rather how to get pupils to convert a powerpoint into animated gifs. Save the powerpoint as JPEGS, find a website such as makeagif.com, upload the images and create create et voila!

Barbara Gleave demonstrated some lovely ideas for songs to do with primary schools. My favourite was a song called ou est pere noel set to the tune of frere jacques to teach prepositions:

Ella talked about a fascinating E-twinning project on the topic of school set up by her mentor in the school in Wetherby.  The pupils took photos of their meals in their respective cantines and of the contents of their school bags and used that as a basis for work ranging from labelling contents to writing recipes and comparing the contents.  They then made questionnaires about the school day which they sent to their partners.  These are great ways of getting really rich cultural knowledge as well as linguistic knowledge from what can be a very dry topic. We are just coming to the end of blogging project with our partner school, and I think it would be great when we re-run it to include some of these ideas.

Adam (I think it was Adam - I can't quite make it out!) talked about a joint history and French mini-series of lessons on the French Revolution.  The first lesson set out the background and how it affected France today.  The next lesson got the pupils to work out the theme of the lesson from the following key words hidden round the classroom.  Can you guess what it is?

The guillotine and the Reign of Terror.  This next part I thought was inspired.  The class had to decide which of the following people would have been "coupable" or "non-coupable".  There was then a panel of judges selected from the class - complete with false moustaches who then decided the fate of the accused, also represented by class members. If they were executed then had to eat a sour sweet ("poison").  Of course, if the judges got it wrong, they were traitors to the cause, and were themselves coupable.  Have a go yourself.

Who was spared?  Only Sophie!

Frances presented 2 activities to encourage co-operation and speaking.  The first, below, is Rally Robin, put I just know it as test your partner, but is a great way of reinforcing language and getting them involved quickly.

The next created much amusement: "would you rather.." - a good starter activity.  She demonstrated on us, getting us to respond to the questions "Would you rather live by the beach or in the mountains/ be a snake or an elephant?" and then asked those who would like to live by the beach to stand up.  We then had to justify our reasons, and believe me they were very revealing!

Diana Keszler (@Diana_Keszler) entertained us greatly presenting a lesson getting the pupils to learn about places in the town using what looked like a bbc french clip about Guadeloupe. The clip was great and had a few bits that are great for mimicking. She then got them to compare Basse-Terre and Paris - a great way to get some "il n'y a pas de" practice in. This gave them a great base for writing work.

Martin talked how to approach the use of literature. 
1.  Using poetry to reinforce a tense. Rather than asking pupils to do gapfill from a listening exercise, he suggested asking the pupils to predict which verbs go in which gaps.  He used a poem which I'm not familiar with, not being Spanish,  but it looked a perfect one.  It was called "Instantes" by Jorge Luis Borges, but it can apply to many others.  He then said that listening to a clip from Youtube would make it much more pleasurable and the pupils would get more out of it.

2.  A poetry reading competition.  They chose "Maripose del aire" by Lorca because it emphasises the rhythm of Spanish well, and is good for adjective variety.

3.  Use songs - use the same technique as number 1. The song for practising the preterite in Spanish was "La historia de Juan".

4.  How about translation from English to the TL?  How about Suzanne Vega's "Tom's Diner" because it's full of the present continuous. I think it might well work in German, and it's great for emphasising that the present tense is both "I play" and "I am playing".