Based on the course with G. Conti “Becoming an E.P.I. teacher”, and on the communicative language teaching, I create my resources according to the communicative functions I want Ss to learn. Then, I create micro-functions, I select the target vocabulary and organize it in chunks to form a sentence builder. The whole lesson will revolve around that SB providing students with more than 95% comprehensible input. After the SB I will put together the templates for different receptive tasks and I will fill the activities with the language of the SB.
The following two pictures, taken from the lessons from G. Conti, represent a guidance for the steps I need to follow.
The following picture show the importance of retrieval practice in order to reach fluency, which doesn’t mean proficiency but it refers to how automatic the retrieval of vocabulary is.
Chunking is the process of breaking sentences down into units of meaning rather than discrete vocabulary and grammar.
It increases fluency.
It lessens cognitive load as it increases the capacity of working memory, compared to the approach involving learning single words and make them fit to the grammatical rule.
Increase the amount of listening and speaking time in class (time spent communicating)
It raises students’ awareness of rhythm, stress and intonation (Gibson, 2008)
It helps promote oral fluency (Seo, 2014)
It can boost motivation to talk (Shinozuka et al, 2017)
It provides less threatening opportunities to talk and it enhances retention of vocabulary when we read to others (Boucher et al, 2015)
For more information on the pedagogy and the advantages of “chunking”, and the use of sentence builder, click here to open Gianfranco Conti’s blog or have a look at TES resources.
Safe and welcoming environment: Building a culture of high expectations is the key, ensuring our classroom is a safe learning environment where the students understand that learning is a complex process If I don’t develop a relationship based on trust and respect, I can’t teach any subject. (Maslow pyramid of human’s needs)
Accessibility and Practice: fear of failure keeps students from participating. Thus, before asking them to produce language, we need to provide a lot of practice through comprehensible input (LAM and RAM) to give students as many chances as possible for receptive learning that helps the structured output.
Pair work: I ask a question, give time to discuss it in pairs, ask students.
Games with referees gives students time to practice at their own pace and correct themselves. This is useful for shy students to develop self-efficacy and improve their confidence.
Scaffolding activities: Differentiation – my biggest challenge and among the current issues of MFL teaching. What is differentiation?
I have come across the tiered LOs: all, most, some… and other similar ones, which suggest that some parts of the curriculum are only for some. I believe we all have the same goal, but some of us will need more help, more time or more guidance to reach it (through guided practice, questioning, writing frames, feedback etc.).
Implicit differentiation: We differentiate everyday in our classrooms – whether it is by carefully selecting the seating plan that is flexible and caters for students’ ability, SEN, physical difficulty (i.e. hearing or visual impairment), behaviour, personality or by circulating around the classroom providing additional support where it is needed, encouraging our students to work at their best level – building on the challenge.
Differentiation by questioning
What language? L1 or L2 or both, cognates, key words, additional details.
How many questions? .
How difficult are the questions? what – yes/no, true/false, who…, multiple choice, why & how -opinion or justification questions, open-ended…
Differentiation by scaffolding and instruction
Scaffolded translation tasks: Consider CLT and Dual coding (not icons/pictures, but how you design your resources so they are maximising learning and not causing distractions). For early finishers translating into different tenses or an extension question provides differentiation with minimal prep for the teacher.
Retrieval tasks differentiation: this is something we should aim at the beginning of every lesson. There are amazing teachers out there who shared wonderful resources and templates on TES, here are some examples and the link to the resources.
Amazing app for gamification. This is the tutorial from a great, and generous, MFL teacher.
Positives:
the free version has got a variety of games to choose from
I can embed any task: from videos, to pictures…
I can record audio
Negatives:
I still need to explore the app in more details but I could not see a way to embed the correct answers to the questions. However, this could be a beautiful tool to revise vocabulary by embedding links to other platforms.
I have dedicated the morning to re-organising my notes and my activities templates. During this never-ending process, as I was trying to understand what was the best way to categorise my resources, I came across two life-changing padlets:
A communicative approach for language learning and teaching. It is based on the following cycle. What I am going to do is trying to analyze each phase and list a series of activities that can be used in class.
1 From modeling to receptive processing.
Aim of this phase: bombard students with comprehensible input. This stage focuses mainly on receptive processing. Hence, students are not asked to produce any language. Production comes only a lot of receptive practice.
Tool: sentence builder.
How: LAM (Listening as Modelling) and RAM (reading as modelling)
TasksLAM: based on the sentence builders that has been provided to students, I can use the following tasks for modelling and get students to familiarise with sounds and phonology.
I have been off work since the end of August. I decided to support my husband, who has had a delicate surgery and wanted to be there for him. I don’t regret it, but sometimes I struggle with not being productive and not using the time efficiently. I need to finish my NQT year ( I have completed ¾ of it), and I feel I need to make the most of this time off work to continue my professional development. Having so much time in my hands is a blessing and a course if I don’t set goals. Hence I signed up for different CPDs and flamenco dance and singing classes. You will probably wonder, “What does Flamenco have to do with CPD?”. You are probably right but I would like to open a parenthesis about this.
The way flamenco classes are structured has many similarities with learning a second language. We learn communication functions where a series of steps are chunks of language that express different things, for instance, highlighting something that the singer says, starting a conversation with the musicians, or calling them back for singing. Like in any other language, Flamenco has an endless variety of vocabulary to express the same concept, depending on our proficiency.
Let’s go back to the point of “using time efficiently”. I have decided to write a short post every day about my CPD courses and my readings on learning a second language and how to teach it, following a neuroscientific approach. My goal, which is also a promise to myself, is to summarise my notes and enrich them with other readings.
I have decided that the pedagogy I am going to adopt for my teaching is the one of Gianfranco Conti and Steve Smith, which I will refer to as Extensive Processing Instructions (E.P.I).
I couldn’t be happier of the place I work in. I feel supported and part of a community. This e-mail is just an example and it really made my day. Yesterday, during my mentor meeting I was expressing my concerns about going back to class, explaining how behaviour management is my weakest point. The response I received made me feel “safe”. She simply told me: “no worries, we will work on it”. The use of that pronoun “we” made me feel supported and held.
These two examples are to be considered good modelling! This is how praising works and how it positively affects people’s mind.
Quizalize.com: it allows to use quizlet vocabulary list to create new quizzes. What is the difference with other quiz makers? You can decide the pass score and if the student doesn’t reach that score he/she is required to do some extra activity and retake the test.
Deck.Toys: also this one uses quizlet as a starting point and it generates different tasks. However, there is the chance to upload any material from pdf, to word to audio files. It is a good tool for Assessment for learning as it is possible to share the game on Teams and the results appear automatically on teams page.
Happy Knowledge 