This afternoon our E25 Explorer students fully observed the HOWLs (Habits of Work and Learning) in their Spanish session, and their level of compassion extended to being a very receptive audience to their peers, during a fitness performance at the end of the day. Muy bien a todos!
Hola! Our E25 Explorer students had a superb session this afternoon in Spanish, with some excellent Extended Study tasks submitted and active participation throughout.
Some students took the mike to greet each other and exchange basic questions and answers all in Spanish. Some featured in paired work on the session slides.
We finished by taking a preview at a language learning website that will help students to retain and recall key vocabulary and structures.
A great start….well done everybody!
Students in C24 Pioneer and Explorer who have requested a Spanish pen-pal – in order to have an authentic audience for their modern language studies – are now required to produce an initial letter to their correspondent(s), unless they have already done so and this has already been posted to them. This is in lieu of Extended Study homework in Spanish set for this week.
Ideally we need letters to be placed in a sealed envelope, with the Spanish recipient’s name written on the front and the author’s name written on the back. We intend to post them off in one large package, so they must be handed in to Mr Pearson or Mrs Sprakes by Monday 26th March.
A list of our students and their correspondent’s details can be found here.
Some slides that might be useful to help compose the letter in Spanish can be found here.
We’re delighted by the craftsmanship and quality of Chloe’s recent preparation work for her Spanish assessment. As you can see from the photo, she produced a draft that was far above and beyond the minimum output needed to generate her MEG in this subject.
An excellent piece of written Spanish, with copious evidence of conjunctions used to link, develop and extend her ideas. ¡Muy bien Chloe por tu trabajo fenomenal!
TKAMB in Spanish sessions!
Last week our C24 students used technology to create and describe facial features in Spanish using a series of composite faces that they had created on a specialist language learning website.
This week they developed their responses to include details such as physical build, height and personality. Before returning to their original composite faces they applied this new knowledge to describe Atticus, Scout and Jem Finch – three key characters in their current anchor text “To Kill a Mockingbird”.
Stand up! when you can describe others’ faces, build and character in Spanish!
Our students are aware that they will complete an assessment of their knowledge and progress in Spanish next week. They will be asked to write a paragraph about themselves in Spanish, that might include details such as:
To help them to prepare for their assessment they were set reading homework on self and family the week before last, they have been provided with a handout to structure their ideas, and they have received a copy of the slides used in sessions and examples of students’ work (taken from their exercise books) that evidence these learning targets. The handout is also included on these slides that have been e-mailed to our students’ school e-mail addresses.
For those students who have requested and now received a Spanish pen-pal, this paragraph could form the basis of their first letter to their Spanish correspondent.
Hola. This week our C24 Explorer group played “feel-the-food”, with their audience asking and stating the snacks they eat with drinks in Spanish, whilst two blindfolded students raced each other to locate the items heard. We used this to help check learning and progress. ibuen trabajo!
Our C24 Pioneer group practised expressing and justifying positive and negative opinions of school subjects. Those who were able to link their reasons to work covered last session on describing teachers’ personalities were evidencing the excellence standard. Particular mention to Aden who was outstanding in his spoken responses. iFenomena!
Our C24 students continue to use their Spanish skills for routine transactions in the classroom, such as understanding instructions or making requests in their Modern Foreign Language.
Here our Explorers are grappling with this week’s Learning Targets – classifying positive and negative classroom behaviours, defining verbs, identifying cognates and engaging their cognitive skills to complete this task.
This session built on the work that we covered last week on school subjects, and challenged our students to link their learning. It was clear from their own self-assessment against the rubric that for most students their finishing point had moved on significantly from their starting point.
¡Hola!
We’re pleased that the devices ordered through Freedom Tech to aid teaching and learning in and beyond the classroom have now arrived. For those students and parents who have taken delivery of a device – and find themselves with time on their hands in the next two weeks – you may wish to visit the following websites that use emerging technologies to teach Spanish:
There are many more out there, some are free, and some have Apps for language learning on the go…..
7X and 7P students are beginning to use transactional Spanish in their MFL lessons to make requests and ask for permission. This week they have started building core vocabulary towards the 2000 – 2500 words that they will need to know as they reach GCSE standards.
On Wednesday they learnt 14 items of stationary that might be found in their pencil case and/or school bag. After half term – on the rare occasion that someone fails to bring basic equipment – it will only be issued to them if they can ask for it in Spanish. We used the random Wheeldecide roulette wheel to generate the focus for our learning check, and the Tarsia puzzle generator to create a grapple so that students could consolidate their knowledge.
The free Tarsia puzzle generator software can be downloaded onto Windows OS devices from the Hermitech Laboratories website. It is user-definable and extremely versatile, offering geometric tesselating puzzles that can be quickly and easily differentiated within the parameters established by the user.
