There were 638 MFL tweets this week, but who made this week's top 10?
Welcome to this week's #MFLTop10!
This week's roundup - as voted for by you - includes tips for Microsoft Teams, tutorials for some new (free) teaching tools, and inspiration to engage your MFL students.
Without much further ado, here are the top 10 posts that everyone has loved this week - ranked by the amounts of likes and retweets received.
10. Esmeralda Salgado (@BotonesSalgado)
Kicking us off this week is Esmerelda Salgado. She's provided us with an excellent, free-to-use spreadsheet of 117 example Spanish sentences, built using the GCSE sentence builders that she uses for the main topics (except Global Issues). She does refer to the TiLT webinar at the beginning of her tweet, which you'll find out more about below...!
9. Señora Peace (@louboops)
In at number 9 this week is Señora Peace, who's hacked a specific problem that comes with teaching MFL online: accents! The fada is the Irish equivalent of the acute accent, and below she is referring to Windows devices (but I presume it works on Chromebooks, too). For those using Apple devices, you can long-press a vowel down to get an accent. If this doesn't work, on Macs you can also press OPTION + ` (`), e (´), i(^) , n(~) or u (¨) - followed by a vowel - to apply the accent. Good luck all!
8. Miss Mullen MFL (@MflMullen)
At number 8 this week is Miss Mullen, who's created a Spanish activity inspired by E Mercier and Gianfranco Conti. It's called "Cross or tick", and works nicely for activities on Teams!
7. DylanViñales🙋♂️ (@MrVinalesMFL)
In at number 7 this week is Dylan Viñales, who's published a new book with Gianfranco Conti. It's called GCSE Spanish Revision Workouts and covers "Self, family and friends - Leisure and daily activities" (including answers). It's available right now on Amazon for £22!
6. Joe Dale (@joedale)
In at number 6 this week is Joe Dale, with a recording of the January TiLT "Show & Tell" webinar. Although the four guest speakers are amazing, two hours of screen time is a long time to dedicate for some teachers! Each speaker only spoke for 20 minutes, so I've provided links to their individual segments below. If you don't have time to watch the whole CPD, here are the speakers, the YouTube links, and their topics:
Esmerelda Salgado (11:00) covers the awesome tool LearningApps (learningapps.org), and explains how to make puzzles, gap fills and lots more. She also covers Genially (genial.ly) for combining resources in one place, and Decktoys (deck.toys) for making games such as MFL escape rooms and speaking activities.
Adeline Moston (39:30) then teaches us how to make listening activities using text-to-speech technology, again using LearningApps (learningapps.org). This includes card games (categorising games, matching games, and labelling games) - all without the need to record any new (or locate any existing!) audio files.
Julia Morris (1:04:00) then covers how to deliver consistent and effective retrieval practice in the classroom, ensuring students are tested on both new and old topics every single lesson. She uses a fantastic home-made spreadsheet which you can edit yourself so that it only includes the language you've taught a specific group. You can then quickly create activities that build only upon the language you've taught so far.
Jerome Nogues (1:32:00) closes the session with tips on how to make lessons for blended learning using Wakelet (wakelet.com). It helps you combine resources into "collections" (which you can build as individual lesson packs). He also provides great hacks for YouTube and Google Sheets, and then tells us how to remove backgrounds from photos for our resources using an awesome site called remove.bg.
5. Rebecca Nobes (@BexN91)
In at number 5 this week is Rebecca Nobes. Even if you're tired after sitting behind a screen all day, 30 minutes on a Monday night to follow a topical discussion between MFL teachers is so valuable. You don't even have to introduce yourself of talk if you're tired, just follow along with the hashtag! But, of course, if you do want to contribute, everyone is more than welcome. Founded by Rebecca and run by a guest host each week, MFLChat is a wonderful initiative that is going from strength to strength. It's powered by fab teachers with lots of experience so, on behalf of MFL teachers everywhere, thank you to everyone involved!
4. Jennie (@MFLteacher5)
In at number 4 this week is Jennie, who's been successfully giving her lower years "screen-less homework". It's such a nice idea to get students to step away from their laptops and to encourage them to express themselves a bit more. This particular idea was to label item(s) around the house. They may not even have to provide paper labels, they could just annotate and decorate their photos on their devices! (I love this idea - it could even be used competitively. All the pictures could be combined into one digital scrapbook, with both the teacher and the class deciding the best pictures each time, while revising vocabulary!)
3. Alyson Coombes (@acoombes17)
In at third place this week is Alyson Coombes. Alyson made a PowerPoint template slide to represent her "virtual classroom". For those doing blended learning (almost everyone!), this is both an interactive and engaging starter slide. Alyson made this slide herself using only PowerPoint, and she explains how you can make your own version really quickly in the replies to her post. Why not design your own "virtual classroom" slide? You can then add different objects that can serve as links to different resources or tasks!
2. MrBCurrier (@MrBCurrier)
In at second place this week is Mr Currier with a video that I can only refer to as insane(!). On a more serious note, it's incredibly inspiring. Watch this journalist reporting on the Capitol riots in French, English, Spanish, Portuguese, German and Luxembourgish. Where can languages take you? To a job working for six international TV channels! (Or for those kids who don't watch TV, to YouTube/TikTok fame in six languages!)
1. Caroline Heaney (@CarolineHeane10)
And in at number 1 this week is Caroline Heaney! Caroline tells us that she kicks off her live lessons as normal. However, once she sets her students onto a number of tasks, she gets them to "like" a message in Microsoft Teams after they've completed each one. Even if this is quite top-line, it's a really nice way to monitor a group's progress through a lesson. Why didn't anyone think of this before?! As ever, the simplest ideas are always the best!
So there we have it! Whether you've been uploading your resources to Twitter this week or sharing these ideas with your teams next week, thank you for being a part of this week's #MFLTop10!
If you want to make it into next week's charts, make sure to share your resources and ideas on Twitter using the MFL teachers' hashtag #mfltwitterati.
Wishing you all a fab weekend, and hope you have a great week next week!
Blaine
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