Behind the scenes: The new MFL proposals, International Day of Multilingualism 2021, MFL exam strategies workbook, lie detector game, GCSE word list hacks and more.
Happy Easter!
A huge well done to everyone for making it through the madness of this term. In today's MFL Weekly:
Behind the scenes: The new MFL proposals
International Day of Multilingualism 2021
GCSE exam strategies workbook
Lie detector game
LiveWorksheets
"Do less, well" in MFL
GCSE AQA word list hacks
Nine types of rest
When you meet your students in person
Grab a coffee and enjoy!
🌍 NEWS
Behind the scenes: The new MFL proposals
Following a Freedom of Information request about the new MFL proposals, TransformMFL has published the documents obtained in a new blog post.
The documents suggest that, with regard to the decision-making process:
The chair wanted to create a “smallish” panel of “6-8” people
The panel was convened in just 8 working days
The panel only met 6 times (as per pre-Covid plans)
The DfE had already decided on the problems with the existing GCSEs
The outcome of the review was determined before the review started
The proposals were designed to influence teachers' classroom practices
To read the full Freedom of Information request, the documents obtained and the TransformMFL commentary, click here.
🎬 FEATURE
International Day of Multilingualism 2021
Last Saturday was the the 3rd annual "International Day of Multilingualism".
Linguists shared some great content online – using the hashtags #multilingualday and #multilingualisnormal – to celebrate how important it is to be multilingual. Here are my favourites.
Available in over 30 languages (!!!) the "Active April 2021" calendar from Action for Happiness will encourage your students to develop their languages as well as their physical and mental wellbeing. A beautiful resource for the classroom (and for some post-Easter atonement)!
Durham University is hosting an online event which is free to attend: "Multilingual Language Learning and Teaching Colloquium". It is taking place on Saturday 24 April and will focus on "learning gain" across the lesson, term, year, and broader student journey.
Last but not least, the fab image below was shared by @LudiJones. It was made by the Centre for Educators of Bilingual and Multilingual Learners, a group which trains teachers around the world about bilingual and multilingual learners.
You can even buy multilingual versions of the image above (French, Spanish and English) as a poster from the website of the Centre for Educators of BMLs directly.
📂 DOWNLOADS GCSE exam strategies workbook
This 12-page GCSE exam strategies workbook is excellent.
The workbook contains strategies and questions to help students prepare for the reading and listening papers, including True / False / Not in Text, Positive / Negative, and translation questions.
The workbook is available for GCSE French but could easily be adapted to other languages.
💡 INSPIRATION Lie detector game An example of the MFL "lie detector" game was shared by Catalina Gabriela on Twitter this week. To play, student A needs to copy a secret sentence to their mini whiteboard. They must then decide whether to read the exact sentence to student B, or a variation of it. If student B guesses that student A was telling the truth (or a lie!) correctly, they get the point. However, if student B guesses incorrectly, then student A gets that point!
The game (inspired by Gianfranco Conti) is a simple way to encourage your students to practise their speaking and listening in pairs.
🖥 APPS & SITES LiveWorksheets
This website has a range of handouts that can be completed and submitted digitally, or downloaded and printed out for the classroom.
Whether you're looking for worksheets on the passé composé, subjuntivo or Plusquamperfekt, you can find worksheets by language, by popularity, and even see what's trending each week!
You can even upload your own worksheets and drag and drop elements onto them to make them interactive, printable and shareable. (Thanks to Caroline Guitton for the inspiration!)
🎓 PEDAGOGY "Do less, well" in MFL
Following their much-praised talk last week, Verity Howarth and Hannah Pinkham have posted a short video explaining how their methodology of "Do less, well" works for MFL.
What follows is 15 minutes of refreshingly clear and concise thought on a successful approach to language instruction at an all-through school in Feltham.
Set aside 15 minutes to relax and watch this video on student progression in MFL from year 6 right through to year 11.
🔁 ICYMI GCSE AQA word list hacks
Call them what you will, there are lots of hacks / patterns / etymological markers to help students learn the vocabulary from the GCSE AQA word lists.
Why not expand your students' vocab faster by teaching the patterns that occur most frequently in the published AQA word lists?
I programmed some scripts to do this, and posted the top examples from the AQA lists:
💪 MOTIVATION Nine types of rest Just in time for the Easter break, Mark Anderson (@ICTEvangelist) shared the below post:
As the Easter break gets underway, which of these should you be focusing on most?
😂 AND FINALLY... When you meet your students in person
A comic look back at this term, courtesy of TikTok...
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Thanks so much for reading, and hope you have a lovely Easter break!
Blaine
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