Motivating students at AS & A2

Dominic McGladdery

@dominic_mcg

domsmflpage.blogspot.com

I ain't no hollaback girl

How to start...?

Slowly.

These students did their GCSE in May.

Now it's September.

How much will they remember?

Even the good ones will be rusty.

Where to start...?

The Scheme of Work.

Is it inspiring?

Is it fun?

Is it text book based?

Why? Why not?

LISTENING

TV APPS

Using smartphone or tablet download an app

France TV

TOP TV (Spanish)

German TV

Get students to watch a random channel for 5 minutes and write about or feedback to the class what they have seen.

LISTENING

www.newsinslowfrench.com/

www.newsinslowspanish.com/

Slow German podcasts http://bit.ly/10XursX

LISTENING

French.

www.frenchrevision.co.uk

http://ielanguages.com/frenchlistening.html

Lots of listening and video exercises for independent revision.

LISTENING

Spanish.

http://www.asisehace.net/

Lots of listening and video exercises for independent revision from Jose Picardo

http://www.notesinspanish.com/spanish-audio/

http://bit.ly/10XvPM4 Eye on Spain website

LISTENING

German.

http://bit.ly/10XqlRH Surrey University links

http://bit.ly/10XqWCS A word file of lots of links for all levels of German

LISTENING

www.warnerbros.fr

www.warnerbros.de

www.warnerbros.es

www.warnerbros.it

LISTENING

Youtube

The best internet resource for finding songs in the TL.

BBC World Service http://bbc.in/5ftDU8

News broadcasts in 27 languages

LISTENING

Give students a tapescript to start with.

Reduce this to a summary of points.

Eventually, wean them off this support.

READING

There is a wealth of foreign language newspapers and magazines available on the internet. http://www.onlinenewspapers.com/

Try to find articles relating to the specification you use. Sites like http://1jour1actu.com and http://news4kids.de/ are updated regularly.

For French try www.ados.fr too.

Put links on your VLE, blog or wiki

http://bit.ly/XHY3UK

READING

Any article can be copied and pasted into word and turned into a reading comprehension or gapfill exercise.

or

Use http://www.textivate.com to make a text jigsaw.

READING

Download and use Tarsia to create puzzles.

See Clare Seccombe's excellent guide to making Tarsia puzzles.

SPEAKING

Use all the ideas from my “squawk to talk” workshop.

Remember that everything that works with Year 7 works just as well with year 13.

SPEAKING GAMES

Students choose or are given a random number. This is the exact number of words (or syllables!) they must use in their answers to questions.

Students are given a random word which they have to include in any answers they give. Their partner must try to guess the mystery word.

SPEAKING GAMES

Use Dave Reed's random letter generator to generate 3 or 4 random letters. Students have to come up with the longest word in the TL.

http://bit.ly/24hzqB

Cheddar gorge – a parlour game.

Working with a partner students have to create a sentence taking turns to say one word at a time.

DESERT ISLAND DISCS

Each student chooses 3 songs and prepares some notes. They tell their partner which songs they chose and the reasons why.

The partner then asks questions to elicit further information and makes notes. This could be something like "Why do you like this song?" or "Where were you the first time you heard this song?"

The pair then change roles. Each student then gives a short summary to the group.

THE UNBELIEVABLE TRUTH

Students a read out a text which contains 3 or more errors to the group.

The group has to find the errors.

They win points if they spot the mistakes and lose points if they wrongly claim a mistake has been made.

ONLY CONNECT Connections

The students are given up to 4 clues and have to decide on the link between the clues. They are shown each clue separately and earn 5 points if they guess the connection after one clue, 3 point after 2 clues, 2 points after 1, and 1 point for guessing after receiving all 4 clues.

Clue 1 Clue 2 Clue 3 Clue 4

aller tomber partir entrer

ONLY CONNECT What's the 4th word?

Students have to guess what the 4th word is. Scoring is the same as Connections.

It might look like this:

Clue 1 Clue 2 Clue 3 Answer

chat chien oiseau

ONLY CONNECT The connecting wall

un chaise grand chat

super deux table crayon

stylo nul trousse cinq

trois chien petit tortue

ONLY CONNECT Missing vowels

Give students a list of key words and/or phrases with the vowels removed.

e.g. Spanish TV vocabulary

tlvsnprcbl (televisión por cable)

cntndsdcrzn (contenidos de corazón)

hrrdmxmdnc (horario de máxima audiencia)

DUBBLER

Dubbler is an itunes and android app which allows users to record their voices and upload the results to twitter and facebook.

The students can change their voices before posting. Very silly, but lots of fun.

WRITING

Fakebook from classtools.net

Use fakebook to create an imaginary facebook account for a character from a work of literature or a flim the group is studying.

http://www.classtools.net/fb/home/page

WRITING

Twister from classtools.net

Use twister to create imaginary tweets. I've used this for students to create a timeline for a character from the work of literature or a film the group is studying.

http://www.classtools.net/twister/

WRITING

Toondoo

A website and app for creating comics.

I use this for students to recreate scenes from literature and film at A2. Ideal for summarising stories and articles.

http://www.toondoo.com/

WRITING

Toondoo

From Deux Amis

by Maupassant

Motivating students at AS & A2

Dominic McGladdery

@dominic_mcg

domsmflpage.blogspot.com

I ain't no hollaback girl