GGS French

Podcasting

Podcasting is basically an online radio which you can have sent to your computer automatically or download. You can get students to create them or you can! You need some basic equipment - ie computer, audacity software to record, maybe a mic and MP3 player and MP3 encoder. Once you get past all the technical know how it is easy - honest and fun! For instance you could get students to have a radio show advertising their area or a health show with a Dr phone in. it's creative and a good way to revise a topic.

Highland Podcast S4 students talk about their towns

Mandarin podcast learn mandarin!

Verb cast Higher students will learn their conjugations

Piecast Exam revision using past papers for Higher

More info on podcasting:

School podcast examples

Want to start a school radio? Hannah Tempest,01535 604026, office@radioanywhere.co.uk

Language trips

A blog can be a great diary and reminder of a trip with photos, sound files and video footage. Take a look at the China blog below to see what I mean. The students wrote the diary entries every day themselves and I did the technical stuff! Parents loved it.

http://www.mfle.typepad.com/ggs/

Authentic language blogs

How about using authentic language blogs as reading materials and students could post comments! How could you use the following? (to find them I used google.fr search engine and typed in the key word ie. la mode + blog. Then I looked at one or two and picked one. It took a few mins)

La mode blog

Bob's holiday photos

Eurosport football blog

Directions! - scroll down to the video on the 'truth about the french presidential race!'

French cinema

Contrast and compare

Explore some other blogs on the right side under French Links + see what you think. They are from different schools or people writing about blogging in edcuation (Joe Dale / Ewan's blog). Check out Dornoch's blog (in French!), The Gordon Schools and the fancy 2 stars and a wish.

What is your favourite? Send me a comment.

Look at this example for a blog that is entirely student controlled and only publishes student's work.

Learner blog

Teacher's task!

Spend some time looking at this blog as it is an example and by no means perfect or the only way to blog. As you at my posts and some comments consider the following:

What is the benefit of the blog?

Is it useful?

Is it doing anything different or just reinventing the wheel?

Could you see a purpose for it in your classroom?

Blogging - what?

What? A digital footprint, an online journal or basically an easy to use website that you can update.

How? Access authentic language materials via french / german etc blogs.

          Set up free blog with typepad / edublogs + start posting.

Why? sharing of good work of pupils, store internet links, lesson plans, upload photos of school trips, collaborative projects within schools + across schools, evaluation by students in private manner, publish work, homework tips, peer and self assessment, quizzes  + many more

For more info see the Creative Section in the MFLE website - Blogging or look at Atomic Learning free trial tutorial on Blogging.

Peer assessment

I have been trying different forms of peer assessment as part of my drive to get students to take more responsibility for the work and be involved with it. I welcome any thoughts....

2 stars and a wish

I tried this AIFL (assessment is for learning) technique with S2 students this week and it worked really well. Students marked each other's weather reports via a class discussion using this idea of two points of praise and one for improvement. It was simple, easy and very user friendly.

WHAT DID YOU THINK S2? WAS IT EASY TO MARK THE REPORTS? WAS IT WORTH IT? DID YOU GAIN SOMETHING FROM IT?

Comments, criteria + grades

I will see how good the S4 are at peer assessment later this week with speaking assessments. We are continuing with 2 stars and wish, but also linking it with the exam syllabus. I want students to know how to do well in exams and what to aim for. So we will be grading the work with given guidelines.To widen out discussions we will also look at speaking assessments from The Gordon School at the following website:

Rate my mates

WHAT DO YOU THINK S4? DID IT MAKE ANY DIFFERENCE HAVING THE ASSESSMENTS ON THE BLOG? WAS IT USEFUL TO HEAR OTHER PEOPLE AND USE THE MARKING SCHEME?

Student marking

My S2 and S3 students are starting to pick up basic repeated mistakes by looking at one another's work. My new rule is that I will not mark a student's work unless it has been marked by someone else in the class. I think it is very important that students have strict guidelines on what to look for. ie. does it make sense? are the verbs right? It has to tie in with what we have been covering in class recently or it doesn't work as students can't pick up all the mistakes.

WHAT DO YOU THINK S2/3? CAN YOU FIND THE MISTAKES? WHAT HELPS YOU SPOT THE MISTAKES?