Here's to Creativity

I spent the whole of the day today taking photos, helping with animation, and listening to audio as the first 14 Year 7's underwent their creative day. Despite spending the weekend preparing cover work for my normal classes for the 2 days of the project, I feel suddenly energised!

Not one raised voice, normally hyperactive attention seeking learners painstakingly moving tiny bits of paper or discussing the merits of 1 second of audio. Some very mischievous photos of both staff and students.

Sometimes it is all worth it. Right, same again tomorrow!

Year 7 French Assessments

I hate end of year exams. I'll repeat that, I really hate them!

I thought I'd concentrate on Listening and Writing as the end of year skills this year with my 2 small groups, and provide a focussed activity to allow Level 4 and 5. I will do a sneaky reading activity as well but won't tell them until after the event...

I'd love to do a Voki activity for speaking, but alas resources and time are so limited!

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Getting Year 7 into Languages.

As part of our new KS3 curriculum review, we have decided to bombard year 7 with a weekly 10 minute activity on language learning as a general idea during the first 1/2 term. We need to stress the use of language learning skills, and provided a context for French. Charged with thinking, I put a plan together... What do you think?

Week 1
Images of France Activity
Influence of France on culture

Week 2
I'll never go to France
French speaking community

Week 3
5 Phrases to survive (mystery language!)
Higher order thinking

Week 4
Languages in School
Identify areas of school and related languages

Week 5
I'd really like to learn…
Justify a choice of language

Week 6
Poster - Learn a language
Persuade others to learn a language

My First Animoto!

I've seen and read a lot about animoto, so I thought I'd give it a try. I love the interface, adding images and choosing music was a breeze. It certainly beats boring death by 30 powerpoints for a writing task!

From a teaching point of view, it will be a case of getting commonly used images together in a folder (in my case: hotel, camp site, caravan, villa, holiday locations, friends, family, transport, places to visit, activities to do), teaching my learners how to export powerpoint slides as images, then letting them go and be creative!

The rendering queue does seem a little slow so a filler activity will be needed while they wait, and the need for an e-mail address to sign up begs privacy issues - there is no try out without signing up, and I'm sure most of my learners haven't a clue what their school e-mail address is! I am also wondering if our filtering system will need tweaking to allow it - if so I'd better get my request in now!

I should be doing this activity towards the end of the Summer term with Year 7, so I'll let you know how I get on.

This is my first attempt below, not bad for 5 minutes work I thought!

Importance of Languages

I have to do a year 7 assembly on the importance of languages.
i thought I'd get them shouting and physically split... What do you think?

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