#FHSTM

mY first Teachmeet

On the evening of Monday 29th June, over 60 people gathered together and gave up their time to support my first ever Teachmeet @FHSBristol. 

The attendees included Primary & Secondary teachers, support staff, Senior Leaders and Governors. The aim of the event was to share best practice and demonstrate ideas and activities which could be used in the classroom. Also present, were representatives from @Matific (Bruce Seymour), Into Film (@rico_intofilm) and the Watershed (Hannah Brady) all of whom were very keen to share how their products can help to enthuse students in the classroom.

The evening started with a welcome speech from our Principal, Ms Catriona Mangham. This was followed by our key note speaker, @Crista Hazell (Severn Vale School) who shared with us her fabulous ideas on creativity in the classroom. 

 We were then treated to a lot of fantastic presentations, some of which included audience participation. I @SJBarnes81 demonstrated websites and apps that can be used as an alternative to PowerPoint presentations including, Powtoon (an online presentation website), Kahoot (an interactive quiz where students respond using mobile phones or tablet devices), Quizlet (an online site that allows teachers/students to create quizzes to practice key subject vocabulary) and also GoNoodle (a fun brain break website). We were also taken back in time to the 1980s with our “Superman” dance.

Cameron Parker @CamParkerHUD (Elite Motivator) gave a motivational speech, Candida Gould @candidagould (Cotham School) spoke about taking control of your CPD (slides here) and Hayley Yelland @Miss_Yelland (Fairfield High School) explained how to ensure successful collaborative learning. 

Jasmine Williams @Miss_JFWilliams (Hansprice School) demonstrated her marking and feedback policy and Rose Hooke @MissHooke (Fairfield High School) clarified the difference between “English” and “Literacy” and demonstrated how we can ensure Literacy is used successfully across the curriculum.

Ben Davey @el_davooo (Bridge Learning campus) told us about his Challenge board and Tower of Power and Said Benchama @SaidBenchama (Bristol Met) spoke about using Bloom’s Taxonomy in lessons to encourage students to progress and challenge themselves. 

Keziah Featherstone @BLC_Head34 (Headteacher at Bridge Learning Campus) delivered the closing speech on the theme of @WomenEd which encourages Females to put themselves forward for leadership roles. She also asked us to save the date of a special Women Ed event on 3^rd October 2015.

The twitter feed for #FHSTM can be viewed here #FHSTM

There is also a dropbox folder with the presentations. Please add your presentation from the evening, if it's not in the folder.

Everyone went away at the end of the evening very happy, enthused and laden with goodie bag. Some lucky attendees also took home a raffle prize including a T-shirt from either Quizlet or Kahoot, a £25 iTunes voucher from Matific and a Teacher subscription to Biteslide. Fairfield’s very own Mrs Lamming was the luck winner of the tips2teaching.co.uk classroom resources. I’d like to thank everyone who presented, attended, sponsored and supported the Teachmeet. Let it be the start of many more to come.

Sharon Barnes @SJBarnes81

Grammar Gate

I often find that despite numerous hours spent teaching grammar that students still muddle up their tenses and produce very interesting word order in their sentences which seem to combine the rules to all 3 tenses.

I decided to create something that would allow them to have all the key information in one place but that wasn't a worksheet that they'd put into their folder and forget about.

The result was a "Grammar gate" It's a flap book style resource that allows students to see the basic rules for the past, present and future tense.

This is our first version and so far, it's working very well. I tried it with Year 11 who loved it and it's made teaching tenses to Year 10 much easier.

Marking in MFL

Trying to find a system that involves students reflecting on their learning with minimum impact from the teacher can be tricky to do. I teach 16 classes across 4 subjects and I often find myself trying to climb a constant marking mountain. 
I've read lots of blog posts on triple marking and DIRT time which I think are fantastic but I feel that they don't always lend themselves to MFL. In Citizenship, it seems easier to ask students questions which encourage reflection and answer development and I've had great feedback on my marking but in MFL it's a different story.

I developed a marking code for the department (based on a resource from a fellow #mfltwitterati teacher) which allows us to use symbols to show students what needs to be changed/improved. We use this alongside stickers that contain the next steps.

This was working well, or at least I thought, until a book scrutiny was done and it was felt that compared to other departments, MFL wasn't encouraging enough student reflection 
I decided to come up with a system that used the target language and would be quick and easier to do.

After completing a piece of work, I ask the students 2 questions "Was it easy/okay/difficult?" "Why?"
I do this in the target language and after asking it a couple of times, I shorten it to a code.

French- C'était facile/ bon/ difficile? Pourquoi? (Shortened to C'était f/b/d?)
German- War es einfach/okay/schwierig? Warum? (Shortened to War es e/o/s?)
Spanish- ¿Fue fácil/vale/difícil? ¿Por qué? (Shortened to ¿Fue f/v/d?)

Students are now able to reflect on their work at the end of the lesson by using this system.
The lower years respond in English but I am working with year 9 and KS4 to encourage a response in the TL.

I now have a clearer picture of who is finding the work hard and who needs more challenge. 

This is very much work in progress and is the 2nd year I have used it. I have had good feedback from lesson observations and book scrutiny since introducing it.