Increasing motivation and
attainment in Year 9
Agenda
Controlled assessments this year
Sharing controlled assessment resources
Working with year 9
Increasing motivation
Increasing attainment
Controlled assessments
Any issues arising?
Any topics which worked well?
Any topics which didn’t work well?
Sharing resources and tasks
Before the Controlled Assessment
Differentiation issues – should you match tasks to
abilities?
How to best use the preparation time and teacher
input lessons
Pupils and the Controlled Assessment
Students asking questions – can they?
Preparing a presentation and not the questions – do they?
The unpredictable element – did they cope?
Hesitation during the exam and recovery
Cheating!
Communication and Admin
Pupils taking it seriously – are they?
Contacting parents and sharing the importance of the
exam
The controlled assessment ‘window’
Technology issues – how do you record?
Controlled Assessment tasks 2009 – 2011 (Edexcel)
Environment – discussion about an environment day
My Town – Photo/presentation discussion about things to
do in your local area
Health and Fitness - Visit to the doctors
My School – Presentation introducing your school
Work experience – Photo discussion on recent job
Sport and fitness – Receptionist in a sport Centre
Free time and Leisure – Radio interview about Fashion
House and Home – Estate Agent selling/buying a house
Changing assessments in Year 9
to prepare for Controlled
Assessments
Why?
Year 9 Listening and
Reading assessments
•No, or very little production of language is required at GCSE
•An emphasis on working out from context as well as relying on
linguistic knowledge
•This jars with the heavy content focus of KS3 but fits in well with the
framework
•Still focus on tenses, inputting new language
•Formulate a revision schedule to consolidate key points from KS3
•Assessments and activities can be adapted to reflect the GCSE papers
Instead of questions on
a listening text 9, we have
created GCSE style tables
which also give
opportunities for
Pupils to add extra info.
We have changed this…..
Questions on the texts
• Who only read for school. ___________________Ayse _________________
• Who doesn’t have to buy the book as they have it at home _________________
• Who got a book as a present last week
____________________________
• Who read a good book about tennis last week ______________________
• Who read more than a hundred books last year ______________________
• Who finds it more interesting reading on the computer than a book ____________
• Who will read another book by the same author ______________________
• Who will have to look in the newspaper to see sports results?
___________
• Who’s favourite books are crime thrillers
______________________
•Who only goes two or three times a year to the library ____________________
•Who will buy a new thriller with the money from my birthday ______________
To this…..
READS BOOKS ONLY FOR SCHOOL
DOESN’T BUY BOOKS AS THERE ARE LOTS
AT HOME
WAS GIVEN A BOOK AS A GIFT
HAS READ A GOOD BOOK ABOUT A SPORT
WAS A VERY ACTIVE READER LAST YEAR
PREFERS READING ON SCREEN TO A BOOK
WILL READ ANOTHER BOOK BY THE SAME
AUTHOR
LOOKS IN A NEWSAPER TO CHECK
FOOTBALL RESULTS
REALLY ENJOYS THRILLERS
OCCASIONALLY GOES TO THE LIBRARY
WILL BUY A THRILLER WITH BIRTHDAY
MONEY
KATHA
RINA
BERND
AYSE
X
10 Marks
Listen to the information and distil it in to 3 tenses.
Write the information you hear in the correct column
Past
Present
1. The film is called “Moulin
1.
Future
1.
Rouge”
2.
2.
2.
Going to the cinema will
be fun
3.
Went home by bus
3.
3.
Pupils get the opportunity to get used to a GCSE style
activity, but still need to listen for detail and content
Year 9 writing assessments
•Pupils given clear idea of what points to cover in the
controlled assessment in the form of task stimuli
•Assessment is prepared in advance
•Skills starters covered in lessons to ensure that pupils
know and can use the key phrases for success
•Revision schedule with a weekly focus decided upon in
class. This has a clear focus on tenses and the things
required to achieve a level 5, 6 or 7
•Level 5 criteria shared regularly with the class just as we
would provide the C grade criteria
•Level 6 work provided as a differentiated approach. Level
7 packs provided to give most able pupils the opportunity
to reach the highest levels. Just as we would for A-A* at
GCSE
•15 words allowed to take in to the exam. Conjugated
verbs allowed
•Clear resources and model answers provided to ensure
pupils have access to as much language and as many tenses
and structures as possible.
•Preparation time in class and for homework.
•Practice task prepared and marked as in GCSE.
Year 9 speaking assessments
•Move towards an English stimulus that details what
pupils should include to achieve the top marks
•Focus on the strategy in the penultimate assessment so
that pupils are receptive in the final assessment
•15 words allowed to support pupils during the
assessment
•Reading resources provided so that pupils can extract
information and more complex sentences and use them
in their controlled assessment
•Listening resources to provide model answers, support
for all abilities, and guidance on pronunciation and
extended answers.
•Using voki to support pronunciation
•Using digital recordings and more ‘for real’ lesson activities to
prepare pupils for speaking and to encourage spontaneity.
•Skills starters to ensure that pupils are very familiar with
question words, word families, negatives, synonyms, key linguistic
skills to help them transfer knowledge or be more resourceful,
ask questions.
•Provide pupils with key phrases – a scaled down version of the
key phrases we provide at GCSE that give pupils a ‘lifeline’.
•Revision timetable in half term prior to assessments to focus on
tenses, connectives and criteria for achieving a level 5, 6 or 7
Year 9
In the classroom:
- increasing motivation
- increasing attainment
- preparing pupils for controlled assessments
-alternative provision
Out of the classroom
Why is motivation an issue?
“Languages are hard”
“I can get better grades in other subjects”
Option blocks can make it difficult
Recent decline in GCSE entries
Languages have not been valued in school (TLR)
Increasing motivation
•
What are the issues in your school?
•
Taking the ks3 programme of study as a starting point
– rather than topics
•
We can focus on skills to increase challenge, improve
motivation, and improve outcomes. programme of
study.doc
Increasing motivation
How do you encourage pupils to continue with MFL at
GCSE
Invitation to do two languages
http://www.languageswork.org.uk/home.aspx
Increasing motivation
•
Cross curricular projects
•
Geography and French cross curricular project
•
Pupil feedback
•
Italian pop project
•
Science CLIL!
•
Sequence of learning!
•
Single lesson activities
Increasing motivation
Creativity and thinking skills
Homer and Marge lesson plan !
Sorting exercise!
Fortune lines!
Mysteries
Diamond 9 / prioritising
Increasing motivation
Eliciting information FROM pupils
Don’t GIVE pupils the rules
Elicit the rules from them, in context
Example 1
Example 2
Example 3
What works well for you?
Increasing motivation –
authentic texts
More appropriate for their interests and maturity, and
linguistically challenging.
Can help them practise high frequency words.
On topics chosen by the pupils – do a survey of their interests.
How do their responses compare to your current provision?
Think about articles with a critical mass of language already
known to the pupils.
Store in ICT so teachers can amend for different groups
Provides extended reading materials for pupils in their early stages
of language learning.
Can use internet resources, which teachers can edit. Can be
written by staff, and given an authentic appearance
Increasing motivation –
authentic texts
How do we teach pupils to read in MFL?
Pupils should be encouraged to persevere when confronted with an unfamiliar word.
Teach pupils to begin by identifying what they know, rather than what they do not know,
will:
Emphasise the readability of a text and encourage reading for gist;
This will improve pupils’ self-esteem as readers of MFL and make extended texts less
daunting;
Encourage pupils to infer the meaning of unfamiliar words;
Encourage pupils to guess the meaning of trickier unfamiliar words before they look
them up in the dictionary.
Carry out a readability audit. Photocopy single pages from a range of existing reading
materials and ask pupils from your target classes to highlight all the words in each text
whose meaning they know.
Increasing motivation –
authentic texts
How do we teach perseverance?
To teach their pupils to persevere with texts, ask pupils to read and
underline or highlight all the words they know, and words whose
meaning they can guess, rather than focusing on what they do not
know.
Research high-frequency words, and include the most common
vocabulary and structures in the scheme of work from Year 7
onwards.
The teaching of words such as était, pourrait, sera at an early stage
can support pupils’ MFL literacy and provide the meaning of
words which might be very challenging for younger pupils to
decode independently.
Increasing motivation –
authentic texts
Can pupils apply meaning to the text?
Editing a text is a useful strategy as it can only be undertaken successfully if pupils
understand the text they are transforming. It is also particularly well suited to ICT
applications. Techniques include:
–
expanding the text by introducing more information, perhaps taken from a
complementary source (Key Stage 3 MFL Framework 7S3, 8T6, 9T3, 9T4, 9T6, 9S6);
–
enriching the text by introducing a number of adverbs, adjectives or connectives
(Key Stage 3 MFL Framework 7S3, 7T7, 8T2, 8S2, 8S6, 8T6, 9T2, 9S6);
–
changing the tense of a text (Key Stage 3 MFL Framework 7S7, 8S7, 8T7, 9S7);
–
reducing the text to a specific length by removing unnecessary detail (Key Stage 3
MFL Framework 7S3, 8T6, 9T6, 9L3);
–
editing the text to enable comprehension by younger or less advanced learners
(Key Stage 3 MFL Framework 7S3, 8T6, 9T6).
Improving pupil outcomes
What levels are pupils on at the start of Year 9?
What is your aim for the end of the year?
How do you focus on improving pupil outcomes?
What do you think the key areas are in addressing this?
Ideas to share?
Improving outcomes – focus
on tenses
From February onwards
Tenses as a focus in all topics
Task: Think of a topic in Year 9. How could you
amend it to focus on three tenses?
Planning for three tenses in French
Perfect tense
Passepresentfutur!
Improving outcomes –
Developing speaking and
writing
Perfect phrases at GCSE
Which of these do you focus on at KS3?
Which of these could you focus on?
Would this be easy to do?
OLD RAT – focusing on key elements to improve
pupils’ speaking and writing; encouraging them to say
more; giving them the skills to do so.
Perfect Phrases for Every Occasion
Il y a
On peut + infin
On a
Il faut + infin
Il est possible de + infin
Il est nécessaire de + infin
Il n’y a pas* de
*ne…jamais
On ne peut pas + infin
ne…plus
On n’a pas de
ne…rien
Il ne faut pas + infin
ne…personne
Il n’est pas possible de + infin
Il n’est pas nécessaire de + infin
Il y avait
On pouvait + infin
On avait
Il fallait + infin
Il était possible de + infin
Il était nécessaire de + infin
Il n’y avait pas
On ne pouvait pas+ infin
On n’avait pas
Il ne fallait pas + infin
Il n’était pas possible de + infin
Il n’était pas nécessaire de + infin
Il y aura
On pourra + infin
On aura
Il faudra + infin
Il sera possible de + infin
Il sera nécessaire de + infin
Il n’y aura pas
On ne pourra pas + infin
On n’aura pas
Il ne faudra pas + infin
Il ne sera pas possible de + infin
Il ne sera pas nécessaire de + infin
Improving outcomes –
Developing speaking and writing
OLD RAT
Opinions (J'adore, Je n'aime pas)
Linking words (useful little words)
Development (i.e. make the sentences longer, qui
s'appelle)
Range (variety or structures, il y a, on a) (parce que, car)
Adjectives (describe - colours etc)
Timeframes (past, present, future)
Improving outcomes –
Developing speaking and writing
Introduce each element at a time.
Focus on a variety of phrases, and different ways pupils can make their
sentences longer, and more varied – from discussion about simple items e.g.
animals to more complex issues e.g. leisure activities and holiday destinations.
Pupils can have this as a visual checklist for a speaking activities (it could also
be used in writing)
As pupils become more familiar, challenge them to ensure all sentences cover
all of these areas. Start to set skill based objectives e.g.
1. Create a sentence with 10 words minimum in it,
2. Speak about yourself for 20 seconds and use 6 linking words
Give them a framework for remembering 'useful little words’
The Alphabet of Useful Little Words
Task: would this work for your language? Can we come up with the same
thing in Spanish/German/Italian?
Improving outcomes –
Developing speaking and writing
AVOCADO
Set regular homework using avocado.
Get pupils to peer assess and self assess regularly.
Use this as a criteria for marking homework.
Lesson plan
Improving outcomes –
Developing speaking and writing
Regular extended writing practice
Get pupils used to writing as much as they will be
expected to produce at GCSE
Extended writing task
Would your pupils be able to complete this task?
What support would you give them?
How would you gradually make them more
independent?
Other ideas?
Extended writing
Level 7 Packs
Your ideas
Motivation and outcomes –
alternative provision
FCSE
Language leaders
Motivation and outcomes –
outside of the classroom
Get Set Network
Arsenal Double Club
Language Ambassadors