Post half term break, renewed enthusiasm!

I don't know about you, but I was just about clawing myself through the last two weeks of last half term. I tried to be bouncy and whizzy, but I had no fuel left in my tank!

However, sitting down to do a bit of work today and finding myself procrastinating as usual, I remembered that I needed to produce a resource to help my Year 7 and 8 classes develop their routines and in turn, their classroom language. I am fortunate enough to have what I think is the best department in the world; we work together exceptionally well and we all contribute resources to our departmental Google Drive account (Which, by the way, is a wonderful way of collaborating and has completely changed the way I work. I never use a memory pen. If your school sets it up as an education establishment, you get the education version with unlimited memory and also you get the benefit of Google Classroom, which is also awesome! Anyway, I digress!). My amazing RQT @sophiamccrea had produced something of this ilk and I was able to adapt it, so that it is organised in a way that I could use it. I also made some minor alterations to suit the way I teach.

If you click here, you will have access to my 'Reg and exit' slides. If you want to edit it, you will have to make a copy. It will also download as a PowerPoint presentation, but you will lose the fonts and some of the tables will look different. If you want to know how I will use it, you will need to read my previous posts about routines, classroom language routines etc. I will add more as I go along (although not on the slides I have posted here) as their confidence grows.

Kinda looking forward to Monday!

Another new year!

The start to another new year approaches. In a few days, I will be faced with a classroom full of bright, shiny, nervous new faces all wondering what their German lessons will entail. They have no idea what lies in front of them; so many changes and new challenges; new KS3 schemes of work and levels, new GCSEs which 90% of them will be expected to take in a language, new GCSE grading system and new A-Levels. All of this change means that it is even more important to get them listening to and using the target language as soon as possible to be able to cope with the demands of the new courses; spontaneous language will feature quite high on the GCSE agenda. So we have a job to do and sooner is better than later. I saw something in a Facebook group this week that resonated with me: "If you don't speak French in your English class, why would you speak English in your French class?" - Richard Smith.

My classroom language washing lines are up for reference, I have labelled items in the classroom, I have posted realia round the room to immerse them a little in German speaking environments and I think I'm ready to go.

The washing line of classroom phrases will be vital, especially in the first few weeks as I set up the all important register routine. This is the beginning of them using German phrases to communicate with me that they want to carry out a job for me, such as; take the register, do the team points etc. From here we will go on to use opinion phrases to express our thoughts about how we thought the register routine went. An altogether mundane part of the lesson, turned into an absolutely essential learning opportunity.

Once they start using the phrases spontaneously, I will reward them with stickers and we will move on to other, more complicated phrases. We will use structures and grammar that we will unpick in time, but not at the start. I'm not going to bamboozle them with grammar in their first few lessons with me; there's time for that when we start to look at things in more detail. I am merely paving the way.

I always feel excited at the prospect of a new year. I am genuinely looking forward to being there at the start of these pupils' learning journey. Some of them might take German to GCSE, A-Level and beyond; some might use the language on our trip to Austria, or in their German exchange partner's house in a few years. Who knows; some of them might well use German on a day to day basis in their chosen profession, or just because they can.

But for the time being, they will ask if they do the register, for now they will give their opinions about how well they thought the register went and most importantly, they will have fun doing it; and so will I!