Nice ideas for Cover Lessons

 If we need work for a lesson where the teacher is unexpectedly absent, we need some fail-safe work that is going to be useful and worthwhile for the pupils, but which doesn't require specialist knowledge or input from the supply teacher or cover supervisor who will be taking the lesson, as part of a day that probably ranges from science, to Spanish, to drama, to French, to music... We owe it to them to make the languages lesson the easiest and most rewarding part of their day.

And even if it's a planned absence, and you leave work that you know fits in perfectly with what the pupils are working on, you can still come back to find they have roamed the school searching for the dictionaries, and claimed not to be able to tackle your carefully planned work.

So here are some ideas for work for lessons (cover, pupils absent, isolated or excluded) that contain all the language needed within the task itself.

The first is adapted from a drag and drop foolproof computer-based lesson:

It is not a tangled translation. It's just tangled texts. All the language is given. So all pupils have to do is copy out separate English and French paragraphs. (In my screen shot, the spell checker is trying to help by underlining what it thinks are the non English words.) It is not a task that pupils can panic over or claim to be unable to do. And it does involve enough thought to be worthwhile, while also modelling the sort of paragraphs we want them to be able to make out of the language they know. The next task in the lesson can ask them to compile a glossary of words in the parallel paragraphs. Then you can set as a further task, to do a translation, based on the words they have already met on the page. No need to go hunting for dictionaries. No excuses for not getting it done!

Here's another task that provides all the French needed. It gives pupils the correct version. Then they have to identify which of the three options below is exactly the same as the correct one. Clare Seccombe writes here about whether or not it's a good idea to show pupils "wrong" French. I certainly have no qualms about this activity. It's designed to draw attention to the correct version!

Then the next task to follow this one is very similar but in paragraphs. The first one here (below) gives the correct and incorrect version  for pupils to find the mistakes. And then a similar paragraph with the same mistakes to find and correct.

This coffee splat task doesn't hand the pupils all the words in quite the same way as the tasks above. But it gives them enough so that they don't seem to panic and are happy to get on with it. I did have one class who were convinced it had really coffee (or was it poo?) and refused to touch it. So much for fail-safe!

Another task that does give pupils all the words they need, is a task based on parallel texts in English and the target language. Here they have exactly the same text in French and in English. They have to locate the underlined words in the other language and highlight them. Again, they can then compile a glossary of these words and use them in further tasks such as translation or putting the spaces back into sentences.

If we are going to give pupils texts where all the words are supplied, then we can give them more ambitious texts and ask them to match words, or match paragraphs, or fill in gaps. This one seems to do all of those. It's a snippet from an A3 sheet of 6 stories of careless Canadian criminals. The stories in English on one page. And in French on the other, opposite. 

First they have to read and match up the French version to the English version correctly. Then they have to fill in some gaps by finding the exact information in the other language. Then there are some underlined words for them to find in the other language. Some cover supervisors like these because they can leave the pupils to get on with it. Others like it because they can read through and enjoy the stories with the pupils.

With a focus on accuracy, modelling, reading for meaning, learning new words, these tasks are a worthwhile lesson, while at the same time containing all the language pupils are going to need, without going off on a wild dictionary hunt!

Here's a link so you can download some when you need!