If you give a mouse a cookie...

 If you give a mouse a cookie is a delightful children's book by Laura Numeroff and illustrated by Felicia Bond. Some pupils know it and always remember it fondly. When the time comes to use it in language teaching, I can either just tell the story, or take in a copy, or I think it's also available being read aloud on youtube.

Here's the gist of the story: If you give a mouse a cookie, he's going to ask for a glass of milk. If you give a mouse a glass of milk, he will want to look in the mirror to see if he's got a milk moustache. If you give a mouse a mirror, he'll probably notice his hair needs a trim... And so on.

And it's the "and so on" that makes it relevant to language teaching. That the next idea is at once inevitable, logical, and yet imaginative, creative.

We actually spend as much time teaching pupils to use their language, as we do on the language itself. How to develop ideas, narrate events, add detail, make it more personal, more sophisticated, more spontaneous. There is a strong oracy/literacy component to helping pupils come up with answers which take an idea and develop it. As well as meeting the requirements of the markscheme. And of course, all the practice working on what you can do with your language, is simultaneously working on the language. So despite what we are being told by Ofsted, it is not a waste of precious time.

So here's some examples.

If you give a mouse a cookie... he's going to want to ask for a glass of milk...

If you give an opinion, you are probably going to justify it.

No "probably" about it. This is an absolutely compulsory routine built in to what our pupils learn to say. Pupils love j'aime and j'adore. They latch on to opinions really well. Make parce que an obligatory part of what comes next. Some schools go with parce que c'est + adjective. I prefer parce que je peux / parce que je dois. Even if pupils use an adjective, I make them add can/can't/have to.

J'aime jouer au tennis parce que c'est passionnant et je peux aller au parc y jouer avec mes amis.

If you justify an opinion, you are probably going to explore the circumstances.

The "And so on" keeps on rolling. Either instead of the parce que or as well as the parce que, next I like pupils to use surtout or surtout si. It can be especially if I can go with my friends or especially if it is sunny or especially if I have to stay at home.

If you use one if sentence, you are probably going to follow it up with another.

Pupils like the idea of two for the price of one. If you have mentioned what happens if it is sunny, you will probably say, but if it rains... If you say what you can do with your friends, you will probably say, but if I have to go with my family...

J'aime jouer au tennis parce que c'est passionant et je peux aller au parc y jouer avec mes amis. Surtout s'il fait beau. Mais s'il pleut je dois rester chez-moi.

If you mention someone else, you are probably going to use a conjugated verb.

What to say next? Well, if you have mentioned my friends or my brother, then make it a rule that this is where you bring in some of those 3rd person verbs you have been using. Or the first person plural. Don't just learn them and wonder what to do with them. Have a plan with how they are going to fit in and extend your routines.

J'aime jouer au tennis parce que c'est passionant et je peux aller au parc y jouer avec mes amis. Nous jouons tous les samedis. Surtout s'il fait beau. Mais s'il pleut je dois rester chez-moi.

If you have given an opinion, you probably ought to give someone else's opinion too.

In French saying my sister likes is easy. As long as you can stop pupils saying ma soeur j'aime!! In Spanish it is more fun, as you have to say to my sister it is pleasing - a mi hermana le gusta. It's worth it, to show off some clever Spanish. But also, it's a natural development of the idea that makes it feel personal and detailed. And by introducing a note of conflict, it sets up a further set of possibilities. If you like, it could also include the subjunctive: my mum doesn't like that I go to Norwich with my friends.

J'aime jouer au tennis parce que c'est passionant et je peux aller au parc y jouer avec mes amis. Nous jouons tous les samedis. Surtout s'il fait beau. Mais s'il pleut je dois rester chez-moi. Par contre, ma soeur préfère aller en ville.

If you have given an opinion, you probably want to give an example in the past.

This might just be for example I played football at the weekend. But of course knowing what mice are like, the whole situation may become a little more complicated. Why not start with saying what I was doing or what I was going to do...? Use the imperfect just once to set up the situation. This could be what the weather was like, or j'allais faire mes devoirs or j'étais en ville...

If you say what was going to happen, you probably need a but... or a so...

As logically as milk goes with a cookie. If you say, il faisait beau... you are going to say, alors j'ai décidé de... If you say j'allais faire mes devoirs... you are going to say, mais j'ai décidé de...

If you are debating whether to do what you were going to do or decide to do something else, you would do well to bring in direct speech.

If you were going to do your homework but it was a lovely day, it makes sense that you would say to your mum, Je ne veux pas faire mes devoirs. Or that your friend would say, Je vais aller au parc. Because that's how decisions happen and plans get changed.

If you use direct speech, always include a reply.

As logically as trimming your moustache goes with looking in a mirror. If one person says something, another person replies. It brings your answer to life, makes it personal and detailed and makes it feel real.

J'aime jouer au tennis parce que c'est passionant et je peux aller au parc y jouer avec mes amis. Nous jouons tous les samedis. Surtout s'il fait beau. Mais s'il pleut je dois rester chez-moi. Par contre, ma soeur préfère aller en ville. Le week-end j'allais faire mes devoirs mais il faisait beau, alors ma soeur a dit, "Je vais aller en ville." J'ai dit, "Je dois faire mes devoirs." Elle m'a dit, "Tu peux faire tes devoirs demain." Alors j'ai décidé d'aller en ville avec ma soeur.

If you went along with what someone else wanted you probably might have some regrets.

In town, I wanted to see my friends, but my sister wanted to buy some shoes. At the beach, I wanted to play on the arcades, but my friends wanted to swim in the sea. This is the logical consequence of the difference of opinion that happened earlier in the book. Or the conversation that took place on the previous page. Worth learning words for unfortunately at this stage. And here is where you can deploy your past tense verbs to say what actually happened.

If you had some regrets, you will probably want to say what you would have preferred to do.

J'aurais préféré isn't any harder to learn than je voudrais, for example. And I'm not saying to throw it in randomly as an "impressive piece of language". It's here because it's doing an necessary job in the story of opinions, conflict, decision, disappointment that we have built up. Alternatively you could say what your plans are for next weekend, sticking to what you want to do this time!

J'aime jouer au tennis parce que c'est passionant et je peux aller au parc y jouer avec mes amis. Nous jouons tous les samedis. Surtout s'il fait beau. Mais s'il pleut je dois rester chez-moi. Par contre, ma soeur préfère aller en ville. Le week-end j'allais faire mes devoirs mais il faisait beau, alors ma soeur a dit, "Je vais aller en ville." J'ai dit, "Je dois faire mes devoirs." Elle m'a dit, "Tu peux faire tes devoirs demain." Alors j'ai décidé d'aller en ville avec ma soeur. Je voulais acheter des chaussures mais malheureusement ma soeur voulait voir ses amis. Alors nous ne sommes pas allées au centre commercial. J'aurais voulu aller aux magasins. Demain je voudrais retourner en ville mais je dois faire mes devoirs.

And there's your answer. It could have been about going to the beach. Or a school club. Or a holiday destination. Because the markscheme always asks for developed answers, giving and justifying opinions and narrating events. Just like a mouse always ends up eating another cookie.

Related posts with different ways to exploit this idea: 

Game Plan

My Granny Went Shopping

A Universally Useful Model Answer

And what if we are wrong...?

 Here is a slide from the inspirational Steven Fawkes from a recent Association for Language Learning event for early career teachers.

These are the values that language teachers hold dear. They give us our identity, our motivation, our energy to keep on going. It's what candidates at interview proudly tell us, and the things we reach for when we need to make our lessons more inspiring.

But what if we are wrong? What if these are precisely the things which increase the cognitive demands on pupils and get in the way of actually learning the language? What if they depend on prior cultural knowledge and expectations that mean pupils who are put in the position of having to "express themselves" are unnecessarily put off learning a language?

I remember my parents telling me that they had A Levels in languages but couldn't use them to communicate. And promising me that my school experience would remedy this. And for as long as I can remember, it has been axiomatic that you don't delay the ability to communicate in the language until mastery of the entire system has been achieved.

We can expect each generation to react to the generation before and move on. I remember in the 90s, being told not to show pupils the written form because it would interfere with their pronunciation. Instead of teaching them the sound-spelling patterns. One generation focusing on excellent pronunciation and oral fluency. The next, worried about pupils making up their own homemade spellings based on English. This oral approach was a response to "Languages for All", developing a style of teaching based on functional phrases, avoiding writing and light on grammar. But then, in my experience, "reluctant" pupils much prefer writing to speaking. And enjoy learning rules. And love terminology. Even if it is usually, "Masculine and feminine" or "Cognate".

But... Culture, Communication, Self-Expression, Creativity. These are big things to be wrong about!

Telling people they are doing everything wrong, à la Michael Gove, is often counter-productive. And the coordinated pincer movement of Ofsted and the new GCSE proposals has not gone down well. The Research Review, the accompanying explanatory curriculum webinars, and the reported focus of deep dive inspections, have appeared to challenge teachers on their core values and competence. And the languages teaching community, across sectors, have reacted as if under attack.

Even if it has managed to alienate many of us, if we can ignore the manner of its imposition, we ought to examine the ideas in good faith, and continue to question our own assumptions.

One sweetener we are offered is that removing Communication means fairer testing. Pupils are to be tested on their knowledge and recall of what they have been taught. Not on their ability to use it. In particular, the proposed new GCSE promises to improve the Listening and Reading papers. I am not convinced by this. The reason the Listening and Reading papers are so appalling is precisely because they have lost sight of Comprehension of meaning. They are already designed to test pupils' ability to spot language features rather than to understand. The markschemes regularly stipulate answers which demand word by word transcription and reject ones which genuinely answer the question. The "She was impressed with a school because they grew vegetables on PART of the playing field" example isn't an aberration. It is how the exam board think of language-learning. And the new GCSE proposals are to go even further down this road!

What are the really good things that we could take from these proposed changes? Well, I am definitely sympathetic to an increased awareness of what we are "really" teaching. So for example if I am teaching pets in French, then yes, I am definitely aware that it is a great vehicle for practising the phonics we have been working on. And that we are going to meet concepts of singular, plural, masculine and feminine, and the verb to have. And it's my job as the teacher that while the pupils are learning to talk about their pets, that I keep sight of what the things are that are going to be most important and most useful. Which I agree, is probably not lists of nouns and obscure domestic fauna.

I think that pupils at this stage are focused on the meaning. They are relating the language they are learning to being able to express things about themselves and the real world. The connections they are making and their focus is all largely on meaning, perhaps on nouns and other words high in concrete meaning. While the teacher is at the same time starting to introduce structures, patterns, high frequency language, verbs, knowledge of what the individual words mean and their inflections... So what I am being challenged to ask is, "Is the focus on meaning and communication deleterious to what pupils are really learning?"

My first reaction is "No. It's a vehicle for what they are ultimately learning." And that I wouldn't want to sharpen a focus on forms by reducing my pupils' focus on meaning. But what I will do, is really watch out and see if there are pupils who successfully learn araignée but aren't picking up the difference between je and j'ai. I think there probably are. Is that because we teach araignée explicitly and leave them to pick up j'ai ? Or is is it because they are quite naturally focused at this stage on the words they perceive to carry most meaning?

And if "pets" is just a vehicle for teaching what pupils are really learning, then perhaps we need to look at our planning. Are we teaching the verb to have incidentally because it goes with what pets you have? Or are we teaching pets because it's a useful topic for meeting the verb to have? And so, have we planned our curriculum around a series of sets of nouns (and structures which incidentally turn out to be useful), or have we planned what the most useful structures are and matched the content to that?

The answer of course is that we have tried to do both. Have NCELP done it brilliantly and so well that we should all just adopt their scheme of work and resources because ours could never be so thorough? Possibly. And thank you to NCELP for doing it. It's a level of micro planning and careful thought that has been done so professionally and in such detail that does make me think I would be very silly to try to invent my own version.

Except for one thing. I am suspicious of the sufficiency of paper plans and resources. When learning happens for real in what is going on in the classroom and in pupils' minds. At my school, our curriculum is based on developing the pupils' growing repertoire of language and their ability to use it. We constantly work on pupils' ability to give and explain opinions and narrate events. Making sure that anything added to the repertoire enables them to expand what they can do as a next step in being able to give more detailed or personal answers.

And I am very aware of the idea of a learner's "interlanguage". That they have an evolving conceptualisation of the language. Which is messy, partial, incomplete. Which evolves as they learn more and which can be called upon to express themselves. The alternative seems to be a collection of remembered structures and rules which if it isn't rolled up into a functioning proto-system, and remains as a set of discrete facts, isn't any sort of language at all.

Rather than looking at the language as a whole grammatical system and mapping what they should meet when, we look at their kernel of language and decide what to add next. This seems like a totally different way of looking at things. Especially in the role of developing communication, oracy and literacy. But in terms of planning, it doesn't have to be in opposition. Good and thorough planning, step by step resources don't have to clash with our approach. We have introduced our Fluent in 5 lesson starters to recycle important language and to draw attention explicitly to forms. I have used some of the NCELP phonics resources in these starters, and I could certainly use some of their planning to help map what are the key structures and when pupils meet them.

This still hasn't got to the fundamental question of whether to relinquish a focus on Communication and Self Expression. I think I can manage some of the issues we've looked at. I can be fully aware of what pupils are "really" learning, and balance my underlying focus on form with pupils' immediate focus on meaning. I can make sure that pupils explicitly meet key recyclable language and grasp concepts and patterns. In fact this is fundamental to a curriculum which asks them to communicate, express themselves and be creative.

This leaves the cognitive load and cultural assumptions of pupils being expected to express themselves. Again, I would say that we have recognised this. And precisely because of this we spend so much time on it. We don't (I hope) leave behind pupils who have nothing to say in French or struggle with the language because thinking up what to say is too demanding. We tackle this head on, working on how to develop ideas, think up what to say, use the ingredients you have in order to make something nice.

But perhaps I should reconsider Culture, Communication, Creativity as being some kind of totemic magic wand to inspire struggling or reluctant pupils. They are the aim, not the means. Where pupils struggle, it certainly can be explicit, defined, step by step learning, with a clear focus on exactly what is to be learned, that can get them back on track. It must be possible to step back from polarised debate and take what works. I just hope Ofsted and the GCSE let us do this!

Embracing Ambiguity in La Casa de Bernarda Alba

 Two of the most popular set "texts" for AQA A Level Spanish are Almodóvar's Volver and La Casa de Bernarda Alba by García Lorca. In a recent post, I looked at how having a clear idea of the "meaning" of Volver can give clarity to an argument. In this post, I am going to look at how embracing ambiguities and different interpretations can help structure an essay on La Casa de Bernarda Alba.

There are different views of the play, and rather than causing confusion, this is a gift to the student in the exam, offering the opportunity to explore an aspect of the play from different perspectives.

Here is a list of the opposing view points that might be confusing:

Is La Casa de Bernarda Alba García Lorca's masterpiece, or is it incomplete and flawed? It's survived the test of time, still being performed around the world and finding its way onto A Level syllabuses. So it must be good. But also it was never performed in García Lorca's lifetime and it maybe lacks the final polishing. The text itself in different editions has had to be "corrected". But does the lack of "finish" explain some of the ambiguities on this list, or are they deliberately creating tension between realism and drama?

Is García Lorca a "popular" poet and playwright or a heavy-weight intellectual? He famously took the theatre to the regions of Spain, was inspired by folk song and cante jondo, and loved puppet theatre. He was also an intimate friend of Salvador Dalí and Luís Buñuel, having moved away from Andalucía to Madrid.

So is his work realist or surrealist? There is a tension and a transition. The stage directions in Act One specify pictures on the wall, doors with curtains and bows, chairs. By Act Three, the set is to be of complete simplicity, with the walls described more as an effect of light. The Acts represent morning, afternoon and night. But not on the same day. So the audience experience an ambiguity in the passing of time. And each Act has a similar movement from the everyday to something more violent or dramatic.

And in his plays is Andalucía a deep and intimate source of roots and passion? Or a stereotype of a passionate land of black and white contrasts of life and death, love and hatred? Is it a "costumbrista" setting giving local colour or is it a world his immediate audience were familiar with in their everyday life? Or is Andalucía irrelevant in a work that is about the universal human condition?

Are his characters well defined individuals? Or are they more like a chorus of women, sisters all dressed alike, speaking with the same voice? The voice not of a dramatist, but of a poet.

And is that language poetic or vulgar? Does La Poncia speak in images and metaphors of a campesina, or is it the language of poetry? Is the play a web of symbols that accumulate poetic resonance, or are they concrete references to the world in which the play is set?

Bernarda. Is she in control, "dominanta"? Or is she in denial, in a permanent state of self deception? Before we even meet her, even as her servants are describing her in terrifying terms, they are stealing her chickpeas and chorizo. When she arrives and commands, "Silencio" it is in response to the servant talking about her relationship with Bernarda's late husband. Bernarda can command nothing except to silence the truth, even from herself.

So many questions. And great to challenge students to approach the play with an open mind. But also an excellent framework for any essay question. Pupils can use the ambiguities to write separate paragraphs looking at the title from different angles.

In an emergency, almost any essay can be tackled using this plan:

If you consider the play to be a melodrama of a family in conflict...

If you consider the play to be a sociological study of life in rural Spain...

If you consider the play to be a study of the human psyche, the conflict of the id and the superego...

Perhaps the play is about... a. García Lorca or b. All of us...

So ambiguity, tension, interpretation of different perspectives are there not to be resolved, but to be exploited. That's what writing an essay involves!

Why I don't call it "The Summary Question"

 In the A Level Spanish Listening, Reading and Writing exam, there is a question called "The Summary Question". It comes up in the Listening section and again in the Reading section. In this post I am going to look at how to approach it, and why calling "The Summary Question" is a dangerous red herring.

I am going to look at the 2018 A Level Spanish paper. It is important to point out that what follows applies to Spanish but not necessarily to French. In French, it seems to be much more of a "summarise in your own words" task, based on re-writing the relevant parts of the text using synonyms and re-wording of sentences. And of course, if a new paper-setter comes along for Spanish, the nature of the task could change fundamentally in Spanish too, without warning. But my analysis of the demands of the task in previous Spanish papers, backed up by explicit comments in the Examiner's Report, suggest that it is not really about summarising points from the text in your own words. And once you understand what the hidden agenda of the examiner is, your students can approach the task in a completely different way.

Here is the first part of the reading summary text from 2018.

AQA 2018 A Level Paper 1

From the start, we have to be on our guard. The text is accompanied by a photo to give "context". Unfortunately, the topic of the text is a photo. But the photo discussed in the article is NOT the photo we are given. The photo we are given is presented as if it were part of the press article. But it's important to understand it is not part of it at all. It's part of the exam paper to gloss the concept of the Catalán human pyramids "los castellers." As students read the article, the false clue of the picture immediately leads to confusion.

Secondly, the entire first paragraph is also entirely for "context" and should not be part of your "summary" of the text. If you approach this innocently as a summary task, you can easily be trapped into including content which is just not on the examiner's markscheme. This is even more important when we come onto the Listening, as we shall see.

The first bullet point we are asked to summarise is, "According to Ana, what did she do that day?"

This is where we start to realise what is behind some of the examiner's thinking. The words, "according to Ana" direct us to the second paragraph. And as an innocent "summariser" I would say that what she did was to go to see the castellers, take a photo, and put it on social media.

Here is what the markscheme accepts for this bullet point. You will see that my innocent summary would score one mark at best. I don't have the specific detail they want, even though I thought I gave a concise summary answer to the question, "What did she do?".  

Now, we can rail against the bizarre markscheme - is what she wanted to do really the answer to the question what did she do? But instead, it would be more helpful to find out why the examiner accepts these answers. And why this is not really a summary question at all.

The first clue is in the Reject column. Answers in the first person are to be rejected. This is why the text is in the format of an interview. So that the student has to change the language from the first person to the third person.

The second clue is in the explanation of how the marks for language are awarded:

You could be forgiven for thinking that the mention of "complex language" might be an invitation to include fancy phrases or personal evaluation. But the key is in the words "where required by the task". You might expect this to mean "required by the bullet points" where the points are constructed in such a way that you have to give a certain angle that would require language for evaluating or suggesting. No. It's not the bullet points. It's the text itself. The examiners have built the complex language into the original text. You might think that your job as a summariser is to simplify this, expressing it in your own words, more concisely. This is where the word "summary" starts to be unhelpful.

A more specific clue comes in the definition of "serious errors". It specifically mentions "incorrect use of pronouns." This is going to be a very important area of interest to the examiner.

Let's look back to the example in the castellers text.

The answers are textually very close to the original text. Despite the requirement to write "in your own words". So the answer to "What did she do?" is to hunt for the verbs in the first person: I decided, I fancied, I posted and to turn them into the third person. And now you are looking at it this way, you will see throughout this text, they are feeding you verbs in different tenses and with little quirks (colgué - colgó...).

Except of course, "I fancied" isn't in the first person. It is a construction with "me". And this is where the reference to pronouns looms large. The direct object pronoun is me. The indirect object pronoun is me. The reflexive pronoun is me. But when you put it into the third person, it could be le, lo/la, or se. Have a look at this question and other examples of the "summary" and see how often this comes up. Now you understand why "le apetecía" is in the markscheme as a correct answer, even though it doesn't actually answer the question "What did she do that morning?".

It's not a Summarise the Bullet Points in your Own Words task at all. It is a Find the Complex Language and Manipulate It task.

This is confirmed by the examiner's report.

This understanding now tells us how to approach the Listening "summary".

The Listening question in the 2018 exam is about Miss World. Again, there is a first paragraph for "context" which is not to be used for the answer. Remember, the candidate has control of pause, play and rewind. They must not spend time re-listening to the introductory section!

Then the passage is again in the form of an interview. And the best way to approach it, once you have listened through to get a general understanding, is to transcribe the verbs.

When you do this, you find a selection of tenses, a bunch of expressions with me and some irregular verbs. Now you understand this is a grammar manipulation task, you can proceed to put these into the third person. Paying particular attention to se sintió and le encantó. And spotting that although the si no hubiera sido por... doesn't actually answer the bullet point "What does she remember?", it is irresistible to the examiner and IS on the markscheme as the correct answer.

You must not call this the Summarise in Your Own Words Task. If you use your own words you risk what you put not being on the list of acceptable answers. You must not go for simplification. The complex language is there for you to use. And finding the complex language will guide you to the parts of the text that the examiner wants, even when they don't seem directly relevant to the bullet points.

Hopefully if you are one of the happy few who made it to A Level Spanish, you already understood at GCSE that the examiner has a hidden agenda, and that the Reading and Listening questions are not comprehension questions at all. So the fact that A Level has its own bizarre secret society handshake designed to exclude the poor innocents will come as no surprise. But please, keep it to yourself. We don't want everyone knowing, or they will have to change the secret code!

Why Randomise your French?

 Joe Dale has contacted me to let me know he's made a Spinner Wheel out of one of my Keep Talking Sheets. 

In the picture you can only see two of the four wheels. You can click to spin each wheel individually or spin all wheels at once. They are designed so that they produce grammatically correct French. Whether or not the sentence makes sense, is a different question. When you have spun the wheels, it will pop up the result in a text box for you to read.

Joe actually referred to it as a Sentence Builder but if you look at it, you will see it's not about building a sentence. When you have spun all 4 wheels, it doesn't come to a full stop. "I can sing in the garden, but if it is cold..." is the random sentence I got by spinning Joe's wheels. So now I need to spin again to carry on.

So I now have, "I can sing in the garden, but if it is cold I like to play the trumpet at the youth club, but if it rains..." and round again we go.

So the French is grammatically correct, the meaning is random, and the lack of full stops makes it ultimately incoherent. So what is the point?

There are 3 points.

1. Showing pupils that writing and speaking French doesn't happen by magic. It is built out of recombinable chunks.

2. You don't start with a blank piece of paper or a blank mind and wonder what to say and come up with nothing or come up with something you can't say. You start with the chunks, and make something out of them.

3. The French is actually easy. You just use the chunks you have been learning. You practise using them over and over. But the real job is, once the French is flowing, to make sure it makes sense, to make it coherent, to make it something you do want to say.

Joe was really pleased to send me this, because he knows it's something I have been looking for for a very long time. In 2006 the tech department made me one out of wood, with spinning cardboard tube barrels. And in 2011 I made this machine for writing French:

Instead of spinning barrels or wheels, this one works with a shape sorter. But it works on the same principle of producing a long sentence in French through mechanical non magical means. It was part of a series of sessions for a group of disaffected boys, to change their attitude to French by showing them the step by step processes.

So it might seem odd to produce random sentences, but it is the physical, mechanical nature of the process that we are trying to emphasise.

We do the same thing in speaking activities in class. We use dice for conjunctions so that where a sentence would end, the pupils always have and, but, so, for example, especially if, because... and carry on.

We tell pupils we want them to beat the world record for the longest French sentence:

This often brings two different reactions from pupils. One is that pupils love to make silly sentences, enjoying the creativity and fun. The other is that they desperately want to take control and make it make sense. Both of these reactions are good.

And the next step is to work on the coherence, taking one idea at a time and developing it. But the ability to talk and talk spontaneously, giving opinions and justifying them, always reaching for a conjunction to carry on, is the core of their repertoire across all topics. In the GCSE Game Plan, it is playing the ball out from the back, keeping possession without taking risks, moving the ball confidently and moving into space to get the ball back. (Before moving into the opposition half to try something fancy or score a goal.) In the food tech metaphor, it is the cake you can always make out of store-cupboard ingredients. (Before putting on the icing and smarties.)

So Spinner Wheel and Flippity are both fantastic for showing pupils how you start with the ingredients and combine them to create French. How do I use them in class?

I actually use them very rarely in class. In the early but important stages of moving pupils to thinking about how to use the French they have learned. It's as an initial demonstration rather than as an activity. Firstly for the mechanical process of putting chunks together. And secondly for evaluating meaning and coherence. Is our sentence a good one or does it need tweaking? Flippity has the ability to re-spin or even nudge the barrel, which is fantastic for sorting out sentences that are grammatically correct but not logical.

 I do like to use them for homework. Asking pupils to spin and write down the sentence in French and English. Because it's an activity they have to do, without being able to just use google translate.

I know other people use them differently. For example with the barrels/wheels in English for pupils to translate. Or with infinitives that the pupils have to conjugate depending on the person. Esmeralda Salgado's amazing blog has great examples.

We have come a long way since spinning toilet rolls on bits of wood!

Interaction - in the classroom and beyond

 If you are visiting this blog for the first time, here are some pointers to ideas, activities and resources for classroom interaction and for taking interaction beyond the classroom:

Being Ben - A Keep Talking Activity

Using Keep Talking Sheets

Keep Talking with Dice

Low Preparation Speaking Activities

Scribble Talk

Adapting Battleships and Connect 4

Assessing Speaking

Building up a story

Talking about Table Manners

Memorise or improvise?

Developing longer answers and stories

Virtual Exchanges

Creating an Art Exhibition

Part Two. Sartre, Proust, Almodóvar -Volver.

In Part One we met our three protagonists: Proust, Sartre, and Almodóvar. Let's see where we left them...

Marcel Proust. Life wasted because we all seek the anesthetic of habit to ward off the paralysing fear of death. Moments of liberation through art and ultimate hope of salvation through his own creativity as a writer. Moments of ecstasy and a sense of self through the senses. Anesthetic, aesthetic, synaesthetic.

Jean Paul Sartre. Our experience of the universe always mediated by human senses and conceptualisations. The meaningless absurd universe is disconcerting, but ultimately it is us that give it meaning. Just existing is a creative act. We determine our own identity, create our own self and our life's meaning through our actions. And it is our responsibility to accept this freedom and act authentically, without falling back on the excuse of how society expects us to behave.

Almodóvar. In his own life, embraces freedom as he comes of age at the end of the dictatorship. Personal, political, sexual, religious, artistic freedom. Paralysing fear of death makes him question the validity of constantly striving to be authentic.

In his films. Likes to play with layers of fiction and reality. Sets up his films as a petri-dish to explore philosophical ideas. Is on a trajectory that can be plotted on a graph where over time the emotional impact of his films is heightened, and the intellectual games become less frequent. His attitude to romantic or sexual love is becoming less hedonistic and turning into a worry about self gratification, predatory relationships, abuse. This is replaced by a strengthening attitude towards family love. And through all these shifts across his career, the one constant is the human voice. One person telling their story to another.

This concern with authenticity in life and the destruction of death come to a head in the pair of films Todo sobre mi Madre  and  Volver. Both films are set up around a strong female character who has to rebuild her life after a tragedy.

In the contrast between the two films, we can see Almodóvar's trajectory away from intellectual games, towards more direct personal and emotional impact. Todo sobre mi Madre is a film full of references to other works of art. All about Eve and  A Streetcar named Desire are explicit parallels for Manuela's life, entwined into the fabric of Almodóvar's film. They are elegant, clever, playful. But what is their role in a film about the devastating impact of the death of a son? These explicit intellectual references seem to detract from the emotional impact of the film. For Proust, works of art provide ecstatic moments of meaning. In this film, Almodóvar is using works of art to intellectualise, to keep the overwhelming fear of death at arm's length, as a form of existential anesthetic.

In Volver, Julieta and Dolor y Gloria, Almodóvar is on a deliberate trajectory to reduce the overt intellectual interplay. And by forcing himself to renounce many of his trademark set pieces, he enhances the emotional and personal impact.

In Volver, there are no overt parallels with other works of art. Optical illusions, reflections and superimposition of images are almost entirely avoided. Comically placed posters and adverts have almost gone. There are no flashbacks, even though the film constantly refers to dramatic moments that happened in the past. The typical Almodóvar Latin American song is hidden as a flamenco version of a Carlos Gardel tango. He even hides the conflict between blue and red in amongst purples and pinks and a particularly nasty pair of orange curtains. And an A Level student unfamiliar with Almodóvar's other films could be forgiven for thinking that it is simply a story.

The intellectual themes have not gone away, though. They are just subdued or hidden. Visconti's Bellissima is there throughout the film with its neorealist scenes of working class domestic life. In scenes where a mother in heels drags her daughter tottering through the street, a bus lit up on the inside, characters shouting messages from windows, seeking escape by a river, a mother and daughter embracing on a bench. In its story of a mother taking her daughter to an audition. In its obsession with cinema. In its use of members of the public instead of actors, or actors who are not actors playing themselves. And finally, at the end of Volver, Irene is watching a scene from Bellissima where a father tells a story to a child. The human voice (with subtitles).

At the end of Part One, I left you with a quote from Almodóvar and promised to show you how Volver resolves his existential(ist) angst.

Tengo la impresión, y espero que no sea un sentimiento pasajero, de que he conseguido encajar una pieza (cuyo desajuste, a lo largo de mi vida, me ha provocado mucho dolor y ansiedad, diría incluso que en los últimos años había deteriorado mi existencia, dramatizándola más de la cuenta). La pieza a la que me refiero es «la muerte»; no sólo la mía y la de mis seres queridos, sino la desaparición implacable de todo lo que está vivo.

In Volver, Almodóvar returns to the region of his earliest childhood: rural La Mancha. Having made his life and fame in Madrid, this is a Proustian return to childhood and family. His sisters were present for the filming, advising him on details and even cooking the flan that we see being turned out from its pot. He has said that he felt the presence of his mother in the making of the film, as a positive and lasting influence in his life after the shock of her death. So for Almodóvar, this film is personal.

The protagonist Raimunda has moved to Madrid. But has not found freedom and authenticity. Her life is "sin sentido" in two senses - meaningless and also without feeling. Proust's anesthetic of the humdrum that keeps desolation away. But the film becomes a painful yet powerful throwing off of the lack of meaning. It shows the protagonist (and Almodóvar according to the quote above) managing to fit the pieces together, making sense of what for many years had caused pain and anxiety.

Almodóvar orchestrates this transition through a beautiful series of scenes where all of his signature cinematographic traits come together to tell us what is happening. Starting with the familiar conflict between the blue of anesthetised inauthenticity and the saturated red of action and taking back control.

Raimunda's life in Madrid is characterised by the colour blue. A washed out cold blue. The blue light of the scene where we see her not having sex with her husband. The blues and whites of her interminable jobs in the restaurant kitchen, the laundry, the airport. A life of drudgery and emotional paralysis. Then Almodóvar's screen is split down the middle. Blue on the left. Red on the right. A huge bright saturated red foregrounded firehose in the red corner. And in the blue corner, Raimunda in a moment's pause from her cleaning job. Ringing her daughter who does not pick up.

And then the entire screen turns red. Inexplicably. Is it the side of the bus we are about to see? It is a powerful transition and change of mood that is going to change Raimunda's life.

The next thing we see is her daughter Paula, wearing red standing at a red bus stop. The bus arrives. Red on the outside, blue light on the inside. And as Raimunda steps out from the blue into the red, we see the advert on the side of the bus: "Volver a Sentir." Volver a Sentir. That's the promise of this scene. There's a crisis coming, but one which will precipitate the need for action and for Raimunda to rebuild her life.

And it's the message of the song, "Volver... Vivir... Sentir..." where Raimunda sings for her daughter, but simultaneously sings to her mother and for her mother. As all three generations, all three versions of Almodóvar can put their lives back together.

And there is another version too. Agustina. Agustina the neighbour who never left the village. The version of Raimunda who never left, the version of Almodóvar who never went to Madrid. Another sort of fantasma in this film of ghosts. Agustina, dressed in green, the colour of the biological cycle of life and death. Agustina who smokes joints, has her gravestone ready, and who ends the film on painkillers, anesthetised waiting to die. Agustina is Proust without art, Raimunda without her mother, and Almodóvar without film.

So what is the moral of the story? As usual with Almodóvar, it is about the telling of the story. The human voice. We don't see a flashback of Paco's death. We see Paula telling Raimunda. We don't see a flashback of the day of the fire. We see Irene telling Raimunda. All Raimunda and Irene needed to do was talk. For Proust it was art, for Sartre it was action (or writing if you were more of a writer than an action man, sorry, Sartre) and for Almodóvar it isn't fame or putting your daughter on the stage or even the cinema, it is relationships.

If Todo sobre mi Madre couldn't answer the question, "What is the point of life if we are all going to die?" then Volver answers it. Irene talks about purgatory. Almodóvar says, "Ya lo dijo Sartre mejor que yo. El más allá está en el más acá." - Sartre said it better than I could. The beyond is in the here and now. Heaven, hell, redemption, judgment. It's all right here in this life and what we make of it.

With the return to put things right, the reconciliation, Almodóvar has flipped the question from "What is the point if we are all going to die?" to the answer: "We only have one life. Don't mess it up."

Sartre and Proust and Almodóvar - Part One

 Talking about Volver, Almodóvar has said, "Ya lo dijo Sartre mejor que yo: el más allá está en el más acá." And we know that he first met Carmen Maura (who studied philosophy) in the years of the Movida Madrileña when they were working on a theatre production of Sartre's Les Mains Sales. So I feel justified in talking about the deep influence of Sartre on Almodóvar's thought and creativity.

I have no evidence of Almodóvar referring to Proust, so I am perfectly happy to accept that this is my own personal lens, when I see Proustian characters and philosophy emerging in Almodóvar's films.

A brief summary of Proust and Sartre's ideas, and you may well start seeing the parallels in Almodóvar's work for yourself:

Proust was a French novelist writing about the period before and just after the First World War. His main concern is with death. Fear of death - his own and of his loved ones. Death and its influence on life. A numbing influence where the habits of society and the expectations of social class act as an anesthetic to avoid confronting too much reality. This anesthesia takes over the life of Proust's protagonist Marcel, but slowly he has glimpses of salvation through the aesthetic. As a deliberate antidote to the anesthetic: Music and art offer moments of true being and experience free from the numbing fear of death and habit. In Marcel's case this is famously through a kind of synesthesia, where smell and memory and art and music come together to provide liberation. And for Proust, the artistic act of writing the novel brings meaning to his life and the time he has lived through. Anesthetic, the aesthetic, and synesthesia. Neat. Except it took a seven volume novel to get there.

Sartre was a French philosopher writing in the middle years of the twentieth century. He is most known for exploring phenomenology and existentialism. Both of these are found in Almodóvar's work. Phenomenology is the idea that we cannot perceive the universe directly. All our understanding is mediated by our senses and our concepts. This leads Sartre on the one hand to the idea of the absurd. And on the other hand to existentialism. The absurd universe is a universe without meaning. For Sartre's protagonists this can be nauseating and disorientating. A turgid world of fog and mud and tides. For other writers such as Robbe-Grillet the absurd universe can be rich and full of shapes, sounds and colours to experience and explore. But always at arm's length, without being able to find meaning. Robbe-Grillet also strayed into Almodóvar's realm of cinema, with his film L'année dernière à Marienbad. But I digress.

Phenomenology and the absurd lead on to existentialism. If the universe itself is not directly perceivable or conceivable, then the act of perception and conceptualisation is a creative act. It is humans who create the meaning. Meaning for the universe and meaning for their own life.

Existentialism as a philosophy is almost redundant for us because we take it for granted. We believe without question that through our actions we become "who we are." We don't believe that we have an essence or an identity which determines how we act.

Maybe for Almodóvar, growing up under Franco and educated in a religious school, the freedom of Madrid in the 70s made existentialism suddenly very real. Artistic, political, religious, personal, sexual freedom. And maybe if his films often focus on women, perhaps that isn't an particular interest in women, but a realisation that if you want to study humans and their struggle for freedom and for authenticity, then in our society, it's in women's lives that this can best be studied.

And for Sartre and for Almodóvar, existential freedom is a responsibility as much as a right. We have the responsibility for our own actions and through those actions, for the person we become and the life we live. Authenticity is a theme Almodóvar takes on from Sartre.

In Todo sobre mi Madre, Almodóvar parodies this philosophy in Agrado's speech in the theatre, talking about how her implants and surgery have made her more authentic. "Porque una es más auténtica cuanto más se parece a lo que ha soñado de sí misma."

Todo sobre mi Madre and Volver are a pair of films both trying to answer the same question. If we and our loved ones are going to die, what is the point of making such an effort to live and act authentically? Both films set up a situation where a female protagonist's life has collapsed after tragedy. We see them attempt to rebuild their life and Almodóvar attempt to answer the question as to why it is so important to bother.

But before we get to that, and if you are studying Volver for A Level then that might be important, I am going to again digress.

Firstly to quickly look at the idea of Almodóvar's films being a petri-dish for a philosophical idea. Take Hable con Ella. This film is clearly not built around plot or character. It is taking a philosophical idea and seeing how it plays out. If there is no god and therefore no absolute morality, then how do we know what is right or wrong? Perhaps through our intentions or the outcomes of our actions? Almodóvar sets up a situation where a character commits an act that all of us would agree is horrific. But with maybe good intentions. And with a positive outcome. Do we condemn him? 

If Almodóvar condemns Benigno, it is actually on existentialist grounds. Benigno abdicates responsibility for his own live. He tries to live his life through others: he wants to be the woman on the balcony in the picture on the cover of Marco's book. He wants to lose himself inside someone else like the hero in the Incredible Shrinking Lover. The film is one big philosophical experiment. Which Almodóvar leaves unresolved, allowing the works of art that frame the beginning and end of the film to carry the moral resolution. Yes. He submits his philosophy homework through the medium of modern dance.

Secondly, what happened to phenomenology in Almodóvar's films? This is manifested in his love of layers of fiction upon fiction. Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios is a great example. The first thing we see looks like a terrible cheap film set. It is only later that we find out it is a model of Pepa's apartment building given to her by the estate agent (played not by an actor but by Almodóvar's own brother). We see a film of some film, we see Pepa through her own glasses. We are one step away from being able to see reality as it is. The universe is always mediated.

Almodóvar takes this into the plot. Throughout the film, messages go astray, Iván dumps Pepa through a song playing on a record, she speaks to him through the dialogue of a film they are dubbing, on a phone message... never directly. And in another incursion into French film and literature, the whole thing is paralleled by Jean Cocteau's La Voix Humaine.

And in the plot, the overlap between phenomenology and existentialism happens. Pepa alternates between living a life dependent on a man, and a life that she takes control of. Famously reflected in the alternation between blue and red. A tension, a conflict, between blue of inauthenticity and the red of an authentic life. Played out against the background of the green of the biological cycle of life and death.

Of course the same three colours, along with a white of hospitals and nothingness, can be seen in other Almodóvar films, in particular Hable con Ella.

But it's the ending of Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios, seemingly low key, which is going to be important to look at before we can come back to the pair of Todo sobre mi Madre and Volver.

Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios just seems to stop. After all the madcap action, the credits roll as two women talk on a balcony. We can't even hear what they are saying.

This, for Almodóvar is the most important thing. Two women, wearing red, who have just discovered they don't need a man to be themselves. Talking. Telling each other what they haven't told anyone else. Heart to heart. The human voice. 

Now we are ready for Todo sobre mi Madre and Volver.

Both films are about a woman whose life has been destroyed and who has to rebuild it. In Todo sobre mi Madre, Manuela's son Esteban is killed in an accident before she can tell him the truth about his father. She has to confront her past and rebuild her life. The film is full of characters acting, forging, pretending. Manuela is the strongest of the group of women, but Almodóvar's burning question is why bother building an authentic life if death will destroy it. And the ending is unconvincing. There are clear clues that the ending is not authentic. The AVE to Barcelona did not yet exist. A baby neutralising the HIV virus had not yet happened. The Argentinian General Videla had not yet been imprisoned. And the unconvincing happy ending for Manuela is not what the original synopsis envisaged. In the original synopsis, Almodóvar had Manuela telling the young Esteban the truth she never managed to tell her first son. Heart to heart. The human voice.

The reason Almodóvar couldn't carry off the ending he wanted, was because he couldn't answer the question about death. Which is why Volver is the pair of Todo sobre mi Madre and answers the question.

Talking of Volver, Almodóvar said:

Tengo la impresión, y espero que no sea un sentimiento pasajero, de que he conseguido encajar una pieza (cuyo desajuste, a lo largo de mi vida, me ha provocado mucho dolor y ansiedad, diría incluso que en los últimos años había deteriorado mi existencia, dramatizándola más de la cuenta). La pieza a la que me refiero es «la muerte»; no sólo la mía y la de mis seres queridos, sino la desaparición implacable de todo lo que está vivo.

So if we are studying Volver, how has he done this, what does it have to do with Sartre or Proust, and what is the answer to the question?

Answers in Part Two...

Using Graphs to teach A Level Literature

 In the picture, you can see the wall that my Year 12s used to display everything they know about La Casa de Bernarda Alba as they skimmed the text, read about the text, read the text, and then watched the play. It's not a finished display, more of a "working wall" as they build up their knowledge. And it's there as a visual representation, to make clear the rhythm of where the play has song, story and violence.

The whole board is a great graphic representation, with the black and white framing of "un documental fotográfico". And the colour of the backing reflects the transition from paredes blancas, to blanquísimas, to "azuladas", as the play shifts from a realistic house with pictures on the wall, to something starkly white, and finally to somewhere that seems more of a symbolic or psychological place - an effect of light rather than physical walls.

I don't know if you can quite see, but in the top right hand corner is an actual graph. Early on in their reading and re-reading of the play, the students took a list of key quotes from Act Three. They found them in the text and read around them to give them each a score for Dramatic Intensity. And then plotted them on the graph. This way they have a strong visual reminder of how the dramatic tension builds. It seems to start low, building slowly with some plateaux of calm, and then reach a violent climax.

They did the same for the first two acts. And all three graphs had a remarkably similar shape. Each act starts with more realistic dialogue, everyday social interaction, and then builds through moments of calm and tension in a steady crescendo towards a climax. And a graph for the overall structure of the play is very similar, moving from something realistic, set in Andalucia, to something more symbolic, surrealist, psychological and universal.

This grasp of the play is vital for essay writing. An answer to an essay question needs to reflect the fact that its treatment will not be uniform across the play. Almost any topic the students are faced with in the exam, will be part of this slow and controlled transition from everyday life to nightmare. And if their essays reflect this, then their essays too will have shape and meaning.

An inspector calls - Vocabulary

 In my last post, I asked myself some of the initial questions an Ofsted inspector might want to ask about our curriculum in relation to Grammar. I think I put our case across coherently. But the question isn't really whether I think our curriculum has a coherent vision. The question is does that vision meet what an inspector is looking for. In this post, I am going to rehearse some honest answers to questions on Vocabulary.

Here we go:

How do you cover and revisit vocabulary in a planned way?

 Our curriculum works like a snowball where new language is added on to the repertoire pupils already have. In this, some language is more important than other language. Rather than parachuting in “revisiting” of a previous topic into a later topic, we try to curate pupils’ growing repertoire of language where it is gathered into a snowball. We focus on this snowball getting bigger and bigger, and pupils being able to use it. We are not obsessed with chasing after every last drop of melting snow, as long as each pupil has their snowball and is looking after it. Compacting it to stop it melting, rolling it around to get more to stick to it, and having some fun with it.

At the centre of this snowball is a core of verb + infinitive structures. Which means we have a strong verb lexicon which is transferred across topics.

About 15 years ago, we stripped our curriculum down to this core, concentrating on pupils getting very good at using the language they know. We are now in the process of adding more language back in, so that it integrates with what they know and can do. For example, weather with “if” sentences in units in Year 8, numbers in different units, clothes…

The words pupils learn are set out on Quizlet, directly integrated with the work they are doing in lessons. Typically the words for each unit start with short chunks. These build into longer sentences and eventually into model answers. The words from Quizlet can also be used to set work in other sites such as Blooket. We are shifting from a punitive “You must learn your words” model, to a low stakes model of, “Meet these words over and over, until you end up learning them.”

 As well as a curriculum designed to not abandon words from one topic to the next, we are using lesson starters and computing work to deliberately re-familiarise pupils with words they have seen before. Our “Fluent in 5 minutes” starters ask pupils in Year 8 and Year 9 to work with words and structures from previous years and previous units. Scheduled work on interactive tasks inWord (dragging and dropping words, putting spaces back in sentences) in the computer room makes sure pupils are regularly working explicitly on structures and vocabulary from previous topics. Our booklets also deliberately recycle examples from previous topics, for example by asking pupils to use a model answer on Holidays to help scaffold work on Jobs.

How do you ensure pupils know high frequency vocabulary?

The fascination with “high frequency” vocabulary and not exposing pupils to unfamiliar words, does not come from the National Curriculum Programme of Study which schools have to teach. It features in the controversial Ofsted Research Review. We ensure that pupils know the structures that we have identified as most powerful for constructing their repertoire. In line with the National Curriculum (and in KS4 with GCSE), this is aimed at developing their ability to communicate. In particular to give and justify opinions, to develop ideas and points of view, to talk about events in the past and future, and to narrate events in detail.

So we have focused on a core of verb + infinitive and a strong verb lexicon. We had stripped our curriculum down to this core, and concentrated on pupils getting very good at using it. We are now starting to add more vocabulary back in, so that it integrates with and expands that core, always while curating what pupils can actually do with their language. And monitoring their ability to communicate is the best way to monitor what sticks, what accumulates, what can be used with increasing fluency, and what might overwhelm. Which I think are also key concepts for Ofsted.

 Our “Fluent in 5 minutes” starters are used to address the balance of the focus on form and meaning. If pupils are focused on meaning-heavy words such as maison, petit or chien, we use the starters as a low stakes regular way to shift the focus to the words like une, est, a . We make sure pupils do know what words in sentences literally mean, for example, “I have 12 years.” We have reintroduced a list of the 100 most common words on the back of pupils’ target language prompt sheet, as a reminder to pupils and to teachers as to what the most common words are.

 We are always looking at what words pupils need to expand their existing repertoire. For example adverbs for setting actions in time are going to be a big focus to be introduced earlier and maintained as part of the repertoire.

 High frequency words are by definition encountered in authentic texts. When we look at songs, stories or poems, we make sure we focus on these words, because they are the words which can unlock any text, especially when it contains unfamiliar low frequency words.

I think I have taken the luxury of being a little more aggressive on the topic of High Frequency words that I would with an actual ofsted inspector. But also I have only asked myself some initial questions here, without further detailed probing. So again, I need to step back and have a good think about my answers here.

Answering an Ofsted Inspector's Questions - Grammar

 What would I say to an Ofsted inspector about our curriculum? I would want to answer openly and honestly, because if they are going to have a good look at lessons, talk to teachers and pupils, and look at resources, then there's no point claiming things that don't correspond to what they will see. So does what we do match what we think they want? Should we change things in the overall approach or in the detail? Or should we be concentrating on making sure that what we say we do, is delivered consistently and successfully across the department?

In this post, I am going to put myself through some potential questions on Grammar in our curriculum, and just see if I can put together a convincing answer that meets the angle of questions we might be faced with. I am doing this mainly as an exercise for myself, so you might want to skip some of the unit by unit detail in italics.

Here we go:

How do you sequence grammar?

 Our grammar teaching is built around developing a repertoire of language that pupils can deploy in order to express themselves. Some powerful structures are much more important than others, and we work on making sure pupils can use these, spending a long time focusing on them explicitly. When they meet other grammar, this is carefully added on to the existing repertoire of language they have. We are very clear that nothing is ever done and dusted. And nothing is ever done and abandoned. Pupils will meet important language over and over, accumulating knowledge and increasing their independence and fluency. The overall curriculum is one of modelling correct use, often in chunks of language to be recombined, with a process of increasing independence of resources, and building the ability to recombine or inflect language for themselves, in order to create meaning.

 In Year 7, the early focus is on meaning. Pupils make the shift from (often) mono-lingual status, to having another language they can relate to their life and enjoy exploring. Pupils learn to talk about themselves, describe an artwork, order food, and describe their house and routine. They select, adapt and substitute language through learning based on modelling and scaffolding, in order to create meaning. As they start to accumulate a body of language, the curriculum starts to shift the balance of attention towards forms, but always in a strong context that links grammar to engagement with meaning.

To summarise:

Unit 1 on Self and Identity – apart from acquiring a body of language with a focus on meaning, the main focus is on Phonics. Other high frequency grammatical concepts are met, principally the verb to have and the indefinite article. These are met in context and for pupils to be able to substitute depending on what they want to say. Pupils are taught the literal meaning of words within expressions, eg I have 12 years.

Unit 2 on describing an Artwork. Word order and adjectival agreement are the main grammatical features. Introduced in very concrete ways starting with labelling shapes and objects in a picture, then adding adjectives and then changing the endings. Pupils also meet prepositions and a range of high frequency words eg is / has / there is. They meet basic opinion words for the first time. The definite and indefinite articles are contrasted.

Unit 3 on Food is mainly transactional, based on substituting items in dialogue and building confidence in speaking. Pupils meet tu/vous forms. It is developed into giving opinions about food and taste, and into talking about eating habits conjugating the verb manger in the present tense. Pupils use opinion + the definite article – j’aime le chocolat. The partitive article is met, often in chunks, with some work on the link between a, the, some.

Unit 4 on House and Routine reinforces high frequency words for is/has/there is, definite and indefinite articles, and opinions. It introduces the concept of reflexive verbs in the first person. And pupils meet the idea of verb + opinion that will be picked up in Year 8.

 In Year 8, pupils develop a powerful repertoire of language they can use across topics. This is built around verb + infinitive for giving and justifying opinions. They use conjunctions to link, extend and develop answers. The focus is on being able to speak and write more and more independently, fluently and coherently, using these core structures across topics. We think of their language as a snowball, getting bigger and bigger, not allowing what is learned to melt, and making it easier for new language to stick to the ball of language they already have.

Pupils develop a strong verb lexicon, for use with expressions followed by the infinitive. Typically they will be saying things like, “I like to … because I can… but if I want to… then I have to… But I don’t like to…. because I can’t… I prefer to….” Having stripped our curriculum down over 15 years ago to concentrate on pupils getting good at using this repertoire of core expressions, we are now adding back in more use of adjectives with the verb to be.

In detail:

Unit 1 on Town revisits definite and indefinite articles, prepositions, and high frequency words such as is/has/there is. It adds opinions and words like can/have to/want to with a strong verb lexicon to talk about places in the local area and what you can do there. We are adding back in more use of adjectives and the verb to be, to add to this established focus on verbs.

Unit 2 on School transfers this language to a new topic, aiming for greater fluency and independence from scaffolding. We are adding back in more use of adjectives and the verb to be.

Unit 3 on Free Time recycles the same grammar. It then adds er verbs in the present tense. We are careful to integrate the use of conjugated verbs into the existing repertoire of opinion and verb + infinitive. For example where a pupil was saying, “I can go to the park with my friends”, this mention of “with my friends” will now trigger the use of a 1^st person plural – “and we play tennis.” This unit also introduces the use of the perfect tense in the first person.

Unit 4 on Holidays. This unit recycles and works on fluency in using the grammar from previous units. It develops use of the perfect tense, still mainly in the first person.

 

Year 9 Starts by applying the grammar learned in Year 8 to new topics slightly more removed from the pupils’ own direct experience and requiring perhaps more complexity of ideas. Year 9 introduces the use of verb tables for pupils to have an abstract concept of the different persons and different tenses. They work on adding on what they can do through methodical rational formation of verb tenses, integrating it into what they can already do fluently and independently. This opens their understanding of the language as a linguistic system, while linking this to the creation of meaning and adding it on to their growing repertoire. It prepares them for GCSE, with a focus on narrating in a range of tenses. It is modelled and scaffolded, shifting from memorised language to an understanding of rules and inflections.

 Detailed summary:

 In Unit 1 on Jobs, pupils take their knowledge of verb + infinitive from Year 8 and apply it to a new topic. There is a shift towards forms talking about the future such as going to / would like to. And a shift to “on peut” rather than “je peux.” The perfect tense for “I have worked” is picked up from Year 8 in the first person. Pupils meet verb tables to conceptualise how there are a range of tenses for worked/used to work and different persons.

In Unit 2 on the Environment, pupils continue to recycle their use of verb + infinitive for can/must/should on a new topic with more complex ideas. They continue to use verb tables to scaffold their understanding of different tenses, including imperfect and conditional. They use verb tables to construct tenses that can be integrated with use of their existing repertoire.

 In Unit 3 on Clothes, pupils consolidate work on word order and adjectival agreement. They pick up their repertoire for saying what you can/can’t/have to wear for different occasions. They pick up transactional language for shopping, including tu/vous. They revisit articles. The unit then turns to focus on combining perfect and imperfect to say what was happening and what happened next. This is built around describing an advert. It links to the idea of narrating events that features in the rest of Year 9 and for GCSE.

In Unit 4, we bring back the topic of Free Time. Pupils have the opportunity to deploy their repertoire on a familiar topic, with fluency and independence. They can apply it to different aspects of the topic, for example developing answers on cinema or sport or shopping. And they put together their whole repertoire from opinions, justifying them, if sentences, what was happening, what happened, plans for the future.

In the summer of Year 9, teachers focus on pupils using the repertoire they have developed over 3 years, for creative purposes. For example story telling – pupils look at films, books and literature in French and then create their own stories for Primary school French pupils.

 

At GCSE, we follow the grammatical progression of the textbook. This ensures coverage and takes the pressure off teacher work-load. But we have a strong principle that the pupils are developing a repertoire of language. We make sure that opinions, verb + infinitive, present and perfect tenses are in place early in the course and that pupils are using them on every topic. This way pupils have 2 years to get good at using these grammatical features as part of a repertoire, and we do not delay meeting these core structures. Pupils use their “test and tick” to reinforce their fluency with these key structures.

 

 How do you break down teaching so that pupils are learning one thing at a time explicitly, not through osmosis? And that concepts are revisited in a planned way?

 We break down our teaching so that pupils are spending a long time getting good at using the most important structures. These structures never go away, and other structures are added on to them like snow sticking to a snowball that is getting bigger and bigger. Teachers model and scaffold, so pupils are all producing work of a similar standard, and then reducing their dependence on support.

This may look like osmosis, but it is not. It is deliberate long term internalisation and building of fluency of the whole repertoire. Pupils may meet things in more complex chunks, learning model expressions before they then learn to break down the component parts to modify and manipulate them. They may meet language where more than one simple concept is involved – the key think is that attention be drawn to one thing at a time, and that the teacher monitors what could overwhelm, what sticks, what accumulates.

 We have developed lesson starters, “Fluent in 5” which focus on shifting the attention from lexis to grammar. Pupils naturally focus on meaning and may understandably neglect minutiae of form. The Fluent in 5 starters require pupils to re-address this balance, going back over vocabulary content from previous units and previous years, focusing on eg gender, contractions, plurals, negatives, endings.

 Rather than revisiting, our curriculum makes sure that nothing is left behind. Pupils’ language is formed into a snowball which grows and grows. They develop a repertoire of language they can deploy, which new language is added on to.

Warning - major shift in metaphor coming (from snow to cooking) like a change of key at the end of a boy band anthem.

In reality, and also because we want it to be that way, the curriculum on paper is not as important as what teachers constantly observe in the classroom. Teachers will depart from the scheme of work because they notice a need or an opportunity. In practice what guides us isn't the detailed Scheme of Work, it is the exemplars we share with pupils of what we want them to be able to achieve. Just as when you are thickening a roux, you don't constantly refer to the recipe. Or even worry about the amount of milk left in the jug. Your full attention is on what is in the saucepan in front of you. And it's the same with teaching. What you do is in response to the pupils and their learning. Not a fancy plan you made for Ofsted.

Oh no, I said that last bit out loud! I am going to think about this some more and reflect on how I think these answers might stand up. I've done my best for now. And I need to try a similar exercise on Vocabulary and on Phonics. And what about A Level?