Fluent in 5 Starters

 In September, I wrote about how we are introducing starter activities for Year 8 and Year 9. We called them "Fluent in 5", a name borrowed from the maths department because I think the word "fluent" properly belongs to us. Along with drag and drop style tasks in the computer room, they were intended to make sure all classes were regularly going back over content from previous units. The were designed to be do-able, and quick. There are usually 5 questions to be done in 5 minutes. Then the answers are given, without getting bogged down.

For example in September, in this puzzle, the sentences are backwards. The pupils just had to write them out correctly, to re familiarise themselves with content from the previous year.

We have kept most of the features and how it works. But there have been some changes. In particular, we've shifted from just covering topic content from previous units. Instead we are focusing much more on grammatical features. Sometimes these are the core structures that pupils re-use in every topic for giving opinions, justifying them, and giving detail in past and future.

 But very quickly it became an opportunity to look at areas of misconception, such as the confusion of je n'ai pas and je n'aime pas. And then a way of revisiting grammar features such as possessive adjectives, interrogatives, articles, prepositions, pronouns, accents and even phonics.

It means that we are revisiting concepts explicitly, separately from any topic content or immediate communicative purpose. This, you might hope, gives teachers and pupils a chance to re-balance the focus on meaning of words versus the focus on forms of words. So when we teach pets, I know that in the sentence j'ai un chien, the word "dog" is the least important for their language learning. But the pupils don't see it that way. Our starters can be a way to redress that balance, without squishing the pupils' main focus on developing ideas and their ability to express them.

How have I sequenced it? As this is re-visiting and re-examining concepts they have previously met, I have not sat down and planned the coverage or meticulous sequencing. What I have done is picked up on features which I know are important in the current unit, or where I've spotted misconceptions in pupils' work either in class or in marking their work. So it responds closely to the work in the current unit, while being kept separate as the lesson starter and using language not from the current topic.

How has it gone? Well, it works well as a routine with pupils knowing they will come in and have a task to do in the back of their books. They prefer them to be easy. And I want them to be do-able quickly and quietly on their own. So it's a fine line to make them challenging enough to be worthwhile now we've moved beyond just re-familiarising them with vocabulary, and moving to tackling concepts. One concept will be developed over a series of lessons, with pupils using what they did last lesson in order to tackle something more challenging next time. 

My impression is that pupils do them because it's the routine. But they rarely have questions about them. And they don't get a mention in pupil feedback surveys. What features much more in pupil surveys is their understanding of how a growing core of language equips them to express themselves with increasing fluency, coherence and independence. (My words, not theirs, so you're right to be a bit suspicious, but follow the link in this paragraph for more...)

I think it's important to have the explicit re-visiting of the grammar and concepts. But it does seem that slightly isolating it from the learning of the language for communication is limiting its usefulness. These are groups who are accumulating a snowball of language which they are getting better and better at using. They are moving from sentences to paragraphs, from linking ideas to developing one idea, from formulaic to personalised. And they can see and appreciate this progress, and understand how they can re-use language from one topic to the next. It seems harder for them to hang on to more nitty-gritty nuts and bolts grammar when it's done for accuracy rather than in order to create meaning.

I think that's a good thing. If pupils' primary focus in learning a language is to get better at using it in order to say more, then that's not something I want to squish. It doesn't mean that we'll get rid of the starters, but we need to be aware that there is an overall balancing of explicit and implicit learning; a balancing of how pupils create meaning by recombining or inflecting; and a pay off in terms of accuracy when pupils choose whether to take risks or play safe when using their language.