How the current GCSE works across topics - My Granny went to an aquarium and she doesn't like geography.

NB The GCSE referred to in this post is the outgoing GCSE. Although I am now teaching the new GCSE in exactly the same way.

 Extra incentive for reading this post. It contains video (click here if it doesn't load) of my very ordinary classroom in case you want a nosey about!

The video shows the set up of the lesson. I have written on the pupils' desks in Spanish (in board pen).  On one side of the classroom, the sequence is:

I like/I love/I don't like        because I can/can't/have to/don't have to

especially if                         but if..., I prefer...

_____ likes / doesn't like...

Then on the desks on the other side of the classroom, I have written (in Spanish):

I went/I was in                    I wanted / ___ wanted

I said... ____ said              I decided / we decided

was ____ing                      I ________ed / ____ __________ed

I would have preferred to ___________

You may recognise this from the original My Granny went to the Aquarium post. Because this lesson is for a Year 10 (beginners) group who have already done the Aquarium lesson. And then recycled it to talk about a Theme Park. I don't really need to write the structures on the desks, because each pupil in the class has ownership of their expression. So by looking round the class, the pupils can remember who says what and build their story. And if someone gets stuck, each pupil can prompt them with their expression.

The original story was something like this:

Me gusta ir al acuario porque me gusta ver los peces, sobre todo si hace mal tiempo, porque si hace buen tiempo prefiero ir a la playa. A mi hermano le gusta tocar las estrellas de mar. 

Fuimos al acuario y yo quería ver los peces. Pero mi hermano dijo, "Quiero tocar una estrella de mar." Entonces decidimos ir a tocar las estrellas de mar. Mi hermano tocaba una estrella y yo sacaba una foto cuando dejé caer mi móvil en el agua. Hubiera preferido ir a la playa.

And they can transform it to come up with things like:

Me encanta ir a un parque de atracciones porque me gusta montar en una montaña rusa. Sobre todo si hace sol, porque si llueve, prefiero ir al acuario. A mi hermano no le gusta montar en las montañas rusas. Prefiere comer refrescos y comer muchos caramelos. 

Fuimos a un parque de atracciones. Yo quería montar en la montaña rusa pero mi hermano quería comer caramelos y beber refresco. Decidimos montar en la montaña rusa. Me divertía mucho pero mi hermano vomitó. Vomitó en mi pelo. Lloré. Me hubiera gustado ir al acuario.

You can see the same structures reappearing in each. These are to meet the AQA criteria of opinions, reasons, examples in different time frames, and narrating events. It's worth pointing out that the two sides to the classroom deliberately correspond to the "two halves" of the game plan for the speaking exam. And crucially, there is a very limited number of verbs for each story. The first one is entirely constructed around to go, to see, to touch, to take photos, to drop. This means pupils can pick four or five verbs and use them to tell a complex story which meets the exam criteria.

As we moved from talking about the aquarium to talking about the theme park, we challenged pupils to do it more and more fluently, independently and spontaneously. The important message to the pupils is that they don't need to learn more Spanish. They need to get better at using it. And we are now carrying this across to a new GCSE topic - talking about school lessons.

So we used the expressions on the desk to reconstruct the aquarium/theme park stories from September. Then we agreed on some easy infinitives to work with for talking about lessons: to talk, to work, to shout, and as a class, we improvised the following story:

I like science because I can talk to Alice, especially if we work together. But if I have to work with Vincent I prefer to work in silence. Unfortunately Vincent likes to work with me. I went to science and I wanted to work with Alice. But Alice didn't want to work with me. I was working in silence but Vincent was talking and the teacher shouted at me. I would have liked to work with Alice.

I don't know who this Vincent is.

They produced it quickly and spontaneously from the repertoire of expressions. We wrote this one on the board together, then made sure everyone could say the whole story. Every version was slightly different, and some pupils can use their repertoire more flexibly than others. You can see in the version on the board, they conjugated the verb we work, which wasn't one of the structures on the desk. This what happens when pupils have a core repertoire: more things stick to the core. The same way once you have a snowball, you can roll it around and more snow will stick to it. What you mustn't do is have an even covering of Spanish (ticking off grammar points on a grid) because it will just all melt.