Year 9 Spanish beginners - writing on the tables, telling their own stories

 You may have been following my Y9 after school beginners Spanish lessons, as we work on narrating amusing stories about aquariums, theme parks and sea gulls. Last week's lesson went really well, with the pupils confidently rebuilding the aquarium story from their knowledge of key structures and verb endings. After a lesson the previous week where I worried I had got the pace and challenge all wrong. So this week I wanted a lesson that was going to stretch and support and move them on to the next level.

So I used Writing on the Tables to enable them to create their own stories.

First we recapped the aquarium story quickly, going round the class. Then we transformed it into the theme park story, keeping the key structures but with new infinitives. This is where we were up to at the end of the last lesson. The template is flexible, but roughly like this:

I like to go to a theme park because I can go on the rides, especially if it is sunny, because if it rains I prefer to go to the aquarium. My brother doesn't like to go on the rides. He prefers to buy loads of sweets and fizzy pop. Last year, we went to Chessington. I said, "I want to go on the rides." My brother said, "I want to buy lots of sweets and fizzy pop." We decided to buy sweets. Later we were riding on a roller coaster and my brother vomited. I cried.

You can see it contains the verbs go, buy, ride, and vomit. We throw in cry for free because it is the ending of all the stories!

Then I gave each pair of pupils a felt tip and a dictionary. They each chose a place - stately home garden, cinema, beach, park... And they chose 4 infinitives to look up in the dictionary - words for something they like doing, something their nemesis likes doing, and something that went wrong. I don't know what the fourth infinitive was for. Probably cry.

They wrote the infinitives on the desk with their felt tip. In the first half of the story, the verbs stay in the infinitive. But in the second half, they need endings. So they wrote their infinitives again, this time ready to be changed. They had to decide which of their verbs was going to be what was happening. And which were the things that happened. Then they rubbed out the ar/er/ir endings - remember these are written on the desk in felt tip. And added the endings. For first person endings, they can do this from memory. For 3rd person endings, they used their verb tables.

Then they were ready to write their stories:

So, I like to go to the waterfalls because I can take photos of nature when it is sunny. But if it is raining, I prefer to go to the cinema. My friends like to have a picnic. We went to Crystal Falls. I said, "I want to take photos." They said, "I want to have a picnic, pretty please." We were taking photos of the waterfall when I fell. I cried.

What is the point of doing it on the tables? Firstly it's fun. Which I know is a dirty word, but you can see it comes out in the gleeful excitement of the stories. Pupils are excited about writing. Excited by all the words in the dictionary. Excited by the felt tips and the spray to clean the tables. Excited by the possibilities of saying things they wanted to say, excited by the progress they are making, excited by their Spanish lesson. It doesn't take a lot! And secondly it's memorable. I know. I know that there are those who will say, "They will remember writing on the tables and getting to wipe it off with spray and a paper towel, but they won't remember the learning." Except they will. They will remember the very physical process of writing the infinitives. Changing the endings. Inserting them into the story. It highlights the process of writing.

Here's a post on more ways to use different approaches to writing. And another one on making constructing sentences physical, to break it down step by step for pupils who don't think writing French is something they can do.

And what is the point of the stories? Firstly they meet the GCSE criteria of opinions, reasons, tenses, narration, developed answers, spontaneity. Secondly they meet the national curriculum criteria of developing what pupils can do with their language, not just what they know. Thirdly, the core of language the stories contain, allows more and more language to stick and transfer across topics.