NPP 16: Rewriting KS3 Booklets - examples from the Food Unit and House Unit

 In the last post, I showed how I rewrote our French Art Exhibition Unit in the light of our reflections on self expression, accuracy, engagement, distraction, short term and long term learning objectives. Looking at our Art Exhibition has been particularly instructive and the insights can be usefully applied to all our other units.

Here are some examples from the Unit on Food and Drink.

I should stress that not all pages in our booklets look like this. I am focussing on the ones that we had inserted in order to work explicitly on grammar features.

The idea behind this page originally was that puzzling out words rather than being told them, helps you remember them. The idea is still valid, and the lesson did work, but for some pupils the amount of text and the number of items was overwhelming.

Here is the new version. I have improved the layout, reduced the number of items and introduced pictures. 

We are alert to the dangers of images being decorative or distracting. But in this case they provide clues to help scaffold the task and make it successful, while still requiring the pupils to work out the meaning of the French words. These were easy decisions to make in the light of our discussions. And the vocabulary items retained are ones which are regularly recycled later in the unit.

This unit follows on from the Art Exhibition unit, and we continue with work on definite and indefinite articles, adding partitive articles so pupils can say some chocolate as well as the and a. This page from the old booklet was supposed to help make these slippery and potentially frustrating little words explicit.

Pupils could (despite the layout) mechanically pick the correct article and say what it meant. But as a purely mechanical exercise, it didn't guarantee that the knowledge would be transferred to when they wanted to talk about food they liked to eat. In fact it was more likely to make them stop and panic that they might be picking the wrong word.

We have replaced it with a page that still explains the different articles, but then instead of asking the pupils to mechanically produce the right one, it lets them see them in context and work with differentiating meaning. And then it quickly moves on to starting work on giving opinions.

The Keep Talking grid allows them to enjoy talking about combinations of food they enjoy and don't enjoy. They can guess if their partner's sentences are true or false. They can use and / but to continue and develop longer answers. And as they do this they are supported by the grid in using the correct articles but without having to stop and worry about them.

There were similar examples in the unit on House and Routine.

This was supposed to introduce pupils to the idea of dictation.

The emphasis on delayed dictation is to not try to write down sounds as you hear them, but to concentrate on processing meaning, remembering what they say their house is like, and then reconstructing the description using French you know. It didn't work. Pupils were unable to process the sentences quickly enough and therefore couldn't retain anything.

The idea of the dictogloss is that you don't have to transcribe every word. You listen and process the description of the flat. Then you make notes that give the information. Then you write French to convey the information. That didn't work either.

I haven't got rid of it.

For the first dictation, I have supplied the English. This means pupils can process the French because they know what it is saying. When the teacher reads the sentence aloud, what they are doing is giving the pupils the answer. They are giving it to them in French, but they are giving them the answer. This is a different and much more positive way of looking at dictation!

For the second glossed dictation, I have supplied a picture. This can be projected on the board and the pupils can predict what they are going to hear. Then when the teacher reads the sentences, it makes it much easier for the pupils to process the French.

Here is an example from the House unit where a task could be completed mechanically by the pupils. But with very little impact on learning because it was divorced from meaning.

The first task was designed to focus attention on the articles as the only words missing from the translation. It didn't work. Pupils invariably ignored the French and inserted a word in the gap that fitted the English sentence.

The new version still has the same objective:

The way I've re-written it tries to get a better balance between looking at the grammar and keeping a focus on meaning. The first task separates out looking at the articles, before requiring an accurate translation of meaning. The second task asks for a translation, with a picture to support the details, allowing the pupil to focus on the articles.

At least, that's how it's supposed to work. We will find out...

NPP 15: Rewriting our KS3 Art booklet. Meaning, Mechanics and Distraction.

 I have spent a week re-writing our KS3 booklets. This was as a result of our day working as a department to pull apart our curriculum. We started with our Year 7 French Art Exhibition Unit and examined our resources, commenting on coherent long term learning as well as on how individual resources worked in the classroom. Our reflections centred on 4 main issues:

• The balance between meaningful and mechanical exercises.
• The balance between expression and accuracy.
• The balance between engagement and distraction.
• The balance between immediately useful language and long term learning.

It seemed that exercises which were purely to practise a language point were "doable". And that such mechanical exercises had a role in cementing conceptual understanding. But that once done, they were quickly forgotten and had little impact when it came to pupils using the language to express themselves. At the same time, we were aware of the danger of using "communication" as an excuse for glossing over important and potentially confusing details. This came to a head when pupils ended up worrying about the details or mistakes and became inhibited and learning stalled.

One of the raison d'êtres of the Art Exhibition Unit is to work on definite and indefinite articles. So that pupils are confident with words like un / une / le / la / les. Some of these exercises were too mechanical to be memorable. Others focused too much on meaning without the articles being relevant. This page from our original booklet is guilty of both of these in turn:

I should stress that not all pages in our booklets look like this. I am focussing on the ones that we had inserted in order to work explicitly on grammar features.

In the new material, I have tried to balance it so that the meaning of the articles is much more integrated with the quality of the description of the image. So that while there is still the long term purpose of confidence in using the articles, the pupils' task is strongly focused on creating meaning:

In this unit, we were particularly aware of the danger of giving pupils language as a "one off" to help describe their picture, but which would never be seen again and would soon be forgotten.

This has led to some pages in the booklet being removed. This page helped pupils go beyond describing what was in their picture and add some comments on the style and mood.

In theory, they could work on their fluency on using these expressions to talk about several pictures, before applying it to their own:

But in reality, it was only really ever used to concoct some sentences about their own artwork for the French Exhibition. While it looked good, a few weeks later they had forgotten what it meant, and the vocabulary and structures are not revisited later in the year. There may be some pupils who enjoyed the impression of sophistication the structures allowed them. But on balance, this page has been cut.

For other pages, we took the opposite view. This page was intended to act as a way to construct a model text getting away from the repetition of il y a...

Again, it did the job of scaffolding pupils' writing and adding sophistication to a description. But the objective was the short term one of creating a description for the Exhibition rather than an objective for learning to be retained and deployed fluently.

You can see in the pages with the Kandinsky and Hockney pictures above that we introduced these more varied structures much earlier in the unit, rather than as a last minute sophistication boost. We included a lot more examples for pupils to practise describing. Here they work with a partner to talk about a picture and see if their partner can recognise which one it is:

This also works well with pupils selecting a picture and the teacher having to guess (in French sentences) what shapes there are without looking at any of the pictures.

The overall outcome of our reflections was that it's the dynamic equilibrium of all these competing factors that has to be managed. Both in the creation of resources and in the classroom. Picking the Art Exhibition Unit as our focus sharpens attention to things like the balance between making things attractive and distracting.

In this next example, the page on the left was already in the booklet. It picks up on French the pupils already know for saying "I have a dog who is called..." and repurposes it for saying things like, "There is a dog who is swimming". I needed to create more opportunities to practise this so it would start to be internalised, with pupils learning about the endings of -er verbs for 3rd person singular and plural in the present tense. The original page on its own was too mechanical and divorced from creating meaning for anything to really stick. In creating the page on the right, I had to be aware of the danger of using artwork that would help make it more engaging, but simultaneously could shift the focus away from the nitty gritty of the language and onto the weird and wonderful ideas in the paintings!

On this occasion it was a risk I was prepared to take. If pupils are intrigued by looking at paintings by Chagal and their imagination is sparked, then that's not something I want to stamp out. If the resource is well written, there is the possibility that the art could make it more memorable. And using vocabulary they already know for animals, and structures that they will see again in Year 8 (-er verbs), I am happy that this shouldn't be a "one-off" and soon forgotten.

This is a good reminder that we are not looking for simplistic answers of what is good and what is bad according to cognitive load theory. We are examining the messy and diverse reality of learning in the classroom. We will report back on how it works...!

Next Post: How do these ideas play out when we rewrite other booklets?

NPP 14: In which I temporarily lose some patience with the argument for mechanical accuracy over self-expression.

 ln our National Priorities Project we are examining whether our Year 7 French Art Exhibition drives language learning or detracts from it, and the lessons we can learn for our wider curriculum from answering questions around accuracy, communication, creativity and self-expression.

In previous posts on the argument that language learning should be a process of careful repetition and practice of controlled and sequenced grammar patterns, I have tried to argue that even on its own terms, freer self expression has a useful role to play. And that errors are revealing of the true state of pupils' emerging grammatical understanding. In the last post, I concluded that there is no definitive answer and that we should enjoy exploring how these arguments play out in the complex and dynamic reality of the classroom. That felt like a great place to end the post. But I have another example that I wanted to include which would have upset that carefully balanced even-handed conclusion.

So in this post I am going to air some frustrations with the idea that we should be cautious about asking pupils to express themselves because it supposedly just inevitably leads them into error.

Here's a piece of work from Year 9. It's in test conditions, and is the result of discussions with the class (full detail here) about exactly this topic of whether to stick to French you know is accurate or whether to try to express yourself:

You can see some of the things that we have been talking about. Errors which could reveal confusion in concepts, such as the accents on "méré". But which in fact reveal that one element of learning is a kind of picture or feel for a word rather than analytically thinking through its construction. This is also seen in how they sketch out spellings for "aujourd'hui" at the top, searching for the spelling that "looks right." These are features of someone who is trying to get a feel for the language, ownership of the language, a love of the language. This is what leads this pupil to squirrel away little idiomatic expressions like "c'est simple comme bonjour" that they have learned on their own initiative and to try them out for their own amusement.

But back to our question of whether asking pupils to write more freely is inducing error. There's a mistake in there which is very revealing. This pupil knows how to say "I want". This pupil knows how to say "my friend". This pupil knows how to say "to be rich". They have put it all together to say, "I want my friend to be rich". But of course, that's a mistake. In French you can't say "I want my friend". You need the subjunctive. "I want that my friend be rich."

Out of all of the French in this piece of work, this sentence would be one where the pupil was most confident that they knew all the words. It's built entirely mechanically from French they have been taught. Each chunk is accurate. There is no way they could have known that French has an entirely different way of saying "I want - my friend - to be rich".

What does this say for our argument about whether asking pupils to express themselves pushes them into error?

They don't need pushing. The ways in which French diverges from English are unknown to them and can be found even in the most apparently mechanical building of sentences from French they know.

I am happy for this post to be less carefully balanced than previous ones, so I am going to throw in a few more bold statements while I am at it.

The drive to say things using language you know is not something you want to squash.

The selection and sequencing of language which is a feature of the "keep it mechanical" approach is all about the powerful language which can be recombined. This emphasis on recombinable language is great, but it naturally goes with the idea of pupils creating meaning from these recombinable elements. And will inevitably lead to error as they meet the limits of their language knowledge.

And while I am making bold statements...

The idea that pupils must not ever see la poulet in case it becomes permanent, comes from the same people who tell us that poulet isn't worth teaching because it won't be seen often enough to be learned. These two strictures seem incompatible.

In case you have forgotten where these arguments come from, here's a slide from an ofsted webinar on how the curriculum should be designed.

The idea is that language teaching should heavily focus on the explicit and direct teaching of the language itself, boiled down to the essentials and avoiding rich and complex contexts, with no incidental knowledge, ensuring pupils are 100% secure and accurate before moving on. This clashes with the ideas behind our Year 7 French Art Exhibition that we are interrogating in our National Priorities Project. I hope you will allow me this one intemperate post and maybe understand a little more context as to where the central questions of this Project are coming from.

Next Post: Rewriting the Year 7 Art Exhibition booklet in the light of these considerations.

NPP 13: Attitude to Error and the wider curriculum

 In our National Priorities Project, we are looking at our curriculum through the lens of our Year 7 French Art Exhibition. What lessons can we learn from the work on the Exhibition for the relationship between communication and grammar, self-expression and accuracy, nitty gritty language learning and Interculturality? And how do these reflections cast light on the rest of our curriculum?

One of the points of interrogation for the Art Exhibition project is error. Does asking pupils to write more freely to describe their artwork for the exhibition lead them to make errors, and is this inherently problematic for language learning?

In my last post I showed examples of pupils' work for the exhibition. I argued that asking pupils to write more freely didn't create the errors. It revealed them. Pupils who could complete a mechanical grammatical exercise accurately, made mistakes when describing their own picture. These mistakes revealed underlying confusion in their emerging grasp of grammatical patterns. The task didn't create the errors. It revealed something important about their learning. What the exhibition project was delivering was an opportunity for teachers to see into how pupils' knowledge was forming. And an opportunity for pupils to test out how well their knowledge could be articulated into a working system. Even on their own terms, for someone primarily concerned with pupils developing coherent and accurate language, the Exhibition project was playing an important role in revealing pupils' underlying conceptualisation of the grammar.

How are these arguments born out elsewhere in our curriculum? How does our attitude to errors affect teaching and learning?

Here's an example from another Year 7 topic.

The pupil is trying to write up his opinions on different foods. You can see firstly that it is full of errors when it comes to words like le, la, les, du, de la, des, de. And secondly that the pupil is aware of these errors. He has commented that he was so worried about these words, that he hardly wrote anything.

In my experience, this attitude from a pupil is actually quite rare. Many pupils will happily pick any of the alternatives for "the" and use them seemingly without caring. When they are trying to convey a message about what they like and don't like, the gender of the word for "the" is not a salient feature for them. Both in terms of conveying their opinion and in transfering meaning from English, gender has no important role.

Its role for a learner of the language is one of indicating intellectual diligence rather than communication of primary meaning. Sometimes I wish pupils had the internal mechanism that I have that makes me physically wince when I see incorrect gender. Something in my education meant that when I went to France I would rather ask for two of something in a shop than risk getting the gender wrong. Expensive and calorie rich, but at least I didn't let myself down with errors of gender.

Do I really want my pupils to think like this? I would say the answer is Yes. But not at the expense of being confident in trying to say what they want to say.

You can see at the bottom of the error-strewn piece of work above, he then went on to write a "With Help" version. Which looked like this:

A much better piece of work. Firstly the articles are largely accurate. Secondly, without the obstacle of worrrying about the accuracy of gender, it shows what the pupil is capable of saying in French. I wish he'd been able to go for it in the first place.

We are told to be worried that allowing pupils to write more freely leads to error. We can see here that the opposite argument also applies: worrying about error inhibits pupils writing more freely. I am not going to argue that one of these positions is right and one is wrong. We have to be aware of both and how they play out in the reality of the classroom. In fact we can see in this case an example of how teacher and pupil worked through the complexity of language learning, with set backs and steps forward.

I quite like the model we've seen in this post, of challenging yourself to write what you can "from your head" as specified in the title for the pupil's piece of work. And then reflecting on it and using support to check for accuracy in a second draft. It's one of the things we took from this National Priorities Project to inform our Department Inclusion Plan.

There are deeper considerations. How exactly are we expecting pupils to learn to select un, une, du, de la, des, de l', de...? Is it because there are important concepts to be grasped? If you have written des fromage, you ought to know that there's a mismatch there? Or is it by learning from musical memory? You would never say la fromage because you've always heard le fromage and it sounds right. Or should pupils always know it's OK to look up a gender of a noun, because while it's important to get it right, it shouldn't be an obstacle to saying what you want to say? Or is it just simply more important to say what you want to say regardless of getting a gender wrong, because it is no impediment to communication?

We can still have the conversation about what drives pupils to be better language learners. Is it being able to say things? Or is it being confident with the nitty gritty of grammar and not being overwhelmed by the demands of communication? But this argument shouldn't be theoretical and shouldn't imagine it is going to come up with a clear cut answer. The answer is going to be in the complex and dynamic reality of the classroom, where experience shows that all these things are in play.

Next Post: A reindeer of the ideas that suggest we have been doing things wrong.

NPP 12: The Art Exhibition and Attitude to Error

 Here are some examples of pupils' work for the French Art Exhibition from 2026.

Most people's initial reaction is that this is a beautiful display and a lovely project to do. But one of the ideas that we are exploring in our National Priorities Project is the idea that the Art Exhibition Project risks pushing pupils into inaccurate work. Should we be asking pupils to be creative in their French, to focus on creating individual descriptions and creating meaning for a real audience? Or should we be rehearsing well-sequenced grammar and vocabulary for the sake of accuracy?

When we zoom in, there are errors in these pieces of work.

This one shows the kind of language we are expecting pupils to deploy. We have worked on il y a and how to say has and is. We have worked on gender, word order and adjectival agreement. Pupils are using some prepositions and some simple opinions.

What do the errors show and how important are they?

The gender of the word forêt. A word the pupil has learned for the purpose of this description. What does it show? That the teacher gave them the word without the gender? Or that the pupil looked it up and because it's a cognate, paid slightly too little attention to the gender and the accent? The transformation of the s on the end of chauve souris into an e. Is this a sign of the pupil "correcting" the French spelling so it conforms more to patterns of gender and number? They are making a feminine singular noun end in an e rather than an s precisely because they know a rule? And what about j'ai adore? What is going on there? There is confusion in the meaning of je / j'ai which may go back to a confusion in the phonics and pronunciation?

I am not shocked by these mistakes. I am interested in them. They are revealing. They reveal a pupil who isn't carefully copying the spelling of j'adore. They reveal a pupil who is operating at the next level up, where they are building sentences from French they think they know. And where their mistakes reveal the nascent formation of rules and patterns. 

As the teacher, this is incredibly useful in seeing the learning process in action. I know when I give this pupil a carefully controlled mechanical exercise, they will produce accurate French. By asking them to create their own picture and describe it in their own French, I get much more information about what is going on with their emerging conceptualisation and memorisation of the language.

Here's another example of exactly this:

We have already taught pupils how to say J'ai un chien qui s'appelle... So now to describe a picture, they learn how to say il y a un poisson qui nage... It was supposed to neatly extend what pupils know, and be a first glimpse into dealing with -er verbs. The mistake this pupil has made, is to think of this as "There is a flying bat" and "There is a climbing mouse". Again, in their booklet, the controlled practice sentences would have looked fine. It's only when they move to a freer self-expression, that the errors occur.

Except that last sentence is wrong. It's not that the errors only occur when they move to freer self-expression. The "error" lurking in their thinking was there all along. Asking them to write more freely has revealed the "error" in their thinking. So even if you think along the lines of accuracy being important, and carefully structured conceptualisation of the language being important, then this "freer" writing is revealing exactly what you need to know.

Of course, we can also view the "errors in thinking" as not so much "errors", but as the nascent recognition of patterns, the emerging formation and application of rules. The pupils are learning how the language fits together, how it diverges from English, how one word affects another. And you can see this in the very nature of the mistakes they are making.

What would a much more accurate example show us?  It might be that the work has been corrected by the teacher and redrafted by the pupil. It may be that the pupil stuck much closer to scaffolding and support. You don't write j'ai adore like the first pupil did, if you are simply copying. A much more accurate example may be showing us a pupil checking more carefully or perhaps more reliant on copying or adapting from a model answer rather than revealing the workings of their own thinking.

I love this picture and the French. But I don't believe for a second that it would indicate that the pupil isn't on exactly the same journey of discovering French syntax as the examples above.

I hope that the people who insist on the importance of accuracy aren't just doing so for the superficial sakes of accuracy for its own sake. I hope they are doing it because it's an indication of the development of the pupil's underlying grammatical understanding. And on those terms, I think this post argues that asking pupils to use their French more freely in order to describe their arwork, focusing on what they want to say, is not inimical to the process of mastering the rules of French syntax. It reveals the complexity of the task and the progress the pupil is making in internalising rules and patterns. I am not arguing this from some romantic notion of identity, self-expression, creativity (although I could). I am arguing it's actually an important part of the nitty gritty language learning.

Next Post: How do these insights into Error impact the rest of our curriculum?

NPP 11: Mechanical Exercises and Meaning Making

 I have been reading more about what Littlewood had to say about the Continuum of Communication. In a previous post I outlined my interest in the idea of the way when we say "meaning" is important in language learning, what we mean by "meaning" can range from semantic meaning (I know chien means dog) to communicative meaning-making (saying something you want to communicate). Our own reflection as a department on our National Priorities Project is leading us to question what is the importance of these different degrees of "meaning" when it comes to successful language learning.

We are looking at how a creative and Intercultural project meshes with the nitty gritty of language learning. We are examining our Year 7 French Exhibition, where pupils create an artwork and describe it in French, and we want to see if our insights into this creative project also apply to the rest of our curriculum.

I wanted to see if Littlewood saw his Continuum of Communication as a progression model. With mechanical exercises a necessary starting point and communication of meaning as an ultimate goal. And if so, is it a remote goal (as suggested by the Ofsted research review Novice-Expert model)? Or is creativity and self expression something that can be injected much earlier as we seek to do with our French Exhibition?

Through the National Priorities Project and UCL, I was able to access this excellent article Developing a Personal Approach to Teaching Language for Communication - ProQuest in which Littlewood sums up the principles of Communicative Language Teaching. While he doesn't explicitly set out a progression model based on the Continuum of Communication, he seems to take it for granted that this is how teachers work. It seems necessary to start with a focus on the form of the language (let's not get into Focus on Form versus Focus on Forms today). And then to progress through questions which require understanding of meaning, but which aren't really communicating anything of great import. And then finally to projects or Tasks. Littlewood points out that maybe the bulk of learning gets stuck at the middle point, where the learner is communicating some meaning, but primarily to practise the language and without any real communicative purpose. He stops short of evaluating this, simply describing what we might see in the classroom.

So as things stand, I think we are free to see what insights our National Priorities Project can offer in terms of our own answers to this question.

As we examine our resources as a department and discuss what is most successful, it is becoming clear that the exercises we have found to be least successful are the ones that seem most mechanical and least "meaningful". Here is one example from the Art Exhibition Booklet practising turning the indefinite article into the definite article.

I have to say straight away, that our booklets are not full of this kind of exercise. As we move on to looking at changes we are making to the booklets as part of this project, I will share more. But in response to the Ofsted research review, we have boosted the attention to nitty gritty grammar, alongside more communicative and meaningful tasks.

Pupils can mechanically complete the grid. In fact they seem happy to do so and feel they are doing useful "work". To emphasise how mechanical this is, some pupils filled in le and un repeatedly down the columns before writing in the nouns. In a slightly less mechanical exercise, they can fill in a subsequent grid where they have to pick the correct masculine or feminine article depending on the gender of the word. As a check of the broad concept of gender and articles, it works. Teachers can see who is and who isn't picking the right article.

But it seems that beyond the concept, it's too mechanical for meaningful learning. Pupils can fill out the grid repeatedly but it doesn't mean that in the next lesson they will associate le with un, or remember the gender of the nouns or be able to pick the correct word for the or a. And I think we would be fooling ourselves to think that they even care. When constructing meaning, for example to say that there is a red circle behind the blue square, while the teacher thinks that the gender is important, to the pupil communicating meaning, it's the least important aspect of the sentence.

What has been learned mechanically doesn't transfer up the continuum to more meaningful communication.

It reminds me of this post, where Year 10 pupils who had written practice paragraphs, just to rehearse their language repertoire, when it came to Year 11, were starting from scratch. Whereas a pupil who had written a personal story was able to retell it. Firstly because it was meaningful and memorable when it came to thinking back. But also because when he wrote it, he was engaging his Spanish repertoire to create personal meaning, not just practise some language.

So in line with the suppositions of translanguaging and task based language learning, we are going to tweak the most mechanical exercises such as the grid above, to increase the level of "meaning". We will share what we do and how it works in the classroom.

This feels like a step towards an answer. But I have another answer. Or maybe another question...

When it comes to the purpose and meaningfulness of exercises... And when it comes to the purpose and meaningfulness of a Task or Project... And when it comes to the purpose and meaningfulness of communication... although some of that can be engineered by the teacher, how much of it comes from the individual pupil?

A pupil can take an open Task, and turn it into an exercise by carefully rehashing language they know the teacher wants to see and without any real personal communication. Other pupils will ignore the strictures and set criteria of an exercise, and embark on something they want to try to say for their own amusement. In this post we see this play out with a Year 9 group. It tells the story (with examples of work) of how I tried to curtail the more fantasmagorical and error-strewn writing of some pupils and what happened when I tried. But the most important question is how does this relate to language-learning. And I can't shift the strong feeling that the pupils who carefully stick to the criteria might do well in tests. But the pupils who put more of themselves into their work are the ones who if you dropped them into France would be the strongest language learners. Click on the link earlier in the paragraph and see if this is born out in their work.

Is this a romantic notion? It seems important, and the posts on Translanguaging and Task Based Learning have been building up to this question. I think in this series of posts, there is a strong rationale for meaningful, purposeful communication to have a very rational role in language learning.

On the other hand, I don't think that I can argue that learners who produce work demonstrating careful accurate application of the language the teacher has selected and sequenced for them can be labelled as "bad learners".

I am enjoying the journey this National Priorities Project is taking us on, in looking at the synergies between nitty gritty language learning and Intercultural communication. Like Littlewood, I am happy to describe what I see without having to adjudicate. Let's get stuck in to what we see happening in the classroom and how communication, grammar, accuracy, expression, exercises and Tasks all overlap...

Next Post: What does pupils' work for the Art Exhibition show us about error?

NPP 10: Interlanguage

 I didn't set out to create a gazeteer of different visions of language learning. This series of posts sprang from thinking about our Year 7 French Art Exhibition which we are examining as part of our National Priorities Project. We are interrogating the role of communication and interculturality in the Art Exhibition and whether these are drivers of language learning. So inevitably the link to Task Based Learning had to be explored. And while the Exhibition challenges pupils to use their language  in order to complete a task, I think the way we specify and scaffold the language to be used dilutes its standing as a Task with a capital T. The role of the project in developing our pupils' augmented identity as owners of their language and their ability to use it to communicate creatively, demanded we look at Translanguaging. And I think although some of the practices feel alien to us, the attitude to expression, error and interculturality are more relevant than I imagined.

There is one more idea which demands attention: Interlanguage.

I personally find this way of thinking about language learning very seductive. But part of this National Priorities Project will mean questioning whether it is a wise and useful concept for rationalising the balance of creativity and personal expression with the demands of accurate rehearsal of well sequenced grammar.

A pupil's interlanguage is the totality of their emerging knowledge and conceptualisation of the target language. It includes a flux of conscious and unconscious concepts in a non-linear natural progress towards greater accuracy and fluency. It exists in between L1 and the target language, with pupils' errors demonstrating a default to L1 syntax until the target language grammar slowly gains ground. It is linked to Task Based Learning through the belief that it is by challenging pupils to deploy the totality of their language repertoire and even to exceed its limits, that concepts become articulated into a functioning idiolect that is in the process of getting closer to the target language. It is linked to Translanguaging through the idea that language learning is the process of extending and augmenting the learner's evolving linguistic identity.

In the context of our French Art Exhibition, these would be key aspects in suggesting that the project does advance language learning. It sets the learner a Task which requires them to invest their creativity into self expression, using their repertoire of language in meaningful and purposeful ways, with an insouciant attitude to error, and a nonchalance towards the idea of redundant language introduced just for this particular piece of work.

I certainly see language learning from this perspective. And it seems to me that without the concept of interlanguage, there is no language learning. Just learning. As in the learning of facts and concepts in any other subject. It's the idea of Interlanguage that allows us to understand how exposure to the language, introduction to patterns and rules, and the application of learning in order to comprehend and create meaning, all coalesces to turn learning into language learning.

But there is an alternative view.

What is the alternative view? The alternative view is that in the classroom setting and limited time, we are not talking about language acquisition. We are talking about language learning. Language acquistion in an immersive environment of interaction and comprehensible input may operate on different rules. But language learning is just... learning. Learning as for any other subject. Learning defined as "a change in long term memory".

And all of a sudden, everything changes. Redundant language learned only for this project and never met again, will be forgotten. So no learning has taken place. Asking pupils to try to say things they can't will lead to errors which will become permanent. And the valuable and limited time available should be spent rehearsing accurate construction of sentences exemplifying well sequenced grammar concepts. The demands of creativity and communication will overload the cognitive demands on the pupils and distract from the learning of the language itself.

In this scenario our Year 7 French Art Exhibition would be a vanity project. It would risk wasting valuable time that could be spent securing learning, through direct instruction with carefully sequenced progression and well timed retrieval practice so nothing is redundant or forgotten.

I think this National Priorities Project will add to this debate. We can document and share classroom examples of where the two philosophies seem to apply. Either separately, with each having its place... Or could it be that there can be an overlap, in a richness of approach where the importance of purposeful, meaningful, creative, personal language use has a key role in the cementing of nitty gritty conceptualisation and memorisation of language?

Next Post: Can we come to some conclusions on the importance of meaningful versus mechanical?

NPP 9: Translanguaging

 This National Priorities Project on how our Year 7 French Art Exhibition engages Interculturality with classroom language learning, is taking me on quite a journey. In previous posts I have raised as yet unresolved questions about tasks and resources which operate on different levels on a continuum between mechanical grammar drills and communicative self-expression. The lens of the Year 7 Exhibition will allow us to view the importance of this and apply it to our curriculum as a whole.

Today it feels as if the next step of our journey should be a diversion via Translanguaging.

What is Translanguaging?

I will start with general impressions and then try to look deeper into how it works and its relevance to our curriculum.

I associate Translanguaging with language teaching in the United States, maybe more in a Primary school context. I hope I am not miss characterising it if I say it seems to be a bit of a Dora the Explorer approach, mixing English with items of Spanish vocabulary. It aims to be culturally rich, effusive in its can-do attitude and unconcerned with nitty gritty grammar.

So you might get sentences like Ireri went to a local tianguis to buy some tasty uchepos for her abuelita because they remind her of her pueblo where she grew up in Michoacán.

It exists in a country where cultural contact and identity is in play. Monolingual and monocultural Americans enjoy moving into a multicultural space. The children of Spanish speakers learn to value and take part in their heritage language.

I hope I haven't done it too many injustices in this initial description. We certainly need to look more carefully at what is going on...

Translanguaging is based in a belief in language acquisition through comprehensible input. It tells us we shouldn't worry about pace or sequencing because we know that with enough input, the human brain will learn language. It is a communicative approach, but a reaction against a 100% target language approach that seeks to banish L1 (English) from the classroom. It seeks to acknowledge that pupils come with language knowledge. Learning another language builds on this rather than starting from scratch in a separate silo.

It acknowledges that most errors learners make are because they apply L1 assumptions to the language they are learning. And it fully embraces this without fear. Rather than holding up perfection in knowledge and use of the Target Language, it wants to see a slow accretion of proficiency in other languages as an extension of pupils' existing language.

And for the purposes of our NPP project, it is tightly bound up with Interculturality and identity. Learners are not denying their own linguistic identity and building a new language from scratch in the shadow of an unobtainable native speaker ideal. They are augmenting their own identity and linguistic repertoire with new exploration and experiences.

It never doubts for a minute that self expression, meaning and Interculturality trump drills, accuracy and explicit grammatical knowledge.

From our point of view it is extraordinary. We find it hard to imagine an approach which mixes languages, which isn't about learning to parse accurate sentences, which doesn't aim for mastery of a conceptual system, and which doesn't start out by trying to erase our accent and L1 syntax.

In recent years, the OFSTED research review and NCELP diagnosed that there isn't time in school for acquisition through comprehensible input to take place. And prescribed a hot housing of well sequenced grammatical conceptualisation as the only viable alternative.

Translanguaging refuses to be worried by this. It leads with the initial introduction of lexical and cultural items which sit happily in sentences with L1 syntax. Grammatical features will follow in good time and at their own pace. Meanwhile they shouldn't be an obstacle to self expression. In fact they are a reflection of the speaker's identity as an American learning Spanish. The here and now of the classroom is a communicative and intercultural space where language learning is an extension of the learner's identity.

It is confident that the language learning experience isn't about chasing native standards of accuracy. It's confident that language learning is a journey to be enjoyed. And it's confident that language learning, although it takes time, is something that we are naturally good at.

I have to stop and go to pick the car up from its MOT now. But along with Littlewood's continuum from mechanical to communicative, and Task Based Learning, we can see that Translanguaging is a vision of language learning we should take into account when looking at how identity, communication and Interculturality engage with accumulation of language and the ability to use it. And I do have some answers. Not definitive answers, but thoughts and insights based on the examination of our curriculum we are undertaking in this National Priorities Project...

Next Post: Are we more comfortable with Interlanguage than Translanguaging?

NPP 8: Is our Year 7 French Art Exhibition a "Task"?

 It's 8.00 am on the first proper day of the holidays, and I already have 7 posts on our National Priorities Project sitting in draft, waiting for September when I can publish them. Some, like the NPP's role in creating our Department Inclusion Plan already show outcomes. Others, like the question of the importance of creating meaning versus mechanical exercises are left currently unresolved. Before I can write more on this topic, I need to get another question out of the way: Is our Year 7 French Art Exhibition a "Task"?

I have written before on Task Based Learning and why we ought to have it on our radar in the school language classroom. Task Based Learning is an approach that puts the emphasis on the learner using the language to complete a communicative Task. The declared focus is on the completion of the Task, rather than on the language itself. The Task is often "authentic" (a word which in language teaching tends to mean "simulated" rather than "real") and the process of interaction in completing the Task may count as part of the Task as much as the outcome.

On this basis, our Year 7 French Exhibition could be considered a "Task". Every pupil creates an artwork, they describe it in French, and their work goes on display to the public. The task is purposeful and authentic, requires a degree of autonomy and creativity, is for a real audience, and is celebrated for the outcome.

Back in 2010 we used to have tangible outcomes for as many of our KS3 French units as possible. We were awarded the European Award for Languages for a curriculum built around things like the French Cafe, Child's Picture Book, Letters to France, and an embryonic Art Exhibition. In 2011 we used a LinkedUp project with 3 other high schools to broaden this to welcome information for refugees for the Red Cross, a menu translation wheel for a local cafe, and a video for the Norfolk Broads Authority. The project was based, somewhat unquestioningly, on the idea that this led to "Deep Learning." Having responsibility for the outcome and engagement with a real client, was supposed to make the learning substantially different from normal classroom learning. The model was Design Technology, and the idea was that language learning suffered from a lack of tangible outcomes. We wanted to think through how we could be more like Food Technology or Resistant Materials. Pupils would be involved in the process of creating something using their French and they would have something to show and be proud of.

The idea also involved an understanding of breaking down the learning into the knowledge and skills required. It coincided with this project to show pupils that writing in French was a nuts and bolts technical process, not magic. One of the outcomes of the project for the schools involved was that our curriculum had to be carefully structured to equip pupils with the knowledge they needed in order to be creative. And the other was that developing pupils' ability to use the language is as much a part of the learning as is learning the language itself. Both of these lessons have had long term impact on the design of our curriculum.

But I think we were largely uncritical of the idea that tangible outcomes ("Tasks") was "a good thing." I don't know how far we were persuaded by the idea of "Deep Learning", and we didn't really examine exactly what was being learned deeply. If we focus on the language itself, it is certainly possible for pupils to undertake a project such as the French Art Exhibition, and then look at their work a month later and be unable to remember what it means. But they may have learned lessons about themselves as language learners and language users in an intercultural world.

That is the remit of this National Priorities Project. But with as sharp a focus as possible on the integration of pupils' growing intercultural identity with the learning of the language itself. Does the French Art Exhibition contribute to the learning of the language? Or does it risk being a distraction or at worst an irrelevance when it comes to pupils' retention of grammar and vocabulary?

Which brings us back to the question of whether the French Art Exhibition is a "Task".

And my answer is No. Our Year 7 French Art Exhibition has some of the surface features of Task Based Learning. It has a Task to be completed and celebrated by a real audience. But there are deeper features of Task Based Learning that it potentially does not meet.

The defining aspect of a Task, is not its authenticity or creativity. It is how a Task stands in opposition to an Exercise. In an exercise, the teacher specifies the language to be used. We use the exercise for pupils to practise using the language they have been taught. We expect to see them using the language, and may use a tick list to check they have done so. There may be an element of personal expression involved, but we train pupils to "use the French you know" and "don't say things you can't".

This is not Task Based Learning. Task Based Learning has a declared focus on the Task, not the language. But it isn't abdicating responsibility for language learning. It's carefully engineered with important aspects of language learning in mind. It is deliberately allowing the learner to test the limits of their knowledge, to try to say things that stretch the envelope of what they can do with the language. One reason for this is to act as a driver for further learning. And the other is to force the learner to explore how to use the language they do have, in order to complete the task. In Task Based Learning, the learner isn't using today's specified language point. They are using the entirety of the language they have learned so far. The process forces them to articulate their knowledge, to pull on all the nascent conceptualisation of the grammar, deploy their skill and ingenuity as a communicator, take ownership of language and create meaning.

It is important we don't lose sight of this, in our world of "use the French you've learned" and "don't say things you can't", especially if our learners seem to be able to churn out today's language point, but aren't accumulating a repertoire they can use in order to express themselves. And once I have finished writing this post on whether our Exhibition is a Task, I will come back with a more nuanced examination of whether it matters, returning to the idea of a continuum of communication.

But for now, I can say that our Exhibition is not an example of Task Based Learning.

We carefully teach the pupils the language they are going to need: definite and indefinite articles, word order and adjectival agreement, prepositions, 3rd person of -er verbs, opinions... We create scaffolding and checklists to make sure they are including these features. We use model answers, we annotate and improve drafts, we check for accuracy. We tell pupils not to try to say things they can't, and we tell pupils what language we expect to be included.

Now we have got that out of the way, I do have more to say. Because one of the Big Ideas emerging from our work on the National Priorities Project is the idea of a continuum of "meaning" from mechanical lexical knowledge of what a word means, to genuine communicative creation of meaning. What we need to look at is whether this difference has an impact on the nitty gritty of language learning. We shall see...

Next Post: Some surprising conclusions about Translanguaging.

NPP 7: Taking Apart our Whole KS3 Curriculum

 In previous posts I have written up how we got started with our National Priorities Project by challenging our assumptions about our Year 7 French Art Exhibition, and how this thinking transfered to our discussions around our Department Inclusion Plan. Next we sat down as a department to take apart our whole KS3 curriculum.

The same questions we were asking about the French Exhibition framed our discussion about our curriculum. You can see already we are becoming more sophisticated in exploring all the implications of our Project:

• Is there long term well sequenced learning where grammar and vocabulary are revisited and accumulated?

• Are there "one offs" where pupils are learning things to say but which won't be met again?

• Do tasks engage pupils or do they distract them from what they are really meant to be learning?

• Alongside the language pupils are learning, are we also developing what they can do with it?

• Does creating meaning and personal expression have an important role in making learning stick?

• Do tasks involving communication and interaction overwhelm pupils?

• What is the role of tasks focused on mechanical application of rules?

• How do we ensure accuracy and ensure memorisation?

• How do we involve learners in developing self awareness as language learners and as users of language in an intercultural world?

And we are also becoming more sophisticated in our responses to these questions. Some of them might seem to give a worrying answer: there are occasions where pupils learn to say something as a one off. But we might decide that it's important to keep it. There are occasions where the demands of interaction are challenging. This doesn't mean we cut it out: we work on explicitly developing it. But I am getting ahead of myself here...

First I should show you the booklets we created for the day:

The front cover setting out the key questions

The central pages for notes on each Unit

Copies of our booklets for Year 7, 8 and 9

We discussed the overall sequencing of the content of the whole of KS3, each year, and each unit. We looked at how pupils accumulated language and at how we explicitly developed their ability to deploy it with increasing sophistication, independence and spontaneity. In the end I think most members of the department didn't make extensive notes. Instead we had a lively discussion, taking it in turns to take the role of scribe.

I now have the task of rewriting extensive tweaks to the booklets for next year, and the additional task of documenting it for the National Priorities Project. As well as continuing to evaluate the ongoing impact of the tweaks. And we mustn't forget the sheer impact of spending a day together in focused discussion of our curriculum. Invaluable!

I will pick out specific examples to share in the future as I tackle the job of rewriting the booklets. But here are the main consensus take-aways in terms of the questions we were asking ourselves:

The tasks in the booklets which work least well are where pupils are doing purely mechanical exercises. They help grasp the concept eg of la plage - à la plage; le collège- au collège. But they don't seem to guarantee memorisation. It seems more meaningful tasks have more impact. It was something of a surprise that this was so unanimous, as we have recently introduced more of these nitty gritty tasks into the booklet.

There are some tasks which appear to be a "one off" or teaching pupils to say things, rather than developing conceptualisation or accumulation of language. But these were often seen as valuable in themselves. Ordering food was seen as an example of something important to learn on its own merits whether or not the language being taught was strictly part of the accumulation of grammatical conceptualisation.

There are tasks in the booklet which are designed to support communication and interaction. Many of these don't sit well in booklet format and can be redesigned as separate resources.

Cultural and intercultural tasks are very important in pupils' motivation and form part of the core of what they are learning alongside the language. "Alongside" is the wrong word. Integrated and enmeshed would be better. Practical barriers around these need to be overcome. And we need an equivalent to the Year 7 French Art Exhibition in Year 8 and in Year 9. The proposals for Year 8 would be to keep going with our letter exchange, despite issues of mixed success with partner schools. And for Year 9 it could be to develop the focus on narrating into the creation of story books for Primary school learners.

Lots of work to be tackled and to be written up for the National Priorities Project. But what is most pleasing is the way when we went through the booklets page by page, the comments and experiences we were sharing were directly related to the questions we are asking in this project. And I think this is the right way round. We aren't trying to answer the questions in the abstract and apply it to our curriculum. The project is casting light on our curriculum. And the curriculum is casting light on the questions in the project.

Next Post: Is our Art Exhibition an example of Task Based Learning?

NPP 6: A Useful Lens to Focus our Vision as a Department

 Our National Priorities Project is focused on our Year 7 French Exhibition. But this focus is very much intended to be a lens which can be applied to other aspects of our curriculum. Each pupil creates an artwork and writes the description in French, and their work goes on display to the public. This is intended to be challenging, creative, motivating, and to drive the need for grammatical understanding. But can it also be overwhelming, cause inaccuracy, and lead to "one offs" in order to complete a task rather than carefully sequenced long term learning.

Having kicked off our debate of these ideas in the direct context of the French Exhibition, would the same ideas be useful for sharpening our focus on other aspects of our curriculum?

One of the first tasks to be completed was our Department Inclusion Plan. The same ideas that we were questioning in the Art Exhibition came to the fore: How do we balance challenge and support? Do the things we do in order to make the work attractive actually distract from the learning? Should we be focusing on accuracy or communication? What is the balance of personal expression and careful mechanical rehearsal of well sequenced language?

What are the most important things in language learning? If we want to make sure that learning is carefully sequenced and without distractions, should we be stripping language down to the nitty gritty core of grammar and vocabulary? Should be we be ensuring accuracy through tightly controlled mechanical exercises based around retrieval of knowledge? Or is this to deny our pupils the key aspects of language learning such as interaction, self expression, interculturality? And if these seem "overwhelming", is that a reason to abandon them or a reason to explicitly work on developing them?

The Department Inclusion Plan was the result of our discussion as a department on these questions. Rather than narrate our debate, the plan itself serves to document this, so here's the central part of it:

The strength of this document is that it arises directly from what we said, how we think and what we actually do in the classroom every day. It wasn't written by starting with a list of criteria and ticking them off. We may have to now do exactly this - I can see, for example, that we don't mention how we work with teaching assistants. But the central questions in the left hand column come directly from our National Priorities Project work on interrogating our French Art Exhibition. And the strategies in the middle column reflect our vision of teaching and learning. 

It is based on a very real classroom-based awareness of the richness of our subject, with an interplay between language learning and intercultural learning. I don't want to "answer" the fundamental questions of our National Priorities Project prematurely, but it's our job to make sure that grammar, communication, engagment, focus, sequencing, personal expression, accuracy, culture... are not incompatible.

Next Post: As a department, we take apart our entire KS3 curriculum and resources.