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...