As a department we love our French Exhibition where each pupil in Year 7 creates an artwork and describes it in French. But central to our National Priorities Project, is the idea that introducing creativity and communication so early could disrupt the carefully sequenced conceptualisation and mechanical rehearsal of accurate language. So when I put it to the teachers that there are aspects of the Art Exhibition which could be a distraction from the nitty gritty of language learning, how did they react? In another post I have written up our staff survey. But what better way to get at the issues than to interview one of the teachers. You can listen to the interview here on YouTube, along with images from last year's exhibition. Or read on...
Here's the transcript of what we said:
Vincent: You were saying the other day how much you love the art exhibition project.
Kirsty: So, I think the thing that I really like about it is that because the children can work independently and do something that they're interested in, and then we bring that back into our French lessons after we've done all the work on it. So, it's kind of got so many steps to it and it's showing those steps and that progression, and at the end of the day, the work that they produce—the French they produce—is so brilliant! They don't even realise they've produced it as well as they have until you look back at it. And they get such a sense of achievement out of it. That is genuinely... they all enjoy it, they all remember it, and they all remember what the, like, silly expressions there were. I can't even remember what they are now, but, you know, like the extraterrestre and things like that, which is not part of what they would possibly normally have learned, but they get so much out of it. And...
Vincent: What did you think the other day when I said maybe some of these things are bad things?
Kirsty: I don't think—I don't think you can say that. I think from my point of view, it is that idea of actually using language for a real situation. It is that—okay, it's a slightly forced situation—but it is actually them communicating in a different way than they used to. And actually, I think that's really special for them. It's that feeling of, "I can do this and I can achieve." Perhaps also, if there's a student who's not the most confident with their languages, it still gives them the space and chance to do it. And if I think of some of the students I've worked with this year, where actually, genuinely, they were struggling with it, and as soon as we put the—the picture in front of them, and as soon as they created their piece of artwork, they had then had ownership of it. You know, some of my students did things like... I had a boy who did all about a football stadium because he's a massive football fan. That was completely different to anything we'd done before, but we were able to kind of manipulate what he'd been learning to suit his kind of context for—for that piece of work. And he was so proud of it at the end of it. And I've got so many cases of that, you know. I had a student's work all about a giraffe because that was their favorite animal. And there are so many times where... what I also like about it is that we then do go back over the previous unit as well because they all do a little biography, but they do a biography that's anonymous because we say, "Because of GDPR, we don't want them to put their real name." So they then have a fantasy family, which is also really special as well. So, you know, there are so many positives to what they can do with it. And the work they produce at the end of it is not what I would say is typical of Year 7.
Vincent: Do you find—you're saying how individual they are—are you having to do a lot of spoon-feeding of stuff that's a one-off?
Kirsty: No, absolutely not. Because how we've set it up, and how I set it up with the classes, is our special, like, what I'd call our "keys." So it's like, we definitely—we color-code a lot of work before we're doing it. So we are, "Have you included your opinion sentences? Have you included your adjectives to describe things? Have you included...?" And we have like a checklist of about nine things. So as long as they fit within those parameters, they can then add the detail with that from the core vocabulary that we give at the end of the booklet.
Vincent: Do you think it gets in the way of pupils who want to just write something about their picture that's not as structured?
Kirsty: Um, I don't know that I've actually thought of that. Partly because when we're doing it, we have it so... all of my classes just buy into the fact that we have got to produce this amazing piece of work, and how it is going to be for an art exhibition that's in the public domain, that people are going to see, people are going to come from outside of school to see it. Um, and I think that does make them want to make it better, so they want to include all of those key things that I've said so that they can, you know, "This is what I'm capable of."
Vincent: So the structures are there. You might have to give your pupil something relevant for theirs, but they do have the language to do it.
Kirsty: Yeah.
Vincent: Um, accuracy?
Kirsty: Redraft and redraft. And we have worked really hard with them—I know that I have worked really hard with them—to make sure that they are understanding those fundamentals. My classes are very much the—the kind of—the focus of the un, une, le, la, les all the way through. And so it's almost... if we make a mistake, we can see the mistake, so therefore we correct the mistake. They also—they do peer assessment, as in they look at each other's work to say, "Well, I think there might be a mistake here." And then I will go and be checking with them. And it's—it's such a lovely working atmosphere from them. "I think there might be a mistake here, miss," and how they change it is brilliant, absolutely brilliant.
Vincent: And do you think this then feeds through to other units that they do, for the pupils?
Kirsty: So, I know that I always use this again whenever the—the gender conversation comes up, we will always go back to that, and opinions certainly is something that we're always reminding them of as well. So, I kind of do a "by the end of Year 7, I am expecting you all in every in every piece of work we ever do to be including your il y a expressions as well," and the fact that we are reinforcing that in so many times... So, you know, I could guarantee every single one of my students, if I said, "Tell me your five opinions in French," categorically would do that. And we would be able to do that about any context because we're so confident with how we do it.
Vincent: And—and as a teacher, then, if what we're doing now is looking at our whole curriculum through this kind of lens, what are the kind of lessons from this thinking about the art exhibition that we can now use to fully use to think about what goes well and what doesn't go well and what needs to change in our whole curriculum?
Kirsty: So I think for me, what I do like about this is what I don't think we get again, and I think this is something we're working on, is that kind of memorable activity. And I think that is so special. So we've actually got a hook for Year 7, and it's a beautiful hook. But I think when we reach the end of Year 8, it's then the, "How do we keep that hook in place?" And I think that's something that as an institution, we've got to try and work on. Because trying to do it at some academic kind of discussion point of, "To do your GCSE," I don't know that many 13, 14 year-olds have that kind of emotional maturity to go, "Oh yeah, that's why I'm interested in learning about this."
Vincent: Would the letters to France fulfill that?
Kirsty: When they worked well with my Year 8 class a couple of years ago, they were absolutely brilliant, and the students wanted to learn new things that they could say to write back to their partner. They all had a partner, and it really did work well. It was quite a logistical nightmare, and I think that's something that you have to be aware of is how—you know, sounds really awful, but teacher time. And partly because you couldn't—you didn't know in advance, it's like the unpredictable text, isn't it? So, what is a Year 8 student from France going to write to a Year 8 student from the UK? You don't know necessarily. Hopefully, the teachers will have given them guidance in the way that we gave ours guidance. So there is that kind of level of unpredictability about it, which is quite interesting. But again, I think if you keep within the context of, "Let's talk about things that we're comfortable with, that are kind of well-known to us," everyday situations—I think that will make it a better communication method.
Vincent: And are these exactly the same questions, then, as we had for the Year 7 art thing, that it's like what I can say versus what I want to say?
Kirsty: Absolutely.
Vincent: And then also someone's going to be reading this, I need to make it good?
Kirsty: Yeah. So actually, one of the things that I always say to the students is, "Look, you haven't been speaking French for that long, so this is not where you are going to try and go into the detail and the minutiae of X, Y, or Z, but it is what can you do, what can you achieve." And what you can achieve is absolutely brilliant, and this is the best level that you can get to at this point. So I think that's also where, when you put it in the context of like a Year 8 real situation... Yes, of course they want to talk about the latest pop songs or whatever, but actually, they also want to talk about things that happen in their world and happen that they understand from the other—other children's worlds as well. So like we were just talking about the French school system. Trying to explain the French school system to the UK is so interesting. So, when I did the email conversations, or the email, exchange, we would do half in French, half in English, and always they did the same. And it worked really well, so you would do half where you had a bit of the expertise, but half where you were kind of supporting the other person. So, it worked so nicely, and that was really good for them.
Vincent: Brilliant. Thank you very much.
Next Post: Using our insights from the Art Exhibition to design our Department Inclusion Plan.
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