1. Motivating students at AS & A2
Dominic McGladdery
@dominic_mcg
domsmflpage.blogspot.com
I ain't no hollaback girl
2. How to start...?
Slowly.
These students did their GCSE in May.
Now it's September.
How much will they remember?
Even the good ones will be rusty.
3. Where to start...?
The Scheme of Work.
Is it inspiring?
Is it fun?
Is it text book based?
Why? Why not?
4. LISTENING
TV APPS
Using smartphone or tablet download an app
France TV
TOP TV (Spanish)
German TV
Get students to watch a random channel for 5
minutes and write about or feedback to the
class what they have seen.
7. LISTENING
Spanish.
http://www.asisehace.net/
Lots of listening and video exercises for
independent revision from Jose Picardo
http://www.notesinspanish.com/spanish-audio/
http://bit.ly/10XvPM4 Eye on Spain website
10. LISTENING
Youtube
The best internet resource for finding songs in
the TL.
BBC World Service http://bbc.in/5ftDU8
News broadcasts in 27 languages
11. LISTENING
Give students a tapescript to start with.
Reduce this to a summary of points.
Eventually, wean them off this support.
12. READING
There is a wealth of foreign language
newspapers and magazines available on the
internet. http://www.onlinenewspapers.com/
Try to find articles relating to the specification
you use. Sites like http://1jour1actu.com and
http://news4kids.de/ are updated regularly.
For French try www.ados.fr too.
Put links on your VLE, blog or wiki
http://bit.ly/XHY3UK
13. READING
Any article can be copied and pasted into
word and turned into a reading
comprehension or gapfill exercise.
or
Use http://www.textivate.com to make a text
jigsaw.
14. READING
Download and use Tarsia to create puzzles.
See Clare Seccombe's excellent guide to
making Tarsia puzzles.
15. SPEAKING
Use all the ideas from my “squawk to talk”
workshop.
Remember that everything that works with Year
7 works just as well with year 13.
16. SPEAKING GAMES
Students choose or are given a random
number. This is the exact number of words (or
syllables!) they must use in their answers to
questions.
Students are given a random word which they
have to include in any answers they give.
Their partner must try to guess the mystery
word.
17. SPEAKING GAMES
Use Dave Reed's random letter generator to
generate 3 or 4 random letters. Students have
to come up with the longest word in the TL.
http://bit.ly/24hzqB
Cheddar gorge – a parlour game.
Working with a partner students have to create
a sentence taking turns to say one word at a
time.
18. DESERT ISLAND DISCS
Each student chooses 3 songs and prepares
some notes. They tell their partner which
songs they chose and the reasons why.
The partner then asks questions to elicit further
information and makes notes. This could be
something like "Why do you like this song?"
or "Where were you the first time you heard
this song?"
The pair then change roles. Each student then
gives a short summary to the group.
19. THE UNBELIEVABLE TRUTH
Students a read out a text which contains 3 or
more errors to the group.
The group has to find the errors.
They win points if they spot the mistakes and lose
points if they wrongly claim a mistake has been
made.
20. ONLY CONNECT
Connections
The students are given up to 4 clues and have
to decide on the link between the clues. They
are shown each clue separately and earn 5
points if they guess the connection after one
clue, 3 point after 2 clues, 2 points after 1, and 1
point for guessing after receiving all 4 clues.
Clue 1 Clue 2 Clue 3 Clue 4
aller tomber partir entrer
21. ONLY CONNECT
What's the 4 word?
th
Students have to guess what the 4th word is.
Scoring is the same as Connections.
It might look like this:
Clue 1 Clue 2 Clue 3 Answer
chat chien oiseau
22. ONLY CONNECT
The connecting wall
un chaise grand chat
super deux table crayon
stylo nul trousse cinq
trois chien petit tortue
23. ONLY CONNECT
Missing vowels
Give students a list of key words and/or phrases
with the vowels removed.
e.g. Spanish TV vocabulary
tlvsnprcbl (televisión por cable)
cntndsdcrzn (contenidos de corazón)
hrrdmxmdnc (horario de máxima audiencia)
24. DUBBLER
Dubbler is an itunes and android app which
allows users to record their voices and upload
the results to twitter and facebook.
The students can change their voices before
posting. Very silly, but lots of fun.
25. WRITING
Fakebook from classtools.net
Use fakebook to create an imaginary facebook
account for a character from a work of literature
or a flim the group is studying.
http://www.classtools.net/fb/home/page
26. WRITING
Twister from classtools.net
Use twister to create imaginary tweets. I've used
this for students to create a timeline for a
character from the work of literature or a film the
group is studying.
http://www.classtools.net/twister/
27. WRITING
Toondoo
A website and app for creating comics.
I use this for students to recreate scenes from
literature and film at A2. Ideal for summarising
stories and articles.
http://www.toondoo.com/
