This morning, I was reading the Active learner blog post about “Café y conversación” and it inspired me to share about an authentic conversation I had last week with my French students. As mentioned in the post: “When we have authentic conversation about topics that students want to talk about,
The speaking examination for the IGCSEs can be a stressful experience for our students as they are having to speak in the target language for 15 minutes and they are being recorded. It is therefore best to practice this experience often during class time. In the past I have used Audioboo so that my students could practice and review the general questions (which are a series of linked questions on two or three topics which students have covered in grade 9 and 10).
I haven’t updated my blog for a while now, and as I am taking a break due to my fourth baby coming at the end of September, I wanted to reflect on my last school year. I was teaching Spanish from grade 6 to 12 and I decided to turn to comprehensible input and TPRS since I was never fully satisfied with the traditional way to teach languages.
The Spanish channel is a goldmine for comprehensible videos with vocabulary and structures related to the IGCSE course. My grade 9 students watched this video about a Saturday night which lead to a fun project!
It has been a challenging school year in terms of timetabling and workload but the one thing which I am very pleased with is that I have managed to write all the scope and sequence documents for all grades and levels (yeah!), which means I more or less know which topics and structures I am going to cover with my classes over the years!
When reviewing the topic of free time with my grade 9 students (14-15 years old), I decided to spice it up a bit with “different” kind of sports and hobbies such as “el futbolchapas”:
without subtitles
We are now reviewing for the IGCSE speaking examination in less than two weeks time! As I mentioned in an earlier post, I created different boards on Audioboo related to the different topics my students will be asked about. I posted samples of questions and answers which my students recorded in groups so that they can review at home or in the bus or wherever and whenever they want!