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Back in December I blogged about an amazing website called Zondle and I've been using this with my classes over the past few weeks.
So far, this has had a huge impact on student engagement - in particular, surprisingly, with a Year 11 group, who have been quite tricky over the past year. I had some really positive feedback from them for the first time in ages. I haven't seen them that excited about anything in a while, despite my best efforts. Last lesson I allowed them to go on Zondle once they had finished their work and by the end of the lesson almost all of them were tapping away (except for 2 or 3 who chose Memrise instead - this is also a fantastic website, by the way). I should also add that this lesson was Period 5 on a Friday! Reasons to use Zondle: 1. You can create your own games for free. 2. It allows you to choose the format for each question. 3. There are also ready-made games (some of which are free). 4. Students earn points (zollars) which they can buy prizes with (you choose the prizes! ie. 1500 zollars = lolly pop) 5. You can track your students and make sure they've done their vocabulary learning homework/revision for exams. 6. Lots of fun games to choose from. 7. Allows you to award extra zollars for good behaviour/effort. 8. Allows you to give badges (there are some already made or you can make your own) to your students. 9. You can take snapshots of their results to enable you to see progress over time. 10. You can easily monitor your students' progress and see which vocabulary they need to spend more time on. 11. Students don't need an email address to sign up. 12. You can reset their login details if they forget them. If any of you are interested, I have already uploaded vocabulary for the GCSE Spanish topics and these are on sale in the Zondle marketplace. They are really cheap too and would save you a lot of typing!
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I had the most amazing Summer last year. My partner and I travelled around Peru for 4 weeks. We were lucky enough to stay in the jungle for a few nights and we successfully completed the Inca trail to Machu Picchu, before finishing our trip at Lake Titicaca. I felt invigorated. When we returned to the UK I told myself I was going to carry on doing things that made me feel like this, and I wasn't going to let work take over my life. Suddenly 4 months had flown by and all I had to say for them was a ton of MFL resources and lesson plans. By Christmas time I was completely exhausted.
Don't get me wrong, I do love my job but clearly I need to make a change. After all, a happy, healthy teacher is a good teacher. Hopefully Martyn Reah's #teacher5aday will be a good place for me to start... #connect When it comes to anything work related, I'm brilliant at connecting. I do it every day on Twitter and Facebook and it has made my job so much easier. However, I need to connect more on a personal level. I am so lucky to have a partner who puts up with my weekly (I'm lying, it's daily) work related rants, yet when he tries to tell me about his day he can barely finish a sentence without me getting distracted and thinking about work. And he never even complains. I really enjoy using Twitter for educational purposes but I need to set a limit, so I'm banning myself from it on Fridays and Saturdays and will cut down the amount of time I spend on it during the week. Instead I'll spend more time with my lovely OH. #exercise Completing the Inca Trail in Summer made me realise how unfit I am and when I came back to England I told myself I was going to get fit. I was going to join a fitness class and try to exercise every day. I was going to go for more walks and stop driving to the Sainsburys just around the corner. But as usual I kept putting it all off as I was "too busy with work". Suddenly it was Christmas and I had done pretty much no exercise during that time, except for running around my classroom attending to my students. I'm going to sign up to a few charity races (Pretty Muddy etc.) so I at least have something to aim for and I'm going to try to be more active at weekends. I've always wanted to try kayaking, so will give that a go, and I might do Go Ape for my birthday. I've also bought a hula hoop! #notice I absolutely loved my time in Peru last Summer. This was mainly because I spent most of the time taking photos, which is one of my favourite hobbies. I also love travelling and discovering new places, so I need to get out more and start visiting places other than the 4 walls of my classroom. I've been saying for the past 2 years that I'd love to go to Bath, but again, work commitments have taken priority. I'm going to try to go somewhere once a month and have a day of photography. I also have Paris to look forward to in April and Cape Verde in July. #learn I need to learn to be okay with not completing everything on my daily to-do list and just be proud of everything I have accomplished that day. #volunteer I will volunteer to do more to help around the house. My partner will regularly make dinner or do the washing while I sit and plan lessons. I obviously really appreciate this but it isn't exactly fair. He works hard too. I've used this over the past couple of years when introducing my students to 'aller'. It's highly annoying but very very catchy and both you and your students will be singing it for weeks! SrMara has a few Spanish videos on his YouTube channel. This is probably the best one. They're a bit silly but if it helps the students remember, then why not? I'm not sure I'd be brave enough to embarrass myself in front of all of my students (and everyone on YouTube) - at least not on purpose anyway! (-memories of accidentally dribbling in front of a class of giggling Year 7s come flooding back-). Here are some of my favourite posts from my old blog site. Feel free to have a look at it and leave me some feedback.
4 Pictures 1 Word - A Great Starter Activity Kahoot - Interactive Quizzes ICT in MFL - ICT Display & useful websites Memrise - Vocabulary Learning GCSE Spanish Revision Resources Jigsaw Reading - An activity which uses reading, listening, speaking and writing skills Maths Karate - Good for numeracy Independent Learning Folders - Read the blog post and download them for free on TES Reading and listening activity - One of my all time favourites! Here's another Spanish cover by Kevin, Karla y La Banda. This time it's a cover of Selena Gomez - The Heart Wants What It Wants. Follow them on Twitter for updates. Here are some blog posts which I've found particularly interesting... ML Musings Steve Smith Isabelle Jones MFL Tricks MFL Meanderings Karen Whitehead Miss Mclachlan Rebecca Wylie Also check out:
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