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Here are 5 teaching ideas I'm going to try in 2015. I'll keep you updated on how I get on...
1. Zondle Great website which allows you to make your own quizzes. I'm looking forward to introducing this to my students. Check out my blog post about it here. 2. Socrative Another great quiz site. I think it's a bit like Kahoot. 3. Musical chairs writing I saw this idea on Clare Seccombe's Pinterest board. Sounds fun! 'Musical chairs writing. Fun idea! When the music stops you pick up writing where the last person left off.' 4. More speaking One of my targets this year is to develop the use of Group Talk with my classes and to share this with the department, so expect a few blog posts and tweets about this. 5. Flip learning I first heard of this through @missmclachlan and I've wanted to try it for ages but haven't got round to it yet. Here's one of her blog posts about it. Are there any activities you'd like to try in 2015? Why not blog about it, then share it as a tweet with the hashtag #teach2015. Hope you all have a fantastic year! Dannielle
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Back in March I wrote a blog post about Twitter and the incredible #mfltwitterati, set up by Joe Dale. I had never used Twitter much before, as I was more of a Facebook gal (did I really just say 'gal'?), but since I started using it for teaching last year, I've been completely hooked on it. When I'm lacking inspiration, Twitter is always the place I go. When I don't have enough time to make my own resources, I'll just ask the #mfltwitterati. And if I've had a bad day at work, it's nice to come home and get a little lift by the positive tweets from other teachers, who have used my resources or ideas I shared.
For me, this year has been crazy (in a good way)...I've always been quite a shy person (I was the sort of student you see walking around school staring at their feet, and even just answering questions in class was a big deal). When I first started my teaching job, I would rarely share my ideas at department meetings for fear they weren't good enough and that people wouldn't want to hear my opinions. Twitter has allowed me to easily share my ideas and I've had some amazing responses from other teachers around the UK. Friends, family and colleagues have commented on how much my confidence has grown over the past year. There have been a few times where experienced teachers have even come to me for ideas, which I've taken as a huge compliment. To me, it is just incredible that these people think I'm good at something and want to hear what I have to say. So to anyone who has read my blog or my tweets, or given me feedback this year: Thank you! It may not have seemed like much to you at the time, but it definitely meant a lot to me. I hope you all have a RELAXING, well-deserved break. Merry Christmas and a happy new year! Dannielle There are so many great blogs out there created by MFL teachers. Here is a small selection of some of my personal favourites:
http://missmclachlan.blogspot.co.uk/ http://srswopshop.blogspot.co.uk/ http://frenchteachernet.blogspot.co.uk/ http://www.changing-phase.blogspot.co.uk/ http://isabellejones.blogspot.co.uk/ http://michellecairnsmfl.wordpress.com/ http://www.modernlanguagemusings.blogspot.co.uk/ If you want to set up your own blog, Weebly is a really good site to use! Click here to download a free MFL ICT display for your classroom!
 Zondle is another website which I’ve added to my favourites list. Just like my beloved Memrise, Zondle also allows you to input your own vocabulary (or other questions – Zondle can be used for other subjects too!) But unlike Memrise, Zondle enables you to choose your own question format (Memrise is still one of my ultimate favourites by the way and I’ll continue to use it with my students, alongside Zondle). There are a few different formats, but personally I think Matching Pairs, Multiple Choice or Type the Translation will work best for MFL. You can create topics with questions using a range of formats. Zondle advises you to only have 12 questions per topic. Once you have created your topics you can then put them into folders. I have set up 5 folders with most of the vocabulary taken from the sections of the AQA GCSE Spanish Revision Guide (General Vocabulary, Lifestyle, Leisure, Work and Education, Home and Environment). These games will be available to buy soon in the marketplace, if you don't want the arduous job of typing in your own vocabulary! Once you have created your folders and topics, you can set these as homework or classwork for your students. You can type the students’ names in yourself or just ask them to enter the site by easily typing in the class code. You can even create different classes and then make the right folders available to the right students so that they don’t get confused. Once the student has logged in they just choose the topic they need to practise and then decide which game they want to play. The great thing about Zondle is that it allows you to easily monitor your students. With its leaderboard you can see who has spent the most time on the website and with its Gradebook you can see which topics each individual student has used. You can even create a snapshot of the Gradebook at certain points so you can make sure students have done their homework by checking that their scores have increased. I love that you can give the students badges and that you are able to create your own rewards on the site – for example you could give sweets or house points if they earn so many zollars. You can even print out certificates for them! 
Here are three differentiated translation sheets I made for my Y9 French set on the topic of Town/Tourism. See below for the free downloads.
 A nice little worksheet on the topic of Town. I took a similar sheet in French from my HoD, adapted it and changed it to Spanish. See below for the free download.
Here is a resource I made for my GCSE students to support them during the preparation for the Controlled Assessments. See below for the free download. 
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