Tag: mfl

Posted on

A Day in the Life of a Self-employed Teacher

Recently I signed up to a blogging challenge and one of the suggestions was to write a blog post about a typical day. That sounds all well and good…..except that I don’t have a typical working day!

Often I have work booked in in advance, which is great.  On those days I get ready for work and I go. Other days I wait to see if the phone rings. Most days it does and off I go to work. Other days it doesn’t and then I work from home.

But, whether the phone rings at the last minute, or the day is booked in advance, the work I do when I get there is the same though – right? Er…no! I teach across a whole range of ages, and teach every subject on the primary curriculum as well as specialising in languages.  One day I could be playing dolls houses and making chocolate crispie cakes in Nursery; the next teaching French to graduates at a local university. The day after that could be a 1960s themed day with Year 6, followed by a day split between Years 1 and 2 doing some Latin. The week could end with a day teaching deaf children.

On those days when I work from home the days are still varied. I maintain my own website and this blog, and also have responsibility for my husband’s website and blog for his tour guiding business. There are always emails that need answering and I sometimes proofread my husband’s translation work for him. I’m part of Team 100WC so I make sure I find time to read the children’s writing and leave comments for them.

I also take my CPD seriously, so a work from home day will include doing my homework for my British Sign Language level 3 course and reading and research for a level 3 course in Dyslexia Awareness, Support and Screening.

Four evenings a week and Saturday mornings I do private tuition for children aged 6-12, but again every lesson is different. Some of the children I work with need help with just maths, some just English and some both. Some have dyslexia and need a different sort of help, and some find the work they do at school easy and need stretching. As if that wasn’t enough variety, I am planning to branch out into 11+ tuition, and language teaching for businesses as well.

So – thanks very much to Nikki Pilkington for the suggestion in her 30 Day Blogging Challenge, but I’m afraid this is about as typical as it gets!

Posted on

What Will I Do Next?

The last few weeks have been language-filled. Over the summer holidays I taught, alongside a colleague, on a subject knowledge enhancement course at Newman University. The aim was to take people from long-forgotten GCSE French up to AS/A’ level standard in just two weeks. It was fun. It was also exhausting! Most of all though, it was rewarding to watch the final presentations to see how far they had come in a fortnight.

After that there was just one weekend to switch off before starting my next job, which was a 7 week contract at the Blue Coat School teaching French to years 2 and 6 and Spanish to years 4 and 5. That certainly kept me on my toes as lessons of the same language weren’t always blocked together, and lessons were quite short so I had to switch backwards and forwards between French and Spanish very quickly. The school staff and children were all lovely and I shall miss working there.

Then over the half term holidays was the Language Show, followed by writing up notes on all the things I’d learned to I can put them into practise, and some proofreading for my husband, who is a translator.

So – what’s next? Well, first of all a “rest” – I shall “relax” by looking into 11+ tuition, catching up on my BSL homework and hopefully doing some further studies about dyslexia). After that….

I’ve had a few enquiries for French and Spanish GCSE tuition so I shall see if I can convert some of those enquiries to bookings.  I shall also be continuing with private tuition for maths and English SATs. I have a waiting list at the moment, so I shall take a few more of those on.

If possible I’d also like to get some work experience in a Deaf school to put my BSL to use, so I shall try to find somewhere to let me volunteer.

Other than that…I’m open to offers!

If you need a teacher or tutor for maths, English, languages or dyslexia teaching then contact me via my website.

Posted on

The Language Show Live 2012 – What I learnt from Helen Myers

Helen Myers gave a run-down of her favourite language learning ICT tools.

Subscription ones

  • Linguascope: I’ve tried this one myself, and personally I don’t like it, but I know that other MFL teachers love it. What I didn’t realise, that I learnt from Helen Myers, is that once you have paid your subscription, you can use their images in your own resources within the school.
  • Task Magic: I’ve never used this, but it looked quite versatile for creating games – and unlike some MFL software which is biased towards learning vocabulary and set phrases, this one can be used for practising grammar, such as conjugating verbs, as well.
  • Vocab Express: this looked like a good way to help pupils learn vocabulary. There are pictures and audio to go with the written words to aid memorisation. While they are revising, pupils can group the words in any way that makes sense to them, which I think is a great idea. It has automated tests for blocks of words, which means you can set vocab tests to be done in individual learning time and free up lesson time which would have been spent of tests teaching instead.
  • Euro Talk: not much was said about this one, and after looking at the Euro Talk website I still can’t work out how useful it would be. If anyone has used this, I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

Free Ones

  • Mylo: I’ve tried this since the show. You can just go to the website and start playing, or sign up for an account to earn points that you can spend on styling your avatar.  I tried a few activities and found it…how shall I put this?….boring. I thought the graphics were odd at best and extremely confusing at worst (a cube wearing 3D glasses and holding a tub of popcorn to represent “brother”). It’s possibly useful for reading and listening activities, but over the Language Show weekend I saw ICT used in so many new and exciting ways that I was underwhelmed by this one. Having said that – it is free so you have nothing to lose by trying it yourself.
  • Quizlet: I’ve tried this since the show as well. This has a few different types of activity, from flashcards to race against the clock games.  I liked the variety and I can imagine younger children would enjoy some of the games. My only criticism would be that there are no visuals, and I think for some children (and adults!) having a picture alongside the word is an important part of learning new words.
  • MS Office, Windows Movie Maker and Audacity combination: The end product of using a combination of these three tools was a really professional looking video which could be used for introducing or revising vocabulary. It looked quite a time-consuming process, and over on the iPad stand the demonstrator showed how children could create a really similar end product on their own in about 30 minutes. However, if you don’t have an iPad and you do have time to invest then this process would definitely be worth looking into. It involved creating a PowerPoint presentation for the words and pictures, and then combining these pictures and music to make a video. The one they showed had vocabulary for clothing, but they suggested it could also be used for songs, poems, raps, recording news items and modelling conversations.

To see how their school is using ICT in language learning pay a visit to www.ashcombe.surrey.sch.uk

Have you used any of these suggestions in our own classroom? If so what do you think of them? I’d love to hear about it in the comments below.

For language teaching and tuition from beginner to GCSE, visit my website www.sjbteaching.com.

Related posts: The Language Show 2012 – What I Learnt from Rachel Hawkes
The Language Show 2012 – What I Learnt from Isabelle Jones
The Language Show 2012 – What I Learnt from everyone else
Le Mur Parlant

Posted on

The Language Show Live 2012 – What I learnt from Dr Rachel Hawkes

Rachel Hawkes had some great ideas for motivating pupils to practise their language skills outside of the classroom. My favourite was the Spanglovision contest which her school does in Year 7. Each class has a different song, and in an interactive lesson at school they listen to the song and make-up some actions to help them remember the meaning of the words. They then take the sound file away so that they can practise at home.

There is a big incentive to do the practise at home, because at school they then have a show for the rest of the school to watch. The Y7s perform, and the Y8s upwards vote for their favourite act. They also have a special show for the parents to come and watch.

Although Dr Hawkes teaches in a secondary school, I think this activity would work really well in a primary school. It would fit perfectly into a European week in a primary school, with each class learning a song in a different language – they could then dress up in the colours of that country’s flag for the final show.

A similar idea is Language Beatz: the children get a backing track, and they create their own song based on whatever vocabulary they are currently learning. This would be a great cross-curricular project for music, ICT and MFL in a primary school. When the song is finished, if teachers and pupils want to, they can submit it to a national competition.

To celebrate all languages within a school, why not have a multi-cultural/multi-language recital? Children are invited to sing a song, read a short story, or recite a poem in either the language they are learning at school or their home language. The English translation is shown on a screen behind them for the benefit of people who don’t know that language. I like this idea, and again I can see it working well at primary school level as well. To break up the speaking and singing, there is no reason why you couldn’t also include some traditional dances from different countries.

These first three ideas would make a lovely alternative to an end of year play.

The last of Dr Hawkes’ ideas that I’m going to talk about here is the Language Challenge. The children have a list of challenges to choose from, and they earn points for each one they achieve. When they reach 100 points they receive a reward. The points awarded for each challenge vary according to the difficulty , so pupils can choose to do 2 or 3 hard challenges, or lots of easier ones. This makes it possible for even lower achieving pupils to reach 100 points. In her school the challenges are things such as:

  • updating Facebook status in the target language for 1 month
  • writing an explanation for a grammar rule
  • teaching a younger child
  • producing a website or blog in the target language

Obviously these challenges would be too difficult in a primary school, but there is no reason why some simpler challenges couldn’t be set:

  • answering the register in German every day for half a term
  • writing the date in French  in other subjects
  • borrowing a bilingual book from the classroom and using it to identify the meaning of one word in the target language
  • counting in Italian for games in the playground

For language teaching and tuition from beginner to GCSE, visit my website www.sjbteaching.com.

Related posts:  The Language Show 2012 – What I Learnt from Isabelle Jones
The Language Show 2012 – What I Learnt from Helen Myers
The Language Show 2012 – What I Learnt from everyone else
Le Mur Parlant