Hard to Teach
Using ICT in Secondary Modern Foreign Languages
Developing self-assessment skills with Year 9
This video shows how a teacher of Modern Foreign Languages at Key Stages 3 uses technology to enhance the teaching of a topic which is often hard to teach, in particular, to improve speaking skills and develop self-assessment.
The video shows ICT being used as a valuable tool to:
Ø work on hard-to-teach topics;
Ø engage students;
Ø develop confidence;
Ø build learning skills;
Ø promote independence;
Ø foster a more flexible approach to teaching and learning;
Ø improve target language competence;
Ø develop creativity;
Ø enable learning to take place in ways which reflect the place that ICT has in the lives of young people nowadays.
In the video, students speak enthusiastically of the value and appeal of using ICT in a creative and effective way to improve target language competence and develop learning.
The teacher featured in this project strongly supports the deeper integration of ICT into teaching and learning, seeing new technologies as readily-available tools relevant to the lives of young people and with the power to transform learning and enable students to develop their potential.
Chris Harte at Cramlington Learning Village
In a series of lessons, teacher Chris Harte worked with his Year 9 students on the topic of Haiti, of particular significance in the light of the earthquake which took place there at the time of the project.
The aim was to build French language skills, specifically speaking, and to develop self-assessment skills, all within the context of developing knowledge and understanding of Haiti.
The skill of speaking in the target language is difficult to develop owing to the transient nature of spoken utterances and ICT enables learners to record, edit, and record again until they are satisfied that their best performance has been captired. Technology can also be used effectively to enable learners to monitor and assess their own performance and that of others within a set of structured and clearly-defined achievement criteria.
Students are set the task of producing a movie presentation on Haiti, incorporating images, text and a voice-over commentary in French. They use Windows Movie Maker, an easy-to-use video editing software generally available in schools. They focus on improving pronunciation in the target language and employing complex sentences, and topic-specific language.
To provide a clear structure for monitoring and assessment, teacher Chris uses specific software, installed across the school, to construct an ‘e-portfolio’. This comprises a checklist of steps to be covered by pupils and a series of ‘can do’ statements, which students use to identify achievement and to assess their own success. Their assessments are stored so that the teacher can monitor their work and provide feedback.
What happened.
Having explored aspects of Haitian life and the effects of the earthquake with his students, Chris works with the whole class in a series of language activities to focus on the key characteristics of high quality language. A set of success criteria is drawn up and students then work in groups to develop their movie presentation.
They use specific software to build topic maps, plotting the areas they want to be cover in their work. They research the Internet for useful copyright-free images and work together planning and writing a script for their presentation. They record their scripts using portable mp3 voice recorders and transfer the audio file to ‘Audacity’, a downloadable audio editing tool. They use Audacity to edit, and redraft their recording until satisfied. Then using Windows Movie Maker, the students assemble their images to construct a timeline for their presentation and add their finished audio file to create a movie with a sound track. After some final editing the movie file is saved and uploaded to the school network and the students complete their own online assessment of the various stages of the project. The teacher can then access all this and provide feedback or use it for whole-class peer review.
Useful links for this topic
Cramlington Learning Village ICT department - www.cchsonline.co.uk/ict/default.htm
Real Smart for online e-portfolios and self-assessment - www.smartassess.com/mediacentre/
Audacity: http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
Other useful links
CILT-ALL: Languages ICT: www.languages-ict.org.uk
CILT, The National Centre for Languages: www.cilt.org.uk
ALL (Association for Language Learning); www.all-languages.org.uk/
BECTA: www.becta.org.uk