School trip to Paris (#paris2013)

I know many teachers who do the annual trip abroad 'because you should', but I really do absolutely love it - I think I get as much from it as the children do ... I'm not sure whether that's something great or not!  I look forward to it with the children and really do enjoy everything about it!

We go somewhere different every year, because so many of the children come back again and again.  This year, we took them to Paris (it was like turning the clock back 10 years - I spent my year abroad as an assistante in Créteil and worked at Disneyland Paris for the summers throughout my degree and at the weekends when I was assistante-ing).  Subscription from our small school of just over 400 children has been great - we had 50 on the trip this week.  It ran without a hitch and was so so very enjoyable, every step of the way.

Although I am quite annoyed with our travel company for several reasons (not least because they clearly have no concept of time etc - something which I pointed out and they disagreed with) - it was a good job that they had screwed up and forgot to book the Eiffel Tower tickets early enough, as the tower staff were on strike that day!  That was so lucky - it could so easily have ruined it for the children, but they were already prepared not to go up.  Likewise, don't let anyone try to convince you that Usines-Center is better than Val d'Europe!

Despite knowing Paris quite well, I decided we would do a couple of different things this time, things I had never taken the time to do myself.  We

• saw the flame lighting ceremony beneath the Arc de Triomphe - fantastic - not amplified quite enough, but moving nonetheless,
• climbed the steps on the inside of the Arc de Triomphe and went to the top - fab views and very different to elsewhere in the city,
• went up the Tour Montparnasse - the inside is a little disappointing, but the view from the Terasse makes up for it!  Breathtaking and so easy to see all the children at the same time (unlike the Eiffel Tower),
• visited the sewers - fab visit (although as we had to translate, I was grateful that I had read the Harry Potter books in French about 10 years ago - otherwise, I'm not sure I would have had all of the necessary vocabulary!).

The children (possibly not all of the staff though) loved the day that we spent travelling by underground - it was such an experience and they behaved absolutely impeccably, following all of the rules set out to them.  They made me really proud of them.  Fully intending to use only the quieter stations, I was a little stumped when Barbès-Rochechouart was closed, as it took us a long way off-route, and took us to an unavoidable change at Châtelet ... eek ... fortunately all went well still.

The travel company clearly has NO IDEA about how long it would take to feed 57 mouths at the Hard Rock Café - surely if there hadn't have been an earlier table, then we should have eaten elsewhere, as the meal booking was for 7pm, with the river cruise at 8.30pm - compounding the evidence that they were not wholly competent in the organisation of a trip to Paris (I am definitely using a different provider next year - I am already organising Berlin alone, but thought that perhaps it would be better to use a travel company for Normandy still).  That having been said, when we got to the river cruise, we had to wait for the 9.30pm crossing (the one I had actually asked for) - it was enchanting - out in daylight/dusk; but back in the dark, so we still got to see the Eiffel Tower's little light show (reduced, I believe because of the strike).  It was fantastical.

The inevitable trip to Disney was super and I was so pleased that our coach driver had agreed to allow us to leave later and stay to the end (again, something which I had asked of the travel company - but they had still insisted and 'itinerised' a 9am-7pm visit ... would have been naff! - 12pm-12am was so much better).  The children loved it - and I think the Year 10/11 students enjoyed it most of all!

A truly brilliant week - we weren't even held up on the M25 on they way home!

Blogging (chtsmfl.blogspot.co.uk) and using twitter (@CHTSMFL) throughout the week has definitely cut down on the need to check on as many phone calls and has helped the children to reduce their text spending - lots better for all.  The only downside was the parent who sent a text to the school phone (addressing the text directly to the child), saying that they had been looking at the blog today, but it hadn't been updated for hours ... never mind that we were busy trying to get 50 children across the city by metro and RER!  The blog had over 1500 hits during our week away (some will have been looking to see if it had been updated or not, but many were finding out how things went!).

New tour company providers, however ... ?

On first reading of the proposed content and AO for MFL, I think ...

Having spent a little time this afternoon looking at the GCSE subject content and assessment objectives for MFL (the "final" version for 'consultation'), I thought I would put fingers to keyboard and type out a few of my thoughts and initial reactions.

I can't think of many language teachers who would not agree with the statement that children should develop a desire to study and communicate in the foreign language through study at GCSE level; however, I can't help but think that the content of the proposed curriculum seems not to consider that aim in the suggested information.

One of the biggest things that jumps out at me is that it is stated that the learning at GCSE should build on the knowledge and skills acquired in KS2 and KS3 (I don't believe that the current subject content states this - but I could be wrong).  This is quite a big demand if there is no suggested number of contact hours per week for children in MFL - our current year 9 children have had just one hour per week all the way through KS3; as they go into KS4, there is no way that their knowledge is comparable to that of the students who moved up last year into the final stages of our school.  This bit worries me for these students.

I welcome the shift from "me, me, me" to a broader set of themes, but I worry that "factual and literary texts, appropriate to this level" may not be particularly stimulating for the students themselves.  The fact that literary texts can include "poems, [...], extract and excerpts from abridged and adapted essays, novels or plays from contemporary and historical sources" seems to be a huge jump in comparison to what is currently expected - is this proposed content for students of all abilities?  How will all students be able to access this proposed content?  I don't deny that the more able children need to be pushed and that their experiences ought to include access to target language texts from a variety of sources; however, I worry about the children in the class, whose target grades are F-D grades - these children still feel achieved if they earn an E, but I don't know how I would motivate them with this proposed content.  This would take some serious reconsideration (which I know is the idea), but this is so far from what we are used to!  Eeek.  For me the love of French came when I first read Bridget Jones' Diary in its French translation and understood it, and when I watched a Disney film in French and could still follow the story and "get it".  I did a degree without reading any literature, but I instead studied history about the nation and learned so much about the history of Germany from 1945 onwards and the importance of French musicians in the post WW1 years - thing I wouldn't have discovered through the reading of literature, but which meant that I learned an awful lot about the people and the social history of the two nations - I inspire our children regularly when I talk to them (in TL or in English) about some of the special topics I studied at university.  I don't feel as though my education is worth less, just because I didn't opt to study any literature, and I don't see why this make my language any less valid.

I welcome a return to no longer assessing the students for their speaking exams (and still sending off their written work) - it is something which I panic over every year - I always try my best to mark them correctly and accurately, but I can't help but think that there is more parity if they are all externally assessed.

Equal weighting of the skills?  I'm not sure what I think about the return to this; some of me thinks that it is a real step backwards, but other bits of me think that maybe it is sensible - I don't know that there can be a right or a wrong where this is concerned.

I welcomed the change to the questions being written in English in reading and listening exams, as I strongly believe that the children ought not to be penalised for misunderstanding a question, even when they had understood the spoken or the written text itself - seems like a big penalty to me.  I'm not sure that, as a life skill goes, in making languages 'real' that it is one of the most important elements ... yes, I would expect my incredibly able top grade students to be able to do so, but I don't think that I would expect my lower ability students to be able to access the paper in the same way.

And as for the ability to translate into French from English ... I spend so much of my time telling the children NOT to write things in English and translate into French because that's not the way to do things that it makes be slightly sad!  I seem to recall at uni that, 10 years ago when we had a careers talk from a translation agency, it would be unlikely for us to bee employed as native speakers of English to translate INTO French, but that we would be doing the reverse, as one is usually more competent when translating into one's native language.  It goes so much against the grain - I'm a real ambassador for teaching the children grammatical concepts as foundations for being able to then build good German/French in a more natural manner.

I know how I feel about the proposed content of the curriculum; I just hope that whatever ingredients we are ultimately presented with in our 'surprise bag', à la 'Ready, Steady, Cook', I am able to cook up something inspirational to serve to our children.

New year - reflections on the past year ...moving forwards

So, it's been a while since I posted to my blog.  It's been such a busy few weeks - starting the 'new academic year' and working with all of my new classes has been a great challenge and it really has been lovely meeting all of my new groups.

I have undertaken to do a few things much better this academic year:

• to encourage much more target language use in GCSE lessons as well as in KS3 classes
• to really push the Year 9 children to make progress, despite them having only one lesson per week
• to ensure that I build more time in for the children to respond to marking and feedback
• to constantly apply more and more of the ideas I pick up from reading other people's blogs and tweets - there are so many great ideas out there!

I'm working on language mats, inspired by @headguruteacher's blog posts about AfL in their MFL department and would like to get the children to try them before the summer break as well, so I can get some feedback from them and make some tweaks as necessary.

Over the past two weeks, whilst trying to get to know my new classes (especially my GCSE groups), I have been trying lots of new ideas - I was really excited when we got approval to share the department wifi access with our students this week.  I want to be able to work with the children to develop the frequency with which they access authentic material - I have been trialling this with them with tablets recently, so that we can use 1jour1actu and also a variety of apps in target language.

I have often thought that it was difficult to reflect on the previous academic year, when one starts the 'new academic year' before the publication of the GCSE results in the summer; however, this year I have found that I am able to reflect on my practice and to talk with my department about our actual teaching, without the context of the exam results - they will come in the summer.  We have been able to really focus our thinking on what we can do best for the children in our care.

One of the things that really excites me about this academic year is that we have ability sets at GCSE for the first time - it is already making a difference to the students' outcomes, and we have only been going for a fortnight so far.  I know that I am pitching things at the right level for the children in my new GCSE German groups, whereas for the past two years, we have been splitting into different groups within the same room for the year (a bit like at primary school) and effectively teaching three different lessons - it has been lovely this fortnight to give the children chance to all work together to pool ideas, because they all feel able to work with one another - the difference is immense.

This past year has seen us build our department blog up and develop a twitter feed for the students to access about the department.  We have had over 2700 hits since January and I hope to really build on this in the coming year.  We started at very humble beginnings with our twitter feed, but are slowly building up - we now have just under 50 followers, so we hope that this will continue.

On a personal note, I have learned loads this year - lots about different classroom ideas, loads about becoming more reflective in my own practice, plenty about how better to offer feedback to the children in my care,  plethora of new activities and ways to explore new technologies in the classroom.  Where have I learned all of this?  Most of it has come from my own exploratory CPD on twitter and on the web as a whole.  Openmindedness is so important in this job and I know that this past year has helped me to open my mind more and more - I hope that I continue to learn and that I will share more and more as the year goes on.  Thank you to everyone who has inspired me this year - there are far too many to name (I only hope I can get to ##ililc or to #thejuneevent this coming year so that I can meet some of you in person).

Happy new year!