Learning to be an outstanding teacher

This year is quite exciting in school because after our OfSTED inspection just before the summer hols (which went rather well, by the way!) we are trying to get teaching across the school from 'Good' to 'Outstanding'.

Every member of staff is completing a learning walk this half term with a focus on looking for outstanding practice in the classroom.

Today I did my first one - I spent about 15/20 minutes watching a BTEC art class, which was lovely. The pupils were all fully engaged the whole time and the pupils were working in a very calm and focussed atmospehere. Progression was obvious - the pupils were making prints in a William Morris style and pressing them over a watercolour backgroud - the work they were producing was stunning. The other things that struck me was that the pupils seemed quite confident in what they were doing. Pupils that perhaps struggle elsewhere in the school and lack confidence to 'have a go' were really going for it and were proud of their work. The teacher had a really nice relationship with the group as well, she had them doing exactly where she wanted them and yet it still felt like they were working with her, not for her.

So how could I incorportae these things into my language teaching? Next week I am going to set one of my lower ability, less motivated groups off on an art project to help them with their German learning and I am now even more confident that this may work well. If I can get the pupils to be proud of their work in the way that this art teacher could, then I reckon they may well start to enjoy their language learning a bit more and grow in confidence. It also taught me that should learn to not feel the need to have every child under my full control all the time. I am not very good at letting pupils 'just get on with it' and promoting independant learning is not a strength of mine!

It was a very positive experience and I can't wait to visit the next class!

European Day of Languages

I like European Day of Languages, because the pupils like it. It is so refreshing to have pupils showing genuine interest in different European cultures and embracing the day. I also enjoy the fact that it often leads to challengiung discussions with them about why MFL is an important part of the curriculum today. In school we had the canteen menu changed for two days to include more European inspired dishes, had quizzes going on, flag work, Who Wants to be a Millionaire in French, not forgetting of course the anual teacher competition for who can incorporate the most foreign language into their lessons.

This year we were also offered a fantastic opportunity by Kelda Richards (@ElKel99) of Isca College and Chris Fuller (@ChrisFullerisms), an independant consultant in Devon. They put together a brilliant day at the University of Exeter working for local schools, working alongside La Gourmandine creperie in Exeter (if you live near to Exeter, make sure you go there and have a tuna crepe for lunch, delicious!) Pupils were to create an advert for the company in French and then present their ideas to the other school groups at the end of the day.

I took two groups of 6 pupils from years 8, 9 and 10 and they had a brilliant day. They LOVED using the iPads that were provided by Isca and despite being quite shy at the beginning soon embraced the challenge of using French that they had never really come across before. They worked so incredibly hard and did Tiverton High School very proud, and their determination and enthusiasm saw them produce some lovely work that they should be very proud of.

The next part of the task was for the pupils to spread the links to their ads, which had all been put onto a blog. This really motivated the pupils who were busy rallying support from tutor groups and across the whole school.

The best things that came out of the day was that a couple of the year nine pupils said to me that they were now thinking about taking GCSE French - how fantastic is that!!!!

Thank you Chris and Kelda for such a brilliant day.