During the summer, when reading ‘Creating cultures of thinking’ by Ron Ritchart, I came across ‘Individual Feedback Sessions’. In the book the teacher claimed that these sessions really helped him to foster long-term, meaningful relationships with his students that had a hugely positive impact on their achievement outcomes and also meant he never had Year 13 (equivalent to Grade 12 or the students in their final year of High School) work to mark at the weekends. Obviously, I want my students to achieve their potential and I also know that the research is pretty robust about the importance of building strong bonds and relationships in the classroom… but ‘no marking at the weekend?’, now that really made me sit up and listen.

In their final two years at our school, our Year 12 and 13’s are preparing for the International Baccalaureate final exams as part of the IB Diploma Programme. For Spanish B (language acquisition) this means they have approximately 12-15 different ‘text types’ that they must be familiar with as any can come up in the exam. In total, between the written assignment, and the written exam paper, their ability to write effectively in Spanish counts for 45-50% of their final mark. Whether I agree with that weighting or not, these are the confines, within which I teach. We would all love to just teach for the love of learning and not have final exams to worry about or prepare students for but that is simply not the reality for the vast majority of High School teachers. We have a responsibility to the students to prepare them for these final examinations whether we like it or not. Nonetheless, I am a strong believer in never allowing the ‘exam’ to dictate our classroom. I trust that if we get them motivated and loving the language, then achieving their own unique potential will come naturally and it will not feel like all we do is practice for examinations… but this is another blog post in itself!

Until this year, my Year 12 or 13’s would usually write a different text types every 2 weeks. I would take them home and read them, and then provide them feedback using Geoff Petty’s ‘Medals and Missions’ format. Before they handed in their work, they were required to fill out a ‘proforma’ which is essentially a self-evaluation that includes my two specific goals from the previous task. I always felt this system worked really well, the students said it was very beneficial and I saw a real difference in their writing over time. The proforma with my two goals gave them concrete objectives to work on, the self-evaluation made them accountable for following guidelines and the ‘medals and missions’ clearly highlighted things they did well and areas for improvement. However, the ‘proforma’ was often forgotten or left until last and only done in a rush on the day it was due. In addition, sometimes they clearly hadn’t read my objectives from the previous piece until it was too late, which was, of course, frustrating for me as the teacher given that I felt like I was spending a lot of time marking their work and writing their objectives, medals and missions.
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In step ‘Individual Feedback Sessions’ (IFS) to the rescue. First and foremost, before you ask, yes they do take time and yes it would be a challenge to do in a very big class but after a month of using them, I’m convinced the time investment is worth it. Students still complete a ‘proforma’ but instead of handing this in with their written work, they bring it with them to their IFS along with a printed copy of their text type. The schedule for each student’s IFS is negotiated with the teacher in advance in order to find a time that works for everyone. No longer can there ever be any confusion about deadline dates and submission times for their work as it is always due during their IFS, which is at the same time on the same day every second week. As Spanish B texts are generally 400-600 words, my sessions with students are typically 10-15 minutes in length and take place during free periods if possible, or alternatively during break or after school.

​The biggest change for me with this system is that I can already see a strong relationship and bond beginning to grow with individual students as you sit with them one-on-one and chat. In addition, it seems having to sit down beside the teacher and discuss their work increases their accountability too. They always have their text printed and proforma in hand as they know if they show up without it, then I have nothing to mark. I’ve also noted that my two specific objectives are being met more frequently, probably because they know I will be beside them reading their text and will immediately know if they haven’t done them.

There are some further, notable, spin-off advantages to this too. First of all, I never have any Year 12 or 13 work home with me in the evening any longer, it is all done there and then with the student beside me. In addition, the students themselves write their Medals and Missions while I sit next to them after we’ve discussed their work. Finally, and for me this is actually a huge benefit, they are getting 15 minutes of chatting in Spanish with the teacher one-on-one, which is also boosting their oral fluency and confidence. By the time those dreaded oral exams roll round they will be very comfortable and used to talking to me in Spanish.
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If you have very big classes, you could do them with pairs of students but if possible I thoroughly recommend the time investment as in the long-term, it will be this strong relationship with the student that makes the difference.

Leaving my classes behind with tests and cover work is always a tough thing to do and to justify, especially when (as most teachers will know) setting and correcting cover work takes twice as long and is twice as much hassle as just being there and teaching the class yourself. Nonetheless, I always come away from educational conferences full of new strategies, bursting with ideas and feeling completely re-energised about teaching and learning. The Alliance for International Education conference in Amsterdam was no different.

The 3 day event kicked off with a keynote address by Prof. dr Marli Huijer, the first woman to become ‘Thinker Laureate’ of The Netherlands. Yes, her job is to think… to think and to discuss, to think and to problematise, to think and engage educators in debate about the issues facing schools around the world. Her address turned the popular idea of ‘travelling to broaden our horizons’ on its head and made us instead reflect on those who ‘stay behind’. Upon returning home for a visit, most of us teacher vagabonds are faced with questions like ‘so how much longer will you be away?’, yet at the same time, we hope that those who ‘stay behind’ will maintain and protect that culture we remember so dearly in its perfect unaltered state. Does this create a kind of deep, often unspoken, resentment on both sides? Are we trading a gain in global understanding for a loss in local familiarity?

A unique part of the conference is how it is divided into ‘strands’ based on the presenters and topics being put forward. As I was presenting my research on the motivational pull of teaching languages through storytelling, I was placed in the ‘role of language’ strand. Other strands included, ‘internationalising education’, ‘learning, teaching and pedagogy’, and ‘researching international education’ among others. This set-up allowed for rich and nuanced discussion with ‘like minded’, yet very different, people coming at the theme from various perspectives. Our ‘role of language’ strand included, for example, presentations from primary, secondary and third level, and encompassed issues ranging from ‘home language’ policy and support in schools, to innovative approaches to teaching, to how language can be used as a scapegoat for ability, to the intriguing Dutch bilingual education system. Truly fascinating, insightful and thought-provoking.

I learnt so much in just three days and I am thoroughly looking forward to sharing some of the ideas with our language department and administration at ISL but two things really stood out for me. Firstly, as language teachers we are lucky that we have one of the only subjects in the school where students can literally do inquiry based learning into anything as long as it is in the target language. We have endless freedom and autonomy and we need to tap into this and allow students to lead their learning through inquiry that compels and interests them, inquiry makes them want to speak about it rather than being forced to. 

Secondly, borrowing from Terry Haywood whose addressed closed the conference, just as we update the systems on our phone so they can cope and work better, we must update the systems in our schools and language departments to meet the needs of the students, as it must be the students’ learning and interests that are always at the heart of our decisions. We are so lucky and fortunate to have multilingual students in our classes who speak a host of diverse languages at home, but are we really doing enough to nurture their home language and help them to maintain that local connection to their culture and language? The research tells us that a rich and deep understanding of the ‘home language’ aids cognitive and emotional development across the subjects but I fear our 'English-first' driven ‘international school world’ may be sadly transforming multilingual mastery into monolingual mediocrity.

The second keynote speech came from Dr. Conrad Hughes,
 who challenged us all to look inside ourselves at our own deeply ingrained prejudices, as we all have prejudices whether we like it or not, and try to confront them. He left us all reflecting intensely on how these prejudices are maintained and fostered but also enlightened us with concrete strategies to unpick them both for ourselves and in our classrooms. Being in contact with those who come from places and cultures we don’t fully understand and working with them towards a common goal, thus learning the true meaning of ‘empathy’ is crucial.

I think above all, I left with a sense of hope and gratitude that I am in a job where I get the chance to make a real impact on the world every day through the young people I am in contact with. We are the ones, both us as teachers and our students, who have the ability and scope to change the face of modern international education. So enough with all the talking, now let’s get started.

Learning about Spanish food, tapas, traditions and all of the other amazing culinary aspects of Spanish life is part of most standard Spanish courses around the world, so how can we, as teachers, bring it to life for the students?

​Well to begin with, we need a TPRS story of course! In our 'Foods and Culinary Traditions' unit I first started with a story about a man who wanted to eat 27 different tapas so he could become the 'Best Tapas eater in the World'. We circled the verb 'pedir' in various forms in the past as this can be a tough one, whilst also bringing in lots of new food and drink vocabulary.

Start with a story

Well to begin with, we need a TPRS story of course! In our 'Foods and Culinary Traditions' unit I first started with a story about a man who wanted to eat 27 different tapas so he could become the 'Best Tapas eater in the World'. We circled the verb 'pedir' in various forms in the past as this can be a tough one, whilst also bringing in lots of new food and drink vocabulary.

​After the storytelling aspect students then spent a class coming up with a role play where 6 different people or groups had to use 'pedir'... for example, most groups chose a restaurant scene and had things like "Yo pedí gambas"... "No hermano! Tu pediste churros, mis padres pidieron gambas!"... "Qué ridículo!" etc. The students really loved this part and it was a lot of fun.

'Pinchos' making cook-off competition

​The last day of term was arguably the best though... we had a 'Pinchos Competition'. Pinchos or Pintxos (In Basque) are smaller portions than tapas, and traditionally can be eaten in 2-3 mouthfuls. After a presentation and discussion on the the pinchos tradition, students had to invent their own pinchos and enter them in our 'Españoland Annual Pinchos Extravaganza'! I supplied the bread and the sticks and the students had to bring 3-4 ingredients to make the pinchos. They had 20 minutes to complete them and they also had to write a little sign explaining the ingredients and why they chose them. They were encouraged to link it to their own culture somehow. 

​We had some incredible creations and students then voted for their two favourites after tasting them and reading the signs. I also treated it a little like 'masterchef' and went around speaking to them and asking questions as they made their creations. They loved the idea of making something very cultural themselves and they were really immersed in the Spanish idea of sharing little mouthfuls of food together as a group. 

It was even more 'authentic' thanks to another Spanish teacher and mother of one of the students in the school, coming in and giving us a demonstration of her own pincho using Spanish tortilla de patatas. Definitely something I am going to do again next year and of course I also had the benefit of tasting all the wonderful

Well actually, 'Less' is more in all teaching across all areas of education if this thought-provoking blog about the Finnish education system is anything to go by. That blog post, which inspired me to finally get back on my own blog writing (apologies for the delay!), possesses a bizarre amount of links to my own professional life. Just this week I presented a Skype seminar to a group of Finnish language teachers in the Lappeenranta district on TPRS and active learning strategies. Then, when I opened our weekly school bulletin today, our principal had given us a link to the aforementioned blog on the education system in Finland that spoke exactly to a theme I was thinking of blogging about... and, ​if that wasn't enough, I also have a big poster in my classroom that says "L.E.S.S. is More" - a kind of classroom mantra I took from Grant Boulanger last year that stands for:

• Listen to understand
• Enjoy the present moment
• Show me that you get it
• Show me when you don't

So with all that in mind, I think the Gods (whoever they are!) were telling me to write a blog again.

Why is this year's class not getting it? Why am I going so much slower than last year?
These were two questions swimming around my head for the past few weeks relating to my new Year 8 class (total beginners of Spanish, aged 11-12). Yes, maybe I had been comparing them to last year's class of high flyers... Yes, perhaps they were slightly more 'high maintenance' than last year's class... but really the difference was more down to me, my teaching and my desire, like many other teachers, to always do more! I was trying to go too fast. I was attempting to do more when I should've been doing L.E.S.S!

A key mantra for Comprehensible Input (CI) and TPRS (Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling) teachers, like myself, is slow down and repeat it again. I realised I had forgotten this. I was putting too many new vocabulary into my stories, I was over complicating them, I wasn't repeating the core structures enough and I was doing the unthinkable for us TPRS teachers... I was concentrating on their minor grammar errors rather than their communication, I was thinking "I need to do some verb tables" rather than I need to 'turn the tables' or remove the tables completely and just get them enjoying a story at their level that they understand, not a bit, but 100%. Really all I needed to do was slow down. Less is more. 

We should be concentrating on ensuring the students are completely confident with those basic structures of the language before we go on and flood them with new vocabulary. If they can't say 'I have, it is, there are, he went' yet with total fluency and automation, why are we hellbent on pushing more and more lists of low frequency words like 'flowerpot' or 'wardrobe' on them? If you find yourself thinking the way I was, remember to just slow down and repeat again. Students at this level need complete mastery of those basic structures in the language to communicate, they need repetitions over and over again so it is automatic, they need a fun, engaging, compelling, simple, story to keep them excited. They can learn the word for lampshade or picture frame or disillusionment from the internet.

The TPRS novels have completely revolutionized my teaching. In the past 3 years I have used a wide variety of these readers with diverse student groups, levels and ages. While of course, the actual story line, plot and themes appeal differently to each individual student depending on their own personal interests, the idea of reading a whole novel entirely in Spanish and actually understanding what is going on, is hugely motivational across the board. 

My students are all very familiar with my mantra "Leer es poder" (reading is 'power' or​ reading is 'being able', a play on words and sounds), so much so that when I say "Leer es..." the whole class will shout "PODER" back at me.

Personally I believe that part of our role as language teachers is to instill a love for reading. Teaching skills as well as content is widely recognised as part of our profession and reading is a skill. A skill that moves our students so far forward with their language learning, and with the TPRS books making this skill 'compelling', it motivates students to keep turning pages and keep acquiring more language.

In terms of reviewing a novel, I am not a big fan of the standard content testing so I have tried a few activities like 'the yellow brick road' and 'freeze frame' from Martina Bex among others. This time round I decided to make it more student-centered hopefully meaning higher engagement and less work for me! Win win!

Student-Centered Novel Reviewing:

1. First each student was given a chapter (some chapters were assigned to more than 1 student). They had to find a phrase or quotation (maximum 8 words) that summed up the key information in this chapter.
2. Next they wrote this in big letters on yellow card paper after I had approved it.
3. I collected these all in; shuffled them and then gave a set of cards to each table of 4-5 students.
4. Their next job was to try to find the chapter number and page for each phrase in their groups.
5. Once they had this they had to put them in order. The first group finished was the winner.
6. Next we used these for The Yellow Brick Activity where students in pairs used these phrases to talk about what was happening at that moment in the book.
7. The final piece of the jigsaw was The Freeze Frame activity. We did various takes on this using the cards the students had created. In some scenes they had to act out the scene previous to what was on their card and finish frozen on their phrase, while in others they just acted that sentence.

The students really enjoyed all aspects of this and I am very happy that they know this novel inside out now. I prefer to always have the students do the work wherever possible and these fit nicely into that approach. One possible nice extension activity would be to ask the students to make up a completely new scene in a totally different context with the phrase they have on their card. Give them some time to prepare it and either act it out or record it.

As always I would welcome your comments and shares. Please let me know if you have done anything different as I am always keen to learn and try new ideas.

Being new to a school generally means that there is going to be some kind of performance appraisal and observations within the first few months and this school, I'm glad to say, is no different. It can, of course, be an intimidating experience both for the teacher being observed and, at times, the observer. What I like about the initial performance appraisal at my current school, ISL, is that it is all led by the teacher themselves. Every member of faculty had to complete quite a long self evaluation appraisal form on various aspects of our professional lives. From this we were asked to pick some focus points that we would like to work on and this would be used in our observations. Next was a meeting with the allocated member of the leadership team to discuss these professional goals, refine them further and let the observer know what you would like them to look for in your professional practice. ​Once specific goals had been set out, the observer did a series of unannounced drop-ins with a variety of my classes to see my teaching in action in short stints with various age groups. Finally there was an announced full class observation.

Now, as far as I am aware I am the only "TPRS" teacher in my school and I've actually already led a short language department meeting on its benefits after attending Grant Boulanger's workshop in Leysin American School in 2015. However, I am pretty certain most of my colleagues are indeed "CI" teachers as I know they deliver interactive, energetic lessons with lots of comprehensible input (I've already observed some of them in action!). Nonetheless, I was a little more than apprehensive about my first official observation in a new school taking place in my now deskless classroom with a crazy story about 'Kim-Jung Il' receiving a package from his scary auntie who was looking for someone to open it on planet Mars!!

In the end I thought "what the heck, this TPRS stuff was good enough for them to hire me so it better be good enough now that I am actually here!" - as part of my hiring process I had to teach a lesson and, 'surprise, surprise', I did a TPRS mini story (which they obviously must have liked!)! As the lesson and story developed I could see that the observation was going well as the observer himself was laughing away, repeating the story, copying the gestures and clearly learning a little Spanish. 

So why am I sharing this? Because TPRS works!! For everyone! All ages, genders, personalities and levels. As you can see from the Assistant Principal's comments below (that he has given me permission to post), it is clear that after coming by my class a few times, Mr. Anderson is also sold on the benefits of TPRS. If you are worried what your school or colleagues might think, or if you are simply toying with trying that first story but keep find reasons not do it, then stop. Just go for it. You will laugh, the students will laugh and they will learn. A lot. They will learn so much in one class and will be dying to come back to your class the next day. Now if that sounds like a good day at work then ask yourself again "what am I waiting for?".