Presenter - Wendy Adeniji, freelance ICT trainer and consultant, Bradford
What this workshop’s about
Wendy looks at how we can move away from ‘Death by Powerpoint’ and use the interactive whiteboard effectively to encourage use of the target language, to teach and reinforce grammar and to create activities that motivate pupils.
The workshop
Wendy is from Yorkshire and worked in one of the first schools to use a Promethean board. Initial attempts often resulted in software crashes or upside-down presentations…. Over the years she has developed some techniques and ideas which she shares in training sessions. Teachers ask Wendy to come and show them how to use an IWB so the boards do not become “expensive wallpaper”…
The majority of people in the room use either SMART or Promethean boards.
NB – The workshop focuses on the use of SMART. Promethean boards do not have exactly the same features so do check your own board.
Using PowerPoint effectively
PowerPoint with sound
Wendy showed a Flashcard of a dog with embedded barking sounds. What’s the value added? She can practise “le chien” and bring the word on after the picture of the dog. It’s important for the children to see the word, hear the “ch” sound. Other animals and sounds can be used – “le lapin”, “la souris”, etc. Text can be colour-coded according to gender – red for feminine, blue for masculine. This is great for visual learners and embedding the memory of word genders. It’s a great activity to use in primary languages especially. She often doesn’t say why the word is red/blue – and lets someone ask.
We saw a trailer for Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory in French – featuring the song by the Oompa Loompas. Then there was a multi-choice question based on the trailer – “How does Willy Wonka describe chewing gum?” (”Vulgaire”!)
Using visuals
Use Google images, video, YouTube (she has a way of getting round blocks on YouTube – go to Real Player and download version 11 of Real Player. It takes about half an hour. Then you can download videos to your own pen drives.) to explain concepts which are difficult to explain without visuals.
“Flash once” activity
Using the animals from before, Wendy lets one of them appear – after first asking the class which one they think will appear. This is a good technique to have the class sitting quietly as they anticipate the quick appearance of an animal.
Beat the image
In the style of the conveyor belt on a famous game show, you can have images floating across the screen and pupils have to remember which objects they’ve seen.
Prediction game
A football will be kicked towards one of six coloured squares – pupils have to guess which one.
Fairy tale – e.g. Boucles d’Ors et les trois Ours
The three bears appear with blank speech bubbles and Wendy asks what the characters are saying. The pupils can write in the speech bubbles and then the audio can play to show whether they were correct – e.g. “Salut – je suis Papa Ours.”
“Slow reveal” activity
Wendy shows part of a picture and asks, in Spanish, what it is, what colour it is and where we are (cheese/apples/meatballs; white/green etc; a cafe/kitchen). Tapas are good to use as pupils know about it. Pupils can label the dishes – either with their own writing or converting it into type. (NB – Wendy would never write large amounts of text on the board – she’d have a slide pre-prepared. You can have an extra board next to you containing any presentation material.)
Beat the computer
Using the animals again, pupils have 6 seconds to guess each animal as they flash up (she has first removed the names of the animals). Wendy would walk round the class listening to responses.
Relating to young people’s culture
Wendy showed a picture of the Fast Show’s Vicky Pollard with a speech bubble. The pupils have to work out what she’s saying. The photo instantly attracts the class’s attention. Pupils can then describe her bedroom in the target language. They can then look at a picture of the bedroom on the board and label objects.
Using stories
Wendy uses these as a way to illustrate grammatical points – eg. the Three Little Pigs can show how to use “du” “de la” and “des”. Don’t worry about the “childish” nature of the story – pupils don’t mind this; in fact they quite like remembering the story from their past.
Using the IWB software effectively
The spotlight tool
You can put a spotlight on your picture, which covers up the whole picture except a hole in the middle. You can move it about and increase or decrease the size. It’s useful for studying parts of the body.
Rub out to reveal
One way to use this is to have characters, e.g. Asterix and Obelix, with blank speech bubbles. The class guesses what they might be saying. Your “rub out” tool then rubs out the blank bubble to reveal what they are saying.
Text manipulation
This involves scrambling words of a sentence and getting pupils to put them back together again. This works well in a group activity – get them to do it in groups then one person can come to the board and put in their answer.
Highlighter tool
You can use the board highlighter to pick out words in sentences. Choose different colours for picking out different parts of speech.
Using the sounds
One way of using sound is to have pictures of dice which you can “roll” and an mp3 file plays a recording of the number. You’ll find pictures in the gallery of your SMARTBoard.
Spinner
You can spin the wheel and land on an option – e.g. an animal.
Countdown clock
Search for “timer” in your tools and you can get a stopwatch – increase the size to fill the screen. You can set the timer and it increases the pace of the lesson as the pupils can also see how long they have left.
La Boite Magique
You can drag words into the magic box e.g. the infinitive of a verb, and when it goes into the box it will reveal the first person present form of the verb. The pupil will first have been asked to write the first person present form of the verb, and then they’ll check in the box whether they were right.
You could also drag words into the box and, if they are masculine, they will stay shown in the box; if they are feminine, they will disappear when they go into the box. This is just done with matching up colours and using the “send to front/back” function.
Dragging and dropping words and objects
You can drag and drop words around sentences – particularly useful when teaching German word order, for example. You could also get pupils to drag towns and cities in France to the correct position on the map, then they can drag weather symbols onto the map to do a forecast. Use a French weather website, e.g. Meteo France, to see what the weather is like at that moment.
Coming soon – tips on:
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using the internet with IWBS – Allocine, CILT on YouTube, Catherine Tate on YouTube, Eddie Izzard on YouTube (watch for ages of pupils when using these). Youtube.com/routesintolanguages. Commeaucinema.com tells you the names of UK/US films in French.
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software – Wendy has information on her CD Roms containing games and activities
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DVDs
Further information/tips
- Read the MFLE article ‘Interactive whiteboards’, which includes an invaluable ‘How to’ course by Wendy.
- Wendy recommends these websites for use with interactive whiteboards in primary and secondary languages.
- Find the “freeze” function on your board which means you can freeze what’s on the board but then play about with what’s on your PC. She will put a black dot on her next slide to remind her to freeze it.
- Take care not to have too much “one pupil”-type activity or just yourself talking and asking for responses – mix it up with group work.
- SMART software is a free download from the SMART website.
- Use the “infinite cloner” by right-clicking on an object then chossing that option. This means when you drag an object away somewhere, another one will appear.
About Wendy
Wendy Adeniji works as a teacher, trainer and consultant specialising in the use of ICT to teach languages. She regularly delivers training to schools, local authorities and Regional Support Groups. She is a consultant for the BBC, QCA and CILT.
She writes teaching materials for Heinemann and training materials for Learning and Teaching Scotland, and is the MFL moderator for the NgfL Teacher Resource Exchange. Wendy also writes regularly for the TES on matters relating to MFL and ICT.
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