In my Year 11 downtime I was tasked with making a Growth Mindset in MFL display and here’s the result below, I really enjoyed making the leaves and some Year 9s helped make more leaves which have been added since I took this photo. If you zoom in you can hopefully get some ideas of what to add to your own Growth Mindset tree!

We are lucky enough to have just received six lockable display cabinets so showing you some ideas of what we have put in them. First one -work of the week from each of four remaining year groups pinned on clipboards with success criteria – notice one has slipped off a bit! Second one -the obligatory why study MFL board, plus you can see me in the reflection hahaa. Nothing new here, but has been very popular with pupils and inspired a few to continue next year. Third one – MFL news to keep pupils and staff up to date with what we are doing in the department – pupils love seeing what we are organising for them – just need to add the Lingua Cuisine day!

I saw these study cards on linguascope, but decided to get my students to make their own for a fraction of the price. I bought 25 and plain metal key rings for a £1 on amazon and we got a load of off cut coloured card from reprographics and voila! We wrote out question and answer for each of the Year 11 speaking questions, they hung them from their planners – it’s portable and customisable revision on a shoe string

Apparently this isn’t really a game, according to my kiddos, but they love it all the same. Basically, you print out 4/5 bullet point questions and scatter them around your room (or pinned on the wall) put them in pairs and they go round clockwise adding / improving answers to the questions. Then you can take a live photo of the best ones and show the class on your projector! Very easy and good Assessment for Learning, plus everyone gets motivated to write!

How about this for a starter with KS3 beginners?

Apart from stealing it from Pâtisserie Valérie whenever I go for an afternoon tea… or is that just me?

Anyway in a nutshell you give the pupils six key verbs in perfect past, present and future that spell out the mnemonic FREeJAM – Faire, regarder, écouter, jouer, aller and manger then make a grid sheet like this one. They then race against each other to fill in the post it notes with the correct form of the verb – brilliant verb drilling and totally reusable!

If you have something like this in your local market it’s worth ringing them in advance and asking if you can bring Year 9 along – they each bought a crepe and Julien the French crepe guy charged ten less if they ordered it in French – plus he demonstrated how he made them completely in French for free!

All you need for this is a camera phone. Give all the pupils the same 40/90/150 word written task and snake your way around the classroom taking pictures of their work as they write. Subtly send them to yourself via email and show on the board. They love red penning each other’s work and it’s great for instant feedback/ modelling.

Here’s a self pinned cringe fest I use with Year 10… To the tune of Uptown Funk

Je me

Tu te

Il se / elle se

Nous nous

And vous vous

Ils se c’est facile !

Year 10 are struggling with reflexive verbs so I have been singing some of my most “pure cringe” songs at them to help them learn…

To the tune of “Robin Hood” –

Je me lève, je me lave, je me brosse les dents…

Je m’habille, je me maquille, je mange mon pain grillé

Je quitte la maison; je monte sur le bus

Au revoir maman

Au revoir papa

Bonjour madame!