Well, this has been a busy old year, hasn’t it?

Back in September, I didn’t know if I was going to be able to sustain writing up all that was going on with my Year 7 beginners’ class in Spanish in their very first half-term. I just about managed it, but the post I was really hoping to get to (this one!), the final one relating to that half-term, never got written. The one where we pull together all that went on and all that was set up for the rest of the year. I kept my notes and, well, here it is now 😊 and thank you for waiting 😉 (which is more or less what they said to us when the train I’m sitting on as I write this finally set off). In the next post I’ll also update you on how the rest of the year has gone and what it all looks like two terms down the line as we have Year 8 in view next term. If you’re new here, it will all make much more sense if you dip into the earlier articles in this series first.

In my very first lesson with the class back in September, I set out a scenario for them of a typical lesson from last year and at the end of it, I asked them which year group they thought I was describing. It was Year 7, but they guessed I was talking about older pupils. I asked them when in the year they thought that described lesson took place. Most assumed it was around this time of year, June or July. It was just before October half-term. When I told them that they would be able to do the same and that we wouldn’t be using English, they looked a bit nervous! But I promised them that there would be one more lesson when I would speak to them in English – on the last day before October half-term, when I would paint the picture for them again and they would be able to see quite how much they had learned. That’s this lesson.

In the event, this lesson took a little bit longer than it normally does for some reason and I could see 10 minutes or so before the end that some of it was going to have to go into the next lesson, i.e., the first lesson back after half-term. Not ideal, as I had plans for something brand new for the first lesson back, but it’s still far better than rushing it to get it all into this lesson and losing the impact I wanted it to have.

Basically, I retell the story in English, but rather than me adding in the Spanish, I would stop mid-sentence and let the class do it. It’s a great moment, hugely motivating, where they realise that they really can do what I said they would be able to do in 6 short weeks. Of course, some things take root better than others and the ones that don’t get quietly dropped in this retelling! There’s still plenty to be proud of and motivated by. Particularly motivating (for me as much as for them) is to get them to think how, if this is what they have learned by October half-term, how much more will they have learned by Christmas? By the end of Year 7? By the end of Year 8? By the time they get to GCSE?

We all know that progress does not go in a straight line, sharply and consistently upwards, from the beginning of Year 7 to the end of Year 11, but that there are times when they plateau a bit for a while before moving on up again. All very normal and even necessary. There are also times as language learners when we even feel we are going backwards. Not everyone progresses at the same pace or in the same direction. Some will turn out to be chatty livewires who love nothing more than chipping in and trying things out, an increasingly confident mix of their temperament and the motivation that comes from learning that this is all working and they can do it. Others, as they grow, can find communication generally (and in any language) more intimidating for all sorts of good and understandable reasons. Some are much happier with a pen in their hand and writing for a surprisingly extended length of time. Others will find that their developing personalities and the relationships within the room can have a helpful or hindering effect on how well they engage with what we are all in the classroom for. None of this is unusual in the slightest and I’m sure we can think of many more reasons why the same starting point doesn’t lead to the same end point for everyone 5 years later. Now is probably not the time to mention it though!

Having worked our way through the scenario and done the motivational bit, we get it all down in their books. Although they have worked with this language for the last 6 weeks, (not all of it at once, of course), and the ‘bubble cards’ have been an essential visual support, they have never written it down. (When they come back from the half-term holiday, they see that most of the bubble cards I have been using are now permanently high up on the wall. No more putting up and taking down each lesson, as these are now ‘in’, making room for more and newer expressions lower down).

So we go through the scenario again, more slowly this time, and as we do, I write it up under the visualiser and they write it in their books. This is probably the only time I ever get them to copy from the board. Some will struggle with this and for them, it is a simple matter to do a colour photocopy of what I do under the visualiser to stick in their books. (I say simple, you’ll see I masterfully managed to cut off a couple of letters around the edges… It takes years of skill to do that, you know).

Here’s what we wrote up in that last lesson before October half-term:

And here’s what we wrote up in that first lesson back after half-term, that we didn’t get time to finish before the holiday:

A big part of the reason why we were able to do as much as we did on interaction is because content language was kept fairly low for the whole of the autumn term. Only in the spring term did we get going on what was more recognisably a topic (Daily Routine). From then on, my rule of thumb is to plan for content language to take up no more than 40 of the 60 minutes of the lesson so that there is still enough time to build progression into existing routines, to set up new ones and to be ready to drop everything to respond to what is going on. Routines are not the only things that go on, but it’s through them that pupils make their most secure and lasting progress and experience their widest range of language most frequently. That, for me, is a good enough reason to do everything I can to protect that time within my lessons – it’s easy to allow so many other very worthy uses of our time swallow up the opportunities for routines. A new addition to our programme this year was to take part in the Foreign Language Spelling Bee, which has gone down really well with the class and something we will definitely do again. (We did it in a slightly different order to the published lists, so that they were only ever using vocabulary they had already encountered in class, through routines or topic language. Over the course of the year, they got the lot).

Hopefully this gives you a little idea of quite what went on in those first 15 hours of the course in a mixed-ability, beginners’ class of Year 7 Spanish. In the next post, I’ll set out how the rest of the year has panned out in terms of topics and how and when routines are introduced and developed through the year, and how they anticipate the grammatical areas we explore in more depth later in the year.