ICT Training for Teachers

Talent Guide

Conference Area

Glossary of terms

Resources to Download

 

Modern Foreign Languages - Planning and assessing ICT in MFL

Module 4 Contents
  1. Introduction
  2. Departmental and whole school issues[Task 13]
  3. Your own planning for ICT [Task 14, Task 15]
  4. Sample Lesson Plan
  5. Assessing the use of ICT in MFL Teaching [Task 16]
Forward to Module 5
Back to Secondary MFL Map
Back to T@LENT Web Site Map

 

Introduction
We hope that by now you are becoming keenly interested in the use of ICT in your MFL lessons, and perhaps even already a keen user of ICT in your lessons. As you gain experience, you will soon realise that you should not be working with ICT on an ad hoc basis, and that some form of planning and evaluation will become necessary. Eventually you will need to consider the use of ICT across the whole department, and in turn across the whole school.

Return to the top

Departmental and whole school issues

 

Return to the top

Activity

 

Task 13

Have a look at the Training Activities on the VTC, and think about how you would adopt or adapt the ideas given on the VTC and in this module to construct your own Departmental ICT Policy.

You can find your way to the Training Activities by clicking on the 1st link below and then working your way through the MFL pages to 'ICT in the Curriculum' and on to 'Managing ICT' where you will find the 'Training Activities'; or you can straight to the appropriate page by clicking on the 2nd link.

  1. http://curriculum.becta.org.uk/
  2. http://curriculum.becta.org.uk/docserver.php?temid=300

 

Discussion 

 

You should start thinking about whole-school issues and pupil entitlement. Is your department doing its fair share for ICT across the curriculum? Can you turn this requirement to your advantage? The VTC MFL IT site gives plenty of stimulus and support for these ideas.

Return to the top

Your own planning for ICT

Classroom organisation

We have dealt at some length with some of the armoury of ICT tools available to the modern languages teacher. We shall now consider those issues of classroom organisation which will help us decide which of these tools will be employed at any particular time.

A number of considerations will be going through your mind when planning a lesson. It will not be enough to justify the use of ICT in a lesson because we happen to have a good idea for using ICT: we need to plan how to integrate the ICT into the lesson plan so that its use arises from good practice rather than as a bolt-on additional idea. Here are some reasons why I might choose to use ICT in a particular lesson (and perhaps some of the thoughts which follow could stimulate further plans and ideas):

Return to the top

Activity

 

Task 14

See if you can add to this list!

For any given lesson you could use a number of these ideas, and over the years a Modern Languages department can gather a very large bank of ready-made ICT resources. For instance, for a series of German lessons covering hobbies you might have available the following ICT resources:

  1. Fun With Texts exercises
  2. Matchmaster exercises
  3. Gapmaster exercises
  4. Six German Games
  5. Unterwegs
  6. CD-Lesen
  7. ideas for a hobby poster using Publisher (or a similar program)
  8. a collection of e-mail letters from the partner school
  9. hints on how to do a class survey
  10. hints on how to enter data into a database or spreadsheet
  11. saved Internet pages from a German tourist office
  12. Internet addresses for German catalogues
  13. suggestions for word processing
  14. suggestions for desk-top-publishing

etc.
 

Discussion 

 

There is no way that you should use all of the well over 10 different approaches available - this would swamp the language learning with ICT. How many do you think you could manage? How would you use your choice to allow for differentiation according to the abilities of the pupils in the class. Some of the easier tasks will come in the earlier stages of the lessons, but your aim should be that as many pupils as possible will be producing original German (text, speech) based on the topic of hobbies.

 

Return to the top

Activity

 

Task 15

Draw up a list of possible activities to support a particular area of your language teaching, and construct a lesson plan which makes use of two or three balanced ICT tasks. Try it out!

 

 

 

Return to the top

Sample Lesson Plan

We give here a link to a sample lesson plan for pupils to write a film review. This was originally designed for a KS4 group, but could be adapted and simplified for a younger group. Try it out, or adapt it for your own class.

Discussion 

 

Does this sample lesson plan reflect your approach to lesson planning?

 
Return to the top

Assessing the use of ICT in MFL Teaching

We devote the whole of the next section to the Evaluation of how MFL has been enhanced by the use of ICT. Here we shall concentrate on how to assess the use of ICT in the MFL lesson.

 

You should begin by looking through the materials on Planning and Assessing ICT in Module 5 of the Primary Core. When you reach Task 12 you should return here for the Activity.

 

Activity

 

 

Task 16

Review any lesson in which you have used ICT and think about how you can apply the Assessment ideas which you have just studied.

  1. What kind of assessment would be valid for that activity?

Can you reach an opinion about the ICT level that they pupils were working at? (You may need to talk to your ICT co-ordinator.)

Write a brief summary of the lesson, with particular reference to the ICT component, and your assessment of the quality of the ICT work. If possible, give your assessment of the ICT level that the pupils are working at.

 

 

Next Module T@LENT Web Site Map Return to the top