By R. Bates, Lead Teacher of MFL
DISCLAIMER: I know this activity isn’t too radically new and different, but it is a first for me in MFL.
My Year 9 German class had to learn about different festivals and customs in Germany and were expected to learn facts of around 8 different events. I decided to trial a marketplace for this language (with a class of 30) to cover this information in a more interesting and interactive way.
It took place over two lessons – Lesson 1 was preparation, and Lesson 2 was producing the marketplace.
Lesson 1: The class got themselves into groups of 3 – 5 people and I assigned each group a festival to prepare. The students worked through reading tasks, vocabulary lists and other resources to find key information to describe their given festival. They had a checklist of key info that they would have to ‘sell’ on their market stall.
Lesson 2: After a brief strategic re-situating of tables, the classroom was magically transformed into a marketplace. Students proudly displayed their wares of information and explained how festivals are celebrated in Germany as the other members of their group moved around the marketplace scribbling all the information they could into their books.
Feedback: The response from students was very positive. Students felt it was a “more efficient”, “more enjoyable” and “fun” way to learn this information.
There were (of course) some students who were not 100% focused, but surprisingly few. The rotation of the market sellers meant that there was an urgency to their note-taking and moving around the room. After the market, students completed speaking and writing tasks based on the vocabulary they should’ve learned. Again, I was pleasantly surprised by how much they had picked up and how confident they were with the new vocabulary.
DISCLAIMER: I know this activity isn’t too radically new and different, but it is a first for me in MFL.
My Year 9 German class had to learn about different festivals and customs in Germany and were expected to learn facts of around 8 different events. I decided to trial a marketplace for this language (with a class of 30) to cover this information in a more interesting and interactive way.
It took place over two lessons – Lesson 1 was preparation, and Lesson 2 was producing the marketplace.
Lesson 1: The class got themselves into groups of 3 – 5 people and I assigned each group a festival to prepare. The students worked through reading tasks, vocabulary lists and other resources to find key information to describe their given festival. They had a checklist of key info that they would have to ‘sell’ on their market stall.
Lesson 2: After a brief strategic re-situating of tables, the classroom was magically transformed into a marketplace. Students proudly displayed their wares of information and explained how festivals are celebrated in Germany as the other members of their group moved around the marketplace scribbling all the information they could into their books.
Feedback: The response from students was very positive. Students felt it was a “more efficient”, “more enjoyable” and “fun” way to learn this information.
There were (of course) some students who were not 100% focused, but surprisingly few. The rotation of the market sellers meant that there was an urgency to their note-taking and moving around the room. After the market, students completed speaking and writing tasks based on the vocabulary they should’ve learned. Again, I was pleasantly surprised by how much they had picked up and how confident they were with the new vocabulary.
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