Countdown and Hot Seat in MFL

by Katie Thwaites,
Teacher of Modern Foreign Languages


Below are some ideas I use to motivate and engage students.

Countdown

Using a visual timer on the board engages and motivates students. It can be particularly effective to use timers when completing starter activities, as it helps the class to settle and immediately engage in the learning environment.

Hot Seat

Hot Seat is a great activity to use for revision. Most recently, I set a flipped learning homework for Year 10. They had to revise how to use and conjugate the conditional voice. The following lesson, I used a name generator website to select a student at random to sit in front of the class. The other students had to think of questions to ask this person to check their understanding. If a student answered two questions correctly, they were allowed to return to their seat. If not, they had to stay on the ‘Hot Seat’. The feedback from students was very positive, with many advising their peers what exactly they needed to revise to improve.