Modern Foreign Languages News November 2021
Welcome to the MFL department! We have had a busy half term so far as all of our clubs are now up and running which has been really exciting. Year 7s have the opportunity to attend our Year 7 German Spelling Bee competition which leads to a national competition. All students in all year groups have had the opportunity to attend German and French film club. This takes place on Wednesday lunchtimes with both a French film and a German film available for our learners and there is more information below about those clubs. This half term, there have been lots of exciting opportunities for our learners to use the laptops and computer rooms to further their language learning. Our students have been using the laptops in lessons to play Quizlet Live, Blooket and Kahoot to practise their vocabulary further. Highly competitive and great fun!
Blooket, Quizlet and Kahoot to further our language learning
This half term, we have been working on improving our vocabulary retention by practising and investigating different ways to learn our vocabulary each week. Pupils have had the opportunity to explore different apps and websites to further their vocabulary learning both in lessons and as homework. All pupils should now have a Quizlet account. Quizlet is a fantastic website/app to store vocabulary flashcards and play games to learn vocabulary and hopefully retain it. We have also been working on practising the vocabulary by using Blooket. This is a fun website that can be used in class or as a homework and our pupils have really enjoyed playing the café game, crypto hack, fishing frenzy, racing and the most popular game, ‘Gold Chest’, where they get to answer questions. Well done, girls on all the vocabulary games you have played recently!
Film Club
French and German Film Club is now a regular event on our weekly calendar and is proving really popular. The Film Society runs on Wednesday lunchtimes with Mrs Raine and Mrs Gill. Watching films in a foreign language is a great way to improve your understanding of a foreign language, as well as enabling you to get an insight into the culture of that country. The French group have watched ‘Le Petit Nicolas’ and ‘Le Petit Prince’. Both films are based on famous books. Did you know ‘Le Petit Nicolas’ is based on a series of French children’s books written by René Goscinny and ‘Le Petit Prince’ has been translated into over 300 different languages? This puts it in the top 5 most translated books in the world!
The German group have watched ‘Ostwind’ and ‘Ostwind 2’ and both have proved really popular as there are lots of twists and turns along the way. We are looking forward to watching a Christmas film over the coming weeks.
Spelling Bee – CGE
Our year 7 Germanists have been working hard, learning their first 50 words and their spellings for our inaugural German Spelling Bee. Organised by ‘Routes into Languages’, the Spelling Bee consists of four stages; an in-class competition in December, an inter-class competition in February, the Regional final in Manchester and the National final in May. Year 7 have covered the Spelling Bee in class and have been practising their vocabulary independently using Quizlet. There have been some impressive times in the Match game. Miss Gelder has seen some wonderful revision techniques and it looks as though lots of parents and siblings have been getting involved at home too!
In our club during Thursday lunch, we have been practising our vocabulary and then we have had some mini-spelling bees. We have been very impressed with the students’ speed and the accuracy of their spelling. It’s looking to be a very competitive competition and we are all looking forward to it!
Our MFL Plans
We have lots more fun activities planned for rest of this half term. Our Revision Bunting competition is being launched soon and this will encourage our girls to look at different revision techniques when learning, retrieving and retaining new vocabulary. You will be given the opportunity to create your own MFL revision bunting for our Module 2 work. Ask your language teacher for more details this half term and information on how to enter.
We will also be learning about how our French and German friends celebrate the Christmas festive period. This kicks off a little earlier in Germany with Nikolaustag on the 6th December. Remember to leave your shoes and slippers outside for treats, girls! Hopefully we will be able to sample some German and French Christmas delicacies too in class. Now that is something we will look forward to!
We will also be attending the German Christmas markets in Manchester. We very much look forward to heading to Manchester to experience the cultural wonders at the markets and to sample some French and German traditional food.
We will also be launching our MFL Christmas card competition this half term. Hopefully we will see another record amount of entries like in our European Day of Languages competition in September. It is open to everyone to enter and your language teacher will guide you with it. I look forward to seeing them all.
Mrs Gill, Curriculum Leader for MFL
