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Using wikis at KS4 to promote and support exam revision
Gordano School offers French, German and Spanish to pupils aged 11-18. All Key Stage 4 pupils, with the exception of a small number who follow an alternative curriculum, are required to study at least one foreign language.
The project
The MFL Faculty at Gordano School is developing wikis to support and engage pupils in exam revision and independent vocabulary practice.
Key objectives
- To provide web-based interactive MFL revision materials for all KS4 students, including especially those who might otherwise do very little or no revision for GCSE from their books.
- To provide a single web-based resource where KS4 students can find a range of revision materials, examples of past papers, exam board specifications, guidance on how to revise and links to other useful sites.
How activities are organised
- Although wikis have been used to nurture collaborative writing in MFL with some classes, in the case of the GCSE revision wikis it was decided that only the teachers could add and modify content.
- Self-marking interactive vocabulary revision materials have been created using Hot Potatoes authoring software, which can be downloaded for free and is easy to learn to use.
- Other ICT resources which would be useful for students’ exam revision have been created and placed on the Faculty Shared ICT Area. These include PowerPoint presentations on grammar points, and exam content, plus Word documents on key sentence structures and tense construction. There are also some light hearted musical items generated on Garageband.
- Other useful web-based resources have been identified to be included as links on the wiki: e.g. BBC Bitesize.
- The wikis have been set up. This can by done relatively easily and at no cost by using a provider such as pbwiki.com.
- Links to the wikis have been made from the school’s website and from the school’s Virtual Learning Environment (VLE).
- The students are then introduced to the wikis in class by the teacher who
- Models the use of the interactive activities by using them in class on the interactive whiteboard or via a laptop and data projector
- Sets homeworks which involve using the wikis
- Draws students’ attention to the web counter on the home page which shows how many of their peers have visited the site and are presumably doing some revision too.
It is then advisable to:
- Revisit the wiki regularly in class using the interactive whiteboard, or in lessons in the ICT suite. Always point out the increase in visitor numbers on the web counter to reinforce the idea that revision is something that lots of their peers are doing, even if they are not too keen to admit it.
- Counter the repetitive nature of visits to the revision site by adding new content and changing the colour scheme and look of the site. There are easy to use features built in to wikis which allow you to give the site a make-over at the click of a mouse.
Evidence of success
The wikis have enabled the school to change the image of revision for all pupils but especially for those who would find the concept of preparing for a GCSE a non-starter. There has been a tangible growth in confidence in class as vocabulary in past papers is being recognised from the interactive activities on the wiki. This has served to reinforce the relevance of the wiki content and encouraged more visits.
The web counter gives an idea of total usage, although no information about which pupils are visiting the site. That said, the German wiki had 914 visits from December 2007 to the end of April 2008 and the French wiki had 443 visits from January 2008 until the end of April 2008.
The revision wikis in this project can be viewed at
Future developments
- Set up a Spanish wiki
- Consider providing similar resources for KS5 students.
- Our wiki providers have recently begun blocking the uploading of html activities, such as interactive exercises created in Hot Potatoes, in order to prevent spam activity. This presents a problem which we need to address.
Author: Peter Morris, AST, Gordano School, Portishead, N. Somerset
