Institution: Gordano School
Context
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 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 PBworks
- 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 and
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. You can
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