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Petra Špilka Kykalová
online course

How to travel to France during COVID

In the summer of 2021, I had the opportunity to travel online for a didactic course for French teachers organised by the French alliance CAVILAM in Vichy with the support of the ERASMUS+ programme. It brought together teachers from all over the world: Lebanon, Spain, Belgium, Canada, Slovenia...

I had 3 90-minute courses each day: forms and methods of assessment, digital support in teaching and video as a means to develop speaking and writing competence.

Aha moments I experienced especially in the course on how to formatively assess and what all can be considered as formative assessment. For example, the assessment of younger students by older students in shorter tests is an interesting possibility.

I also like to use methods other than paper-based methods at the end of both terms on a regular basis at the instigation of this course, e.g. cooperative video on a given topic, writing topics (and then talking over their content), pecha-kucha, live presentation using e.g. orgpad. The outputs of these papers are then shared across the class and there is an opportunity to assess or give feedback together for each group according to set criteria (2 positive feedbacks, 1 suggestion on what to try differently next time).

From the Digital Support course, I brought back knowledge that has already been translated from covid time into regular teaching: answergarden, mentimeter, padlet, learningapps, kahoot, etc. But also a youtube to MP3/MP4 converter, which allows you to download a video from youtube to your computer and use it either during an internet outage or for example when teaching outside. And the last feature of this course was the discovery that you can set the playback speed in youtube videos, which I like to use, especially for level A1: I switch to 75% speed. This usually remains understandable and doesn't feel so machine-like. You can't really use lower speeds.

A useful takeaway from the Video as a Means of Developing Speaking and Writing course was the realisation that it is not the authentic material/document that carries the language level, but the activity I set up for it. And so, from then on, I have never had a situation where I despaired that a video was beautiful but too difficult. For the beginner songs, it has worked well for me to focus on listening as well as watching the clip, and then the students just sort the words based on whether they saw or heard them in the song. This method of working with the song/video can really be applied almost from the very beginning.

From the Digital Support course, I brought back knowledge that has already been translated from covid time into regular teaching: answergarden, mentimeter, padlet, learningapps, kahoot, etc. But also a youtube to MP3/MP4 converter, which allows you to download a video from youtube to your computer and use it either during an internet outage or for example when teaching outside. And the last feature of this course was the discovery that you can set the playback speed in youtube videos, which I like to use, especially for level A1: I switch to 75% speed. This usually remains understandable and doesn't feel so machine-like. You can't really use lower speeds.

 

A useful takeaway from the Video as a Means of Developing Speaking and Writing course was the realisation that it is not the authentic material/document that carries the language level, but the activity I set up for it. And so, from then on, I have never had a situation where I despaired that a video was beautiful but too difficult. For the beginner songs, it has worked well for me to focus on listening as well as watching the clip, and then the students just sort the words based on whether they saw or heard them in the song. This method of working with the song/video can really be applied almost from the very beginning.

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