Skolverket have now published materials intended to help teachers assess written proficiency in accordance with the latest revision of the Swedish syllabus for English (2011):

Skolverket link

The original syllabus document sets out the communicative basis for English as a school subject, based on the overarching framework of the Common European Framework of Reference for modern languages in the EU,  specifying central contents for the subject and knowledge attainment targets.

What has been lacking in the syllabus and accompanying documents so far has been samples of pupils' work along with a detailed commentary which can help teachers to arrive at a grade on the new A-E scale.

The Kommentarmaterial till kunskapskraven i engelska document includes 18 samples of pupils' written work at year 6 and year 9 respectively.  Comments are given relating to:

* range of language (eg range of vocabulary, grammatical structures and phraseologies -språkets omfång och bredd)
* language accuracy (språkets precision)
* text cohesion, how individual clauses and sentences relate to each other etc (grad av textbindning)
* flow in interaction and production ( this covers in particular areas of spoken proficiency where hesitations and interruptions can disrupt the flow of speech- flöde i interaktion och produktion)
* adaption of language according to different purposes, audiences and situations (grad av mottagaranpassing)
* use of strategies (for solving communication breakdown problems, gaining the turn in spoken interaction etc - språkliga strategier)

The document stops short of actually giving a grade for the pupil samples presented but at least gives you something more to go on when carrying out an assessment of pupil performance.

We plan to take up aspects of the commentary material and written proficiency evaluation at our forthcoming meeting in Kalmar, week 45.

Chris

Scoop it!

Scoop it! is an interesting site which allows you to 'curate' digital content of relevance to your pupils. You specify a topic and parameters and Scoop it! will search the internet for suitable content.

At a click of a button, you can choose to 'scoop'  the articles which you think are particularly relevant, discarding suggestions which are of more marginal importance. Scoop it! then assembles your chosen content in the form of an online 'magazine'.  Imagine that your pupils are doing something on English spelling or New York restaurant menus. Scoop it! will crawl the internet suggesting authentic content sites based on the criteria you specify.

You can have a look at content I put together by specifying the topic of 'language teaching':

http://www.scoop.it/t/language-teaching-1

The Scoop it! website can be found at:

www.scoop.it

Chris Allen

e-Twinning … and information from Skolverket about assessment (at last!)

It really feels like autumn now, doesn't it! A great opportunity to explore ways of working on-line - especially with schools in warmer climes!

The Education Guardian had a good 'how to' article about forging links with schools overseas this Tuesday:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2012/sep/24/overseas-school-partnerships

The e-Twinning EU Project is mentioned there, but here's their link separately:

http://www.etwinning.net/en/pub/index.htm

Both the e-Twinning Project and the British Council (linked via the Guardian article) have some really good suggestions for how to get collaboration with a school outside Sweden underway.

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Skolverket have also recently published another Commentary document about the new syllabus for English, this time focussing on how to grade pupils' performance:

http://www.skolverket.se/prov-och-bedomning/ovrigt-bedomningsstod/grundskoleutbildning/7-9/2.6248/engelska-1.106058

They're very careful to describe the limitations of this document in great detail (!), and it really only takes up examples of written performance, but at least it's something!

David

ePortfolios for language learning

Since 2001 and the publication of the guidelines for the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR), there has been a great deal of interest in the use of portfolios in language learning and teaching.  The main initiative here has been the European Language Portfolio, a product of the Council of Europe. A Swedish language guide to the Portfolio was released some 5 years ago, produced by the Department of In-service Training at Uppsala University. 

The idea is to help pupils in their language learning through the documentation of their developing language skills in accordance with the CEFR levels (A1- C2). The language portfolio has three main parts:

* the language passport (where pupils document their knowledge of foreign languages

* the language biography (where pupils can reflect on their language learning and knowledge of foreign language cultures in accordance with a checklist related to the CEFR levels)

* the language dossier (where pupils can collect samples of their performance in various spoken and written language tasks).

A more recent initiative is to digitalise the portfolio enabling documentation of pupils' work in terms of computer files and materials which can be stored on a server or computer hard drive.

If you have a spare minute, you might like to explore eportfolios for language learning by downloading the software available from the following page:

http://www.eelp.org/eportfolio/index.html

Have a good weekend!

Chris

A bit more about Macs - and comics!

If you're new to a Mac, there'll be lots of things you might not know are even there. The F3 key on your keyboard is a good one, for example. You'll see that there's a sort of icon made up of little rectangles on it. If you press that key, you go over to a view called Mission Control (at least in English!). You'll usually see the icon in your Dock too (or you can find it in your Applications folder).

In Mission Control you can see a thumbnail version of every window that's currently open on your Mac. If you then click on one of those thumbnails, you jump straight to that window. You tend to have a lot of windows open when you use a Mac (it's so easy to jump back and forth between programs), so this is a great way of not forgetting what you've got open!

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Another of these 'hidden' functions is the spacebar! If you, say, get a mail with an attached document, click once on the document to select it and then hit the spacebar. You get an instant view of what the document contains without having to open the program it was produced in. If you just want to check a detail in the document, this saves a lot of time. Or if you're cleaning up your desktop and you can't remember what a particular document is, you can find out … and then either save it somewhere or trash it.

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You may know that Chris and I went to the EUROCALL conference in Gothenburg at the end of August (EUROCALL = the European Association of Computer-Assisted Language Learning - a great bunch of people) … so I decided to make a comic out of it!

This is made in a program called Comic Life 2 (http://comiclife.com). It's one of those programs that's free to try out, but you have to buy the full version (for 229 kronor from the Mac App Store - when you buy things from the App Store, btw, they're both installed automatically and updated regularly) if you want to avoid a watermark over your comics after 30 days. 

What I've done here is use one of the templates in the program, then drag photos I took with my iPhone and drop them into frames where they were re-sized automatically. Naturally you can adjust the layouts, etc. As you can see, the program automatically 'comic-izes' the pictures. Imagine what you could do with a bunch of pupils and a digital camera!

In fact, I'm exploring an idea with someone we met in Gothenburg. He teaches English in Tokyo and we were discussing how to get reserved Japanese students to really take part in the lessons … and we started thinking of a business English course, where he takes pictures in Tokyo and we turn them into a business English comic …

You can read more about the EUROCALL Conference here: http://www.eurocall2012.eu

It's going to be in Portugal next year …

Giving feedback on pupils' essays with Jing

Just thought I would draw your attention to an interesting tool called Jing which you can download free-of-charge by following the link here:

Jing enables you to capture screenshots of say, a pupil's written work and record spoken comments at various points throughout the text. For example you could comment on specific spelling errors, word order problems or 'swenglishy expressions' as you go through their writing. 

Another good aspect of Jing is that you can create short animations if you wanted to show a pupil how to go about doing something specific with the computer. The animation  you create will show your mouse  pointing and moving as you go talk them through the specific steps involved. Obviously you would need a headset  / microphone to record your voice. 

You can watch demo tutorials on the Jing website which will give you a better idea of what this tool can do for you. 

So instead of scribbling comments in the margins you can provide a maximum of 5 minutes' spoken commentary with the free version of Jing. This length of time is extended if you pay for the licence.

Some of you may have used Jing in your teaching in which case we would like to hear your comments to this blog posting!

Feel free to use Swedish if you prefer when responding to the postings.

Chris

Getting used to using a Mac - 1

Kalmarsunds gymnasieförbund have just started issuing Macs to sixth-formers (and to teachers - at last!) and I wondered how people who were probably only used to using an old version of Windows XP would cope with the transition.

I've actually never had a PC running Windows issued to me. In fact, when I took the job down here in Kalmar, me having a Mac was a condition of my accepting the job, believe it or not! I started on a Mac SE20 in Saudi Arabia in 1989 and I haven't looked back!

So … what surprises does a teacher have in store for her (by the way, since English doesn't have a non-sexist generic third-person pronoun, and since we've been using 'he' for a thousand years, I decided a few years ago that 'she' deserved its thousand years too!)?

One immediate difference you'll notice is that you can have two windows open side-by-side on a Mac, even if they're in different programs. Or they can be in the same program. So, if you've got some text in one Word document that you want in another one - and let's say that the text is broken up into lots of little chunks scattered throughout the document - the easiest way to get the bits you want into your new Word document is just to select the text and then drag it across. When you 'drop' it, you'll find the text in the new document too … without it disappearing from the old one.

I'm going to detail how we prepare a brand-new Mac for a new user in a separate post in a few days, but one thing we do is always to move the 'dock' from the bottom of the screen to either the left- or right-hand side (gives you more space on your screen for documents). Click and hold on the black apple right up in the top left-hand corner and choose the Dock menu. You'll find the choice of where the Dock is going to be there.

Another neat aspect of a Mac is that the key commands are the same in all programs. So we just get used to hitting Command-S to save and Command-W to close a window, for example. It works much faster than going up to a menu (You want a new document? Command-N - You want to print something? Command-P).

One last useful key: the Dashboard key (which doubles as F4 on the top row of your keyboard). When you push that key, you switch to a view which contains a lot of 'widgets'. The 'Convert' widget, for example, is really useful for working out how much $75 is in Swedish kronor, or how much 65°F is in °C. I know there are web sites where you can find that information too, but it's just so convenient to push a key, find the information out and then come right back to whatever you were working on by pushing the same key again.

Oh, and one last useful command: Command-Tab (the one right next to 'Q' on the left). When you use those two keys together, you see which programs happen to be open and if you keep the Command key down and click on the Tab key, you go from program to program. It's really useful if you have to switch back and forth.

Finally, have you ever wondered what most Swedish people feel about the Swedish chef on the Muppets? Click here to find out!

Have fun with your new Mac!

David Richardson