Chris's Profile

Upcoming events in Devon- especially the Devon conference at Newton Abbot College!

Hi everyone, well, it's taken longer than I'd hoped but I'm delighted to announce details of this year's Devon ALL conference at Newton Abbot College to be held on the final Friday before most of our half term as usual... Continue reading

Posted Dec 5, 2016 at Facing the currently unknown

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Practical Pedagogies conference, Toulouse- Doing things differently in languages

It was an absolute honour to be invited to present at the International School in Toulouse this weekend as part of the Practical Pedagogies conference. After 3 years of hard work there are a huge number of ideas that I... Continue reading

Posted Nov 7, 2016 at Facing the currently unknown

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ShelterBox Spanish Challenge 2016- THE WINNERS!

It's with great pleasure that I can announce the winners of this year's ShelterBox Spanish Challenge- with huge thanks to the wonderful Caroline Grant and Nina Elliott for helping me with the judging this year. The entries were really creative... Continue reading

Posted Jul 6, 2016 at Facing the currently unknown

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Saltash.net's Olympic Minecraft project

I love it when teachers get creative. So it was with great delight that I received the flyer above from Elodie Tremellat at Saltash (those of you who came to the Newton Abbot conference in February may well have had... Continue reading

Posted Mar 13, 2016 at Facing the currently unknown

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Newton Abbot / ALL Devon languages conference, Feb 12th 2016

Hola a todos, it's with great delight that I can finally launch on here the flyer for this academic year's Newton Abbot / ALL Devon languages conference. The last 2 years have been fantastic days, and we're delighted that this... Continue reading

Posted Nov 12, 2015 at Facing the currently unknown

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Free training event in Exeter- A pedagogical assessment system for MFL with Ernesto Macaro

At the moment I'm fascinated by how we can shift the nature of teaching in our language classrooms if we are still assessed in a very old fashioned way. So it was with really great delight that I received the... Continue reading

Posted Nov 11, 2015 at Facing the currently unknown

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ShelterBox Spanish Challenge 2015-16, come join the creativity!

Hola, with half term approaching (wow, that's gone quickly, I hope it's been productive!) I thought I'd just write a quick post to say that the ShelterBox Spanish Challenge 2015-16 is open for entrants and it would be great to... Continue reading

Posted Oct 16, 2015 at Facing the currently unknown

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ShelterBox Spanish Challenge 2014-15: the winner!

Hola a todos, it's with great delight that I'm now able to share the winner of this year's ShelterBox Spanish Challenge, Luke from the Burgate School and Sixth Form in Hampshire. The judges considered it to be an incredibly different... Continue reading

Posted Jul 29, 2015 at Facing the currently unknown

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ALL London Webinar, Thursday 30th April- Doing things differently, building engagement with languages

Last night it was a real pleasure to present a webinar for ALL London, organised by the lovely Helen Myers. It was a nerve-racking experience, as one of the main points that I enjoy about presenting is normally the sense... Continue reading

Posted May 1, 2015 at Facing the currently unknown

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Language World 2015- Doing it differently, building engagement

Language World is a real highlight of the annual calendar for me. Yes the range of sessions are always great. But more than that it's an amazing opportunity to catch up with colleagues and friends from across the country to... Continue reading

Posted Mar 22, 2015 at Facing the currently unknown

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Smore.com- multimedia reading / listening creator

At the moment my Stretch phase students are working on a project, alongside STEM and Geography, to develop an eco waterpark. As part of the project launch we had a session with Richard Hammond, founder of the green traveller website... Continue reading

Posted Mar 14, 2015 at Facing the currently unknown

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Uruguay legalisation- a lesson update

Sometimes you teach a lesson and it restores your... hope. It reminds you of why you love doing the job that you do. Pleasingly, I had one of those lessons last week- the last session I taught on the Thursday-... Continue reading

Posted Feb 18, 2015 at Facing the currently unknown

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PE in Spanish- a reflection of our ongoing programme

I've just been playing around adding some videos to my departmental blog, www.route39.typepad.com/spanish and it's made me reflect that I haven't really written any updates for a while. Like so many of us, I've hardly stopped for a pause at... Continue reading

Posted Feb 18, 2015 at Facing the currently unknown

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Newton Abbot conference 2015- a review

There's something very special, and very enjoyable, about being in a room packed with determined, enthusiastic language teachers. Friday was one of those special days for the second (now annual!) Newton Abbot language conference. With about 65 language teachers in... Continue reading

Posted Feb 17, 2015 at Facing the currently unknown

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Newton Abbot conference- 13th February 2015

Posted Nov 26, 2014 at Facing the currently unknown

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Memrise- independent learning that works

I love great tools. I especially love great free tools. As for great free tools which really do the trick and support students to learn? Unsurprisingly, that's a massive tick on my list. I was first introduce to Memrise at... Continue reading

Posted Nov 24, 2014 at Facing the currently unknown

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PE in Spanish- an update

The last few weeks of implementing PE in Spanish have been a steep learning curve, but fascinating with them. Of our 6 classes in school we currently have 4 who are receiving some or all of their PE in Spanish.... Continue reading

Posted Oct 1, 2014 at Facing the currently unknown

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Learning Habits- Building Learning Power at Route 39 Academy

With thanks to the amazing Hattie. A large element of the academic side of our school life is built on the TLO's concepts of Building Learning Power. Having recently spoken to another Head of Department, who I trust and whose... Continue reading

Posted Oct 1, 2014 at Facing the currently unknown

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Duplo sentence building

A while ago I read a cracking blog post by the fantastic @dominic_mcg, who was describing an idea that he had learned from the wonderful @bellaale in this post. Duplo. Something that I spend a massive amount of my time... Continue reading

Posted Sep 28, 2014 at Facing the currently unknown

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ShelterBox Spanish Challenge- a competition for schools across the country!

Last year it was a pleasure to team up with the fantastic charity ShelterBox to develop the ShelterBox Challenge. We've made some key changes in 2014 to make it more user-friendly, more effective and, hopefully, better for departments and for... Continue reading

Posted Sep 28, 2014 at Facing the currently unknown

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Making good on a promise- cyberbullying lesson (in Spanish)

As per my promise to myself and on the blog to try to share more resources and ideas, please find below the materials that I used a few weeks ago for a 90minute lesson with year 6 students. Boy was... Continue reading

Posted Aug 3, 2014 at Facing the currently unknown

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Developing spontaneity- table boxes

One of my main priorities in February when I started teaching part time at Route 39 was to increase both the ability and desire of students to use the Target Language. Taking over part way through a year adds massive... Continue reading

Posted Aug 1, 2014 at Facing the currently unknown

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Doing things differently... PE in Spanish

Howdy y'all. Sorry it's been a while since I've blogged, been a bit busy... Anyway, with term having finished last Friday my thoughts are now turning to the course that I will be running for the next 3 weeks in... Continue reading

Posted Aug 1, 2014 at Facing the currently unknown

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Exeter MFL primary conference postponement

It is with great, great sadness that we have had to postpone the upcoming primary MFL conference in Exeter. Numbers remained below what we considered to be a reasonable level to warrant the support of our exhibitors and to make... Continue reading

Posted Jun 22, 2014 at Facing the currently unknown

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My first Flipping experiment

My school is all about doing things differently if that's going to mean putting control into our students' hands and minds. For me, the practice of "Flipping" a lesson, whereby learning of new material is done in advance of the... Continue reading

Posted May 15, 2014 at Facing the currently unknown

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