How to promote self-efficacy in primary schools #3, 3 part series
I’m Kate Percival, a primary teacher and MFL consultant here at Primary Languages Network. In my blogs, I’ll be sharing top tips and inspirational ideas from the schools and coordinators I’ve been working with.
In the third part of this series we look at further ways to encourage a growth mindset and steps to improve self-efficacy amongst our young language learners.
Read on to find out more.
1. Language Detective Skills
Language detectives colour code parts of a sentence eg pronouns, verbs, nouns and conjunctions.
As adults we know them as ‘transferrable skills’ but our super language detectives are developing skills they can take with them to high school and beyond; with any language they choose. This is their super power, so tell them this! When faced with a piece of language, what is your first way in? We find what we already know. Look for words we’ve already learnt; colours, numbers, animals, certain set phrases. Then see what we can work out. Cognate words are the same words in English (or near-cognates if they are similar in spelling and pronunciation). They really are a gift when it comes to unpicking meaning. They can’t always be trusted as in the case of false friend words but this is what makes language interesting. Next, we need to use very similar strategies to guided reading in English. We teach the children to skim and scan, read for the gist, work out what the unfamiliar words mean by using context. As a last resort, we know we can use resources around us; working walls, word mats and glossaries, bilingual dictionaries. The key is understanding that we don’t actually need to know what every word means to unpick meaning. That light bulb moment when children realise they have all the skills they need to understand is brilliant!
2. Phonics
Using a phonics wheel to refer back to previously learnt phonemes and graphemes.
Children learn to read English in the UK using phonics. So it makes sense that they learn to read unfamiliar words in a target language by learning key phonemes and graphemes too. I’m not saying we teach phonics discretely (although graphemes can be taught the same way as words and games played with them etc) but as and when you meet new sounds within the words you are learning, extract them, collect and display them somewhere (poster, working wall, make a model, add to a chart in books) and refer to them when you need them. This self-efficacious super power was described by language teacher Estelle:
“We collected sounds from words learnt so far. These collections help pupils become better reading detectives (it could help their spelling and their pronunciation too). I plan to create a shoebox treasure chest which children post their sounds on ‘coins’ becoming ‘richer and richer’ as the treasure chest fills.
— Estelle Jones, Palace Fields Primary, Runcorn.
3. Identify the skills! Listening, Speaking, Reading, Writing
And finally, over to Lauren for this one:
“My older children love using their knowledge organisers to help them with independent work and they are so good at using them now that they will flip back to KO’s from old topics to check for older vocab/grammar points.
Also, using our AFL tracking clouds reminds children of what we have done so far and gives them the chance to see for themselves what they need to work on. Last week we spent about 15 minutes traffic lighting the clouds and was great to see children saying ‘we didn’t do dictionaries last term! Or ‘we did that in writing but not in speaking’ and really thinking about what they have done and what needs to be done. Last week, I explicitly went through the four language learning skills with examples of activities that we do for each and from this week onwards I’ve been saying ‘which skill(s) will be need to use for this task?’— Lauren Boon, MFL Lead, St Mary’s Academy Trust
This is children using the resources they have at their disposal to further their learning – some schools know it as Brain, Buddy, Book. To help you identify the skills used in each task throughout the Schemes of Work, PLN now incorporate the picture symbols for Speak, Read, Write, Go Fetch, at the top of the slides. Look out for them in your next lesson and draw the children’s attention to them.
Skills icons appear throughout the PLN scheme of work to help identify to children the skills they are working on.
So why teach self-efficacy? Well, once children learn how to help themselves, they can apply those skills across the curriculum, so it helps with all subjects. They are developing that resilience are always aiming for and a shift in their growth mindset and attitude to learning. This prepares them for secondary and beyond; transferrable skills so that all children can achieve. And that, in my mind is worth striving for.
We’d love to hear from you if you have tried a technique and you are seeing results. Equally, let us know if there is something in your practice which really helps to boost confidence and self-esteem in your young language learners. Tag us on Twitter @network_primary or email us to share! kate@primarylanguages.network
To book one of our trainers for a twilight or full day session for your school or Trust, get in touch with sylvia@primarylanguages.network
Kate Percival runs MFL consultancy sessions for co-ordinators which can run virtually and can cover areas such as: starting out with primary languages in your school, putting together coordinator documentation, preparing for an MFL deep dive and looking for the next challenge. You will be given a full report of the discussion which includes working points and this can be shared with your Head teacher. Also included is a shorter catch-up session at an agreed future date where we can celebrate progress made and support with anything further.
If you would like to book Kate for a consultancy session, contact sylvia@primarylanguages.network or click on the link below: