There are a number of strategies that can be used in schools to ensure that key aspects of personalised learning take place. A key aspect of personalised learning is high quality teaching and learning in Foreign Languages such as Spanish. One strategy is ‘direct teaching’ (DfES 2007, Moore 2009; Muijs and Reynolds 2011) which can be used to implement high quality teaching and learning. Other strategies suggested by the DfES (2007) are social, cognitive teaching and learning models. However, Muijs and Reynolds (2011) state that other strategies include ‘interactive teaching’, ‘collaborative small group work and peer tutoring’ and ‘constructivist …show more content…
This strategy is an element of high quality teaching and learning because it involves ‘teacher – student interaction’, allowing ‘questions and answers, review and practice, and the correction of teaching and learning’ to take place (Moore, 2009). This strategy was teacher centred and allowed the teaching team to take it in turns to teach something new to the children. A benefit of using this strategy was we were able to carry out initial assessment of the children we would be working with. The initial assessment allowed the teaching team to become familiar with the needs of individual children that is necessary for personalised learning.
Whilst teaching, the teaching team used Dialogic teaching that is necessary for high quality teaching and learning in Spanish. We used Dialogic teaching in every lesson to teach Year 2 children key words and phrases in Spanish and then we asked the children to translate them into English (Appendix A – lesson plans). Alexander (2006) states that there are five principles that brings together Dialogic teaching in the classroom. The principles …show more content…
This strategy was used because the teaching team wanted to focus on a certain number of individuals in order to learn about their needs, strengths and weaknesses in Spanish. An advantage of children working in mixed ability groups is teachers who use ‘mixed ability teaching strategies effectively are much better equipped to meet the diverse learning needs of their learners’ (Šimanová, 2010 cited in Wits Language School, 2016). Whilst working with my group I found out which children were confident in learning Spanish and the children who needed motivation and further guidance to become more confident. Working in mixed ability groups also allowed children to learn from one another which relates to the Social model. This is because the social model requires the ‘learners to collaborate and learn together’ (DfES, 2007: 4) which occurred during every lesson in the main activity (Appendix B – Pictures of children working together). Lastly, Leadbetter (2005: 8) suggests that personalised learning “stems from creative and social interaction” which is another advantage of working in mixed ability