By Mark Rogers
1. I start every French lesson in the same way, by asking three students respectively to give me the day, date and month in French. The questions are graded, with students that need their confidence built asked the day and month, as these are the most accessible. When it’s the first lesson in a particular month, I may ask a higher-attaining student as the challenge to recall the month from over a year ago can be quite high. All this serves to constantly reinforce key vocabulary, such as number formation.
I then promote engagement with the key question, by asking three more students to translate key parts, again graded in this case by bronze, silver and gold. The example here requires the recall of the question word ‘que’ (what), the conjugated verb ‘fais’ (do) and the application of a reflexive pronoun ‘te’ (yourself).
These six questions should take around a minute to facilitate, as students open books and start to title their page before moving on to the Do Now.
2. Here, the base (introduction) task for the Do Now is to unscramble the sentences, which are based on content from the previous lesson and across the term/year so far. They do this independently, allowing me to circulate and check the progress of one or two highly vulnerable students that may need help. This is rare, but when they need it, I write the first letter of each word in their work to scaffold. The development task is to translate the sentence and students that complete this can apply their creativity to continue the final sentence in their own words. A task like this (prepared for a Year 7 group) can be completed in about 5-6 minutes.
3. For assessment, I’ll ask students to switch to green pen. I will then ask a middle-attaining student to give me the English for the first sentence, then a lower-attaining student to give me the French. This pattern is repeated for sentences 2-4 with the increasingly challenging questions reflecting to whom I am asking them. Finally I will ask for an example of the Depth task. In many cases, I will know what the students have written from circulation, so the public questioning is not so much for my own assessment, but more to build the culture of success in the classroom, improving confidence and giving the students a chance to show off what they can do. When it comes to getting students to produce a foreign language, this really is essential.
Critically, all of this also serves to promote student agency and build accountability. Once the Do Now has been assessed, in this case I will have asked 14 different students a question and asked one to show off their Depth task - all within the first 10 minutes or so of the lesson. Notwithstanding circulating to check on their work too. There are no passengers!
Reflection question: How can these principles be transferred to a Do Now in your subject?
