Higher French: Peer support and enhanced communications

Overview

Amanda Lyons teaches Modern Languages at the James Young High School in Livingston, West Lothian. Keen to encourage independent learning, she wanted to create an environment for the pupils in her Higher French class that would allow them to take responsibility for their own learning and enable them support one another.

Context

Amanda began by creating a Glow Group. She wanted to make the Group as simple as possible for pupils to navigate around, and so decided to create a Group which had only a single page. 

To do this, she used the ‘Glow Group Document Library’ template when creating the Group, rather than the default ‘Full Glow Group’ template.

This simpler type of Glow Group comes with only one page and one web part by default – a Document store. However, Amanda then customised the page to suit her and her class’s needs.

She removed the Document store from the page, and added in two other web parts:

Discussion Board

The Discussion Board in the Glow Group has been used extensively through the year by the pupils in Amanda’s Higher French class. It has been used for two main purposes.

The first purpose has been for peer support.

When pupils have been doing homework and have encountered a problem, such as not knowing how to say a particular English phrase in French, they have been able to post a question on the Discussion Board to ask for help. This help has regularly then come from their classmates, but also, Amanda herself has been able to support pupils in this way too.  This has really opened up the range of people that a pupil can get support from and does not rely on Amanda always being the person that the pupils turn to.

The second purpose of the Discussion Board has been for Amanda to let the class know what their homework is.

She has done this by giving the information in the text of the post, but also, has been able to attach appropriate documents to the post. For example, she has attached Powerpoint presentations to posts and directed pupils to carry out tasks relating to particular slides in the presentation.

This method of advising of the homework tasks has had great advantages. Amanda can ensure that the pupils are clear about the task, rather than risking them perhaps copying the instructions incorrectly into a homework diary; she can supply resources and supporting documents for the homework tasks in a very simple way – previously she would have had to either copy the files onto each pupil’s own USB memory stick, or print out paper copies; the pupils have constant access to the information about the homework, as well as access to the resources, both in school and at home. Even if a pupil has missed the lesson when the homework was issued, they can find out the details from the Discussion Board in the Glow Group without having to ask the teacher.

Web Links

The other web part in the Glow Group is the Web Links web part.

Amanda has used this to direct pupils to useful websites that are suitable for supporting and challenging them throughout their Higher French course. She has modified the display of the web part to show the Notes field. This is a really nice touch as it gives pupils additional information about the website, helping them easily identify which site might best suit their needs at any given time.
 

Glow Learn

Amanda has also made use of Glow Learn to give her pupils access to resources.

She has created a course with a range of different resource types and enrolled the pupils onto the course to enable them to view the resources.  One of the most beneficial things she has found from doing this is being able to upload sound files, which the pupils then use for French listening practice. As sound files can often be quite large, it has previously been difficult for Amanda to find a suitable way of sharing the sound files with pupils. She has found Glow Learn to be an excellent way of doing this and the pupils have really benefited. Learn more about this and the pupils’ thoughts on it in the cookbook ‘Ecoutez! – Using Glow Learn to support listening in Modern Languages’

 
Ingredients

So what did Amanda have to do to create her Higher French Glow Group?

- Create a Glow Group using the Glow Group Document Library template.
- Make all of the pupils in her class members of the Group
- Remove the Document store web part from the page
- Add in a Discussion Board
- Add in the web links web part and modify the view to show the notes field.

- Create a course in Glow Learn
- Add resoures to the course
- Enrol pupils onto the course

In the following videos, we can take a look at Amanda’s Higher French Glow Group then find out how to replicate some of the elements in it in the subsequent videos. In a separate cookbook we will find out how to replicate Amanda’s use of  Glow Learn.

Overview of the Higher French Glow Group (4:56)

How to create a single page Glow Group (3:03)

How to add members to a Glow Group (5:36)

How to create a voki (5:00)

How to add a Voki to a Glow Group (5:01)

How to add posts to a Discussion Board (2:26)

How to add web links and display the Notes field (4:50)

Impact

Amanda has found using Glow to be a tremendous benefit to both her and her class.

Channel of communication
She has found that it has provided a great means for the pupils to communicate and collaborate with one another. Most pupils have been very motivated to do this, although less secure pupils were less likely to post in the Discussion Board. They did, however, still benefit from reading posts made by others.

It has also been a good way for the pupils to communicate with Amanda herself. As she is not in school on a Wednesday, the pupils are still able to leave messages for her on the Discussion Board, which she can pick up from home if she chooses, or can answer on her return to school. Equally, if she needs to communicate something to the pupils whilst she is not in school, she can do this through Glow.

The Discussion board has also been very useful to Amanda as a way of issuing homework and sharing resources, reducing the time she needs to spend photocopying worksheets or putting files onto pupils’ memory sticks. She can upload the file once and it is forever available to all.

In the following video, some of the pupils talk about the benefits they’ve had from using the Discussion Board to access and upload homework and to support one another:

Pupils: Benefits of the Discussion Board (1:33)

Listening
Perhaps the greatest impact that there has been though is the way in which Amanda can now share sound files with pupils and so give them a means of practising their listening skills. She has found Glow Learn to be extremely useful for this. She has also explored uploading recordings of the pupils speaking in French, so that they can listen back to these and use them as a way to improve their pronunciation.

You can find out more about this in the cookbook ‘Ecoutez! Using Glow Learn to support listening in Modern Languages’