Designing the perfect unit of work

With so many new ideas to think about , the idea of designing a unit of work for MFL seems scarier and more complicated now than ever.  With new specifications on the horizon, though, it's something we all need to be thinking about to get the most out of the new courses.  We need to be ready to hit the ground running as soon as these new courses go live. With that in mind, I've decided to have a look at some of the issues surrounding the design of a new unit of work.



What do we all want from a unit of work?

...great results...pupils' engagement in and oustide class...to please OFSTED and tick boxes for our teaching...

To be honest, we could probably keep going here, but I think these are probably three of our core values.

So, what do we need to include?

• A range of approaches (think Fleming's VARK)
• A range of activities (LSRW)
• A range of levels (ability and Bloom's, naturally!)
• A use of technology

So let's have a look at each one of these individually and think about what they can actually look like in the languages classroom.

1. A range of approaches (Fleming's VARK)

Visual - This involves learning language through visual stimuli but not simple reading activities!
Ideas:

Auditory - listening is luckily very easy for MFL, but maybe the way we ask pupils to respond could be more creative.
Ideas:

Reading and Writing - Again, there are no shortages of reading and writing opportunities in the language classroom but in general, they're definitely due for a bit of an overhaul.
Ideas:

Kinesthetic - A lovely way to learn, but definitely under-used for languages.  It seems very difficult to satisfy both our need to share as much information as possible in as little time as possible (timetabling being what it is!) and have pupils moving around!!!

Ideas:

Made this for Bloom, too.  Any ideas to add to this most welcome:

http://www.tes.co.uk/teaching-resource/Bloom-and-39-s-Taxonomy-for-MFL-6428468/