1. Personal Learning & Thinking Skills in the Languages Classroom
Isabelle Jones, Head of Languages, The Radclyffe School, Oldham
My Languages Blog
PLTS in MFL Wiki

2. You will...
Look at strategies for embedding PLTS in your daily practice
Audit your own practice
Consider different approaches to promote PLTS in your classroom
Widen your repertoire of Thinking Skills activities
Find out what ICT tools can support the development of PLTS resources

3. Are PLTS here to stay? Not a new concept:
Personal Learning + Thinking Skills
Independent learning skills
Learners’ social interactions
Making the link/ transfer knowledge
NOT a government initiative-focus for good practice

4. Bloom’s Taxonomy Give opinions, assess/ criteria
Express rules, summarise, create
Identify patterns and rules
Predict, infer
Explain, describe, illustrate
Information recall: identify, list

5. PRICE Taxonomy 5 types of Thinking Skills:
Information-Processing skills
Reasoning skills
EnquIry skills
Creative Thinking skills
Evaluation skills

6. PLTS in the Secondary National Curriculum
self manager
independent enquirer
creative thinker
reflective learner
team worker
effective participator

7. Embedding PLTS the BLP Way
Building Learning Power, Guy Claxton
“The 6 clusters of qualities are more than Skills that can be trained... The point is to cultivate these qualities into becoming dispositions, or habits of mind... Cultivation of the PLTS should run through the curriculum, life and ethos of the school, like lettering through a stick of rock”

8. Embedding PLTS the BLP Way
The 4 Rs
Resilience: absorption, managing distractions, noticing, perseverance;
Resourcefulness: questioning, making links, imagining, reasoning, capitalising;
Reflectiveness: planning, revising, distilling, meta-learning;
Reciprocity: interdependance, collaboration, empathy and listening.

9. Audit your own practice
Which PLTS areas do I find are the easiest to integrate in my practice?
Can you give examples of activities?
Which PLTS areas do you think are
the most difficult to integrate?
Why?

10. Strategies for Embedding PLTS
Aiming to deliver a wide variety of tasks in
a varied way: impact on resource design and nature of interactions in classroom;
Opportunities highlighted in SoWs & examples of activities shared;
Focus on developing students’ skills and independence.

11. Strategies for Embedding PLTS
Introducing Meta-language to talk about learning: mats, display
Overlaps with AFL and SEAL
Training of support staff like FLAs
Focus on developing PLTS as a wholeschool approach

12. Promoting PLTS: Mats

13. Using cross-curricular Thinking Skills tools
Promoting PLTS:
Using cross-curricular Thinking Skills tools

14. Using cross-curricular Thinking Skills tools
Promoting PLTS:
Using cross-curricular Thinking Skills tools

15. Strategies for Embedding PLTS: Overlaps

16. Strategies for Embedding PLTS: Overlaps

17. Strategies for Embedding PLTS:
Lesson Objectives
Objectifs:
Look at the specific skills required to do well the Speaking Controlled Assessment
Identify and use “interesting” phrases to improve the range of the language used
SEAL objectives: Motivation (red)
I monitor and evaluate my own work
I set challenges and targets for myself and celebrate when I achieve them

18. Strategies for Embedding PLTS:
Lesson Objectives
Vers le succès (Steps to Success):
Developing strategies to start off answers in different ways
Say & understand how time phrases, connectives, comparatives, reasons & opinions can improve your linguistic range
Practise speaking ensuring you do not pronounce silent letters
Vers le progrès (Path to Progress):
Be able to develop your speaking answers using a range of structures
Recognise your strengths
Be aware of how you are doing
Learn from mistakes

19. Strategies for Developing PLTS through languages activities
Use mystery pictures
Use links between pictures: and, but
Compare pictures : use comprative, because
Say what happened before
Say what might happen after
Read/Listen to clues to identify one specific
picture

21. Points forts et Points faibles
L’alcool: C’est relaxant mais c’est cher
Le jeu
Le tabac
Plus … que (more … than)
Moins … que (less … than)
Aussi … que (as… as)
La drogue
L’alcool: C’est plus relaxant que le jeu mais
c’est aussi cher que le tabac

22. Diamond nine cards.doc

23. Pourquoi pas? 
1. Parce que ça sent mauvais
2. Parce que c’est dégoûtant
3. Parce que ça donne le cancer
4. Parce que ça cause des crises cardiaques
5. Parce que c’est facile de devenir dépendant
6. Parce que c’est trop cher
7. Parce que c’est du gaspillage
8. Parce que c’est difficile d’arrêter
9. Parce que c’est illégal
10.Parce que c’est dangereux
11.Parce que c’est mauvais pour le foie
12.Parce que ça fait grossir/ ça coupe l’appétit
13.Parce ce que c’est mauvais pour la santé

24. L’alcool, le tabac ou les drogues?

25. Showing off your PLTS KS3 or KS4 lesson on healthy eating
What would you do to “show off your PLTS”?
Classroom set-up
Activities
Resources (including ICT if relevant)

26. How embedded are your Thinking Skills/ PLTS?
*Schemes of Work:
mapping out of Thinking Skills lesson opportunities sharing PLTS objectives
*Evidence of:
Collaborative team work [+Seating arrangement, Display]
Students using “meta-language”
Students as Independent learners
Cross-curricular support/time dedicated to skills building across the curriculum

27. Independent Enquirer Activities
Intercultural understanding-identify features
Flickr
taggalaaxy
French Google
Spanish Google

28. Independent Enquirer Activities
Intercultural understanding-reflecting on identity and finding out about France
Find songs with repetitive structures
And get students to also be more
Creative with the language...
Je viens de là où...

29. Creative Thinkers Activities
Poems: recipes, acrostics, calligrams, comparisons
Song-Stromae “Alors on danse” [Lyrics world app]
Transfer structure: Stromae_on_danse : Qui dit...
Rebus
Rebus Malin iphone

30. Creative Thinkers Activities
Stromae-Alors on danse...
Structure suggested for students’
own poem/ song (complete)
examples of student’s responses
Qui dit amour dit … haine/ famille
Qui dit parents dit… bagarres/problèmes
Qui dit enfants dit … futur/larmes
Qui dit vacances dit … rire/ désastre
Qui dit études dit … travail/ennui
Oui dit travail dit … argent/ennui
Qui dit copains dit ... amusement/bavarder

31. Creative Thinkers Activities
Making links: Learners are given a selection of familiar words and asked to make a concept map by adding connecting words between the words already on the list.

32. Reflective Learners Activities
Fact or opinion
“On mange mieux en France qu’en Angleterre”
Discute et range les phrases selon leurs catégories
2 stars and 1 wish
Direct
Post-it notes
Wallwisher

33. Reflective Learners Activities
2 stars and a wish (direct/ post-it notes/ wallwisher)

34. Effective Participator Activities
Get involved in outreach activities: resources for Primary (mini books, recording stories, using video-conferencing), open evening
Organising a languages club/ café
Involvement in activities to prepare for a trip, exchange, option evening
Displays, videos, LAFTA competition...

35. Team Worker Activities
Running dictation/ collective memory
Students work together to create or re-create a text or a visual image in the form of a map, picture or diagram. Each student look at stimulus for a short period of time (e.g. 10 seconds) before returning to reproduce the original
Wikis: Collaborative Writing Task:

36. Team Worker Activities
Collaborative Writing Task:
Wikis

37. SOLO Taxonomy Stands for Structures of Observed Learning Outcomes
Developed by Biggs and Collis in 1982
Describes levels of increasing complexity in a student’s understanding of a subject
With the highest level being the extended abstract level, when students can make connections not only within the given area but also beyond it.
Students will also be able to generalise and transfer the principles and ideas to another area.
Are we allowing our students to make these connections?

38. You should have ...
More ideas for strategies to embed PLTS in your daily practice
Reflected on your own practice
Considered different approaches to promote PLTS in your classroom
A wider repertoire of Thinking Skills activities
Found out what ICT tools can support the development of PLTS resources

39. Personal Learning & Thinking Skills in the Languages Classroom
Isabelle Jones, Head of Languages, The Radclyffe School, Oldham
My Languages Blog
PLTS in MFL Wiki