I am a member of my school's Raising Achievement Team. We are a group of teachers from different subjects with a common goal, namely raising achievement.

Over the last year we have been trialling different ways of feeding back to students, choosing the most effective ways for our departments and our students to improve and sharing our experiences. Successful feedback, naturally, depends on our objectives and our outcomes for the task set and not all ways are right for all activities or subject… Continue

Another wonderful recent Twitter discovery, Storybird.com is a delightful addition to any MFL-er's armoury.

Sign up for a free account and you gain access to masses of charming children's illustrations and a tool for using them to build your own stories. The pictures are so gorgeous and the simple layouts so effective, that I defy you not to discover your creative streak. When you publish, you will have a fabulous digital story to show using your (interactive) whiteboard.

Don't limit yourself… Continue

I first came across the fun and useful Xtranormal.com via Twitter (as with almost every new thing I try at the moment). It pressed all my buttons both as a teacher and a parent.

In simple terms, Xtranormal is a free-to-use website where the user can use a text-to-speech facility to make animated cartoons.

The brilliant thing is that the creators have enabled several languages. When sett… Continue

After yesterday's disappointment at not being able to publish my storybird for the whole world to see (modest, much! as Buffy would say), I contacted Mark Ury co-founder of http://www.storybird.com/ and offered my services as a moderator.

This is his very quick and very nice reply:


Hi Dominic,
Thanks for the kind words (and your blog post—just saw that).
As for your offer—it comes at the right time. We… Continue

Six hours ago, I had never heard of storybird, now I'm hooked. I can see a wealth of uses for it in MFL for both teachers and pupils, especially as a teaching resource in primary classrooms.

It was through a tweet from Clare Seccombe (the genius behind MFL Sunderland website and the changing phase blog) this morning that I first… Continue