Sentence Builders in OneNote Class Notebook

Put sentence patterns first. Humans chunk everything into patterns. The larger the chunk, the lighter the load on working memory as we process language. However, if you put the teaching of single words and conjugations first you will raise a breed of slow and hesitant speakers.

— Dr Gianfranco Conti (@gianfrancocont9) March 11, 2019

This is a blogpost about current thinking regarding successful practices in Modern Foreign Language teaching and how I am able to embed such practice in my own lessons where I make use of  Microsoft Education OneNote Class Notebook.

It is not unusual to see tweets such as the following on twitter on a daily basis:

Latest blog: using sentence builders to prepare for GCSE Speaking and Writing. Apologies for the formatting of this post, but you’ll get the point. https://t.co/OtURNo61gR #mfltwitterati

— Steve Smith 🇪🇺 (@spsmith45) February 21, 2020

Looking forward to moving onto the next topic with Yr8 and delving into these infinitive constructions😍😍. I love these sentence builders to really push higher ability students whilst still supporting other students. pic.twitter.com/zoolnIBHcU

— Clare Caio (@c_caio_mfl) February 21, 2020

Sentence builders are not really new to me, neither is making the most of technological tools in my lessons,  but synthesizing the two has been very much at the forefront of my lesson planning these days.   The goal of sentence builders is to give students a good base from which to build, to provide them with chunks of information that they can use when producing language and which over time they can manipulate with a view to creating their own new chunks of language.  Sentence builders, well applied, can give students an opportunity to embed knowledge in their long-term memories freeing up space in their working memory.  That is as far as I am going to go on the technical aspects of Sentence Builders - for more information check out Dr Gianfranco Conti's blog - he's the real guru.

What I want to do is to show you how I use OneNote Class Notebook with Sentence Builders and show how I make the most of the Notebook and ability to collaborate, link to online resources and so on to enhance learning.

Firstly, I create my Sentence Builder (SB) which will look a bit like this (and click here to open fully:  Sentence Builder)

So, what will I do with the SB?  Well here's a little list with a few examples:

1. To start with, we will practise reading as a class, repeating after me, phrases that we created from the SB.   
2. Students then highlight what they hear me read (as you can see above)
3. I read in English and students then highlight the French
4. I start a sentence and finish mid word for students to complete my sentences.
5. I dictate a sentence with a word missing.  
6. I dictate a sentence in the wrong order.

All of these activities can be completed first as a class and then as pairs or in threes with student three being the referee, if the class are confident enough to try without looking at the SB.  The activities can be completed orally and/or on paper.

My SB in the next lesson may take the phrases and play a game such as Connect 4.  Students here have to translate the phrases and their partners can check answers as they will have the translations in their grids.  

But what about the technology?

If you click here on Sentence Builder, you will see that there is a link there to Quizlet which will provide students with the opportunity to practise some of the chunks via the features in Quizlet.   I will also put links to activities that allow further practice of the chunks on other apps such as learningapps.  If you are not aware of this website then I encourage you to check it out.  It is very adaptable and gives you opportunities to create listening activities too.  Here's a couple of examples based on the SB above on healthy eating.

Il est important de boire... (gap-fill)

J'ai mangé du pain (another gap-fill)

I eat chips everyday (listening)

You can ask students to sign up to Learningapps but I simply ask them to screen shot their work and paste into our Class Notebook Page so that they and I can refer to it at a later stage.

In the Collaboration Space of Class Notebook we will complete some Rapid Fire Translation or some mad dictation and students can peer assess the work of their classmates.  This is especially possible if I create a grid as follows where each student can write their response and can then look at what others have written.  As a class we can live mark or in pairs or groups depending on the students needs and abilitites.

With the technology at my disposal my students will use the dictate function in Learning Tools to see how well they have remembered the chunks we have spent time learning.  They can dictate phrases that I have given to them originally in English and they have to then translate or they can simply use what they have remembered. In both instances they can verify their pronunciation by double checking against the original SB.  The other plus is that if pronunciation is poor there will be spelling mistakes and this gives students another opportunity to check their spelling and to check that they have embedded chunks correctly.

After an appropriate period of time I can create a Microsoft Form to test their knowledge thus far.  The good thing with this form is that the marking is done for you and they can see their results immediately to see how they did and if and where they went wrong.  Results can then be deleted and the test set again at a later date.

This is just a snapshot but I think you can see how I have harnessed the tools in OneNote Class Notebook to further opportunities to work on chunking with SBs. 




My ideas on using SB come from my reading and I thank everyone who has shared their thoughts on this process.  It has been a delight to see how my students have taken to learning in this way and I will continue to enjoy considering how I can provide opportunities for practice using the tools at my disposal.