What does an outstanding MFL lesson look like?

[Howaboutthisone]

We have Estyn (Wales) coming in soon our inspection. We keep being told to ensure our lessons are made up of the pupils being more active than the teacher. I can see the benefit of this ( believe me it really appeals!) but think that its quite difficult in MFL.if you're introducing new vocab, trying to cover the different skills.
Has anyone recently taught an 'outstanding' or a 'good' lesson and what did it look like?
I'm starting to unpick everything I do in a moment of pre inspection madness!!!

Sorry for typos!

Give us a clue about the language, topic, year group, and maybe we can help you. Are you a MFL teacher or primary?

Card sorts, dominoes type match ups. Categories. As much TL as possible. Give them sentences containing a grammar rule, they translate, work out the rule, write own examples then RAG rate their understanding.

Showing very clear progress from the starting point to the end.

I teach EFL to adults so quite different but we are definitely taught to get the students to do the work, not the teacher! So quite easy IMO because it's mostly what I do.

For vocab: Give them the words on pieces of paper and get them to match up to pictures. They do it in groups (guessing, going off prior knowledge) and then check in a dictionary or you give the answers. Then some kind of activity (preferably practical/verbal, not written) to practise using the words, get pron down, get more comfortable with them, form them properly in various sentences, etc. First with the pictorial guides visible and later without.

Or - present each word in context where the rest is familiar language and the meaning is unambiguous. Like if you said "I keep my clothes in a flibble, my flibble is made of wood and has two doors and a rail." It's clear that "flibble" means wardrobe. To get the info needed in your sentence you need to work backwards - think what it is and what it's not, what makes it different from other similar things? The definition of wardrobe:

• Place to keep clothes
• Has a rail
• Has doors, rather than drawers
• Usually made of wood, possibly canvas or plastic.

So you need all of these elements to be in the context.

For grammar - yes to getting them to figure out the rule themselves from several similar examples. Ask them why this sentence is different to that and how the meaning changes, and then get them to produce their own examples from a prompt/situation.

You can combine both new vocab and unfamiliar grammar (or grammar which they know but is wobbly) or something practical about language use (e.g. formal vs informal language) with a reading or listening activity. Then bring speaking or writing in at the end for them to practise, and link the topic into the listening/reading topic to tie it all together. This does depend on how long the lesson is - don't try to cram too much in.

Is that helpful or not?

Thank you so much for your responses and I'm so sorry I disappeared! I've been crazy busy in school and both of my dc have been ill, on antibiotics and not sleeping- timing hey!

I'm a secondary school MFL teacher. I have 10 lessons to plan as if they could be seen as we have no idea where the inspectors will go during the two days of observations.
Mixture of KS3 and 4. My biggest conundrum at the moment is what to do with my yr11 French class. They are lower of two sets but are quite a mixed bunch! I need to re do the topic of home and helping around the home etc for those who need to complete another piece of coursework but at this point in the course, everything is so time pressured that I'm really not sure what to do for the possibly observed lessons. I see this class on both days of Obs so need to prepare two lessons.

Aaargh!!!!!

To show progress I usually have a separate sheet that they all have with good, great, even better if objectives. At the start of the lesson I ask how much of it they can do ( usually making sure it's none of it) then match tasks to each objective, getting the kids to assess periodically their progress against each target, tick off if they can do it and write an example. At the end of the lesson, they each write a 'what I need to know more on' sentence at the bottom of the sheet.
For a lower ability set on house and helping around the home, I would maybe give a few kids phrases e.g Je passe l'aspirateur and get them to mime them for others to guess. Maybe do a survey where the question would be "Qu'est-ce que tu fais pour aider à la maison?" and they ask each other and present the results as a bar chart. Then you've covered numeracy too. Ensure differentiation is covered by allowing some of them to use vocab sheets to answer the question.
I'd get a listening ex in, varying the amount of information they need to listen for to differentiate there.
The plenary could be pupils volunteering to be in the 'hot seat' and answer as many questions as they can. This could be French-English or English-French, depending on the child.

I like Matchsticks' progress sheet. As another possible idea, could you do a skills-oriented lesson for one of them at least? Find a good listening / reading exercise from an exam paper, pull out all the key vocab in advance, give them 8 minutes to learn as much of it as they can however they choose: look-cover-write-check etc and then test them on that vocab right away so they get immediate feedback (partners can mark the vocab tests, give feedback so you tick the peer assessment box). Then run through the actual exam question and see how much they got right and whether there was a connection between their learning at the beginning and success in the question.

I really like both of those ideas! Thank you! I promise I'm not usually a rubbish idea less teacher- circumstances and this inspection have stopped me seeing the wood for the tree!
Thanks so much for taking the time to reply!