Train your Brain

Memory Skills

•LO: to discover effective ways to memorise chunks of work for your speaking assessment

•5 activities with memory games > try each of them

•Use sections of your controlled assessment draft in your books to learn and practise your skills

•Make notes on how you found each so that by the end of this presentation you can choose a suitable method to use to learn your speaking and writing assessments

1. Sentence builder

•Write/Say one sentence.

•Then do it again, with a second one.

•Then do the first, second and then a third

•Then the first, second, third and fourth....

•...etc...

2. Record it •Record yourself or ask your Spanish

teacher to record herself on your phone/computer voice recorder reading it out

•Play it back again and again and speak along with it

•Put it onto your mp3 player

•Play it on the bus, while walking the dog, while sleeping, while doing other homework, while jogging....

3. Get someone to test you

• Learn a short extract and get someone to test you as if you were learning a script for a play.

• They do not need to understand what it means, all they have to do is listen to what you say and see if the sound matches the words on the page. They can prompt you if you forget.

• This is a good way to get family members to help you, even if they don’t ‘do’ a language.

4. Act it out

•Pretend the assessment is part of a play you are in and that your draft is your script

•Put tone, emphasis and passion into your voice

•Move around? Strike a pose?

5. Sing it

•sing it / rap it / put it to music / find a rhythm...

•Use a tune of your choice

•Record yourself, put it onto your mp3 player

•Play it back again and again and again...

What would NOT work?

• leaving it to the last minute

•not practising at all / not bothering

•not speaking it at all

• just reading it in your head, hoping it will somehow magically transfer itself to your mouth for the assessment

Top tips from today•On your post it notes, write your best

tips for memorising and practising your speaking

•Any other methods? Include them too!

•Mrs Welthagen also likes http://text-to-speech.imtranslator.net Type a paragragh (spelling has to be spot on) and play it back to you. Great to help you with pronunciation!