Changing Phase

Slightly appeased

2011-12-20T10:15:00.000Z

Following the news over the weekend that the overhaul of the National Curriculum has been delayed until 2014, the DfE released yesterday two documents covering what has been done so far.

First, the Summary report of the Call for Evidence. The Call for Evidence ran from January to April of this year, and altogether there were 5763 responses. 2359 of these were primary and secondary teachers. 81% of the 2679 respondents who completed the MFL section said that it should continue to be a National Curriculum subject. The other points arising from the Call for Evidence and regarding MFL were:

learning a foreign language not only helps pupils to understand their own language more deeply, but also helps them to respect and understand other cultures around the world.
children in many parts of Europe begin to learn at least one foreign language at the age of 7. For England to be competitive in the European business market, it is therefore important that when young people leave school they are able to converse in at least one other language
GCSE must not be the sole outcome at Key Stage 4.
The few respondents who said that MFL should not continue to be a National Curriculum subject were mainly talking about KS1 and KS2. In their opinion, the learning of another language takes vital time away from other subjects and is not suitable for children who are just starting to read and write English.
13% were of the opinion that pupils need to begin learning as soon as possible.
Children have recently made good progress in learning languages at Key Stage 2. Respondents were concerned that the work that had been done to introduce languages into primary schools would be curtailed.

The second document is the Report by the Expert Panel forthe Curriculum Review, the results of which “will be subject to further consultation and discussion”.

The report recommends that MFL should be a Foundation subject in Key Stages 2-4, although "It is worth noting at this point that the optimum age at which to introduce modern foreign language teaching remains a contested matter that requires careful consideration of evidence; this is not yet fully resolved and we therefore present modern foreign languages in lower Key Stage as a query .... However, we do believe because of its importance that it should be included in the National Curriculum at upper Key Stage 2, which represents a change to the existing arrangements." It adds in a footnote: “We are aware, for instance, of the arguments in favour of teaching language awareness in primary schools to avoid language choices which cannot be continued in secondary education, and the counter-proposals of those who believe that more specific capability in a language should be developed from as young an age as possible.”

Therefore it recommends compulsory MFL for Years 5-11, but maybe not for Years 3 and 4, Lower KS2. I hope that provision is extended across KS2, as in my experience Y4 is the optimum year for language learning. The proposed Foundation Subjects will have “refined and condensed Programmes of Study and minimal or no Attainment Targets”.

This table is a summary of the recommendations made:

The list of aims for the recommended new curriculum is also an interesting read:

Provision should be developed to:

Satisfy future economic needs for individuals and for the workforce as a whole, including the development of secure knowledge and skills in communication, literacy and mathematics and confidence in acquiring new knowledge and skills; (recognition needs to be made of the valuable contribution that MFL makes to literacy and maths.)
Appreciate the national cultures, traditions and values of England and the other nations within the UK, whilst recognising diversity and encouraging responsible citizenship;
(the Ofsted team that inspected one of my schools in September were looking for evidence of this. Where will MFL’s intercultural understanding fit in?)
Provide opportunities for participation in a broad range of educational experiences and the acquisition of knowledge and appreciation in the arts, sciences and humanities, and of high quality academic and vocational qualifications at the end of compulsory schooling;
Support personal development and empowerment so that each pupil is able to develop as a healthy, balanced and self-confident individual and fulfil their educational potential;
Promote understanding of sustainability in the stewardship of resources locally, nationally and globally.

So this is cautious good news for the languages community, especially at the primary end. The previous plans to make primary languages compulsory were abandoned in April 2010, after which schools started to abandon language teaching. The funding ceased in March 2011 causing many Primary Languages advisers to be made redundant. In 2014, when it is intended that the new curriculum will be in place, some schools will not have taught a language for 4 years, and many local authorities will have been without the necessary support and expertise for 3 years. It’s still going to be a long, hard slog.

Outraged from Tyne and Wear

2011-12-17T21:49:00.001Z

While catching up with Twitter this afternoon I saw some references to the Curriculum Review. Now I've been waiting anxiously for the publication of the conclusions of the Review, mainly to see what the Coalition's plans will be for languages in KS2. We had been told that we could expect it at the end of this year. So now, in fact. But I had seen no reference to it in the press or elsewhere. I consulted one of the #MFLTwitterati:

I read the article with interest. It concentrates on English and maths, and you have to read between the lines for the rest. It was this paragraph that was of particular concern:

"The conclusions of the review had been expected in the new year, but wholesale reform of the curriculum will now be delayed by 12 months.

A final report by an expert panel is unlikely to be published until the end of 2012, with specifications in the core subjects to be introduced in 2014 rather than 2013."

So the timetable on the DfE website no longer stands, and we will have to wait even longer for some kind of decision about the future of Primary Languages. This is infuriating given its already precarious position. I am also outraged by the fact that this information has come out via a newspaper article (no mention of the information is made on the DfE website) over the weekend and after most schools have broken up for the Christmas holidays. This appears to me to be underhanded and cowardly on the part of the DfE and of course of Gove himself. But then I suppose I'm not really surprised about this. It's not like it's the first time it's happened.

A card for Christmas

2011-11-27T21:01:00.000Z

Every Christmas in the primary school where I teach Spanish, I like to make Spanish Christmas cards with the children. There are a few reasons why we do this. Firstly, they always ask to do it. Secondly, it ticks some Intercultural Understanding boxes, and thirdly, it's something from Spanish for them to take home and share with their families.

This is the third year that I have had to think of a design for a card. It wasn't easy! I decided to base it on this card. Please feel free to download it and have a go at making it with your students:

Spanish
French
German (thanks to Alex Bellars for supplying the vocabulary!)

Also still available if you fancy something a bit different:
2010 Christmas card (Spanish)
2009 Christmas card (Spanish) - crib scene
2009 Christmas card (French) - crib scene

We are also going to be making stencil calligram cards (as described here) for the children at our partner school in Madrid.

Buon Natale e felice anno nuovo.

Sing a song of Spanish phonics

2011-11-21T11:43:00.000Z

In recent months I've done a lot of phonics work with my KS2 Spanish students. However, a fortnight ago, at the end of our Family and Pets unit, I noticed that they were still having a problem with the [x] sound (the ge/gi/j sound that we can't write in English!) So I decided to have a lesson about just that sound. They like singing so I set out to make a song with as many words with that sound in as possible. I later decided to add words with the [g] sound so that we could work on the rule for when you say each sound.

I collected all the words that we have covered that had those sounds (there were more than I thought) and thought up a tune. The song has ended up having four verses and is a nonsense song due to the diverse nature of the words involved!

You can have a listen to it here. It had its debut with the children last week and they seemed to like it. I've also done a "th" sound song, which I'm going to use with Y4 as they do more phonics work. You can listen to that one here. I have also uploaded the resources that go with both songs (scroll to the bottom of the page).

With Y3 I have worked on the vowel sounds by doing a chant, which you can hear here. The lyrics are:

a - a - a, Gran Canaria
e - e - e, Té en el café
i - i - i, Lidi y Pili
o - o - o, ¿Loro o lobo?
u - u - u, Purucú, Perú

I recorded the songs using Songsmith, which I think gives a really professional finish for something I have recorded on my laptop in my front room. The difficult thing was recording the vocal in one take, as I am still suffering from a post-cold "viral chest"!

I wrote the scores with a very reasonably priced and easy to use program called Finale NotePad. I made the backing track for the chant using Aviary Roc and then recorded the vocal using Audacity.

Are there any other Spanish sounds that you think would benefit from having a song made in their honour?

#ililc2 - ICT and Languages Conference 2012

2011-11-18T23:03:00.000Z

In the summer of 2009 I left the security of the secondary school where I had been teaching for 13 years, and the AST job that I had there, to take up a post teaching primary Spanish and to become my LA's advisory teacher for primary languages. I went from being part of a department, with the structure and support that it and the school offered, to being a lone practitioner, and an adviser who was expected to be at the forefront of language teaching.

The network of teachers and education professionals with whom I connect daily via Twitter have been, since then, an invaluable source of inspiration, information and innovation. And I have been honoured to meet many of them in person at the MFL Show and Tells that have been held over the last few years. The icing on the cake was attending #ililc - the ICT and Languages conference in Southampton in February this year. Not only were the presentations excellent, but I was able to spend the whole weekend learning from the language luminaries over various dinners and drinks.

The brilliant news is that it's all happening again, in February 2012!

25-26^th February 2012

University of Southampton, Avenue Campus

Whether you want to find out how to use blogs and wikis to trying out digital voice recorders, you’ll be inspired to try something new! A range of speakers will demonstrate tried and tested models for different skill levels. You don’t have to be an expert in ICT to attend!

Plenary speakers:
Joe Dale - Saturday 25^th February

José Picardo – Sunday 26^th February

Workshop speakers:
Annalise Adam, Wendy Adeniji, Alex Blagona, Vanessa Burns, Joe Dale, Catherine Elliott, Stuart Gorse, Esther Hardman, Isabelle Jones, Helen Myers, Carole Nicoll, Juliet Park, Bertram Richter, Jo Rhys-Jones, Amanda Salt, Clare Seccombe, Lisa Stevens, Jenny Turner, and Sara Vaughan.

You can take part too! Don’t miss the Show and Tell event on the Saturday evening, to be held at the Highfield House Hotel.

To book go to the Languages South East website: http://www.languagessoutheast.ac.uk/events/ict-and-languages-conference-ililc-2012

Standard: £175 for both days / £125 for one day
Concessionary rates available for Postgraduate students: £100 for both days / £75 for one dayWe will require the name and contact details of your tutor when submitting your registration form.

For more information please contact Languages South East on languagessoutheast@soton.ac.uk or call 023 8059 9135.

So what are you waiting for? Come along. It'll change your teaching life and give you a new spurt of energy in what can be despondent and disheartening times.

Tarsia again

2011-11-13T09:28:00.000Z

Following on from previous posts about Tarsia, the puzzle-making software, I have created a "how-to" guide for MFL teachers. You can download the guide in PDF format here.

Image by the brilliant Bev Evans

MFL + Maths = all in a day's work

2011-10-25T10:30:00.000+01:00

Michael Gove's plans to extend primary languages into KS1 were greeted with cautious optimism in the MFL community. Some members of the public, some other teachers and headteachers, however, preferred the "What's the point of teaching them a language when they can't even read/write/speak English?" approach. An afternoon of comparing the MFL Frameworks for KS2 and KS3 and the Literacy objectives for EYFS through to KS3 will show beyond doubt the contribution that learning another language can make to literacy skills in the mother tongue. Generally speaking, learning a language reinforces the Literacy from the previous key stage.

In a press article earlier this year, the CBI criticised the "inadequate" literacy and numeracy skills of school leavers. So English and Maths teachers obviously have some work still to do. I wonder if they are aware how much MFL teachers are helping them out? Are MFL teachers aware how much Literacy and Maths they are teaching? I've done a fair bit of work on Literacy, and always kind of knew that in MFL we cover some Maths, but, until I started to look into it in some detail recently, was unaware exactly how much.

KS3 MFL reinforces KS2 Literacy, and it would appear that it also reinforces KS2 Maths. I would urge any MFLer to have a look at the KS2 Maths curriculum to see just how much they do. A particular eye-opener for me was looking at the key vocabulary for KS2 Maths. Here is the key vocabulary for "Time":

Familiar? When we consider the new Ofsted framework for January 2012, I think it is vital for MFL teachers to find out exactly how they reinforce Literacy and Maths, and for them to open a dialogue with English and Maths teachers to let them know exactly how MFL supports and reinforces their subjects.

From the draft proposals for the new Ofsted framework:

When evaluating the achievement of pupils, inspectors will consider

the extent to which pupils develop a range of skills well, including communication, reading and writing and mathematical skills and how well they apply these across the curriculum
the standards attained by pupils by the time they leave the school, including their standards in reading, writing and mathematics

When evaluating the quality of teaching in the school, inspectors will consider

how well teaching enables pupils to develop skills in reading, writing, communication and mathematics

I asked the #MFLTwitterati what are their favourite ways of incorporating Maths into their lessons, and combined the answers with things that I have done in my own lessons:

Numbers

Simple calculations

Ages

Comparative (older than, younger than, more than, less than, more expensive etc)

Countdown (the numbers round)

Loto (play with calculations and not just numbers)

Number tennis

C’est quel numéro?

Crosswords where the clues are sums in words and answers are numbers written in words

Higher / lower (plus / moins, más / menos)

Numbers Tai Chi

Hold up small cards to show the right number

Put small cards in order

Pupils hold number cards in right order to make a telephone number

Songs to reinforce order

Games like Snakes and Ladders, Blue Numbers etc to reinforce

Strip bingo

Dominoes or shape puzzles to match the written word to the figures

Psychic counting

PowerPoint activities such as Fly past

Colour by numbers

Follow-me cards with the numbers in figures and words, or phone numbers

Use number words for phonics practice

Standing-up-sitting-down games for practising multiples while counting

Noughts and crosses, Connect 4

Surveys

Carry out surveys

Show the results of the survey in graphic form

Work out the percentages

Shopping

Compare prices

Le Juste Prix – higher or lower

Multiply prices of individual items at market

Buying stamps

Sending parcels

Use a French website to “buy” equipment for school using budget of a certain number of Euros

Find out the price of the same items in £ from a

website

Weights and measures

Add up a bill

Time and Dates

Telling time

Speed, distance, time calculations

Dates

Cinema prices and times

School timetables

Bus and train timetables

Dates Cluedo

Follow-me cards with the times in figures and words

Battleships with dates (numbers on x, months on y) Can use the same grid for Connect 4

Plurals

Count the number of items and write how many there are, making the noun plural as appropriate (worksheet or mini-book)

Make pictures with different shapes and write/say how many of each shape there are

Past tenses

Years for big numbers

Calculate how long ago something was

Intercultural*

French départements

Numbers of countries that speak the language, speakers within those countries

Number of languages spoken in the world, number of speakers of the top 10 languages and lesser languages

Cocoa bean calculations (Spanish)

*Many of these aspects of Maths have links to intercultural understanding

I have also simplified the KS2 Maths objectives to make them more accessible (and understandable!) for MFL teachers, and you can download them here.

Here are some more ideas for incorporating Maths into MFL:

Number sequencing
What is the next number? - neuf, dix-huit, vingt-sept, _______

Put the numbers in the right order: siete doce cuatro veinte catorce

Addition and Subtraction
Use a website like www.bonbonsgourmands.fr. Give the students a budget of a certain number of Euros, they choose what to buy, work out the total and the change they would receive. All in the target language of course.

Multiplication and Division
Work out who receives the most pocket money, when given sentences giving the amount that people receive and how often they receive it. (Thanks to Fiona Joyce for passing on that idea.)

Play the Number Challenge (like the numbers round of Countdown) from Triptico.

Fractions and percentages
A good vehicle for introducing some comparative and superlative work.

Shapes

Make pictures out of certain shapes and write correct plurals to say how many of each shape there are.

Take this one step further and make a picture with coloured shapes. Then the writing will involve numbers, shapes, plurals and adjectival agreement.

Measures

For something a bit different to shopping lists and recipes, have a look at websites like this one. "Avec un dollar je peux acheter trois paires de tongs au Vietnam."

Reading temperatures from a thermometer is a skill that students need to practise. This could be an introduction to climate and weather.

Maths? All in a day's work for an MFL teacher.

I am not an MFL teacher

2011-10-16T20:10:00.000+01:00

The more I find out about literacy and maths in MFL teaching, the more I think that I am not an MFL teacher at all. It would appear that I am, in fact, a teacher of all subjects, using the medium of Spanish or French.

I reinforce literacy and maths from the students' previous key stage. I explore traditional music and art by artists from other countries. I cover geography and cultural identity, and aspects of history such as the age of exploration and William the Conqueror. I examine health and healthy lifestyles as well as other aspects of citizenship and the PHSCE curriculum.

Is it the same for teachers of other subjects? When I explain acute accents in French, I always refer to acute angles in maths. Do maths teachers refer to acute accents in French when teaching that aspect of geometry?

Is this true? Am I being conceited about the importance and value of my subject? Or am I showing classic MFL-teacher insecurity, the insecurity of one who has to constantly justify the worth of their subject?

I would be very interested to hear your comments and thoughts.

Calculogramas

2011-10-15T23:27:00.001+01:00

In 1976 I was 7 years old. For my birthday, my parents gave me my very first calculator - a Detson E406. It was as big as a Samsung Galaxy Tab, as thick as the Tesco Direct catalogue, and I thought it was magic. You clicked it on with a proper on-off switch and on the display appeared bright numbers of blue light. They were so bright that I often used the number 88888888 to illuminate my books under the bedclothes.

The other part of my present that year was a book. A book of puzzles, games and exercises to help me find out how to use my calculator. It was thanks to this book that I discovered the art of calculator spelling. I think most people of my generation have experienced the sniggery delight of typing 5318008 into a calculator then turning it upside-down to read a certain naughty word.

For the last few days I have been finding out about Key Stage 2 Maths, as in 6 days time I will be delivering some training to secondary MFL teachers on Literacy and Numeracy. While looking at a list of KS2 Maths vocabulary, I came across a list of calculator terms. This made me think of calculator spelling, and I got very sidetracked. I need to blog it to get it out of my system and make me concentrate again!

I wondered if calculator spelling existed in other languages, and I'm pleased to be able to report that it does. In Spanish it even has a proper name - Calculogramas. It struck me that these would make cool little target language exercises that would promote numeracy in the MFL classroom, as well as dictionary and other skills.

Have a go at these:

French

Aujourd'hui il fait du (220681 + 493024).
Ma meilleure copine s'appelle (277461 + 73612).
Je ne suis pas Français. Je suis (9934.5 x 4).
J'ai une nouvelle robe en (621 x 5).

Spanish

Me gusta jugar al (372902 x 19).
Tengo (5 x 1027) años.
A mi novio doy muchos (41436 + 9102).
Un vaso de limonada sin (12 - 11.2686) por favor.

There are more ideas for French here and Spanish here. Apparently there are some German examples too, but, as I don't know any German, I'd recommend you use 379009.

UPDATE 31.10.11: I have added a Calculogramas worksheet to my website - click here and scroll to the bottom of the page.

Tarsia

2011-10-10T21:07:00.000+01:00

There has been talk on Twitter this evening of a free-to-download program called Tarsia. Designed as a Maths program, it is also incredibly useful for MFL teachers. With it you can make dominoes, follow-me cards and shape puzzles. Above you can see an example of some dominoes and below is an example of a shape puzzle:

It is a very easy program to use.

Step 1: Select the kind of puzzle you want to make.

There are many different shapes that you can use. The one you choose will depend on how many pairs of words or phrases you want to practise. You can have blank edges to make it easier for students or you can have edges with red herrings to really test the learners (these are "extended jigsaws")

Step 2: Type in the words or phrases together with their translations in the other language or, instead, a picture.

Step 3: When you've typed in all your pairs of words or phrases, click "Output" on the bar at the bottom, and Tarsia will generate your puzzle.

Tarsia files have their own peculiar file suffix which is incompatible with other programs. If you want to share your creation with others, I recommend PDF-ing your puzzle. I use CutePDF. To make a PDF of your document, you click as though to print it and then select CutePDF from the list of printers. Then you get a dialogue box which allows you to save your PDF document.

Tarsia activities tick many boxes. They are ideal for pair and group work and really make students think. You can use them to revise previously-learned language or to introduce new language or patterns.

The all-important links:

Download Tarsia (Formulator Tarsia) from here or here.
Information about Tarsia here.
Lots of examples of Spanish Tarsia puzzles for KS3 and KS4 here. Many thanks to the wonderful Marie Connolly.

#MFLSAT+ at Cramlington

2011-09-25T17:10:00.001+01:00

It's been a week of extremes for MFL teaching. The Bishop of Bradford said that language teaching in this country is "deplorable". And then today #MFLSAT+ happened.

#MFLSAT+ was the fourth MFL Show and Tell, following on from the previous ones in Coventry, Nottingham and Oldham. It was invigorating, exciting, inspirational, exhilarating, challenging.... Don't believe me? Then have a read of some of the tweets from the event. If the esteemed Bishop of Bradford could hear about the language teaching that was described here, he would have to climb down pretty rapidly.

The event was well attended, with plenty of local support, which was good to see. It made a nice change for me to only have to drive for 30 mins to get to a Show and Tell! Admittedly Northumberland is a long way for some, and so for those who couldn't attend but would still like to find out what went on, here are the notes that I made. You can also watch the video replay here.

Mark Purves

The Singing Tribe - MFL group dynamics

Mark showed us some warm-up exercises for the beginning of the lesson – warming up the voice, and also as children are copying what you do they are all focussed.

Use a backing track with a good beat to do this

Use rhythm, actions and tune for giving praise to individuals.

Samantha Lunn

Routines in the MFL Classroom

¿Puedo ser voluntario por favor?

¿Puedo cronometrar por favor?

¿Puedo pasar lista?

¿Puedo cronometrar?

¿Puedo ser voluntario por favor? – to the tune of Coming round the Mountain

One pupil calls the register, another times them with the stopwatch

Pupils then have to guess how many seconds the register took using an opinion phrase.

Then they express an opinion of the whole process -“Fue + mal, super, bien” etc

Then porque fue + adj e.g. interesante

Expanding spontaneous language

Could build on this, for example "how long will the register take?"

Forfeits for people who speak English by mistake!

Using cognates, mimes and visuals to facilitate understanding

Read more about Sam's presentation on her blog.

Lynn Smith

Thinking Skills

Reading images – pretend you are a person and then say positive/negative sentences about them, say what they should do to be more healthy etc

Create a mindmap of what you have learned in the lesson

Draw round your hand – write how you’ve learned in palm, write what you’ve learned in fingers

Emma Bains
Small changes to the curriculum to improve motivation

Emma has been designing a new curriculum for KS3.

Creating own satnav using ppt and audacity

Language with purpose early in Y7

Complex language produced

Pupil assessment of the process

Fashion rather than clothes

Lots of opinion work with adjectives

1^st week of Spanish, mixed experience groups:
find cognates, use common sense, guess what things mean

Lesson 2 adapting the patterns

Cluedo can be adapted in lots of ways

Rights and responsibilities in Spanish Y7

Endangered species - animals but in a different way.

“Soy un mamifero, vivo en Africa, soy amarillo” etc

20 statements for others to try to guess which animal it is.

Advertising – looking at videos – questions before start

“If the HT walked into the room during this, how would he know that you were learning?”

Simon McLoughlin

Audioboo

Audioboo.fm is an online application, and is also available as an app for Android / iphone.

Set up a free account

Record children speaking in class, can listen to the "boos" via the web interface straightaway.

Can embed "boos" in blogs

Children can listen at home and also reflect on how successful they were

(Put phone on airplane mode in class!!)

Alex Blagona

Getting students to 'mark' our lessons

“I thought this lesson was ….. because….” Establishing dialogue with students

Teacher comments on the pupil comments – getting students to think about their learning and the usefulness of their comments to the teacher.

Informs marking, gives ideas of points to address next time

Personalises the experience for each child

Comments are good for showing to parents

Need to explain to students what constitutes a good and useful comment

Students can express problems privately

Gives teacher a very good idea of which level students are at, good for differentiation

Joe Dale

QR codes

QR codes video by Common Craft has just come out

Open URLs quickly

Link to audio or video files to play straightaway

Link to Google Form for students have to fill in information

There are some apps which will make QR of page you’re looking at on mobile device

QR Coder bookmarklet – whatever webpage you’re on, it’ll make a code for that page. You put it in your bar on browser

Use in classroom:

QR treasure hunt

Qwikvotes – surveys etc

Kath Holton has made QR codes for Zondle games

“Make your classroom 4D” – QR codes of students' blogposts stuck in exercise books

SnipURL – can change link URL for your QR

Find out more on Joe's blog.

Suzi Bewell

Vocaroo

Free, and you don’t need to set up account

Record, click “send to a friend” to email the recording to someone

Receiver listens but can also save it as .wav file

Good for homeworks – individual speaking tasks

Opportunities for peer assessment

Pupils enjoy it – something a bit different and reaches the students who may not want to speak out in class

Avoids having to do it all in class – saves time. Instant.

Students can explain something for others, such as how to make tenses perhaps.

Mailvu.com – good for FLAs – videos with audio, can be sent to students for homework.

Also consider Voicethread, Ipadio. Ipadio also provides an embeddable widget.

Read Suzi's blogpost about #mflsat.

Isabelle Jones

Music and art, creative partnerships

Isabelle gave her presentation via Skype!

Rap project for boys. Girls reluctant to be involved as don’t identify readily with rap. We heard a clip where the boys were rapping using simple language (their name, what pets they have etc)

Rene Koglbauer

Social Media and improving boys’ achievement

Emailing work to teacher – 1^st step Teacher can comment easily, more personalised

Started to get a bit cumbersome with the number of emails

Looked for next step, pupils suggested Facebook

Created pages for classes in KS4 and KS5

Profiles in German

Alex Bellars

A trio of tools

Class Dojo – real time behaviour and rewards in class

Create a class group, select individual avatars for each one

Give awards to students as the lesson goes along, at the end of the class you can see who has what

Can PDF the resulting graphic and forward to colleagues, parents etc

Android app too

Lingro

Turns any webpage into a clickable resource

Students can access reading material which may be out of their reach ordinarily

Triptico

Fridge Magnets excellent for sentence manipulation work

Random group generator

Resource for putting things in order

“What’s the question” – bit like jeopardy where you give them the answers and they have to provide the question. Can be done as a team game.

Thomas Snell
Language learning resources from Newcastle University

Thomas described the Linguacast and Universed projects at Newcastle University.

Schools can also book to use the facilities at the university, and this can be accessed via the Routes into Languages website.

Terri Dunne
Blockbusters

The scope of Blockbusters as an activity for the classroom is broader than we might think.
For example, put a sport word in English on each square. Starting at word level, students have to give the sport in the target language. Then, using the same game, they have to give the sport with an opinion.
Another idea is using time phrases. What tense do you have to use with it? Give an example of a sentence that includes that time phrase.
It's good for plenaries, though you could easily use one slide for the whole lesson in lots of different ways.

Dominic McGladdery
10 ideas

Wallwisher
Fakebook on Classtools.net - make a fake Facebook page
Twister on Classtools.net - make a fake Twitter page
Random name generators. PowerPoint one can also be adapted as random question generator for starters.
Random letter sequence generator - generate the letters, the student to find the longest word containing those letters wins.
Wikis
Blogs - everyone has something to say that other people haven't heard before.
Clea.nr for YouTube. It gets rid of all the "stuff" on the YouTube page, but only works in Chrome and Firefox.
Puppets
Mug of Misery / Pot of Participation

Amanda Salt
Speak, eat, sleep Spanish - an immersion residential

Amanda takes 6th formers on an immersion residential where no English is spoken in the presence of teachers.
Activities such as Dragons Den and Which Teacher.

The videos that the students produce during the weekend are used to promote Spanish around the school.

Find out more on Amanda's blog.

And here is my presentation from the day, including audio:

Reading Books with KS1 and KS2

View another webinar from Clare Seccombe

All of these have been really useful ideas in the face of uncertain and unsettling times for MFL teachers at the moment.

In the words of Steven Fawkes - "Subvert creatively".

In the words of Adam, when he was with The Ants - "Don't you ever, don't you ever, lower yourself, forgetting all your standards."

And in the words of the great Chris Harte - "If you do what you've always done, you'll get what you've always got."

A different angle

2011-09-03T15:14:00.000+01:00

When we were in Brittany at the beginning of August we spent a most pleasant day in Vannes. I wanted to see the historic town centre (it didn't disappoint), the girls were looking forward to the Aquarium and Jardin aux Papillons, and Mr S wanted a very tasty lunch. We started off at the Aquarium, and made our way to, for us, the star exhibit. The star exhibit is a crocodile. Not any old crocodile, oh no. This is Eléanore the crocodile, who was discovered in the Paris sewers in 1984, when the égoutiers noticed that there weren't as many rats down there as usual:

In true MFL teacher style, I took pictures of all the signs and information in case it comes in useful for a lesson sometime. And this blogpost is about ideas for lessons that approach the usual in an unusual way, from a different angle.

This month Year 7 teachers are receiving into their classes children with mixed experiences of language learning in Key Stage 2, something which can create all sorts of problems. One strategy that is suggested for classes with mixed experience is to go over the same language but in new contexts, so that those who haven't done it before can learn the important language, while those who have done it before won't be bored because the context is different. Eléanore the crocodile could be used for looking at personal identification in a new way, as illustrated by the speech bubble at the top of the page. It makes a change from children writing similar information about themselves or their friends. There must be some other famous animals that can be written about.

This can also bring in some elements of intercultural understanding. How many students will know about Eléanore's former home, Les Egouts de Paris? Eléanore's home in Vannes Aquarium has been decorated to remind her of her time in Paris:

We were so busy being excited about the crocodile that I almost missed the jellyfish corner. There was an interactive display - the sort with lots of buttons for small children to press.

You had to press the buttons to find out what parts of the body the jellyfish has, and in the white boxes a "Non" or a "Oui" plus information and pictures would appear. This would give a new twist to "Parts of the Body".

No concrete ideas, I know, but hopefully some food for thought and some inspiration.

And, in case you're wondering, our favourite thing about the crocodile WAS that she is named after my sister!

Another new phase

2011-09-01T00:01:00.000+01:00

1st September 2011 is the beginning of a new phase in my professional life. For sixteen years, from being an NQT, I worked for Sunderland Local Authority. Now I don't. The local authority will no longer receive the money that paid for me to be the advisory teacher for Primary Languages, and in these times of cuts the role has been deleted.

Now I will be teaching Primary Spanish in one school and Primary French in another, and that will take care of 2.5 days each week. I would like to spend some of the remainder of my time training, speaking and consulting, something which I started last year. To this end I have set up my own company. And for the first time, despite my years of web experience, I have purchased a domain name and paid for web hosting. So if you would like to see what I do and have done, please click on www.ideaseducation.co.uk. You can contact me via the same site.

The prettiest little squiggles of black

2011-08-25T18:37:00.001+01:00

"Figures are the most shocking things in the world. The prettiest little squiggles of black looked at in the right light, and yet consider the blow they can give you upon the heart."

H.G.Wells, The History of Mr Polly

The font that we choose can have a huge impact on our resource and how it is received by our students. Are the letters too big or too small ? Are they too grown-up looking or too babyish ? What does the font tell them about the tone and subject matter of the resource? There are many very good-looking fonts around these days (I should know - I spend long enough browsing them when I should be doing something else!) but are they just "the prettiest little squiggles of black" or do they really help us to say what we want to say?

I participated in a conversation about this on Twitter a couple of evenings ago. @littlejessw and I were discussing which fonts to use in PowerPoints and other resources, in particular those intended for students with special educational needs. The stimulus of this conversation was "is it OK to use Comic Sans for resources or should I use something more 'grown-up'?"

At one time, Comic Sans was my default font. Then I moved on to Arial Rounded MT Bold. Now it's ordinary Arial. However, the difference now is that I choose my font carefully depending on who the resource is for. For PowerPoints I use Comic Sans for primary (have to use one that the school system will recognise, which narrows the choice considerably) and Arial or Verdana for everything else.

In 1999, the SEN department at my school gave everyone a document called "Working with children with learning difficulties". I found the sections on Legibility, Attractiveness/Layout, Instructions and Readability incredibly useful, and they informed and continue to inform my current practice when I am making resources. Here are my favourite tips for producing resources for students with SEN or for primary school children:

Choose a Sans Serif font with a "rounded a". (This is why Comic Sans is useful.)
DON'T WRITE THINGS IN CAPITAL LETTERS. Lower case letters are much easier to read as they have rounder, more easily recognised shapes. Capitals have more straight lines.
Choose a font size of at least 14pt.
Leave adequate space between lines and paragraphs - don't try to cram too much onto a page.
Include images and diagrams which are close to the relevant text.
Make headings stand out. Use bold, a different font or a different size.
Make instructions clearly distinct from the rest of the worksheet.
Try to give a working example for clarity.
Produce a glossary of vocabulary.
Restrict the amount of information to be absorbed at any one time.

I have since found this document, which has been produced for teachers and parents who prepare texts for children with reading difficulties, particularly dyslexic children, and which has similar tips.

I have mentioned before that sharing resources is my thing. Well my favourite part of the whole process is creating the resources in the first place. I would say that I spend a disproportionate amount of time creating them, making sure that they look just right. Over the last 16 years my style has changed and evolved, and I more or less have a template now:

Worksheets can be Portrait or Landscape. Bear in mind that it's best to have text at the top (Portrait) or, because most pupils are right-handed, on the left (Landscape) and the space to write at the bottom or on the right respectively.
Put an eye-catching title at the top. I often use a simple Word Art image for this. I usually put the title at the top, but sometimes down the side. In addition I often use a picture font to put a partial border on the top or down the side, or to add some images.
Put a box in the top right-hand corner for students to put their name. Get them into the habit of naming their work!! I put "Je m'appelle" on the French ones and "Me llamo" on the Spanish ones, just to drip-drip-drip how to say your name into them.
Fill in one of the answers for them as an example. I use a handwriting font to do this to make it clear that it's a completed answer. I often use my own handwriting font which I rashly paid for a few years ago.
Make sure that you give the students enough space to write their answers in. Younger children in particular have big writing and they get frustrated when they can't put their answers where they're supposed to go. 1.5space or even double-space the lines for them to write on.
A new part of my template is the assessment box, which is inspired the system used by my daughter's ICT teacher. There is an "I can" statement for the sheet to start with. The children tick the appropriate face to tell me how they found it. Then when I've marked it I put a face in the blank circle to show how they've done, and write a brief comment. Hopefully this will encourage me to mark more (!) and enable me to assess more easily.

On the subject of fonts, these are the ones that I use the most for my resources:

For more information about the above pangrams, by the way, and examples of pangrams in lots of languages, have a look here.

Here are some other things about fonts that you might enjoy reading:

Typography for MFL teachers and learners - an excellent blogpost by Fiona Joyce

Do typefaces really matter? - an article from the BBC

What's so wrong with Comic Sans? - another from the BBC

Fantastic Fonts and where to find them - a very helpful presentation by Jackie Berry

Guatemala

2011-08-17T16:53:00.000+01:00

During the summer term of 2010 the World Cup provided me with weeks of intercultural lessons. However, it wasn't something that I could replicate in 2011. This posed a problem with, among others, Year 2's scheme of work.

I decided to replace the World Cup with a similarly intercultural unit, about Guatemala. I've mentioned it on Twitter a few times and thought I'd describe it in more detail here.

It lasted 6 weeks in total (45 minute lessons each time). Here are the steps:

1. We revised the 6 main colours (red, blue, yellow, green, black, white) and then the children completed a worksheet where they had to colour in the flags of the countries of Central America correctly.

2. We looked at a map of Central America and located each of the countries whose flags we had coloured.

3. We looked at a map of the world and located Central America.

4. We looked at some photographs of Guatemala, like this one and this one, and talked about what kind of country it is and what the weather is like.

5. We looked at some photographs of Guatemalan fabrics and found out about traditional back-strap looms. In particular, we noticed the shapes that are used traditionally in the woven fabrics - diamonds, triangles, zig-zags, stripes and squares.

6. We made our own Guatemala bags, using this template, felt-tip pens and a lot of care and time. Here is the one that I made and used as my model, to give you an idea:

This is the part of the unit that took the time! Three lessons of very careful colouring followed by tricky cutting and sticking.

7. I read "Silly Billy" by Anthony Browne to the class. This beautifully illustrated book introduces the Guatemalan tradition of making worry dolls.

8. I showed the class some real worry dolls (which are tiny) and then we made our own worry dolls. You can download the instructions here if you want to have a go yourself. Y2 were very taken with the idea behind worry dolls and were very proud of the dolls that they made. We put them in their Guatemala bags and they took them home. Some of them have since told me that they told their worries to their dolls and that it did help. You can see the fruits of their labours on the school blog.

I was pleased with the outcome of this unit of work. The children had furthered their knowledge of the Spanish-speaking world, as well as gaining specific intercultural knowledge of one country in particular, and we crossed the curriculum with the bags and the worry dolls. It's definitely something I'll be repeating.

I haven't got a bean

2011-07-21T21:47:00.001+01:00

We have a rule in our house: the person who doesn't cook the tea has to wash up. Today I wasn't quite quick enough off the mark, and the sausages, potato wedges and beans were cooked by my husband. So while the children were upstairs "brushing their teeth" it fell to me to do the washing up. To keep me company I turned on the radio, choosing Radio 2 and Simon Mayo.

If you're a regular listener to Simon Mayo's programme, you'll know that every evening each member of the team prepares a quiz question based on sport, business and financial affairs or general trivia. Today the question posed by Simon himself went along the lines of "In Mexico in Aztec times, cocoa beans were used as currency. If a turkey cost 100 cocoa beans, what could you get for 3 beans? Was it (a) an avocado (b) a wife or (c) a tomato?" The two other members of the team, with much giggling, pleaded for it to be answer b, and were disappointed when it turned out to be answer a.

There I was, washing the pots and pans, thinking "What a neat idea to use when you're teaching numbers in Spanish!"

I've had a little look around the old Internet, and have found out the following info:

The Aztecs were using cocoa beans as currency when the Spaniards first arrived, and continued to do so until as late as 1858. An Aztec document from 1545 gives a list of what you could buy for your beans.

1 small rabbit - 30 beans
1 turkey egg - 3 beans
1 large tomato - 1 bean
1 slave - 100 beans
1 male turkey - 300 beans
1 female turkey - 100 beans
1 newly picked avocado - 3 beans
1 fully ripe avocado - 1 bean
20 small tomatoes - 1 bean
5 long green chili peppers - 1 bean
1 large strip of pine bark for kindling - 5 beans
And finally (maybe not one to share with KS2) the services of 1 prostitute - 10 beans

Cocoa beans were small change. For your bigger purchases you would need mantles (capes or cloaks), copper axe blades or quills of gold dust. 1 cotton cape would set you back 300 beans. A string of jade beans would cost you 600 capes. How many beans is that?

There are lots of possibilities here for some number work in the foreign language using the beans exchange rate. For example:
¿Cuántos granos de cacao para dos conejos?
Tengo veinte granos de cacao. ¿Cuántos huevos de pavo puedo comprar?

There is also plenty of opportunity for intercultural work. How many of the children will know that chocolate, tomatoes, avocados and turkeys come from the Americas? And of course they can find out more about the Aztecs. I've found the Aztecs pages of the Mexicolore site interesting and am going to have another scout around it to see what I can find.

My next-year's-Y3 have already done two years of Spanish with me, and know the numbers 1-15 well. This will give me a good way to revise them without being repetitive.

Getting an international dimension into Numeracy and Maths was already in my mind after someone tweeted a link to this blog post about "McDonald's Menu Items From Around The World" yesterday. You can learn a lot about different countries and cultures from their McDonald's menu, and of course it's something that our students know all about. I've looked at other countries' McDonald's menus before, and my ideas for using the information in schemes of work formed part of a presentation I gave to local headteachers a few years ago. If you would like to have a look at the presentation, you'll find it here.

UPDATE 11.8.11
I've just purchased this book as part of my ever-increasing library of intercultural materials. It refers to the cocoa-bean currency and suggests getting children to draw up their own system of currency using foods, counters or other classroom materials like pens and pencils. They can say, for example, that a red counter is worth 1p or that a pencil is worth €1, and work out how much they would charge in their new currency for groceries, clothes, toys or magazines. There is nothing to stop them doing this work in another language.

I have also created a worksheet for Primary Spanish practising numbers and using cocoa beans, and you can download it here.

Take a walk around the world

2011-07-18T20:17:00.000+01:00

I expect lots of people are going to be looking for Olympics-related ideas for their lessons next year, me included. Today I found out about the Global Children's Challenge. Teachers of Y4, Y5 and Y6 and their classes are invited to apply to take part (applications close on 31st July, so you'll need to act quickly). The idea is that teachers and the children in their classes wear a pedometer every day for the 50 days of the challenge, which runs from 15th September until 3rd November. They work as a team to accumulate and log actual physical steps, which then enable them to take virtual steps around the world via the Challenge website. There is the possibility of visiting 50 different countries. The Challenge is an initiative designed to get children more active, but of course is also an excellent global and intercultural opportunity. Full information is on the Challenge website, and you can download the flyer here.

Admittedly time isn't on most schools' side with both holidays and the application deadline looming, so many schools who want to take part may not be able to. But there's nothing stopping you from adapting the Challenge and putting your own spin on it. Pick a French-speaking or Spanish-speaking country and find out the distance from its capital to ours. Will they be able to walk enough steps to get to London in time for the Olympics? Where will they pass on the way? Give yourself a time limit and see how many countries you can walk to in that time. Can you do a tour of Africa or of South America? There are all sorts of possibilities.

If you reckon on 2000 steps to a mile, you and your class will soon be able to rack up the miles. The cheapest pedometers are available for about £3 from places like Argos and Amazon. You'll be able to watch your class tearing around the playground, getting lots of exercise and enabling you to tell them about lots of fascinating countries and cultures.

*Image by the brilliant @bevevans22

The Birth of a Nation

2011-07-10T11:19:00.000+01:00

I have been following with interest over the last few days the news coverage of the beginnings of the Republic of South Sudan. It was this BBC news article which first captured my attention. It talks about all the things that the new nation will have had to sort out in advance of its official "birth" yesterday, such as its political border, its flag, stamps, currency and its country-level internet domain. South Sudan had an X-Factor style competition for its new national anthem.

It struck me that this would make a good school project. Tell the children that your region - the north-east in my case - has decided to become an independent state. They have to decide on its capital city (Newcastle? Sunderland? Durham? Controversial!), a flag, currency and so on. What they choose will depend on the cultural identity and heritage of where they live. This could also work in language lessons. Instead of their own region, you could choose a region of one of the target-language countries. For example, tell them that Castilla y León is going to become an independent state. They will have to do some research to find out more about it if they are going to create a meaningful profile for it. And then of course they can practise their presentation skills by introducing their new country to the rest of the class.

Just an idea.

Bend it, shape it, any way you want it

2011-05-19T21:04:00.000+01:00

I have a very low boredom threshold. I'm always looking for something different to try in the classroom, for different ways of doing things.

With my second-year Spaniards (Years 4, 5 and 6) I am working towards an extended piece of writing where the children design their own strange animal and describe it in Spanish.

We've been working on parts of the body and animals. I used Switcheroozoo to make some strange animals, and we made sentences to say which body parts of which animals they had. For example, for this one we wrote:

Tiene la cabeza de un oso.

Tiene el cuerpo de una tortuga.

Tiene la cola de un perro.

My normal way forward would be to have them draw their animal and then write their description underneath. But I've been there and done that, and, more importantly, so have the children.

Then recently I was tidying daughter no.1's bedroom, which involved finding a space for more of her Plasticine Menagerie. Perhaps using Plasticine or Play-Doh would be an alternative to drawing?

I asked the MFL Twitterati if anyone had experience of using Play-Doh in the classroom:

So there were definitely some possibilities. I managed to get 40 pots of Play-Doh for £15 from Argos and decided to get the children to model their strange creatures.

By this point daughter no.1 had run out of animals to make with Plasticine, so I set her a Plasticine Challenge. I gave her the list of animals that I'd taught the children at school and asked her to make some strange creatures with different body parts from the different animals. I then showed these to the children and asked them to put together some opinion sentences to say which animals they thought the creatures were made from. They were highly motivated to do this, and put together many successful sentences using this writing frame. This allowed them to see the sort of thing we were aiming for, so I then handed out the Play-Doh and they set to work. I photographed their handiwork before they scrunched it up and put it back in the pot.

There are a few different things that we could do now. I could give each child a picture of a creature that they didn't make and they could put together some opinions about it. Or they could simply write about their own. Or it could be a speaking assignment. I haven't decided yet. I'll put it on the school blog when it's done.

While I was planning this lesson, I did a search for other ideas for using Play-Doh in lessons. There is very little out there! There are some things on the Play-Doh website and some pre-school ideas here. I'd be really interested to hear your ideas for using Play-Doh, because now I've bought it, I need to get my money's worth!!

Letter by letter

2011-04-22T09:15:00.000+01:00

Daughter no.1 received a Waterstone's voucher for her birthday, and on Wednesday she and I went to Newcastle to spend it.

I was very taken with the W calligram on the side of the Waterstone's building, and was pleased to see it was also on the bags (which is where the above picture comes from). It reminded me of the letters of the alphabet that I once started making in ImageChef. I got as far as G. Here is the E:

It got me thinking about calligrams (again) and how this particular idea might be developed for use in the classroom.

At the moment I am co-ordinating a big transition project in the LA - our "last hurrah" if you like, before the money runs out. One of the things that we have been looking at is how KS3 teachers can manage a new Y7 class with very different KS2 experiences. (I've put the findings so far here.)

Letter calligrams could be used as a diagnostic tool at the beginning of Y7. Students draw a large, faint pencil outline of their initial, then fill it with some of the language that they learned at primary school. Some may be able to fill their letter with whole sentences, some with phrase level work, and others with single words. If you have students who haven't done that language before, hopefully they will be able to use their transferable language learning skills and find some words in the bilingual dictionary.

At the end of the exercise, you'll have a good idea of who can do what, plus you'll have some attractive display work. It's a good leveller - you don't have to know lots of words and phrases in the other language to make an effective and creative calligram.

It's also something that you could do with, say, a Y8 class who you are taking for the first time. Get them to write in their letter as much as they can about themselves.

I've made a couple of examples to illustrate how it could work:

Ser detective

2011-04-12T22:30:00.002+01:00

I've been to two major CPD events this year - #ililc and the Primary Languages Show. Each of them has taught me new things, and each of them has reminded me of things that I already knew or have already done in the past and which I should really do again.

One of the recurring themes was having the confidence and the trust to get children working in pairs or groups, helping each other to find out new information and solve problems, rather than the traditional format of the teacher being at the front of the classroom as the font of all knowledge. This is something I used to do in the olden days of secondary teaching, in the days before my life became a constant round of GCSE classes, when I incorporated thinking skills and linguistic analysis into my lessons on a regular basis.

This problem-solving approach forms part of the Language Learning Skills strand of the KS2 Framework for Languages:

Use knowledge of English or other languages to help learning and understanding
• Listen and look for words which are similar and different in other languages
• Draw on knowledge of word classes, letters and letter strings
• Use knowledge of sentence structure when reading or creating a new sentence in the target language.

Practise with a friend
• Collaborate to devise role-plays; memorise words and phrases, testing each other; make up telephone conversations.

Pronounce/read aloud unknown words
• Read aloud unknown words by applying rules of the sound/spelling system they have learned.

Dictionary skills

With my second year Spaniards I had finished a unit on the parts of the head, and describing them using adjectives of colour, size and shape. (All the resources are here if you are interested, and some of the children's work is here.) Next on the list was other parts of the body and then animals. I decided to have a go at a pupil-centred Body-and-Animals unit. Something very different.
Here's what I've done so far. Each lesson, in my "here's what we're going to do today" chat at the beginning, I have called it "Ser detective" (Being a detective) and the children are able to explain that that means we are going to look for clues to solve a problem.

1. Concentrated and focussed work on phonics. We have used the excellent resources that have been produced by Rachel Hawkes and which she modelled at #ililc (about 35 minutes in on the video). You can download them from Rachel's blog. We have also enjoyed doing the Spanish Vowel Haka, inspired by Mark Purves.

2. The children had a worksheet with a skeleton and eight Spanish words for parts of the body. They worked in groups to label the correct body parts using cognates and prior knowledge from the song "Cabeza hombros manos pies" (from Take 10 en español) which we had learned before starting the parts of the head. They then used their new knowledge of the phonic system of Spanish to work out the pronunciation of these new words to feed back to the class.

3. I put on the IWB a series of speech bubbles where an animal described itself using familiar language from the previous "head" lessons, plus the new parts of the body. The children read the descriptions, decided together which animal was speaking, used the dictionary to find out how to say that animal in Spanish and used their knowledge of phonics to work out how to say that animal word.

4. I prepared a grid giving the parts of the body in Latin, Italian and French, and then two empty columns for Spanish and English. The idea was for the children to fill in as much of the Spanish and English as they could, looking for cognates and other clues in the other languages. If you would like to try this yourself the resources are here. We then had an interesting discussion about Spanish being one of the modern forms of Latin, and how English obviously has different roots. They have been much more alert to cognates since then.

5. The children labelled a sheet of animals using cognates and prior knowledge to help them.

6. We read Mamá by Mario Ramos, minus the last two pages. Then we read it again, with the children taking notes in pairs. They had to note down which animal appeared on each page and how many of them there were each time. Then they continued in pairs to put together the last two pages of the book, which involved numbers and the correct animal in the plural form.

7. The children had the names of some new animals on their worksheet minus the vowels. They listened while I said the words (very carefully!) and filled in the vowel sounds. I also emphasised the importance of looking for patterns and using prior knowledge to make the task easier. This certainly made a difference to presenting new vocabulary using flashcards.
8. We read Muu Beee ¡Así fue! by Sandra Boynton (the original English verison is one of my family's favourite books) and had a go at the animal noises. Then the children used their knowledge of Spanish phonics to decode and label some other animal sounds.

This is as far as we have got at the moment; we are heading towards the end of the unit which will be some work using Switcheroo Zoo to make strange animals, and we will use everything we already know to describe a strange animal.

My classes have enjoyed being detectives and learning in a different way, and I have enjoyed watching and listening to them helping each other to learn. It has made a refreshing change.

The Written Word: how soon is too soon?

2011-03-24T21:49:00.001Z

I've been in this teaching game for nearly 16 years now. Along the way there have been some milestones which have shaped me as a teacher. The ones that come straight to mind are the publication in 1998 of "The Invisible Child" by David Buckland and Jeff Lee, joining the virtual community of language teachers in 2005 and becoming a parent in 2003.

I did my PGCE in the mid 1990s when the Communicative Method was king. "The Invisible Child" and the working group that evolved from it in Sunderland LA made it OK to teach grammar explicitly, analyse texts and explore the sound-spelling link. Communicating with other MFL teachers from around the UK and beyond broadened my teaching repertoire and kept me right up to date with all the latest developments. I learned more from these virtual colleagues than I ever did from my real ones. Having my own children changed the way I interacted with other peoples', my students.

I don't think I could ever have been a primary teacher without having been a parent of small children first. My daughters have taught me how to interact with little ones, how to speak to them, what they like, how much they can understand. This knowledge has come in very handy for my teaching, especially with EYFS and KS1. I've had some hits, but there have been a lot of misses too.

Today was definitely a hit. My Year 1 class really surprised me.

It's Science Week, and I had a chat with the Y1 teacher about what I could do with the class. They had been finding out about plants and had labelled a plant on a worksheet. So I made a giant cardboard plant, which you can see in the picture above. We gradually pieced it together on the board, with the children telling me what they knew about each part. Then the children helped me to label each part with the right English word. The last step was to show them the Spanish labels and ask for volunteers to replace the English labels with Spanish ones.

First surprises:
the five-year-old girl who explained "I know that one (flor) is flower because the letters are nearly the same."
another girl in the class who said "I think that one (raíz) must be root because they both start with r."

Once the plant was labelled in Spanish, we did some choral repetition to practise the Spanish words. Quickly, hands went up.

Next surprises:
"In that word (tallo) we're saying a y but there isn't a y in the word."
"In that word (hoja) there's a j but it doesn't make a j, it makes a (Spanish j sound!)."
"In hoja we don't say the h."
"The z sounds like th, like in diez."

I was astounded. My usual pattern of work is to practise the words (most of our work is at word level in Y1) orally and then to introduce the written word at the final stage. But Y1 showed me today how much value can be gained from introducing the written word right at the beginning. Phonics is obviously such an integral part of their daily life at school that their ears and eyes are finely tuned to the letters in a word and the sounds that they will make.

When Primary Languages first started (this time round) nearly ten years ago, it was said that in lower KS2, children should concentrate on speaking and listening and that reading and writing should only be introduced later. The Ofsted report "Achievement and Challenge: 2007-2010" said that speaking and listening are being done well in KS2, but that more work needs to be done on developing reading and writing. Indeed, the KS2 Framework for Languages has Literacy objectives for Year 3 and upwards. In my experience, KS2ers enjoy reading and especially writing, which gives them a big sense of satisfaction. Some make their own notes during lessons which they take home to practise in their own time.

To reply to my own question, I think EYFS is too early to introduce the written word, as, generally speaking, the children do not have sufficient experience or knowledge to be able to make the links between English and the target language or the motor skills to be able to write the words comfortably and confidently. But by the time they get to Y1, the time is evidently right. They are making links between their language and the foreign language, learning about one by comparison with the other. The more enlightened headteachers know that this happens and how beneficial it can be, but there are some who still need to be convinced. Are secondary colleagues aware of this? Are they aware that the Y7s that they receive can make these connections from an early age and that they do indeed have these language learning skills? Do they provide opportunities for these connections to be made? Do they give students the necessary vocabulary to explain these connections?

I would be interested to hear your thoughts, even if I have asked more questions than I have answered!

Fruit Miles

2011-03-18T15:35:00.000Z

One of the things I do on my day off on a Friday is go to Tescos to do the weekly family shop. We used to do it on a Saturday morning, but my younger daughter has started dance classes which are, you've guessed it, on a Saturday morning, and of course at a different time to her sisters'.

This morning I was accompanied on my shopping trip by my husband, who also has a day off today. When we reached the fruit and veg section, I told him about the lesson I had with my Y3 class last week.

We had watched one of the chapters of the BBC Active's DVD "Being Spanish", which shows some Spanish children picking nectarines in Valencia, and then following the nectarines' journey to the processing warehouse, the giant fridge and the delivery lorries, which then transport the nectarines all over Europe.

We then talked about where the fruit in our supermarkets comes from. Some of the children had already noticed that some of the fruits that their parents buy come from other countries. I asked them to have a look at the labels next time they are in the supermarket. We talked about it again this week, briefly, but it was evident that they hadn't had the opportunity to look at the fruit, or had forgotten! So when I was in Tesco today, I thought why don't I do a little survey to find out where all the fruits come from.

With my trusty HTC Desire I took photos of the labels showing where the fruits are from. This afternoon I have PowerPointed them, ready for our lesson next week. This has been quite a labour-intensive process just for one bit of one lesson, and so I thought it would be worth sharing here as I'm sure it will be useful to others too.

Before you look at the slides, have a think about the questions I'm going to ask Year 3:
1. How many fruits did I see?
2. Which fruits do you think I saw?
3. How many countries were represented?
4. Which countries do you think were represented?

I'm going to get them to do some predicting in table groups, and then they can mark each others' while we look at the PowerPoint.

Fruit miles

View more presentations from Clare Seccombe

I'm hoping that the information will also raise important questions such as the environmental impact of importing all these different foods, why we import them in the first place, and which foods are in season when. Even if we don't get onto that, they will be finding out the names of more fruits and the locations of more countries, which can only be good.

Primary Languages Show 2011

2011-03-07T21:58:00.000Z

On Friday I made the 360 mile round trip from Sunderland to Liverpool for the 2011 Primary Languages Show. In my post about the 2010 show I said that I would attend both days this year, and indeed that is what I booked for. Unfortunately the show was reduced from two days to one this year due to LAs' budget cuts and uncertainty about the future of Primary Languages.

Nevertheless, there were still plenty of appealing workshops to attend, in most of the sessions too many to choose from. The ones that I chose reflected the priorities that we have in the local authority at the moment and also my own personal interests.

Toto et les graines magiques: Strategies for storytelling
Chris Behagg from West Sussex LA gave us plenty of ideas for using a story to its maximum linguistical benefit.

Matisse Magique!
Maria Roberts, also from West Sussex LA, showed us this project, which combines Art and French for upper KS2. It showed me that there is so much more that I can do with my Gaudi project.

The West Sussex Grid for Learning is packed with resources for MFL. They don't know if the resources will still be there in September, so download them now!

Story Making in French
I had wanted to attend Jo Cole's session last year, but it was all booked up. I was not disappointed. Jo's strategies and rationale for story making in the languages classroom make so much sense and, if you can find the right story, are straightforward to do.

Les Animaux du Monde
I'd met the human dynamo that is Liz Black before, and enjoyed chatting with her again. Her web pages on the Stokesley School website are packed with excellent ideas and resources for KS2-KS3 Transition.

A particular highlight of the day for me was the keynote address by Professor David Crystal, which addressed multilingualism and why it's A Good Thing. He said a lot of very sensible things about languages in general.

Rather than say too much else here, I'll put my notes below and you can read all about it at your leisure.

Primary Languages Show 2011

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A different kind of mini-book

2011-02-27T19:47:00.000Z

We've more or less decided to go to France on holiday this summer, to a bit that has animals for younger daughter, history for the older one, and relaxation for mum and dad. One of the best things about going on holiday to France is being able to visit the stationery departments of the hypermarchés. I know, I know, we have stationery here too, but somehow it's not quite the same. My husband just shakes his head and sighs while he waits for me to look at all the different pens and notebooks.

The poor man's version of the stationery departments of the hypermarchés, where I live at least, is Staples. I more or less pass a Staples on my way home from school, and often pop in for bits and pieces. In the summer they had a grand sale, with lots of multibuys. For no particular reason, I bought 8 little photograph display books (4 for £1!) I was sure I would find something to do with them.

That was in the summer. The other day I came across them again when I was looking for something else. This time, however, I could think of something to do with them.

The recent Ofsted report, Modern Languages: Achievement and Challenge 2007-2010, stated that while speaking and listening were sound in most primary schools, too few KS2 pupils have the opportunity to read longer texts in the foreign language. Since then I have been thinking of ways to address reading in KS2 and how I can facilitate that for the non-specialist teachers who I support.

In addition to this, I find occasionally that when my KS2 pupils are working on an individual piece of work, some finish before others and then have nothing to do. Nothing new there, really, but when you are an itinerant classroom-less teacher it's tricky finding them something worthwhile to do.

So I have come up with a plan. Small, portable reading books that the children can dip into when they have a spare minute, and which will enrich and enhance their learning of Spanish. And today I made the first one.

This is one of my Storyjumper stories. I screencaptured the images using Jing, and then pasted them into a Publisher template. I added the text in text boxes underneath the images.

I also added a glossary of vocabulary at the end to facilitate independent reading.

I'm now thinking about which other stories I can present in the same way. Adapting Storyjumpers and Storybirds is an easy way to go as I've already written the stories and the images are fantastic. I'm also going to use some stories that I've made in PowerPoint, for example "¡Qué rico! ¡Qué asco!" which is an adaptation of one of my daughters' favourites, "Yummy Yucky", and which I have made into a Podomatic minicast.

I did a lot of work on reading in KS3 when I was a secondary AST. If you are thinking of working on reading with your classes you might like to read the rationale that I produced at the time.

I really would like to make some more mini-books now, but sadly the ironing beckons.

#ililc

2011-02-14T22:12:00.000Z

It's Monday night and I've been back from the ICT Links into Languages conference (#ililc) in Southampton for 24 hours. I've had to work today, and do more presenting (on a much smaller scale!) but have been thinking about the conference all day and still following other peoples' reflections on the #ililc hashtag on Twitter.

It was an amazing event. Amazing for lots of reasons:

It wouldn't have been the event that it was without the fantastic organisation by Joe Dale, Zena Hilton, Jo Rhys-Jones and the rest of the Links SE team. The fact that it all ran so smoothly is testament to the fact that it must have been brilliantly organised.

I was so honoured to be asked to present, particularly given the calibre of the rest of the presenting team. I hope that people found my presentations useful.

I thoroughly enjoyed meeting many of the MFL Twitterati who I have been corresponding with for so long on a virtual level. We were saying at the time that for such events we should have t-shirts with our avatars on to facilitate the recognition process!

I attended some wonderful presentations. I found out how to use tech to facilitate working with a partner school from Dale Hardy, got some good ideas for teaching phonics from Wendy Adeniji, learned more about what Wikis can do from Alex Blagona and explored KS2-3 transition with Jo Rhys-Jones. And not forgetting the opening keynote from Joe Dale about "The rise and rise of the MFL Twitterati" and the closing keynote by Rachel Hawkes.

And of course if you were there you'll know that I got to see my crazy sister for the first time in ages. She is now a #MFLSAT convert and dedicated Twit.

What was particularly noticeable was that we were all singing from the same hymnsheet. All moving forward towards the same goal.

"When spider webs unite, they can tie up a lion"
Ethiopian proverb

Here are my presentations from the weekend, plus the handouts so that you can access the links if you want.

Its good to share

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It's good to share

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Arts smart

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Arts smart

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Soy una taza

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Realising the Strategic Importance of Languages

2011-01-11T20:36:00.000Z

11.1.11. Baroness Coussins Day. The day of "Realising the Strategic Importance of Languages", the event organised by Links into Languages NE for language teachers and their senior leadership teams.

Interestingly, the verb "realise" has two meanings - "to grasp or understand clearly" and "to make real; give reality to". All MFL teachers can do the first one and would like to do the second one. Members of SLT may not know the first one, and until they can do the first one the second one is unlikely to happen.

The event started with keynote addresses from Baroness Jean Coussins and Richard Hardie, Chair of UBS Limited, giving us plenty of information to help us to grasp and understand clearly the current languages landscape in this country. Here are some soundbites:

Baroness Coussins

Baroness Coussins is a cross-bench Peer. She said that cross-bench Peers are "troublemakers about the causes that we really care about", and hers is of course languages. This endeared her to the MFL Twitterati straightaway, as we consider ourselves to be troublemakers too, if troublemakers think outside the box, question the status quo and work to effect change.

"The prevelance of English should not be overestimated".

We live in a country of "complacent monoglot Brits".

Over a third of UK businesses need language skills. They mostly need French and German, but more Mandarin and Spanish is required now.

Language learning "opens doors to understanding peoples' cultures".

Meetings in Brussels are being cancelled on a daily basis because of a lack of English-native-speaker interpreters.

"The timing is right for a national languages recovery programme", especially with the Curriculum Review imminent.

At the moment we have "curriculum by league table".

We need to aim for language learning to be the cultural norm like it is in Belgium or the Netherlands.

"I do believe very strongly that it should be compulsory for every child to study a language until the age of 16." (Though not necessarily studying for a GCSE).

This is Baroness Coussins's wishlist for languages:

Make sure that school policy includes something prominent about preparing children to be global citizens.
Introduce a compulsion in KS4, whether they study GCSE or not.
Make a qualification in a language necessary for access to the 6th form.
Make a qualification in a language necessary for University entrance.
Make sure that timetabling doesn't make the study of two languages impossible.
Give parents information about languages and their usefulness.
Promote exchanges and visits to the target language countries.
Foster links with universities and other institutions in the community, including businesses.
Investigate and try CLIL.

"If you really want to get under the skin of another culture, you need language skills and not just a louder voice."

Richard Hardie

Richard Hardie's company, UBS Limited, is particularly keen to hear from graduates with language skills; that's to say with strong oral and written skills in another language AND English. Their client base is increasingly globalised and multicultural.

Language skills "build trust and deepen relationships with clients"

The "English" spoken in some countries is not always intelligible to an English person!

Languages "prove you've done something difficult".

Denying students the opportunity to learn another language is denying them access to many avenues of employment in this country and overseas.

UBS Limited estimate that by 2030 the main business languages will be English, Spanish and Mandarin.

After the keynote addresses we moved into our groups, where delegates worked through a series of activities to explore feelings about languages at the moment and what can be done to resolve the situation. With Chris Harte's guidance we had put together a plan structured by DeBono's Thinking Hats. Some White Hat facts were already in delegates' packs, so when they entered the room we moved straight to the Red, emotion, hat. Delegates were asked to plot on a feel-o-meter their feelings about the state of languages at the moment. This is the feel-o-meter from my group, and as you can see, feelings were quite mixed.

Then, using yellow post-its for the Yellow positive hat, and pink Post-its for the Black negative hat, individuals wrote down positives and negatives of the current languages landscape. Then they discussed their Post-its with the rest of the their table, to see if there were any common themes. The discussions arising from this were very interesting, particularly as we had representatives from primary, middle and secondary schools, and we could have spent much more time on them. The one overwhelming point to have come from my group was how crucial headteacher support is to this. If successful language learning is not in the headteacher's vision for the school, it will never be completely successful. The Green opportunities hat was next. Delegates noted down lots of ideas for things that they could do in their school to raise the profile of languages, improve the teaching and learning, and ultimately make them more successful. They then ordered these ideas in a diamond ranking, putting those with the highest impact at the top. We also discussed which were the quickest wins. Finally, individual school groups worked on an action plan, for the Blue planning hat, which would be the beginning of a much longer process and dialogue between the MFL departments and teachers and their SLTs.

The final part of the event was questions to the panel. On the panel were Bernadette Holmes, President Incumbent of ALL, Michael Wardle, a local languages star who is currently DH at a school in Durham, Elizabeth Andersen, Head of the School of Modern Languages at Newcastle University, Richard Hardie and Baroness Coussins. Here are some closing soundbites:

Target language use: "Taking independent control of the language system to make meaning" Bernadette Holmes

"Be courageous. Languages matter. Your voice matters." Bernadette Holmes

I hope that in all the schools represented today the dialogue which was started is only the beginning of a longer and fulfilling process of realising the strategic importance of languages.

Another reply

2011-01-08T08:36:00.000Z

You'll have read in my Christmas Eve post that a couple of months ago I wrote to my MP, Michael Gove and Nick Gibb about the position of MFL in the Key Stage 2 curriculum, as sending to the DfE my comments on November's White Paper.

Yesterday evening I received a response from "a member of the Secretary of State’s correspondence team". It doesn't, unfortunately, tell us anything that we didn't already know. I also know, from reading the Primary Languages Linguanet forum, that I'm not the only person to have received this stock response.

Here is the response:

Thank you for your email and e-card of 6 December to the Secretary of State, regarding the importance of language teaching in primary schools. As a member of the Secretary of State’s correspondence team I have been asked to reply, and I apologise for the delay in doing so.

The Coalition Government is fully committed to the teaching of languages in schools, not only for its social and economic benefits, but also because learning a language helps pupils to understand the different cultures of people around the world.

We know that primary school teachers and others have worked very hard over the last few years to stimulate an early interest in language learning, and a recent NfER study showed that 92 per cent of primary schools are now teaching foreign languages within class time at Key Stage 2. The Government believes that learning a language at primary school can inspire children with a love of languages that will stay with them throughout their secondary education and beyond. Given the importance of language learning, and the benefits of an early start, Ministers expect that the majority of primary schools that are already teaching languages will continue to do so.

On 7 June 2010, the Minister of State for Schools announced that we would be carrying out a review of the National Curriculum to return it to its original purpose - a core national entitlement organised around subject disciplines. The review will consider the place of languages within the National Curriculum in both primary and secondary schools, and will ensure that our core curriculum can compare with those of the highest performing countries around the world. In designing the new curriculum, we plan to consult a wide range of academics, teachers and others with an interest in what is taught in schools. More details about how to contribute to the review will be announced shortly via our website at http://www.education.gov.uk/, and I hope that you will feel able to respond.
Yours sincerely,
Kate Jarrett
Correspondence Team
www.education.gov.uk

Languages: The Facts

2011-01-07T14:02:00.001Z

Next Tuesday, 11th January, sees the visit to the north east by Baroness Jean Coussins for "Realising the Strategic Importance of Languages". It's a Big Deal for us, and a lot of planning has gone into the event, under the expert leadership of Links NE Manager Ruth O'Rourke. My job, as part of the preparation, was to put together a list of 20 facts about the current state of languages in this country. Well, I found a few more than 20. I thought they would be useful for other people, especially come Options time, so here they are. If you can't be at the event itself, don't forget to watch the live streaming and follow the chat on Twitter by following the hashtag #linksne.

SCHOOLS

The number of people studying languages beyond the age of 14 has plummeted by almost 50 per cent in the last seven years to just 206,087.

Only 9,246 teenagers took a GCSE in Latin last year – and some 70 per cent of entries were from private schools.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/8170876/More-state-schools-to-offer-Latin-in-curriculum-overhaul.html

And the proportion studying a modern language overall has fallen from 79% in 2000 to just 44% in 2009 - and when you take out the independent sector that 44% falls to 39%.

Nick Gibb, Politeia Conference address

http://www.education.gov.uk/inthenews/speeches/a0069268/nick-gibb-to-the-politeia-conference

The previous government made foreign languages an optional subject, and less than 30% of schools in the state sector now have languages as a compulsory subject to the age of 16. Many schools struggle to get even a dozen pupils through to GCSE, German has been phased out in many schools, and it is not unusual for schools to offer only one foreign language, usually French.

http://battleofideas.org.uk/index.php/2010/session_detail/4103/

4.22 Alongside the number of students who secure five good GCSEs including English and mathematics, the performance tables will record the number who secure the combination of GCSEs which make up the English Baccalaureate. Those schools which succeed in giving their pupils a properly rounded academic education will be more easily identified. This will provide a powerful incentive for schools to drive the take-up of individual science subjects, humanities such as history and, especially, foreign languages.

4.23 The proportion of young people studying a modern language at GCSE has fallen from 79 per cent in 2000 to just 44 per cent in 2008 and 200958. The introduction of the English Baccalaureate will encourage many more schools to focus more strongly on ensuring every student has the chance to pursue foreign language learning to the age of 16.

Schools White Paper “The Importance of Teaching” November 2010
http://www.education.gov.uk/schools/teachingandlearning/schoolswhitepaper

The bleak picture was compounded by the publication last month of an OECD survey that showed that secondary school pupils in the UK spend less time studying languages than their counterparts anywhere else in the developed world. Only 7 per cent of the lesson time of 12 to 14 year-olds is allocated to languages, which is half the amount that they spend on sciences. This puts England joint bottom of a table of 39 countries, alongside Ireland and Estonia and behind Indonesia and Mexico.

Baroness Coussins
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld201011/ldhansrd/text/101028-0002.htm

The decline in GCSE entries from 2004 has been severe. The vast majority of state schools neither insist on a language post-14 nor even set a benchmark for take-up, as they are meant to do. As a result, languages have become one of the main causes of what the coalition Government have called the "vast gulf" between state and independent schools, with pupil take-up at key stage 4 being only 41 per cent from comprehensives, compared to 81 per cent from independent schools and 91 per cent across all selective schools.

Also, and worryingly, it would seem that a class divide is opening up; the National Centre for Languages' CILT Language Trends figures for 2009 note that last year 41 per cent of comprehensive school pupils at Key Stage 4 were entered for a modern language, compared with 91 per cent of selective school pupils and 81 per cent of independent school pupils.

Michael Worton
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=413898&c=2

In England, the only time anyone is obliged to learn a language is in the first three years of secondary school. But a recent report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) found that we don't spend much time doing it even then. In percentage terms, England came bottom, along with Ireland, with languages taking up around 7.25 per cent of compulsory curriculum time for 12- to 14-year-olds.

The average across the 15 EU countries that gave figures was 14 per cent. By comparison, key stage 3 pupils here spend about three times as much time learning about technology, which includes ICT, than the EU average. In addition, it has recently emerged that since plans to make foreign language teaching at primary school compulsory were shelved, provision at this level is already falling off a cliff.

EUROPE

NATIONS SHALL SPEAK

Compulsory time 12- to 14-year-olds spend on languages in EU countries each year (by curriculum percentage and hours)

1. Luxembourg: 26% (237 hours)

2. Italy: 15.99% (160 hours)

3. Denmark: 17.78% (160 hours)

4. Germany: 16.97% (150.5 hours)

5. Portugal: 15.26% (134.3 hours)

6. Belgium (Fr): 12.5% (120 hours)

7. France: 12.13% (118.7 hours) - EU average: 13.59% (118.6 hours)

8. Finland: 13.94% (108.3 hours)

9. Spain: 10.11% (102.7 hours)

10. Greece: 12.38% (101.7 hours)

11. Hungary: 12.42% (83.3 hours)

12. England: 7.25% (67 hours)

13. Ireland: 7% (59.4 hours)

Data from OECD: education at a glance 2010.

http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=6060808

I am deeply concerned that fewer and fewer students are studying languages, it not only breeds insularity, it means an integral part of the brain’s learning capacity rusts unused.

Michael Gove
http://www.education.gov.uk/inthenews/speeches/a0064281/michael-gove-to-westminster-academy
6th Sept 2010

Gove said the narrowing of the range of exams being taken was "depriving young people of the things they should get from education, which is a rounded sense of how to understand this world in all its complexity and richness.

"If you don't understand science and you don't understand other cultures, you are deliberately cutting yourself off from the best that is going on in our world." Gove said he was "very attracted" by the baccalaureate systems operated by many European and Asian countries that deliver a broader educational curriculum than in England.

Michael Gove

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/sep/05/michael-gove-baccalaureate-gcse

They become non-compulsory at GCSE in 2004, and the number of children taking a language GCSE dropped from 78% in 2001 to 44% in 2009. Last year, just 26% took French and 11% took German – the numbers for both have halved since 2001 – while 8% took Spanish and 4% another language. The GCSE results published this week showed the numbers studying French down a further 5.9% and German down 4.5%, with French dropping out of the top 10 GCSEs for the first time.

In this year's A-level results, Spanish was up 4%, but the numbers taking French and German were down 3.8% and 3.4%, while other languages decreased an alarming 7.1% year on year. In 1996 18% of A-Levels were in languages, while now the figure is about 10%.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2010/aug/28/learning-foreign-language-boost-career

Making languages optional at 14 has had several consequences, each as predictable as it is regrettable. The first was to signal that an acquaintance with even one foreign language was a luxury rather than a necessity. The second was to reinforce the impression that languages were difficult, and so to be avoided, by pupils and schools concerned about scores and league tables. And the third was to encourage schools to scale down language teaching and divert resources elsewhere.

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/leading-articles/leading-article-the-insularity-of-our-national-curriculum-2061013.html

According to the Annual Language Trends Survey for 2009, just 41 per cent of comprehensive school pupils took a modern language at GCSE. It is selective and private schools that are keeping languages alive. At A-level, the 7.7 per cent of children in private schools are now so over-represented, that only 11 of 31 Cambridge colleges have a majority of language students from state schools.

The rot started long before a foreign language ceased to be compulsory at GCSE in 2004 - and has spread. Like fish stocks, levels are now so low that Mike Kelly, Professor of French at Southampton University and Director of the UK Support Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Study, says: “If the clock is ticking, we are getting close to midnight. We had hoped that the decline in modern languages had bottomed out, but it’s not getting better.

“Free choice has meant that languages are often set against subjects like art or drama, and are pushed further down the list of preferences. Languages are a long term business: you don’t get quick rewards. It takes three or four years to get to a decent level, whereas in other subjects you can have fun without long-term preparation.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/secondaryeducation/7964468/GCSE-results-Why-we-should-mind-our-languages.html

For the first time ever, French has slipped out of the top 10 of the most popular subjects at GCSE – the most obvious sign of the seemingly inexorable slide in languages take-up in schools, which employers say will damage British students on the international jobs market.

Fewer than one in four youngsters (22.7 per cent) now sits French, with the numbers falling from 341,604 students in 2002 to 177,618. This year alone, there was a further 5.9 per cent fall. German has slumped from 130,976 to 70,619.

Last night, exam board leaders called for a summit with ministers to try to stem the decline. The figures, released as part of this year's GCSE results, led to Andrew Hall, the chief executive of the Assessment and Qualifications Alliance, to claim that yesterday was "a rather sad day for languages".

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/the-language-crisis-in-british-schools-2061211.html

HIGHER EDUCATION

The minister confirmed that tuition fees would replace government teaching grants for humanities and arts subjects, but he said that it was "very possible" that languages could be earmarked as strategically important and benefit from extra money.

Interview with David Willetts, The Guardian, 9th December 2010

6.2 Public investment will be targeted on the teaching of priority subjects.
The current system incorporates a hidden blanket subsidy to institutions. The subsidy is delivered through a block grant that does not vary significantly from year to year. Institutions do not compete for this funding – they get it automatically. Our proposals will shift the balance towards a more dynamic system of funding, with students having more choice about where they study and directing a greater share of the resources for teaching through the Student Finance Plan. There is nevertheless a strong case for additional and targeted investment by the public in certain courses. These may be courses that deliver significant social returns such as to provide skills and knowledge currently in shortage or predicted to be in the future. Students may not choose these courses because the private returns are not as high as other courses, the costs are higher and there are cheaper courses on offer, or simply because these courses are perceived as more difficult. Typically the courses that may fall into this category are courses in science and technology subjects, clinical medicine, nursing and other healthcare degrees, as well as strategically important language courses.

Lord Browne
Securing a sustainable future for higher education
An independent review of Higher Education funding & student finance.
12 October 2010

CAREERS

If you have language skills you really can have a successful career in many different fields. A language can add 10 – 15% to your salary and really make you stand out from the competition.

Steve Shacklock, Managing Director of Euro London Appointments, the specialist multi-lingual recruitment consultancy
http://www.jobsite.co.uk/insider/jobs-you-could-do-with-a-language-6519/

But market forces clearly back teaching German. Worldwide, up to 120 million people speak it and Germany is our second largest trading partner. The CBI says employers seek German and other languages when hiring staff but that, increasingly, British applicants are losing out to candidates from elsewhere.

http://www.heraldscotland.com/comment/herald-view/languages-provide-a-world-of-opportunities-to-our-students-1.1070703

The ability to function in a new linguistic cultural environment is a skill highly prized by international employers, many of whom will not consider graduates without experience of living and working outside their native land

Work and Study Abroad
(Residence Abroad Project at www.llas.ac.uk/resources/mb/626)

The growing need for people with language skills is attributable to a number of fairly recent developments, all of which have implications: changes in technology; changes in Europe; increasing internationalisation; advances in transport systems

King, A., Thomas, G. (1999) The Guide to Languages and Careers (London: CILT)

Cultural awareness is a highly important career asset. To work successfully abroad, you need to have an appreciation of ideas, traditions, customs and lifestyles which are often very different from your own

King, A., Thomas, G. (1999) The Guide to Languages and Careers (London: CILT)

Graduates in modern languages are sought after by employers not merely for their linguistic skills, but for the intellectual training which their course has provided. Linguists are trained to think structurally, they write essays which give them good practice in thinking clearly and in presenting focused arguments. Many language courses involve working cooperatively in groups and making formal presentations to an audience.. just the sort of teamwork and presentational skills which employers tell us they are looking for

King, A., Thomas, G. (1999) The Guide to Languages and Careers (London: CILT)

Language learning can enable students to communicate, share experiences and values and set in motion a whole series of both inductive and deductive processes that students need in both academic lives and future professional ones

DiNapoli, R. (2000) 'Reflection and professionalisation in language teaching: the case of 'Polylang' at the University of Westminster' in King, A. (ed) Languages and the Transfer of Skills (London: CILT), pp. 45-51

Effective use of technology needs linguistic skills - The next generation will need high levels of proficiency both as communicators and in the associated technologies. While computer-aided translation systems will speed up the process of working between languages, it is people with high levels of literacy and the experience of learning and using languages who are most likely to be able to exploit new technologies to the full

The Nuffield Languages Inquiry (2000) Languages: the next generation (London: The Nuffield Foundation)

Britons who speak a foreign language are richer, happier and are regarded as sexier than those who can speak only English

Cassidy, S. (2004) 'Speak a second language for money, happiness and sex' in The Independent, November 1, 2004
http://education.independent.co.uk/news/story.jsp?story=578076

languages are empowering, provide a passport to a more varied and adventurous life, open up a wider pool of friends and sexual partners, and slow down the ageing process. While the skills they promote tend to be personally enriching, many are also sought by employers and so enhance job prospects. Who could ask for anything more?

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=413897&c=2

German was the most popular language required for jobs in September 2010, highlighting the war for talent when it comes to German speakers. That’s according to specialist language job board multilingualvacancies.com.

Statistics of jobs posted on the site show that with 460 roles, German is by far the most sought after language, with the next most popular one being French, required for 332 jobs. Other Western European languages were also in demand, with Dutch the third most requested language, followed by Spanish and Italian which both featured 132 times on job adverts in September. The Scandinavian languages were next on the list and there was also a niche demand for the languages of Japan and China.

http://www.prfire.co.uk/press-release/sprechen-sie-deutsch-german-is-most-in-demand-language-from-employers-32831.html

"There's no doubt that languages on a CV immediately make potential employees stand out, and, with the degree of globalisation we are experiencing, I think it's safe to say that multilingual graduates will be snapped up like they're going out of fashion."

Paul Robinson, global chief executive at KidsCo, which spans territories using 18 different languages
http://www.independent.co.uk/student/career-planning/getting-job/how-to-get-ahead-in-the-global-marketplace-2093269.html

TRADE

72% of UK international trade is with non-English speaking countries – but it is estimated that only one in ten British workers can speak a foreign language.

Confederation of British Industry (CBI)

As the European Commission website states: “Each year, thousands of European companies lose business and miss out on contracts as a result of their lack of language skills and intercultural competence. The challenge for internationally active firms is to integrate different organisational cultures and communicate efficiently in order to maximise performance – languages mean business!”

http://www.jobsite.co.uk/insider/it%e2%80%99s-all-foreign-to-us-time-to-learn-a-language-3965/

Research shows that Welsh firms could increase sales by 44.5% if they recruited more staff with languages skills.

The calls follow a Welsh Assembly Government action plan to boost modern foreign languages learning. The average take-up of languages at GCSE level has dropped to 27% in Wales, yet businesses in a wide range of industries need candidates with practical language skills.

Newport University deputy vice-chancellor Professor Stephen Hagen, a professor in multi-lingual business communications, has led studies showing that small to medium- sized businesses in Wales could increase export sales by 44.5% if they had stronger language skills.

http://www.walesonline.co.uk/business-in-wales/business-news/2010/12/02/languages-needed-to-boost-exports-91466-27752593/#ixzz17zKfNLF5

Employers are increasingly looking for Mandarin and Cantonese

Among employers looking for employees with particular language skills now or expecting to do so in the next three years, French still has the edge as the most commonly mentioned language (49%). But almost equally in demand are staff who speak Mandarin or Cantonese to cope with the rapid rise of Chinese economic activity and trade. Spanish is sought after by a third (32%) of employers looking to develop trade links not just with Spain but importantly the emerging markets of South America. A significant number of employers (19%) are looking for staff with Arabic skills for doing business with one of the most energy- rich regions of the world.

CBI Education and Skills Survey 2010 http://www.cbi.org.uk/ndbs/content.nsf/802737AED3E3420580256706005390AE/C4393B860D00478E802576C6003B0679

English alone will not sustain word-class excellence - operating successfully in a highly competitive world economy and maintaining world-class standards involve more than muddling through in the short term and include as a minimum the acquisition of the range of skills which our competitors offer. Given that so many people all over the world now speak, or are learning English, knowledge of English no longer confers an automatic advantage on the British workforce

The Nuffield Languages Inquiry (2000) Languages: the next generation (London: The Nuffield Foundation)

Across Europe, language skills are still very much in demand and a recent survey commissioned by the European Commission identified a clear link between languages and export success. While English is a key language to gaining access to export markets, the survey results suggested that the picture was far more complex than the much quoted view that English is the world language. Russian is extensively used in Eastern Europe as a lingua franca (along with German and Polish); French is used to trade in parts of Africa, and Spanish is used similarly in Latin America. It is therefore becoming increasingly apparent that candidates with one or more foreign language skills are at an advantage in the workplace and that in future, those who are not multilingual may struggle at the top of the employment market. In fact a recent poll of 500 companies, conducted for CILT, the National Centre for Languages, revealed that one in four employers felt that the ability to speak a second language would give a candidate the edge when applying for a job.

European Hiring Trends – Autumn/Winter 2010
Euro London Appointments

we are also finding that the Euro/Sterling exchange rate is no longer attracting foreign nationals to seek employment in the UK.

European Hiring Trends – Autumn/Winter 2010
Euro London Appointments

"Anyone who can clinch a deal in Argentina because of a grasp of Spanish, give directions to an Italian family visiting a tourist information office in the Lake District or work with a Chinese sporting delegation in London for the Olympics, will be of immense value to business and Britain.

"We must change our cultural attitude: we are an island race but must embrace the world and speak its languages if we want to be in the pole position for business.

Sir Digby Jones, CBI chief

The language of business

Language skills are increasingly important in a globalised economy. Linguistic proficiency helps firms to consolidate their relationships with existing overseas trading partners and develop contacts in new markets. Most employers (65%) are looking for conversational ability – rather than fluency – to help break the ice with customers or suppliers. Businesses looking for language skills are still seeking traditional European languages such as French (49%), but employers are also increasingly looking further afield with increased demand for Mandarin/Cantonese (44%).

CBI Education and Skills Survey 2010 http://www.cbi.org.uk/ndbs/content.nsf/802737AED3E3420580256706005390AE/C4393B860D00478E802576C6003B0679

The combination of an increasingly global economy and heightened cultural sensitivities means new demands on many people at work. The education system has a major part to play in preparing young people for work, and teaching foreign languages can help. But over two thirds of employers (71%) are not satisfied with the foreign language skills of young people and over half (55%) perceive shortfalls in their international cultural awareness.

CBI/EDI Education and Skills Survey 2010
http://www.cbi.org.uk/ndbs/content.nsf/802737AED3E3420580256706005390AE/C4393B860D00478E802576C6003B0679

Key findings

• While only a small proportion of firms (4%) are certain they have lost business as a result of inadequate language skills, the true figure could be much higher as 17% of respondents said they did not know

• Most employers (65%) are looking for conversational ability – rather than fluency – to help break the ice with customers or suppliers and as part of wider cultural understanding

• Those able to communicate in Mandarin/Cantonese are now as much in demand as those with skills in the traditional major European languages of French and German.

CBI/EDI Education and Skills Survey 2010
http://www.cbi.org.uk/ndbs/content.nsf/802737AED3E3420580256706005390AE/C4393B860D00478E802576C6003B0679

A global market necessitates language skills

In an increasingly competitive global marketplace, UK firms need staff who can communicate in foreign languages. English has become the international language of business – in itself a real benefit for the UK – but there are enormous advantages for British businesses if some employees have the language skills to communicate with suppliers, customers and officials in their own tongue. With many businesses developing links in China, India, Russia, Brazil and other emerging economies, they recognise the value of employees who understand the culture and can operate effectively in the different business environments of these countries – and an understanding of the language is often a crucial first step. Assessing the scale of business problems caused by the linguistic shortfalls in their workforces is a difficult exercise, but at least 4% of firms know they have missed out on opportunities as a consequence of inadequate language skills. A further 17% don’t know whether they have lost business or not, so the scale of problem may well be considerable.

CBI/EDI Education and Skills Survey 2010
http://www.cbi.org.uk/ndbs/content.nsf/802737AED3E3420580256706005390AE/C4393B860D00478E802576C6003B0679

Conversational skills more in demand than fluency

Companies particularly value an employee’s ability to communicate conversationally with potential business partners, customers or clients in their own language (Exhibit 55): this can help break the ice, deepen cultural understanding, and open access to new markets. Two thirds of respondents (65%) say that when recruiting for foreign language skills, they normally require quire a conversational level of skills rather than full fluency.

CBI/EDI Education and Skills Survey 2010
http://www.cbi.org.uk/ndbs/content.nsf/802737AED3E3420580256706005390AE/C4393B860D00478E802576C6003B0679

WHY ?

At the heart of this must unashamedly be the argument that intercultural competence is not only one of the essential skills for modern life and work, but is in itself exciting, pleasurable and rewarding.

Much is rightly made today of the importance of helping all of our young people to become global citizens, by which we mean that they will learn to think in new, critical and creative ways; that they will be committed to ethical and socially responsible behaviour; that they will be ready to embrace professional mobility; that they will assume leadership roles, sometimes very locally within the family or a group of friends and sometimes nationally or even internationally; that they will embrace entrepreneurship and embrace and develop their own ability to innovate; and, crucially, that they will be not only sensitive to cultural difference, but also able to appreciate and mobilise its value in intellectual and social contexts.

This is a new form of citizenship that has no global governing body, but whose importance is recognised by many national and regional governments. Global citizenship is marked by a sense of responsibility, both individual and collective, and by a commitment to living in and with difference, in all of its complexity, ambiguity and challenge. This is the fundamental reason why we should encourage as many people as possible, both young and old, to learn a language, since this involves encounters and learning about a different culture as well as a different linguistic system, and thereby enables an understanding of just how much sameness and difference are bound up together and define each other. Without some knowledge of another language, we remain locked into a single system.

Michael Worton
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=413898&c=2

To learn another language is, quite simply and profoundly, one of the best ways of learning to recognise the world and to see how others and otherness inhabit it. It is an education in difference as a pathway to understanding how to contribute to integration and fellowship (or global citizenship).

Michael Worton
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=413898&c=2

Second, there are strong cultural arguments for learning a foreign language. Education is not just about picking up skills and knowledge that will be useful in the job market, though all too often it is presented that way nowadays. For in addition to such immediately practical matters, it is surely also about understanding our place in the world - geographically, historically, politically, culturally and so on; and about understanding how our world works - hence science, engineering, etc. Foreign languages fit into this broader picture of education because they provide access to the culture and history of other countries, through learning to read their literature, their newspapers, or whatever.

Third, I think there are also huge intellectual arguments for learning foreign languages, which I would sum up briefly as follows: (a) it's hard to get far with a foreign language without learning a good deal of grammar, and that can have enormously beneficial effects on the learner's ability to think and write in English; (b) a little like mathematics, foreign language learning necessarily involves discipline, logic and accuracy - you have to get things right, and can't get away with waffle and general chat as is apparently possible in some other subjects. So as mental training, learning a foreign language is an excellent vehicle. And (c) because learning a foreign language is perceived in the UK to be 'difficult', successfully doing so and achieving a good level has to have beneficial effects on the learner's self confidence, something that is invaluable when doing almost anything else in life that is difficult and demanding.

Professor Paul Hare, Heriot-Watt University
http://ukhighered.blogspot.com/2010/09/does-learning-foreign-language-matter.html

Canadian scientists have found astonishing evidence that the lifelong use of two languages can help delay the onset of dementia symptoms by four years compared to people who are monolingual.

January 2007

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/01/070111133129.htm

A Christmas present, and my Christmas wish

2010-12-24T14:39:00.000Z

This morning I received a letter about Primary Languages from Sharon Hodgson, my MP.

I emailed her on 6th December in response to the government's White Paper "The Importance of Teaching", expressing my concern at the lack of clarity, or indeed any word at all, about the future of language teaching in KS2. I also emailed the address provided for feedback to the White Paper, I emailed Michael Gove, and I emailed Nick Gibb. Sharon Hodgson is the only one from whom I have had a response. Not even an automated response from the others to say that my message has been received.

Ms Hodgson's letter has brightened my day. She is a Shadow Education Minister, and keen that the previous Government's commitment to Primary Languages be carried forward:
"In a global economy, the country needs people who can communicate effectively with those in different countries, and the education system should recognise and support that."
She has also written to Mr Gove to ask him to reply to me, and has tabled the following Parliamentary Question to give him the opportunity to put his commitment to Primary Languages on Parliamentary record:
"To ask the Secretary of State what steps he has taken toward establishing Modern Foreign Languages as part of the primary school curriculum from the academic year beginning 2011."
She has asked me to keep in touch and has expressed an interest in visiting a class or workshop in the constituency at some point.

So that is my Christmas present. What about my Christmas wish? My Christmas wish is that the current Government tell us as soon as possible what they intend to do with Primary Languages and whether or not they are going to fund it anymore. The announcement of the new curriculum in Autumn 2012 is too long to have to wait. Primary schools need help and support now.

So I urge you, if you haven't already done so, to contact your own MP to put the case for Primary Languages. You could always send them this ecard.
Let's bombard them from all sides!

Baroness Coussins is coming to the north-east

2010-12-06T09:57:00.002Z

Baroness Coussins, Realising the Strategic Importance of Languages
Venue: Royal Station Hotel, Newcastle upon Tyne

Time: 8:30-12:30 includes breakfast and lunch

£300 to be awarded the first 40 schools who come with senior management.

It's the biggest event for languages the North East has ever seen....It's confirmed for 2011....it could change what happens in your schools....and its got big names!

You might have heard about it on the blogosphere and we are now pleased to confirm that Baroness Coussins, Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Modern Languages will visit the North East on Tuesday 11th January.

We know how crucial it is to influence your senior management as well so this event is geared towards them too.

Baroness Coussins will be joined by:

Richard Hardie, Vice Chair UBS Ltd. and advocate for A-level Languages
Dr. Michael Wardle, Deputy Head and Ofsted Inspector for Languages
Dr. Liz Andersen, Member of the National University Council for Modern Languages
Bernadette Holmes, President incumbent of the Association for Language Learning

The event includes keynote speeches, workshops and a panel, so plenty of chance for contributing and questioning as well.

The first 40 schools who bring along a member of their senior management team will receive £300 so take this to your SMT straight away and get signed up on the website here!

We know this is short notice but as this is such a fantastic opportunity to really make the case for languages we hope you don't miss it.

If you have any queries please get in touch with Ruth O'Rourke by email or on 0191 222 5814.

Your Head of Languages will soon receive an invitation to this event to pass on to your Headteacher.

This is primarily for secondary schools but we will welcome primary schools, Further Education and Higher Education Institutes as well.

The Links into Languages NE team

#MFLSAT Oldham

2010-11-14T16:34:00.001Z

Yesterday I spent a most enjoyable day at The Radclyffe School in Oldham at the third MFL Show and Tell (affectionately and tweetingly known as #MFLSAT). It was brilliantly organised by Isabelle Jones and brought together about forty MFL teachers from all over the UK (and Germany!).

I gave a short presentation about mini-books, something which I love and which I have used successfully (in my opinion) with my primary classes. Here is my presentation:

Mini-books

View more webinars from cseccombe.

A lot of people have asked where I got the jigsaw thing in the PowerPoint. I actually found it quite by chance while I was looking for a suitable template for the presentation. The instructions are here, and you can access the actual template via the same link. As far as mini-books are concerned, the most important link is the "how to make a mini-book" one.

As is usual with #MFLSAT, I left totally enthused, my head buzzing with lots of ideas. In no particular order, here are some of the things I'd like to try:

Selecting pupils at random to answer a question
Marie O'Sullivan showed us The Hat, which you can use to select one pupil at a time. As far as I can see, once you've selected one particular pupil, they are then safe from selection for the rest of the lesson, unless you start the Hat up again.
Dominic McGladdery gave us lots of examples of ways to select pupils at random, starting with lolly sticks with pupils' names on which are drawn from the "Mug of Misery" (as it has been christened by Dom's pupils!) I really like this PowerPoint random name selector from Fresherschools.com as well.
I'm particularly interested in this as it is one of the things mentioned at my PM review, and one of the teachers at my school is very keen to get all the pupils alert and not coasting.

Intercultural Understanding
Something I am very interested in (see previous posts) and so I'm always grateful for new links and ideas to help me in my endeavours.
Marie-France Perkins showed us the website of Collège les Tamarins on the island of Réunion. A particularly useful part of the website is the "Visite du Collège", which shows photos and plans of the school.
Suzi Bewell showed us "Ecoles du Monde", a book written in simple French and with beautiful photographs of schoolchildren around the world. Suzi also guided us to Links into Languages's 10 minute guide to Intercultural Understanding.

Groovy Tech Tools
Kath Holton showed us some of the tools she uses in the classroom and to facilitate home learning. Spicynodes looks worthy of closer investigation, as does Zondle.
Vanessa Parker from The Radclyffe School showed us some PowerPoint ideas. I liked her idea for a twist on Kim's Game. Instead of just making a picture disappear and asking the children which one it is, Vanessa suggests asking them which one they think will disappear and giving them a point if they are right. I also liked her idea to have a bag or basket of images flash across the screen and pupils have to name all the objects. Flypast taken one step further.

I can't wait for the next one. Where's it to be, guys?

A Language Show in the North, part 2

2010-11-14T09:03:00.000Z

A big thank you to everyone who completed the survey, which is now closed. 128 people responded altogether, and the results will be very useful in planning an event. Here are the results:

A brief summary of the results would suggest that we would be looking at an event with the following profile:

in the north-east
at the weekend
for teachers
concentrating on French, Spanish and German
concentrating on Key Stages 2, 3 and 4
exhibition focusing on teaching resources, language learning and teaching equipment and educational publishers
seminars focusing on language learning methods, creativity, ideas for speaking, using the latest technology, assessment for learning

I hope this is the kind of event that you would want to attend. More anon.

A Language Show in the North

2010-11-01T21:09:00.000Z

A few weeks ago, on a Saturday night, the MFL Twitterati came up with the idea of a North East Languages Show. There was a great deal of discussion about it at the time, and it is something that hasn't gone away.

I volunteered to look into it as it was partly my idea and also because I have a day off each week which allows me that bit of flexibility.

This afternoon I was corresponding via email with Ruth O'Rourke, the North East Regional Manager of Links into Languages, about venues and dates, and whether we would actually get enough interest to be able to put on such an event. We decided that before we get stuck too far in we need to gauge peoples' interest.

Therefore I have put together a survey, which you will find embedded below. We would be very grateful if you could complete it. The survey will close at 1.00pm GMT on Friday 12th November so that I can feed the results back to the Twitterati at the Show and Tell in Oldham on Saturday 13th.

Create your free online surveys with SurveyMonkey, the world's leading questionnaire tool.

Why is Twitter great?

2010-10-22T23:33:00.000+01:00

10 days ago or so, while having my breakfast, I was checking my tweets. The tweets that come in overnight are mostly from the USA on one side of the world and Australia on the other. One of the Australian MFL Twitterati who I follow, @ykombi, had tweeted:

I had made a table comparing the French and English school systems for a podcast about La Rentrée, and so tweeted back:

Almost immediately I had a reply.

@ykombi sent me her email address via Twitter DM (Direct Message) and I emailed her the file, which she was able to adapt to the Australian system, as it is pretty similar to the English one.

That's just one example of why Twitter is great. You can ask something, however complex, and someone somewhere will do their best to help you out. The MFL Twitterati are so generous and supportive.

Then a few days later I read this tweet from the wonderful @wizenedcrone:

Having spoken to @bootleian via Flashmeetings and corresponded via email, I am a big fan, and cheekily asked @wizenedcrone if I could be a temp in her department so that I could attend the CPD day. And today I did attend the CPD day! It was not only an opportunity to meet up again with several of the north-east Twitterati, not only a chance to meet the great @bootleian, but also a chance to learn lots of new ideas and to meet and network with new MFL colleagues in the north-east. All in all a very profitable way to spend my day off. And another example of why Twitter is great. You get to find out about events that are happening not only in your area but all over the place. Even if you can't attend in person you can often attend virtually or catch up with the presentations afterwards via services such as Slideshare or peoples' blogs.

Twitter often gets a negative press, with many people thinking that it's just daft people telling anyone who will listen what they have had for their breakfast.

But for me it's much more than that. When I worked as a secondary AST, I was expected to at the forefront of MFL teaching, but rarely had the opportunity to find out what that forefront looked like. In my current role, I need to be at the cutting edge of primary language teaching. Thanks to my Twitter PLN I find out all I need to know and more.

So that's why I think that Twitter is great. What about you?

Smart !

2010-10-03T20:57:00.001+01:00

I've already mentioned quite a few of my gadgets on here. Digital camera, talking pen, Flip video, air mouse.... But one of the gadgets that the Twitterati have been trying to persuade me to get for a while is one I've never wanted. I've never wanted an iPhone. Or any other Apple product, to be honest. But the more I read about Android phones, the more I was sure that was what I wanted. I spent time reading up about the different phones available and settled on HTC. I was considering a Wildfire but then my lovely husband offered to buy me a Desire for my birthday.

It was delivered on Tuesday, and my mother pointed out that I shouldn't have it yet. I know, I know, but you have to make sure it works! Five days later, I am hooked. I've set up my Gmail and downloaded Seesmic for effective tweeting. I'm having a go with UltimateFaves Pro to have all my favourite apps on the homescreen and have found gReader to be able to access my Google Reader and a Delicious app to be able to bookmark sites when accessing the internet on the Desire. Naturally I have also been finding some good games, in the process rediscovering my addiction to Othello. The Android Karaoke app is great fun and will drive my husband crackers.

It's been very interesting to see the reaction of my daughters, currently aged 7 and 3, to the Desire, the first smartphone that they have had proper access to (my husband has an ancient HTC through work that they aren't allowed anywhere near). The elder one can find her way around it very easily. I took her photo with it earlier today, and she said that she wanted to put a different dress on the picture. So we went into the App Market and quickly found and installed PicSay. Within minutes she had added to the photo a multi-coloured title, a speech bubble, some "stickers" of hair and funny glasses, and a green tint. The little one is obsessed with Talking Tom, who we discovered thanks to this blog post from Dominic McGladdery. She is always asking to "stroke the pussycat" and also knows how to give him some milk and make him scratch the screen. It occurred to me that she is growing up in a world where it's perfectly normal to stroke a virtual cat to make it purr. Technology that is normal for her would have been unimaginable for me at her age, in the early 70s. A Changing Phase indeed.

It has also occurred to me that a smartphone is only as smart as the person operating it. I know that I have a lot to learn before I am using the Desire to its full potential. I'd love to hear about your experiences and recommendations.

Is it worthwhile learning another language?

2010-09-02T20:54:00.000+01:00

Boy 1: My dad's car's got 5 gears.
Boy 2: My dad's car's got 6 gears.
Boy 1: Well my dad's car's actually got 6 forward gears and 2 reverse gears!

This is a conversation I overheard on a bus in Sunderland in 1995. It made me chuckle greatly at the time and it still makes me chuckle. Children love to brag and get one up on their mates. Since I've been teaching in a primary school I have noticed that children love to brag about how much of a foreign language they know as well. Knowing more Spanish numbers than we have covered in class gives you real status. Giving an original and complex opinion sentence when your name is called in the register (they have to answer with a word or phrase in Spanish) earns you the respect of your classmates.

That's just one of the reasons I love primary language teaching. The thirst for knowledge, the delight and pride at being able to communicate, the discovery of new things. This continues throughout the KS2 years, and, if we manage transition properly and teach them imaginatively, into KS3 as well. But you approach Y9 and the GCSE years, and the enthusiasm wanes. The dry, formuleic, unrealistic diet that is served up by the GCSE boards is enough to put off most students, and also demotivates many teachers.

So is it really worth putting yourself through it all, is it worthwhile learning another language?

This is the title of a Radio 4 You and Yours programme that was broadcast on Tuesday August 31st, and which you can still listen to on the iPlayer. It followed on from and was probably stimulated by the many press articles that appeared after the publication of this year's GCSE results. The numbers of students taking a language at GCSE continue to fall (no surprise there) and French has fallen out of the Top 10 subjects for the first time ever.

There are many reasons why I think languages are A Good Thing. When asked by a pupil "What's the point of learning languages?" I have been known to reply "For me, a nice house, 2 cars, a good job with good holidays, holidays abroad, friends all over the world, and the ability to talk about you without you knowing." Everyone who has pursued language learning has their own reasons for doing so. My daughter's godmother is French, and her English husband learned French at evening classes so that he would be able to talk to his in-laws and understand his marriage ceremony in France. You never know who you're going to fall in love with. If you'd asked me the same question when I was 14 or 15 and heading towards O'level, I probably would have said "I just really enjoy learning it." I had no career path in mind, but I had the thirst for learning, and still do. Learning for learning's sake.

Languages are a good academic subject, which extend not only your language skills but your life skills, your interpersonal skills, your understanding of other subjects such as English, History, Geography and RE, your general knowledge. They make you into a more rounded human being who is more tolerant of and open to other people and other cultures. A good academic education does not appear to be valued in this country anymore. People seem to prefer easier, quicker subjects that require little or no effort.

Following the Radio 4 broadcast, where, incidentally, the voice of the teacher was absent, and at the instigation of Joe Dale, a bunch of the MFL Twitterati attended a special MFL Flashmeeting to discuss the programme and the points that it had raised, and to endeavour to reach some conclusions about the state of languages in this country and what could or should be done. If you would like to watch thereplay of the Flashmeeting, you can do so by following this link.

Over the two hours many things were discussed and many issues raised. I would recommend that you read this blog post by Catriona Oates, who has outlined the main "myths" about languages that need tackling. Also worth a read are this post by Isabelle Jones and this one by Steve Smith, both responding to the press articles from the last week or so. José Picardo has written this blog post about the languages class divide.

I'd like to focus on what learning a language says about you as an individual regardless of whether you end up using them in your future life and work.

This is from an old TES forum thread that I started and can no longer find. These are just some of the transferable skills that you can gain from learning a language.

I am brave (languages are hard and sometimes scary)
I have a good memory - I have learned loads of words and how to spell them
I can communicate in another language, and therefore must be quite good at communicating in my own
I am literate. I can read another language as well as my own.
I am open-minded
I perform well under pressure
I am culturally aware
I am creative
I am open to new experiences and cultures
I am confident - I don't worry if I make mistakes, as long as I get the message across
I can multi-task - I often have to think of several things at the same time
I have well-developed listening skills
I persevere
I can think logically
I can see and apply patterns
I can think on my feet and express myself verbally
I can solve problems and think outside the box

This is just one point of view, from one person. There are many reasons why languages are in crisis, and many solutions that need to be found.

Intercultural Understanding

2010-08-13T20:02:00.001+01:00

If I had £1 for every time a student has said to me, "Why doesn't everyone speak English?", I would currently be in the Caribbean soaking up the tropical rays and sipping cocktails on board my private yacht, and not in cold, rainy Washington.

It's a question they often ask in exasperation or to deliberately disrupt the lesson, and so my reply has often been similarly exasperated, along the lines of "It's not something that's quick to explain so if you come back at 3.30 I'll tell you all about it for half an hour." And that usually does the trick. Some students have been genuinely curious, and I have given them my quick "Because of history, geography, politics and religion" explanation.

In retrospect, it's a question that we should take seriously and do our best to answer in depth. Because you cannot completely understand or appreciate a language without knowing something about the country or countries where it is spoken. The two are inextricably linked. For example, the Spanish phrase "hacer puente" does not always mean "to bridge" in its strictest sense. Scratch the surface and you find out about a tradition for taking days off that you'll wish you had, and then dig a little deeper and you discover how many holidays Spanish children get compared to British children.

What is Intercultural Understanding? Here are two definitions:

“Intercultural Understanding is the ability and willingness to see things from a different cultural perspective..... It is respecting different ideas and lifestyles and recognising that your culture is not superior to others.”
“Appreciating the richness and diversity of other cultures.....Recognising that there are different ways of seeing the world and developing an international outlook.”

For me, Intercultural Understanding addresses and disproves the stereotypical views that Britons so often have about people from other countries, proves that our way is not necessarily the only way or the best way, and allows students access the rich and vibrant culture of the target-language country or countries through their language studies.

The photograph at the top is one of a series that I took to make a CrazyTalk video for a training session I was giving. The little figure is one of a set of "World People" that can be purchased from the Early Learning Centre (and who you may recognise from Gorseville!) I use them often to explain about stereotyping. Is this what French people look like? What do they really look like? And interestingly, go a step further and examine why we have this stereotypical image of French people. The BBC's "Coast" programme explains very well about the Onion Johnnies, who would have been the first and only contact that many British people had with the French.

I am a big fan of the Intercultural Understanding strand of the KS2 Framework, and am pleased that it is part of the KS3 Framework as well. I've done my best to include Intercultural Understanding in my KS2 Spanish lessons over the last year, and I have to say that it has been harder than I anticipated. It seems a bit false somehow, especially when you only see the children once a week, to depart from the "thread" of your lessons and stick something intercultural in. What I have done so far, formally in any case, has been looking at the Spanish-speaking world (thanks World Cup!) and highlighting certain fiestas such as San José, San Fermín and la Fiesta Nacional de España.

After some useful tweets and research over the last couple of weeks, I have come to the conclusion that Intercultural Understanding, in my setting at least, would best be covered little and often, as a "drip-drip-drip" approach, rather than as one-off occasional lessons.

I was reading Danny Nicholson's blogpost "Powerful Images to Give Lessons Punch", where he suggests displaying a photograph on the board at the beginning of the lesson to stimulate questions. In the MFL lesson this could be a photograph of a fiesta, place, child or house from the target language country, or something a bit different like a Google Doodle. Fiona Joyce tweeted the Google Doodle link and I could see its potential for intercultural work, as Google Doodles are something with which our young people are very familiar. Here's one to start you off:

It's from August 27th 2008. Which Spanish fiesta does it represent?

In September, one of the first things I will be teaching my second-year-of-Spanish pupils is the months of the year. I am starting to make the flashcards, and have decided to put images of fiestas on each month's card, such as Reyes for January, San Valentín for February, San José for March and so on. This will give learning what is essentially twelve words a bit more depth and purpose.

I thought I would share with you some of my favourite Intercultural Understanding links.

FRENCH

Equipment that children need to buy for La Rentrée: What do our children buy to return to school in September?

Videos showing playground games

Collection of playground games from all over the world

24 heures de la vie d'un enfant: Study the daily routines of children from all over the world

Ton scooter est japonais: Poem reminding us that many of the things we use in our daily life come from other countries. An easy model for students to replicate.

SPANISH

Playground games from El Huevo de Chocolate

More playground games

European Playground Games, including Choco-choco-la-la, which my KS1s and daughter love

Calendar of Spanish fiestas

Semana Santa: origen de las procesiones

Spanish customs and culture

Map puzzles: of each continent and more. Perfect for perfecting your South American geography!

Colours in Cultures: In the West we wear black to mourn. In South America the traditional colour is purple.

I would be interested to hear about how you teach Intercultural Understanding, and any good resources that you have come across.

You can also read a blogpost I wrote about Intercultural Understanding for José Picardo's Box of Tricks blog.

Gaudi's Mosaics

2010-07-15T21:08:00.002+01:00

In June I blogged about a sequence of lessons called "Mi bandera". With my KS2 classes I have just finished the next part of this unit dealing with shapes and colours.

Last summer I went on a mini-break to Barcelona, and was struck by all the different examples of "shapes making shapes" in the city. Lots of square panels making up the front of a building, seven circular panels of glass arranged to make a big circular window, and, of course Gaudi's mosaics. I took lots of photos and started to formulate an idea.

The difficult thing proved to be fitting it in at such a time that it didn't seem contrived in our sequence of learning. It did, however, fit perfectly after the flag lessons.

We started off looking at a map of the world to find Spain (and had some useful discussions about how come the countries in South America speak Spanish when they are so far from Spain), and then we looked at a map of Spain to find Barcelona. This in turn led to some interesting discussions about the regions of Spain, Cataluña in particular, and we compared and contrasted the numbers 1-10 in Catalan, Spanish and French.

We then focussed on Barcelona specifically, and looked at the examples of shapes making shapes. We talked about Gaudi, his buildings and his mosaics. We then looked at these mosaics from Parc Güell:

We found out that Gaudi used unusual materials in these mosaics, like glass bottles, dinner plates and china dolls. We set about creating mosaic suns of our own, using unusual shapes to echo Gaudi's unusual materials. I made an example to show the children, photographing it at various stages of its creation so show them how to build up their mosaic.

If you would like to see some of the children's finished mosaics, there is a video montage on my school blog.

So why did I do this?

Mainly:

Cross-curricular art
Intercultural understanding (Spanish-speaking world, Spain, Barcelona)

But also:

I wanted them to write about the mosaic afterwards, using the same format as we used to describe the flags. I wanted them to use the dictionary to find the words for the shapes they had used and to make these nouns plural as necessary, and to agree the colours as necessary. It was bringing together a lot of the different threads of our work since January.

What would I do differently next time?

Start it earlier in the year - we haven't been able to progress to the writing stage due to it being the end of term!
It's interesting that the best artists aren't necessarily the best mosaic makers. I'd set up a Smartboard activity or a group cut'n'stick activity to practise jigsaw-ing shapes into another shape, to enable more of the children to produce a more authentic-looking mosaic.
Find stickier gummed paper! And get more of it, as we ran out of certain colours very quickly.

All in all, I am very happy with the results, particularly with how well Y3 responded to it (it's them you can see working in the photos on the video). It made my day yesterday to follow one of my Y3s out of school and to watch him excitedly show his dad the mosaic he had made and explain how and why he had made it. It's given me the courage to find more ways of "thinking outside the box" and to endeavour to teach Spanish in its broader context a lot more.

#MFLSAT

2010-07-11T17:01:00.026+01:00

This is a Tagxedo of my Twitter feed for the last 24 hours or so

I'm imagining a conversation with my dad:

Dad: What is #MFLSAT ?

Me: It's a hashtag, something you add to your tweet in Twitter to group your tweet with all the other tweets about the same thing.

Dad: Yes, but what is #MFLSAT ?

Me: It stands for "MFL Show and Tell". We've had two now. The first one was in Coventry in November 2009, and the second one was yesterday in Nottingham. It's where lots of like-minded MFL teachers give up their Saturday to meet together and share good practice and engage in professional dialogue. Some people give presentations about things they've done in the classroom. It's also an opportunity to meet in real life the people with whom you correspond virtually most of the time, via Twitter and other fora.

Dad: Well why didn't you just say that in the first place ?

Yes, yesterday I went to Nottingham High School with 46 other teachers from England, Scotland, Wales and Australia (yes really - it was great to see Fiona Rose there). After coffee and chocolate croissants - which were most welcome after the 3 hour drive - there were 7 presentations on subjects as diverse as recording from Skype and the French vowel Haka.

We were really fortunate that all the presentations were filmed and streamed live on the internet by @eyebeams, so you can watch them all here. Thanks to a tip-off from Lisa Stevens, I've been able to embed the video of my presentation below. I talked about my RecorderPen, about which I had already written a blogpost:

After a very nice lunch in the high school dining hall (gadget of the day - the conveyor belt where you put your tray afterwards!) we had some round-the-table discussions about, amongst other things, VLEs, Language Labs, using ICT to enhance speaking work, e-safety and international links.

The day was sponsored by the high school, Links into Languages, Naace and Scholastic. The first MFLSAT cost us each £10, and was a more low-key affair. I had been concerned before yesterday that this event would be too "corporate" and that it would change the feel of the MFLSAT. But I needn't have worried. The sponsorship enhanced our comfort and the catering, but little else changed, for which I am grateful.

So what did I learn, and what am I going to try ?

You can export selections of an Audacity file as .wav My podcasts will be a lot quicker to do now I won't be cutting mp3s up into bits and saving them all as individual .wav files. (I know, Dom, I was a plonker not to know this before!)
Get KS2s to do writing on mini-whiteboards, then photograph them for assessment evidence. Cuts down on paper for them and me, mistakes are easier to correct, and I always have my camera with me anyway.
I MUST have a go with Prezi and play a bit with Sliderocket.
Have a go with Xtranormal to make starters and listening activities for KS2 and maybe KS1.
I love singing, the children love singing, so I must make an effort to do it more. And of course, the Spanish vowel Haka.

Do you fancy getting involved in something like this ? In these days of rarely cover and dwindling funds, teachers have to take the initiative as far as their CPD is concerned. Twitter is one way of finding out what opportunities are out there. You might also be interested in these:

Primary Languages Meet (#PLMeet) in Doncaster on Monday 27th September 2010

MFL Flashmeeting 8 - Monday 27th September 20.30-22.30, link to follow

And for you Mackems out there, there's the Sunderland TeachMeet on Thursday 14th October 2010.

Hope to see you there!

Working with partner schools overseas

2010-07-09T15:00:00.002+01:00

When I first started working with partner schools overseas, in 1997, communicating with partners and exchanging project work involved faxes, telephones, files, CDs, video tapes, books, pieces of art and craft work.... and many expensive trips to the Post Office to post it all. It took time for it all to reach the partners, and just as long for them to send theirs to us. Everything took a long time. Over the years, however, thanks to all the new technology that is out there, this communication and sharing of work has become much easier, quicker and cheaper. There are many web tools that we can use now to collaborate with our partners.

Two of the tools that have really taken off in the MFL world are Storybird and Storyjumper. Brian Stobie, the international officer for County Durham, discovered Storybird recently and could immediately see its use for partnership work. He asked me to give a presentation about Storybird and Storyjumper at the Atlas (RNIL) conference today. I agreed to speak for 10 minutes, just to give delegates a taster and to whet their appetites to find out more. I decided to present Storybird and Storyjumper as a story. I hope you like it.

Here is a Storybird that I wrote in collaboration with Dominic McGladdery. I wanted Fiona Joyce, queen of the MFL Storybird Wiki, to be involved as well, but at the moment you can only collaborate with one other person.
What do you like to do ? by d_mcg, CSeccombe on Storybird

Storybird and Storyjumper aren't of course the only programs that can be used in this way. You could also try Voki, Wallwisher, Voicethread, Xtranormal and GoAnimate, to name but a few. And you could set up a blog or wiki for the partnership so that you have some shared webspace via which to share your work. Anything that motivates you and your students to sustain your partnership and make it meaningful can only be a good thing.