ALL Primary Languages Conference Online 2021 (ACAPULCO #2!)

 

I am honoured to have been invited to give the keynote address at this year's ALL Primary Languages Conference.  Following the success of last year's event, the conference, affectionately known as ACAPULCO #2, will once again be held online.

The theme this year is An ambitious primary languages curriculum, and you can find the full day's programme here and book your place here.  If you are an ALL member or trainee teacher, the cost is only £5, and if you are not a member the cost is £25.  Great value, I'm sure you'll agree!

During the conference we will be hearing from Kate Percival, Vicky Cooke, Lisa Stevens, Ellie Chettle Cully and Marie Allen.  The conference is organised brilliantly by Steven Fawkes and Sue Cave.

I look forward to seeing you there!

Doozy

I've mentioned before that I subscribe to Richard Byrne's blog Free Tech for Teachers.  I recommend you follow it as well, particularly if you use Google Classroom, as there are lots of posts and useful information about that.  This morning Richard has written a post about an online quiz generator called Doozy.

You can use Doozy to build quizzes that require students to type in their answer, or multiple choice quizzes.  

I've had a go at making a quiz where you have to type the answers in.  It's all about regular -AR verbs in Spanish, and you can try it out by clicking here.

You don't have to create an account to use Doozy, so if you create content you'll have to think of a way of keeping a record of the links for the quizzes you've made.

You can play by yourself, or send the link to friends and play along with them, or you can be the quizmaster - this generates a quiz in a similar way to Kahoot that can be played by a group of people at the same time.  The quizzes can also be played over Zoom, Google Hangouts, Messenger and Houseparty - Doozy is a new application which has been developed since the beginning of lockdown.

I haven't yet had the opportunity to play as a team or against others, but if you challenge yourself, you answer the questions and then at the end you have to mark your own answers.  In the language learning context this provides useful feedback to the student.

Doozy provides a useful and different alternative to other online activity generators, such as educandy, which have been widely used during this period of home learning.

Have a go and see what you think.

My Lockdown Load

The last time I set foot in a classroom was Tuesday 17th March.  Since then, I've been working at home, joined by my Year 8 and Year 12 daughters and my husband.

Because I haven't been in any of my three schools, my income has plummeted - I am employed by my own company and not directly for the schools, who buy in my company's services.  I don't qualify for any of the Government grants and haven't been able to furlough myself as I have still been doing a little bit of paid work alongside the mostly non-paid.

I have been endeavouring to keep myself busy during the working days (hence the picture of the busy bee!)  Here's what I've been up to:

• BBC Bitesize Daily:  I've provided the content and reviewed the scripts for the French and Spanish lessons.  It started off being 3 French and 2 Spanish, but has ended up being 2 sets of French programmes on BBC iPlayer and 1 Spanish page on the website.  One lot of French has been broadcast already:
  - Age 5-7 https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p08f9qft/bitesize-57-year-olds-week-6-4-bonjour
  - Age 7-9 https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p089rq13/bitesize-79-year-olds-week-6-4-working-out-change
  - Age 9-11 https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p089zk0k/bitesize-911-year-olds-week-6-4-value-for-money
  The second set of French will be broadcast on BBC iPlayer on Thursday 25th June.
  UPDATE:
  25th June sessions:
  - Age 5-7 https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p08h0z8r/bitesize-57-year-olds-week-8-4-counting-to-10-in-french
  - Age 7-9 https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p089s0kh/bitesize-79-year-olds-week-8-4-food-in-french
  - Age 9-11 https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p08h1m8s/bitesize-911-year-olds-week-8-4-clothes-in-french
  I was asked to be the teacher in the studio, but the 3 hours each way of travelling to Salford was, at the time, an absolute no-no for me.  So thank you to Mr Allen, wherever you are!
  The Spanish is here:
  - Age 5-7 https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/articles/z82jr2p
  - Age 7-9 https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/articles/zgvs2v4
  - Age 9-11 https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/articles/zt6296f

• BBC Bitesize - primary Spanish:  The new content for primary French, Spanish and Mandarin will be unveiled in a few weeks' time.  The main part of it will take the form of an interactive game.  This journey started in August last year when I attended the focus group for the new content.  Since then, I've been working with the team to put the content together for Spanish.  It's looking very exciting and I'm looking forward to seeing the finished result!

• RiPL MOOC:  I was asked to contribute to the MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) that has been put together by RiPL (Research in Primary Languages).  It's called Teaching Languages in Primary Schools: Putting Research into Practice and you can sign up for it now on FutureLearn and it's free!  It starts on 6th July.  You'll see me talking about designing a scheme of work and ensuring progression.  Because of current circumstances the interview had to conducted remotely, which wasn't without its technical problems!

• ASCL Transition Toolkit:  I've been working alongside colleagues from ASCL and the British Council, and other members of the ALL Primary Steering Group to produce a new toolkit for facilitating Key Stage 2 to Key Stage 3 transition.  My 2018 survey revealed that transition arrangements between primary and secondary schools still tend to be poor, so hopefully this toolkit will help to improve the age 7-14 language learning continuum for our learners. The toolkit is currently available in French, and the Spanish and German versions will be ready soon.

• Camembear:  I've been proof-reading and helping to edit the Camembear resources from Headstart Languages.  If you teach French in EYFS or Key Stage 1, it's a really lovely scheme of work and I recommend it.

• Videos and challenges:  I've mentioned before that I've made a series of 58 videos to support children who are learning at home at the moment.  I've also added other activities and online games to support the learning.  I've also added to the website the Lumen Language Challenges, which I have been doing myself!

• New scheme of work for Key Stage 2 Spanish: I've completed what was going to be my summer holiday job of re-writing my scheme of work for Primary Spanish (read its story here!)  I started teaching it just after Christmas with my Year 3s and beginner Year 4s and so thought it needed committing to paper!  It's all uploaded to the website, and I've rearranged the existing resources to suit the new units.  I haven't deleted any resources, but what you're looking for might be in a different place now.  I've also made a lot of new resources to accompany the new scheme and have a lot more on my list.  Check the Light Bulb Languages blog to find out what's new.
  The original scheme of work documentation is all still there, in a zipped file called "Legacy Scheme".

Hopefully I will find enough to keep me busy for the rest of the summer!

Learn Spanish at home

During a normal school week I teach Spanish to over 400 children over three different schools.  It's now been 2 weeks since I saw any of them, and I'm kind of missing them!  To give them something to do while they are stuck at home I've started to make some videos to help them to learn some more Spanish and to refresh what they already know.

You'll find the resources here.  A few points to note:

• The videos cover the language in more or less the style that I would present it to the children in the classroom. 
• The videos are embedded in the webpage so that the children don't have to go onto the YouTube website if their parents don't want them to.
• Next to each video there are some suggestions of further activities that children could do to practise the same language.
• I teach Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2, so I'm starting with Year 1 content and working through.  It won't hurt some of the older ones to recap this stuff in any case!

Please feel free to share the link.