Cautiously optimistic

I've written before about the Review of the National Curriculum, the last news of which appeared just before Christmas last year.  Since then we have been waiting for further news, in particular news of the fate of languages at Key Stage 2.


A few weeks ago (during the penultimate week of May) I heard from two reliable sources that further news would be coming at the beginning of June.  I was not surprised by the timing, as it would be half term, and big news about education often seems to come out during holidays when teachers aren't in school.  


Yesterday evening this article  - Foreign languages to be compulsory from age 7 - appeared in the Telegraph (where else?!)  It states that the learning of a foreign language will become a compulsory part of primary education from 2014.


Some of the salient points from the article:

• A system in which all primary children learn a foreign language from age seven will give pupils a much stronger foundation, which they can build on in secondary school to become fluent.
  I started to learn French when I was 7.  I took O'level, A'level and S'level.  By the time I got to university I was proficient in French, but not fluent.  I was not anywhere near fluent until I returned from my year abroad, at the end of the third year of my degree.  Stating that Year 11s will become fluent is complete pie-in-the-sky, as far as I am concerned, and dangerously misleading.

• Under the plans, schools would be allowed to decide which language, modern or ancient, their pupils should be taught.
• Primary teachers will be required to focus on a single language to avoid a piecemeal approach. Personally I am very pleased about this - better to learn a lot of something and be fairly proficient than to learn lots of bits of things and end up knowing nothing.
• Secondary schools complain, however, that there is little consistency in the knowledge and skills of pupils joining from primary schools.
  The involvement of secondary schools in this new chapter for primary schools will be absolutely crucial.  If they are to build on the foundations that their primary colleagues have built, they will need to be confident that those foundations have been consistent, good quality and in an appropriate language.  Finding a solution that suits all stakeholders will be a huge challenge.

• By the age of 11, pupils will be expected to speak the language in sentences with appropriate punctuation, express simple ideas with clarity and write phrases and short sentences from memory.
• They will also be expected to understand basic grammar and be acquainted with songs and poems in the language studied.
  This links very closely to the new proposals for Literacy in KS2, as outlined in this BBC News article.  It speaks of a new emphasis on grammar, spelling, phonics and poems, all in a day's work for MFL, n'est-ce pas?  If a school chooses to teach an ancient language rather than a modern one, they may find the songs and poems part a little challenging!

• Research also suggests that being a foreign language can help to improve conversation skills and literacy in English, as well as benefit study in other subjects.
  Yes, but there are many teachers and headteachers who still haven't seen the light.  We need to continue to make the most of the cross-curricular nature of MFL.

• The announcement this week, which will be consulted on over the summer, is not expected to include any additional funding to help schools provide language lessons.
  So we shall await the Big Announcement in a few days time.  I am concerned that the consultation will take place "over the summer" - do they want teachers to be involved in this?
  Additional funding isn't needed necessarily to "help schools provide language lessons" but to train teachers and to put in place suitable schemes of work and materials, as well as to provide the crucially needed support which is now sadly absent from so many local authorities.

So, as I said at the beginning, I am cautiously optimistic.  There is a lot of work to be done in the next two years if this plan is to succeed.  For some primary schools 2014 will be very much business as usual, but for others it's going to be a long, hard climb to get to where they need to be.

The mind of a man is like a clock

"The mind of man is like a clock that is always running down, and requires to be constantly wound up."  William Hazlitt


The half term holiday is drawing to a close, and, like many other teachers out there, I'm thinking about planning for the last half term of the year.  Fortunately, nearly all of my classes will be a repetitions of lessons that I have taught in the past.  Years 5 and 6 Spanish, however, are the ones that I have to plan and make completely new stuff for, as they are the only ones nearing the end of their third year of formal Spanish learning.  We're just finishing big numbers (we've worked out that we could now count up to 999,999 if we only had the time) and will be seguing from distances between cities in Spain to reading and understanding the timetables for buses between major cities in Spain (request from Y6 teacher who takes them all for maths).  Therefore, teaching them to tell the time in Spanish will be the next step.


So earlier this afternoon, while the girls were watching Annie (Disney version) for the nth time this week, I set to thinking of possible activities for "Telling the Time" and couldn't really think of anything.  Like William Hazlitt said, my mind had run down and needed winding up.  I decided to read back through my previous blogposts to get some ideas.  I use my own blog posts a lot, just like I use MFL Sunderland all the time, mainly because all my resources are on there.


In the hope that it will be useful to someone else, here is my list of ideas for teaching telling the time, in no particular order:

• use the RecorderPen and flashcards to practise listening and understanding and build up the times
• Tarsia puzzle, dominoes or follow-me cards with pictures of clocks or digital times on one side and times in words on the other
• Timetables for data handling
• Time ballet
• Worksheet where children read the times and then draw the hands on the clocks (or vice versa)
• Teacher says a time, children use little clocks with moveable hands to make the time and hold it up
• Fling the Teacher game
• Song - I like "Un dos tres ¿qué hora es?"
• Human lines - give 5 or 6 children a written time, they line up at the front of the room and the rest of the class have to put them in chronological order
• a game of Blue Numbers
• a game of Cluedo - columns with es la, son las/number/y cuarto, y media for example.  Teacher thinks of a combination, children have to use the grid to work out that combination.  Teacher can tell them when they have 1 part right or 2 parts right.  Lots of thinking and listening involved.
• Pin-number writing frame activity to support weaker learners.  Work out times then put them on a blank clock.
• Small cards of numbers of hours and numbers of minutes etc, teacher says time and children have to hold up the right cards.  Or give cards with the words on, show a clock face and children have to hold up the right words.
• Higher/lower variation - teacher puts a time on a clock and hides it.  Children have to work together to work out the time that is on it.  Teacher can only say "más temprano" or "más tarde"

I've also had a look around for an online teaching clock for displaying random times for speaking work.  This one from Cambridge University Press is delightful.  Click "open clock" then "show panel" to select the sort of times you want it to show, then click on the cat's paw to change the time.  I also like this one from Sandfields, as there is plenty of scope for changing the settings.

I already have some worksheets that I can use, but may well use some of the online worksheet generators to make some simpler ones quickly and easily:

• apples4theteacher
• themathworksheetsite
• SEN teacher

I'll be putting any resources that I make with my other KS2 Spanish resources.

Do you have any good ways of teaching the time?

#ililc3 is on the way!

#ililc3 - ICT and Languages Conference 2013 (#ililc3) "Jailbreaking the Languages Classroom" was announced yesterday!  It will take place on 9th-10th February 2013 at the University of Southampton.  Put it in your diary now!


Keynote speakers will be Joe Dale and Isabelle Jones.


If you would like to present at the event, you can submit a proposal.  If you would like to attend, you will find more information on the Languages South-East website.


Read about the very first #ililc and this year's #ililc2.  If you are on Twitter, follow the #ililc3 hashtag for further information.


#ililc3 will be the MFL CPD event of the year - don't miss it!  I heard about it at last night's MFL Flashmeeting and am already excited!  It's the one event where I can guarantee that I will hear something new that I'll be able to use to great effect in the classroom.

Jacques a dit

This is the kit that I had with me for my Y3 French lessons this afternoon.  My Twitter followers may remember my mentioning Jack the Puppet, purchased from John Lewis in Newcastle on Sunday afternoon.  I simply could not resist his French colours!  He is now, of course, called Jacques.  I also had my four finger puppets from the same range that I have had for some time, who are now "Jacques's babies".  We were working on Olympic sports and simple opinions (c'est super, c'est pas mal and c'est nul).  Jacques said a sentence such as "La boxe, c'est nul", and the children had to use the Recorder Pen to make the cards say the same sentence.  Then they took it in turns to look after one of Jacques's babies and help the baby to say a sentence for one of the others to solve.


All very lower KS2, I know, but hopefully it will give you some ideas.  It's possible to create a smartboard activity with embedded sounds that you can use to build up sentences and which would work along similar lines.  Students get to demonstrate their understanding and they and the others hear plenty of the target language, building their confidence to use the language themselves. 

Strip for the Olympics

No, not that sort of strip!  It's sporting strips that I'm going to talk about!  (Are you one of those people who was disappointed with their first game of strip bingo?!)


My scheme of work with my 3rd-year-of-Spanish pupils for the last term and a half has been sports and weather.  I've put an Olympic slant on it all to increase pupil interest, and the resources are all here if you would like to use them.  For this new term my topic is clothing, and I knew that I wanted to look at the clothes that the Olympic athletes are going to wear.


First of all I chose two Spanish athletes who have qualified for the Olympics and who we could use as an example.  I chose Carolina Rodríguez, a rhythmic gymnast, and David Cal, a canoeist.  The children found out more about them by reading in pairs some short texts:

The children weren't familiar with rhythmic gymnastics, and weren't aware of the kind of canoeing that David Cal does.  So we watched some short video clips of them in action - this one of Carolina's routine with the hoop, and this one of David's race in Hungary.  They were amazed by Carolina's skill with the hoop and cheered David on in his race!


After that we talked about the Opening Ceremony of the Olympics and how one of its main features will be the 203 participating national teams marching into the stadium behind their national flag.  We also talked about how the team members will wear a special uniform, and I showed them a third short text which describes what the Spanish team will be wearing:

They used the dictionaries and their prior knowledge to find out what the athletes will be wearing.  


Once we had discussed the answers, we remembered the extravaganza that was the launch of the Stella McCartney designed Team GB strip.  On Monday it took me several hours of searching to find this, the only photo of the Spanish strip, designed by Russian company Bosco Sport, which was launched in November 2011:

Y6 in particular were unimpressed, and thought that the outfits looked old-fashioned (¡lo siento mucho, España!)  They immediately started to call out improvements and changes that they would make.


The final step to our lesson was for them to use the dictionaries to make a list of items of clothing that Carolina and David will need for their two sports, other than those which are pictured here.  Watching the video had helped them to see, for example, that David will need a wetsuit and Carolina will need footless tights.


And next week?  They get to design and describe in Spanish their own version of the Spanish Olympic strip.


UPDATE 05/06/12: The Spanish team's reaction to the strip, which surfaced in the Spanish press at the beginning of May, is described in this article in the Guardian.  It gives some useful background information.