Below is a press release from CILT / CfBT – interesting stuff!

CfBT Education Trust to provide curriculum support for languages

International education charity CfBT Education Trust has been selected as the preferred provider of curriculum support for languages in primary and secondary schools in England. The contract from the Department of Education (DfE) runs until March 2013.

Neil McIntosh, Chief Executive of CfBT Education Trust, said: “We are
delighted at the success of our proposal. It marks the beginning of a
renewed emphasis on support for languages in schools. CfBT’s record of
success in school improvement, partnering with CILT’s considerable assets
and expertise, developed over many years of service to the languages
community, has proved a winning combination.

“We aim to work with organisations and individuals across the country who
share our passion and ambition for languages. We are determined to
ensure that the resource provided by the government achieves maximum
impact on schools and learners.”

Kathryn Board, Head of CILT, added: “Both primary and secondary schools
continue to need high quality support. This support is essential to sustain
and develop languages in the curriculum and raise the numbers of young
people taking languages to GCSE and beyond. Our proposal is to develop
new models of mutual support within the new structures for teacher training
and CPD. This will underpin the drive for an improvement in languages.”

I’m pleased to say that before I leave these shores, I will be speaking for one last time (for now!) on October 1st in London.  Details are below, including the programme and the application form to complete. Great value for money at £25!

Talleres de formación de la Consejería de Educación

Sábado 1 de octubre de 2011: talleres para profesores de primaria
Sábado 8 de octubre de 2011: talleres para profesorado de secundaria
Lugar: Colegio Español Vicente Cañada Blanch, 317 Portobello Road, London W105SZ
Los programas y hojas de inscripción están publicados en nuestra página WEB:
http://www.educacion.gob.es/reinounido/convocatorias-programas/formacion-profesorado.html
Plazo de inscripción: hasta el 26 de septiembre.
Coste de la inscripción, incluido almuerzo y materiales: 25 libras por persona
Os esperamos.

Spanish workshops

The Consejería de Educación are organizing their Spanish Workshops.
Saturday October 1st: Spanish workshops for Primary teachers
Saturday October 8th: Spanish workshops for Secondary teachers
Venue: Colegio Español Vicente Cañada Blanch, 317 Portobello road, London W105SZ
Programmes and application forms are available at: http://www.educacion.gob.es/reinounido/convocatorias-programas/formacion-profesorado.html
Registration will take place until September 26th
Cost: 25 pounds, including lunch and materials
We look forward to welcoming you

Application Form Primary

Primary Workshops

Application Form Secondary

Secondary Workshops

Posted this on my school website on Friday – thought I’d share it here too because I’m very very pleased!! 

We have just received some wonderful news to start the new academic year – Whitehouse Common Primary has been awarded the Full International School Award.

The British Council website says that “the Full International School Award accreditation is for schools that have successfully embedded internationalism into parts of the curriculum and whole school ethos.” We are very proud that all the exciting things we do at WCPS to look beyond our immediate surroundings and appreciate the lives, culture and beliefs of others has been recognised in this way, and we will proudly display the logo – and certificate when it arrives!

Thank you to everyone who contributed to achieving the award – our partner schools in Barcelona, India and Birmingham, all the visitors who have shared their experiences with us, the parents and families who share in our international work by showing an interest (and especially those who kindly sent letters in support of our application) and of course, most of all the staff and pupils of Whitehouse Common who participate in all the activities which such enthusiasm, interest and joy.

Great way to start the school year – an inspiring INSET day with not a dress code, health and safety lecture or mission statement in sight.

Alan Peat, addressing the subject Raising writing standards and motitvating reluctant writers was EXCELLENT! He engaged the room all day long; noone was muttering, noone was fidgetting and at the end of the day there was unanimity about the value of the day (rare indeed as every group has at least one or two cynics)

I tweeted all day – here are (most of) my tweets. Unfortunately they start at the end and work back through the day! But I think you can tell my thoughts on the day by the final tweet – which appears first!

And here are my notes – do they make sense? Possibly! I’ll attempt to expand!

Alan Peat  www.alanpeat.com

A blank sheet is scary
Games based approaches are not a waste of time – they are vital.
Bite sized chunks are best and *DBW and decontextualised drilling should be avoided at all costs (* death by worksheet)

Brainbreaks or brain warm ups are anything that has nothing to do with the task – NOT braingym which is a big fib.

Games based approaches
Staircase
Build a chain as a staircase
Lateral thinking – bans the obvious
Across word
Sets of letters – first and last
1 pt for adding one letter; 2pt for 2 etc
*the anecdotal sticks in the mind* makes the less engaging more palatable
Glidogram
1st letter, 2nd letter, 3rd letter, 2nd letter, 1st letter

Aardvark

pArrot

snAke

jAguar

Antelope

rally
Like a staircase but harder! Last 2 letters of the word – you need to think ahead so you don’t break the chain

I found the OULIPO concept by Raymond Queneau fascinating. The idea that constraints are needed for creativity seems very contrary but when you think about it, some constraint actually makes you think! Some examples follow –

lipogram  – ban a letter of the alphabet

eg ban the a in

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall …. All the King’s horses and all the King’s men

and it beomes ..

Humpty Dumpty perched on the brick construction … Every one of the King’s horses plus every one of the King’s men.

A book that demonstrates / celebrates? this is “Ella minnow pea” by Mark Dunn

Hendecasyllabic
11 syllable sentences

I like sausages becomes I really like juicy, sizzling sausages.  Great for recognising syllables as well as being creative with language. And an activity that could easily be used in language teaching – in Spanish, syllables are different!

Rashomon effect
examples include Akutagawa – At the grove ;  Anthony Browne – Voices in the park;  Hoodwinked

Same story from different perspectives

Beyond acrostics
Where do you go from basic acrostic?
Hidden acrostic– word as 2nd letter
Telestich– word as last letter
Tele-acro – word as start and finish of sentence

(I tried these out on my son when he was bored the other day – he loved the challenge!)

Genre modification
See below.

I loved this idea as it is very supportive, is a useful ‘working wall’ with context, and also because it provides assessment at start and finish without fuss!

Wordless storybooks

I loved this too as one of my favourite actvities as a kid was making up stories about what’s happening in a picture – in fact, i loved the bit of my Spanish exam. where I had to do that!

Monosyllabic – rewrite texts in monosyllables – it’s very tricky. We tried with Little Red Riding Hood. Again, constraint lead to creative thinking as we thought of ways to avoid syllables!

Yoked sentences – last word of first sentence starts second sentence then last of second the third etc A good tool for persuasive writing.

One word at a time storytelling

Like storytelling ping pong! Yout hink you know where the story is going then your partner throws in an unexpected word and you need to rethink! Makes you listen! http://www.alanpeat.com/resources/listening.html

Plot skeleton – using one skeleton ie the bare bones of the story, and adapt for another genre – genius!

If you Google Citation of a phrase / word, it gives usage and when first used v useful!

7 key pedagogical approaches which underpin effective teaching of non-fiction writing
1.linked to real experience GGM – growing going and making
2.fictionalise it
3.link to books being read in class
4.link to pupils’ interests – know your pupils
5. Use talk/oracy as start
6.maximise cross-curricular links
7.ensure breadth of real purposes and audiences

A quotation I loved from the day was

“to be creative you need a body of knowledge to accept modify and reject”

I (sadly) got over excited with the quotation and didn’t note down who said it :o(

And also sadly, at this point I became so engrossed in the course that I stopped taking notes digitally and started scribbling!

However, one thing I’ll share is that the nailing down of level appropriate prompts for genre types was a very valuable activity – a good point that learners shouldn’t have to relearn the structure of genres according to their teacher’s way of putting it – why not have a common lexis?

Another thing I thought was great – and would again be easily used for language learning, is the sentence structuring activity Alan described for use with those who aren’t yet reading.

You pick a card from each envelope to ‘write’ phrases – and then sentences.

And another activity I loved was based on The Ultimate Alphabet by Mike Wilks.

Look at the image below. It is the B page. How many things beginning with B can you find? My partner and I got 70 in our 3 minutes.

And finally – it wouldn’t be at all like me if I didn’t mention technology of some kind – and Alan was on my page. He mentioned Twitter – and made me blush by mentioning that i followed him and had loads of followers! And Wordle – www.wordle.com – so excited when staff around me said ‘Oh, you showed us that Lisa!’ – hurrah, I’m not a freak now! E-pals – www.epals.com was another recommendation – look for classes around the world studying the same things as you and share your learning. Alan also advocated using Skype – tick!  And then a new one on me – Padworx. Checking that out now!

To summarise my thoughts – I thoroughly enjoyed the day because it challenged, encouraged, inspired and confirmed. Alan obviously believes passionately in learning being an enjoyable activity and that that is the best way of getting the best out of learners. I admire the fact he is inspired by and champions ‘normal’ teachers who are in the classroom, and that he is obviously an practical educator at heart rather than a theorist. I loved the fact that so many of the ideas were so easily transferred to learning languages. And he loves his iPad too so must be a good bloke ;o)

Find out more at www.alanpeat.com or follow @alanpeat on Twitter.

Thanks to Jen Turner for telling me about this fun site on which you can make a jigsaw puzzle of any image, specifiying the number and shape of pieces as well as difficulty.
To demonstrate, I’ve made a couple that could be used for Spanish cultural awareness.

20 Roscón de Reyes

30 Sardana

Zachary Jones’ site Zambombazo is a great source of inspiration for all things Hispanic.

And I love it because it proves time and again that there is always something to learn about a language you thought you knew quite well.

I’m often challenged by pupils when I can’t recall the word for ‘meerkat’ or ‘spark plug’ that ‘you’re supposed to know Spanish’ to which I reply I don’t know every word in English. Especially when it comes to colloquial useage. I mean, my son tells me that when he says soemthing is ‘sickage’, that’s great. I’m not so sure…

So, I particularly like this map that Zachary has made – ¿Cómo se dice ‘cool’ en español?

As he points out in his post, the answer to that question depends on lots of factors including the country or even region you’re in, your socioeconomic status as well as your age. The post also offers ideas on how you might use the map to increase vocabulary, to encourage intercultural discussion and to promote discussion of current linguistic useage.

Just found this interesting infographic about the relationship between learning languages and your brain.

The bottom section about the optimum age for your brain to be most efficient at language learning is a strong case for Primary Languages (hurrah!) but not such good news for my attempts to learn German (boo!). It doesn’t say you can’t learn a langage when you’re old. Er. Although I will very shortly head off their scale…

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One of the aspects of our Comenius Regio project that I have particularly enjoyed and that has given me great pleasure is the change in perceptions about being ‘foreign’ and by extension different.

Although pupils at WCPS are bright, and have had some contact with children in Spain previously, many still thought that every town in Spain was near a beach, that it was always hot, and that everyone steak and chips whilst speaking English. Their idea of a Spanish person was a lady with dark hair wearing a sevillanas dress or Lionel Messi (who isn’t Spanish!)

As one of the strands of the project was Intercultural Understanding, challenging and changing these perceptions has been key to the success of the project.

As pupils have met teachers from Barcelona in person, and children from Els Pins via Skype, and asked them questions, many things have dawned on them – for example,we all wear similar clothes, our food isn’t so different although we eat at different times and that we have many interests in common like sport and the environment. It’s also been noted that, whilst they do speak English quite well, people in Spain speak Spanish , but people in Barcelona also speak Catalan.

Now that we’re more aware about Spain- and India through Connecting Classrooms, being ‘different’ has become cool and there are several pupils who would never have ‘owned up’ to having another first language who are now wanting to share.

There’s always further to go of course and whilst this infographic is deliberately provocative, how many of the ‘perceptions’ can be identified as not just being held by Americans?

If we were to draw a similar map based on our perceptions, what would it look like?

Might be interesting to ask learners what they know and think, and then set about challenging the accuracy of their perceptions.

 

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August 1st is Swiss National Day and across Switzerland people are celebrating with parades, parties and fireworks.

A couple of years ago, we arrived in Interlaken just as the parades began meaning we were stuck at the station for a couple of hours (we weren’t that bothered!) (see Animoto above!)

And 19 years ago I first conversed with a certain John Stevens as we watched the men of Oberwald in the Swiss Valais ‘ga-donging’ huge bells hung around their waists as they paraded down the street. A twisted ankle, a trip to Interlaken, a broken down bus and a swimming pool- the rest is history.

However, there’s another reason why I highight Swiss National Day this year.

Tomorrow marks the real start of an adventure which is very exciting but also rather scary!

You see, I’m moving to Switzerland. Tomorrow, my husband goes to start his new job (the reason for the move) and I’ll follow with the boys later in the year once school, housing etc are sorted. We’ll be living near Zürich so I’ve started learning German (you may have noticed if you follow me on Twitter!)

So next year, watch out for the picture of me ‘ga-donging’ and blowing my alpine horn with the best of them!

Interesting how different colours mean different things according to culture.

For example, no 16 – death – is represented by black in Western / American, Native American and Japanese or white in Hinduism and Chinese but silver in Muslim culture and green in South America.

Would make quite a fun activity finding similarities and differences.

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