Category: BritishCouncil

Last week I had the pleasure of taking part in a workshop entitled Welcome to Germany and the German speaking world being held in Durham as part of the Express Yourself North East Festival of Languages. Held at Durham University, it was organised by the British Council and the university with support from the Goethe Institut.

In the morning primary aged pupils (years 5-6) with little or no experience of German were introduced to the German speaking world via an introductory presentation by Sara Davidson, learning that German is spoken in a number of European countries but also in an African one, and discovering that some familiar things originated in the German speaking world as well as having a go at decoding some German words. Following on from that, they took part in two workshops, a language led by Frau Marshall who taught them some basic German, and a cultural workshop which I led during which they learned about and made a Schultüte.

In the afternoon, secondary school pupils (years 7-9 pre-options) were introduced to the German speaking world by the wonderful Laura Lewis from Durham University who shared some typically German concepts like Spaghettieis and Flachspüler as well as sharing information about where German is spoken and by how many people. The students then moved on to a pair of workshops – a German rap workshop with Sara and a workshop all about pioneers and influencers lead by ALL President Liz Black which ended with chocolate tasting!

In my Schultüte workshop we talked about our memories of our first day at school, in my case a looong time ago so I recalled my sons’. My lovely assistant Jonas told the children about his first day at school in Germany, throwing in the word Schultüte which led nicely into the rest of the workshop. Using information and images gathered by Marian Devons, Liz Black and me, we explored how a German (also Swiss in my experience!) Schulänger spends their first day at school, homing in on their Schultüte or enormous cone of school supplies and sweets that they receive to soften the blow of starting school. After a bit of language work during which children had a go at working out what goes into one from the German words, the children made and decorated a (small) Schultüte which was filled thanks to the Goethe Institut with all sorts of goodies like pens, badges, bracelets, Gummibärchen and stickers. The wide eyed joy of the children as they received something else to put in their Schultüte was wonderful: “I can keep it?” “I can have that as well?” “Wow! This is brilliant!” And the multiple cries of Danke and Dankeschön as they left was lovely too.

The intention is to hold further events in the next couple of terms, and some of the materials will be uploaded to the British Council website – I’ll post the link when it appears! So keep your eyes open if it’s something that you fancy for your learners.

In the meantime, if you want to do some German with your learners, do check out the Goethe Institut website and particularly Gimagine where you can find lots of resources and support. Also it’s worth looking at the UK-German Connection and Voyage Kids where you can find some fun Easter activities .

I was really pleased to be asked to present at the annual Association for Language Learning national conference, Language World. This year it was held in Kenilworth with the title Languages – a unique ingredient of learning. There were several threads running through the weekend including parental engagement, AI, transition and international partnerships. It was on that latter topic that my presentation focussed.

My talk was on Saturday afternoon, and over the preceding 36 hours I attended several presentations that celebrated and promoted international links including one by Jane Harvey and Richard Tallaron of LFEE entitled International projects in schools? Yes we can! as well as a session delivered by Almudena Martinez entitled Celebrating multilingualism – supporting home and community languages. In addition, conversations with exhibitors and other delegates meant that I was adding to my presentation until the last moment and ended up with too much to say in the given time. Therefore, as well as uploading my slides, I’ve made a recording of my presentation (click the image.) All the links in the PDF are clickable but I’ve added a few key ones below.

Lisa Stevens – Promoting International links – a practical guide PDF

Here are some key links:
British Council video
British Council Partner Finder
Global Schools Alliance
UK -German Connection (partnerships) Survey I mentioned is here
LFEE
GSA Student Council
International School Award
Global School Award
Turing funding
Taith (For Wales)
Languages in Primary Schools FB group
Last year’s presentation

Please feel free to ask questions in the comments below, in the comments on the video, via email or on social media. And if you attend the GSA 5th birthday event in Liverpool, please say hello!

Since I last wrote a post, I’ve presented three times about international links!

In November I was pleased to speak, along with Vicky Gough of the British Council, to the ALL Portsmouth Primary Hub about Making international links to motivate our young linguists and celebrate their achievements. My contribution was summarised as:
Lisa took us on a whistle-stop tour of the many different projects she has been involved in over the past twelve years or so.  What shone through was the positive impact these experiences have had on all involved – pupils, teaching and school staff and parents.  Senior management have increasingly recognised the value of these projects and prioritised them within school planning.  Comments from pupils and colleagues, and more formal statements from school leaders, provide testimony to their success. 

In December I was invited to deliver a keynote at TMMFLIcons entitled International links and developing young linguists. I knew that 15 minutes was tight to say all that I wanted so I summarised the benefits/outcomes on the 3rd slide!

Even so, I still struggled to fit in everything I wanted to say so I wrote a summary of my points to share. You can download and read it below! If you want to see what was said and catch up with the recording, have a look at the @tmmflicons Twitter feed

And a couple of weeks ago, I spoke at Language World in Sheffield. Once more I packed in as much as I could into the time allocated, and still had more to say as I am passionate about sharing my experiences but also about the incredible value of international links and the impact it’s had on our school community.

After a bit of editing, I’m happy to share my presentation but I’m afraid that the file is too big to upload; you can however view it here or, if you attended Language World 2023, on the conference website.

I am really passionate about the international dimension, the power of links between schools around the world and the beauty of collaborating. Yes, it sometimes leaves me exhausted juggling and negotiating so that everything is done but it’s so worth it to see the impact on the staff, school, community and, of course, the pupils. Whilst some opportunities are no longer available to us and I still mourn for their loss, it’s not going to stop me. There are still ways to make links and work in collaboration with others and I will continue to search for more!

There’s a list in the summary document but a few to highlight:
If you are looking for a school for collaborations such as penpals or exchanges, particularly a French one, you can try Match My School.
The British Council has School Connect and also Partner Finding tools to help you find links and help them grow.
And the Global Schools Alliance helps create, maintain and develop links with schools all over the world.

It’s also worth exploiting any links you have as a school community, and also looking to see if your town/city has a twin TownTwinning.

If you want to find out more about the WCPS International Journey, have a look at the International section of the school website and/or our Erasmus+ blog. And please feel free to contact me to ask questions or for advice via the comments, via LiPS or Twitter.

I’ll leave you with a couple of comments and a sketchnote (thanks Clare!)

Speaking a language confidently and coherently is an important part of the curriculum in the United Kingdom. However, the impact of Covid-19 has meant that many pupils have had fewer opportunities to speak the languages they are learning.  Therefore, the Association for Language Learning, the British Council and the cultural and linguistic bodies in the United Kingdom have combined efforts to devise an exciting event entitled ‘Express Yourself in Lockdown’.

This will be an opportunity to showcase language learners’ enjoyment of a language that they are learning or that is normally used in their home community from home (except for English*!). 

Language learners can prepare:

• A short poem in the target language (written by themselves or by another author)
• A short presentation on any theme e.g. climate change, equality, why I love languages
• A short sketch
• A short dialogue

This can be a solo or joint performance but should be no longer than 90 seconds in total and should be recorded in landscape mode. The participants will record themselves delivering their performance, however participants who are under-16 should use either PowerPoint slides/Bitmoji/other pictures or video imagery rather than showing their faces.

Teachers can then upload the performances to a teacher or school Twitter, Instagram or YouTube account with the hashtag #CelebrateSpeaking and the language chosen (e.g. #French) by 28 February 2021. [*If your pupil speaks EAL, they may enter in English BUT you must add #EAL so it’s clear!] Don’t forget to tag @Schools_British  on Twitter or @BritishCouncil  on Instagram when sharing your entry.

You can find out more about the initiative (including helpful tips!) here http://bit.ly/36lnGYz

At one of my schools, I spent the lesson before the half term break focusing on a poem written by Clare Seccombe from her brilliant new resource Poesía. As well as working on the meaning and using them to further the children’s understanding, I also invited children to read along with me as I read, and then, if they wished, to record it and submit it as part of their Teams Assignment for that week. We’ll see how many I receive!

One young lady at my other school decided to record her rewritten version of The Very Hungry Caterpillar 🐛 – El Monstruo Muy Hambriento – and agreed for me to share it. You can see and hear it below. I was gobsmacked at her accent given that we have been learning remotely since Christmas and she has had no live lessons, just a couple of videos of me reading La Oruga Muy Hambrienta.

I'm a very proud Spanish teacher today. Layla in Y4 decided to read her version of El Monstruo Hambriento. Listen to her Spanish accent! All done remotely having listened to me reading La Oruga Hambrienta #celebratespeaking #Spanish @ALL4language @Schools_British pic.twitter.com/gm9Eo7fn34

— Welford Primary (@WelfordPrimary) February 10, 2021

Over the next few days I’ll be sharing some other poems that you might use for the challenge. Don’t forget, adults can join in too!

Last night I attended a webinar hosted by ALL London with the British Council to launch the Language Trends survey for 2021.

Language Trends is a yearly report that discusses the state of language learning in England and is written by Ian Collen of Queens University, Belfast. It’s a really important report on language learning at primary and secondary level in England that is published and read at high level by government and policy makers. The more responses they get, the better the picture of language learning across the country as it is informed by the results of a survey sent to schools.

The Language Trends survey 2021 is being emailed to schools this week. It’ll be sent to the public email of your school – often the HT or enquiry@ Last year, it was notable that the responses tended to come from schools in more ‘affluent’ areas statistics wise (eg lower than average FSM) so it would be good to have a wider breadth of data this time. Ian Collen, the author of the report, wants to hear all about what’s going on in primary schools. One of last year’s finding was that “Primary Languages are embedded in policy but not in practice.” Therefore, if you ARE putting policy into practice, this is an opportunity to share all the wonderful things that are going on.

If you are asked to fill it in, please do! If you aren’t, email the Head and ask them to do it, or offer to do it for them! It’ll take you about 15 minutes. The deadline is 29th January which is very soon!!

If you’d like to read last year’s report, you can find it (and other research into language learning in the UK) on the British Council website Language Trends 2020 or it’s below in PDF,

Yesterday I visited London in my role as a British Council Schools Ambassador to meet up with other ambassadors, reflect on last year and look to the future.

Throughout the day I sketchnoted the sessions, a variety of presentations giving information and sharing of international projects carried out in schools, clusters and organisations. Below are the results; I did tweet as I went along, but decided to retake the photos as they had shadows on them!

It was an interesting and inspiring day, and I hope that the notes give you a taste of the day, and what a wonderful thing international work is!

I spent this past weekend in Nottingham at the 12^th eTwinning UK National Conference held at The DeVere Jubilee Conference Centre – always the NCSL to me though! The name of the venue might have changed but the sense of community, fun and learning never varies, and once more I came away inspired, energised and still laughing at onions, pants and Bollywood Maori dance moves.

The theme this year was inclusion and below are my sketchnotes from the sessions I attended. Lots to reflect on and many ideas forming already.

If you want to find out more about eTwinning or any of the other British Council programmes including the International School Award or ISA, feel free to ask questions using the comments below or the contact form. I am a British Council Ambassador and would love to help!

Professor Sonia Blandford – Achievement for All

An interesting session on Lyfta, a Finnish designed VR and AR resource to facilitate global awareness and empathy.

Manju Patel-Nair – Diversity in the global classroom; beyond the single story

Andy Cope – The Art of Being Briliiant
Amazingly motivating session – being a #2%er in my special pants.

Jo Speak talks passionately about Inclusive Pedagogies

Paddy Carroll shares about The F word – failure, and how his project worked on developing resilience through learning from failure.

Joe Dale shares how to use Clips by Apple as well as Autodraw (a web tool) and a number of other apps.

Walking the walk as well as talking the talk, I’ve tidied up my sketch notes from Nottingham and the National eTwinning Conference, added references that I needed to look up and completed quotations that I’d not managed to finish.

They’re presented below in chronological order. I hope that they give you a taste of the weekend’s sessions if not the atmosphere of communication, collaboration and celebration of all things eTwinning. If you have any questions, please leave me a comment and I’ll try and answer them!

Opening thoughts from Susan Linklater and the NSS.

Keynote by Rohan Guntillake about digital wellbeing, and the connection between mindfulness and technology.

Drew Buddie talked about how you might use Microbits in the curriculum and in projects.

Participants in a recent PDW reflect on their experiences.

eTwinning, digital literacy and beyond – a presentation by José Mour Carvalho about society, technology and the need for awareness to lead to action.

Ray Chambers talks about Minecraft in education; lots of ideas of how Minecraft can be used in curricular projects.

Joe Dale’s session on Green screening – very practical but tried hard to take notes too 😉

by InkyEllieC www.inkythinking.com

This weekend I’ve been in Nottingham at the NCL (I think that’s what it’s now called!) for the National eTwinning Conference. “Interesting” given the events on Friday but also good timing as I can’t think of anywhere I’d rather have been at such a time, reaffirming the joy and value of collaboration.

After several requests following fascination with my sketchnoting at last year’s conference, I volunteered to lead a seminar on sketch noting, thus completing my busy week with a third presentation. You can see a very similar presentation on my Slideshare channel here. I also sketchnoted as many sessions as I could, trying not to be intimidated by the wonderful @inkythinking InkyEllieC from inkythinking.com who was provided ‘real time graphic animation’ of the event.

I’ll post my sketchnotes as soon as I’ve had time to tidy them up (not a spare moment all weekend!) as well as my reflections on the event. A hint: I had a great time!