Category: secondary languages

Some of you may recall a blog post in July about a group from English Martyrs School and Sixth Form College, Hartlepool, winning Company of the Year and Most Creative Company of the Year in the Young Enterprise in the NorthEast sponsored by The Arts Council NorthEast for their product LanguAges.

For those who don’t, here’s a brief recap from the group ;

Our company, LanguAges, provides educational resources to aid the teaching and learning of French in primary schools at Key Stage 2. We have created a compilation of three different games, The Clothes Game, The Class Card Game and The Shopping Game, and an Interactive CD, which form the LanguAges Pack.

All of our games are tailored to be fun, yet educational, comprehensively covering the Key Stage 2 curriculum, and helping to improve vital comprehension and speaking skills.

Having tested the product and marketed it to Stockton schools, all schools in Hartlepool should now have a copy of the materials.

A representative from the Hartlepool local authority, Tom Argument, said: “Their materials are creative, fun, very practical, and of a high quality. The group present themselves in a business-like manner and have real entrepreneurial potential.”

The group went on to discuss the future-

We realise that LanguAges has a huge amount of potential, and are currently investigating the many options available to us. Several possibilities are being considered, such as selling the idea, or even continuing the company even after the Young Enterprise Company Programme is over.

The prospect of mass producing the LanguAges Pack and even expanding the range to include a variety of other modern foreign languages is a very exciting one.

Today I received news from their (very proud) teacher, Madame Welsh, about LanguAges.

An update….they did brilliantly well at the National Finals, winning the Award for Financial Management. They are working with a company http://www.tts-group.co.uk/ to market their product further afield! They make me so proud!

So well done once more to the LanguAges team for their continuing success – a great example of language learning going hand in hand with other areas of the curriculum.

And a pat on the back to TTS for seeing the potential of the product. TTS is currently one of my favourite school shopping places so I’ll be watching out for the arrival of the products!

Just been checking my e-mails and came across one from Helen Myers that I thought I might share with you!  

In response to a request for a song about pets in French, Helen posted - 
To the national anthem: (thanks to Rachel Hawkes for reminder of this .. I think it originates from a CILT Pathfinder / Steven Fawkes) ...

A Tweet from Spanishblog advised me to check out Profeland, la web para el profesor de español. And, as I’m an obedient girlie, off I popped to see what it was about. I must admit that i haven’t had time to look at it in depth and much of it seems to be great for older learners with comprehensions and reviews, but not much for Primary pupils…

…apart from

As the blurb says –
An “instructional” video teaching the use of the verb “Gustar”. Can you find the errors???

Now there’s a challenge ;o)

The lovely Joe Dale sent me the link to this video on Teachertube today – thought I might find it interesting. And I did, so I thought I’d share it with you too.

Adorable Spanish Elementary Plays is described as

High School Spanish students perform The Three Bears, Snow White, and Little Red Riding Hood plays for area elementary students.

The sound isn’t brilliant but the idea is clear – older pupils have worked on a play to present to younger pupils from neighbouring schools. This is an idea for transition that I love. It benefits both groups of pupils – excellence and enjoyment, anyone? The older pupils get to plan script practice and perform the play, using language they know and also stretching their vocabularies; the younger pupils are familiar with the story so don’t need to understand every word to be able to follow the plot. Both groups have fun, and links are made between the Key Stages, making ‘moving on’ easier for pupils – and potentially for their teachers too.

It’s good to see what can be done with a bit scenery, imagination and a good smattering of Spanish!

There are other videos from sparkenthusiasm that I’ve discovered via this one – more of those tomorrow :o)

I have made no secret of my love of puppets as evidenced by various blog posts over the last nine months and several dodgy pictures floating around the blogosphere. So a post on Linguahelp captured my attention.

I hadn’t discovered the Linguahelp blog before, probably because my school doesn’t subscribe to Linguascope. However, my Google alerts today included a link to the most recent post entitled Gimmick sites to help in the MFL classroom and it made lots of sense to me. I’m always up for finding innovative and captivating ways of engaging language learners so the idea of using the Iceland Socks site seemed appealing – and I tried it out!

I followed the advice offered on Linguahelp –

The idea is simple – you build up a mini ‘film’ using sock puppets, subtitles and a series of animated locations, which you can then email to friends – but the usefulness to language learning is immediately apparent. The puppets speak a ‘Pingu-esque’ nonsense chatter, which is made into intelligible dialogue by the user. Students could use the site to build up practice dialogues in a very up-to-date, hi-tech fashion – instead of potentially awkward and embarrassing role-play in class, they can create YouTube style cartoons full of the language they are learning. To top this, the resulting ‘films’ can then be emailed to the teacher for checking later! Not perhaps the original intention of the site designers, but a fun adaptation to liven up the lesson.

and you can see the results of my first attempt by clicking on the title, Lucía and Miguel go to Iceland.

In fact, it was so much fun, I made another! Mimi and Roberto go to Iceland.

And I’ll probably make more!

Feel free to leave me links to your videos in the comments box – would love to see what others dream up!

Photo by zen
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License

Posts have been a bit sparse recently as the frantic end of term rush took over! Sports days, Year 6 leaving plays, Performance Management meetings and generally tying up loose ends got in the way of blogging. However, the holidays are here, and I’m hoping to make up for my failings over the next few weeks.

I noticed a couple of articles last week about schools in the news – Halesowen school wins award for languages and Loving languages on which I wanted to comment.

The first report is congratulating Earls High School in Halesowen (not too far from here!) on winning a European Award for Languages for their project , Project Croissant where older pupils from the High School mentor younger (primary) children through a weekly afterschool club.

I think this is a brilliant way of making links between local schools and of raising the profile of languages. I also think it’s great that the older pupils are given responsibility for activities etc and, through the project, are gaining life skills. And the activities are very appealing too! Now onder they won an award!

The second article also highlights links between phases, this time in Portishead in Somerset. Pupils at Gordano School visited St Joseph’s Primary School and taught them songs in french, Spanish and German as part of a project called Raise the Roof with Languages. Again, an activity that shows how older pupils can ‘teach’ younger pupils, making links and promoting languages. And the older pupils volunteered to help!

This kind of project is a brilliant model for encouraging language learning – not just for primary but for secondary. It’s really important to make and maintain links between phases, particularly as the Primary Languages Framework increasingly impacts on Key Stage 3 and 4.

So well done Earls High and Gordano Schools!

Whilst checking my Google alerts for MFL a couple of weeks ago, I noticed a news article about Young Enterprise in the NorthEast. And as I read, I was excited to see that I knew the school whose virtues were being extolled.

Lesley Welsh, AST and SSAT LP, is the Madame Welsh referred to in the article, and it is pupils at her school, English Martyrs Schol and Sixth form College in Hartlepool, who have won not only Company of the Year but also Most Creative Company of the Year in the awards sponsored by the Arts Council North East to reward an innovative and creative way of running business.

Here the group from English Martyrs explain –

Our company, LanguAges, provides educational resources to aid the teaching and learning of French in primary schools at Key Stage 2. We have created a compilation of three different games, The Clothes Game, The Class Card Game and The Shopping Game, and an Interactive CD, which form the LanguAges Pack.

All of our games are tailored to be fun, yet educational, comprehensively covering the Key Stage 2 curriculum, and helping to improve vital comprehension and speaking skills.

The initial idea around which our product is based sprung from a discussion with our business adviser in which we discovered that, as of next year, it will become compulsory for all primary schools to teach a modern foreign language at Key Stage 2. This meant that there would definitely be a market for teaching and learning tools.

We then sold more than £100 worth of shares in our company to get us up and running, which allowed us to design and develop our own prototype games. We tested these in several classes across Key Stages 2 and 3, and realised the LanguAges Pack was bound to be a great success.

Indeed the team has gone from strength to strength, selling several packs, and scooping up the ‘Best Sales and Marketing’ award at the MetroCentre Trade Fair, then going on to gain an order for 12 packs from Stockton Schools and ultimately securing a contract for 34 packs via the Hartlepool Local Authority.

This means that at the start of the next academic year, every Primary School in Hartlepool will have a full LanguAges pack – a true achievement for any company!

Furthermore, we have impressed pupils, parents and teachers alike. In fact the representative from the Hartlepool local authority, Tom Argument, said about us: “Their materials are creative, fun, very practical, and of a high quality. The group present themselves in a business-like manner and have real entrepreneurial potential.”

Our sales revenue is nearly £2,000 which has generated a healthy profit. Shareholders will receive at least a 100% return on their investment, and LanguAges will make a donation to charity from the net profit. However, we, as the directors, will be receiving a well-earned director’s bonus!

Young Enterprise has opened our eyes to the world of business. We learnt about the different departments of a company and the importance of each. Since our product was very time consuming and labour intensive it was essential that we learnt time and resource management. This was the first time many of us worked in a large group, therefore this experience enabled us to gain valuable team working skills. We learnt that communication and problem solving are two of the most vital components for the success of a business.

Of the many highs involved in the running of LanguAges, the development of our sense of team camaraderie has certainly been one of the most enjoyable. The shared responsibilities and experiences have led to solid professional relationships and firm friendships. These particularly flourished during the creative process of developing our product, which we all found both testing and fascinating.

Of course, one of the biggest thrills of business is the pursuit and accomplishment of sales, and this we enjoyed thoroughly with some of the team finding their niche in enthusiastic and mostly successful sales pitches. However, the extensive manual labour involved in the production of our product has at times been difficult to manage, but with close and effective teamwork, this challenge has been overcome.

Our hard work and determination has been recognised with a number of awards. As well as winning ‘Best Sales and Marketing’ at the MetroCentre Trade Fair, we also won Best Company Report at the Tees Valley Area Finals.

We have furthermore very recently forged strong links with an international company, who are acting as business advisers and supporters after appreciating LanguAges’ potential as a viable commercial product at the Area Finals. Working with them has been hugely beneficial and we look forward to the possibilities that this connection will lead to.

We realise that LanguAges has a huge amount of potential, and are currently investigating the many options available to us. Several possibilities are being considered, such as selling the idea, or even continuing the company even after the Young Enterprise Company Programme is over.

The prospect of mass producing the LanguAges Pack and even expanding the range to include a variety of other modern foreign languages is a very exciting one. We also appreciate that there is much scope to produce games, not only for younger or older students, but even for companies who wish to train their staff. After all, you have to think big to be big!

Needless to say, as a company, we have shown creative flair, dedication, and determination to reach the top. We have all greatly enjoyed the valuable experience that is the Young Enterprise Company Programme, and have learnt so much throughout the process. The experience and skills acquired will be invaluable to us in the future, whichever careers we choose to pursue.

So, congratulations to Faye Greason, Gayatri Sivakumar, Sreenag Krishnamoorthy, Jennifer Laws, Joseph Harrison, Charanya Ravi, Stuart Christie, Katie Wheelhouse, Francesca Tosson and Mariusz Cichomski, and of course to Madame Welsh and Linda Ward.

What a great idea – no wonder they won awards by the bucket load! And I will be very interested to follow the progress of the group -hopefully thye will expand the project to other languages and market it outside of the North East. As they say – every school in England could potentially use the product!!

Subtitle-

Better late than never!

It’s a week since Language World and I have sat down each day intending to blog about it, but everytime I’ve had to do something else first and the post hasn’t materialised. It’s not that I haven’t got anything to say, it’s more that there was so much to assimilate that it’s not something I could do in five minutes! Anyway – here are my impressions.

Kathy Wickstead shared thoughts on the new KS3 curriculum – things that stood out for me were Sir Christopher Maynard’s comment that ‘it’s inviting teachers to be bold’ and also Kathy’s parting comment – ‘we’re being offered an opportunity with this new curriculum – can we afford NOT to take it?’ Check out www.all.nsc.org.uk for all you need to know about the new secondary curriculum for languages – worth it for primary language teachers too so as to understand ‘what happens next’. On the same (ish) subject, Mick Waters spoke really clearly and sensibly about the new curriculum and the ‘big picture’. He seems so passionate and completely committed to the vision of a modern world class curriculum that it’s not hard to catch his vision.

Ewan McIntosh once more challenged and inspired me with his ideas on using technology in language teaching. This time, Thinking out of the XBox suggested ways in which gaming might be used to inspire and encourage creativity in the language classroom. My son was particularly looking forward to me attending this seminar as I bought a Nintendo DS last year following Ewan’s seminar at Language world and he was hoping for a similar result this year, possibly a Wii? Alas for 9 year old, no such recommendation, but he is awaiting the arrival of Myst and Nintendogs from Amazon, and has had a good nose at Samorost (he’s become my chief researcher ;o) Using clips from Youtube and Tim Rylands’ website, Ewan made a great case for being innovative and creative, tapping into what pupils are familiar with and enjoy with the purpose of achieving a greater variety and richness of learning experience and outcome. Check out his blog for his notes – and much more to make you think!

Wendy Adeniji as always shared some brilliant ideas and resources for making the language classroom interactive and fun, specifically based on Rhymes songs and sounds to teach phonics.
Wendy showed how simple rhymes can be learned off by heart and recited, and links made with other vocabulary that contains specific phonemes. I always look forward to wnedy’s seminars as her ideas are easy to implement and very practical.
She recommended a number of artists’ music; for French, Ilona Mitrecy and Henri Des as well as the adorable Pigloo! For Spanish she suggested José Luis Orozco and for German, Detlef Jöcker and Rolf Zuckowski.

Bev Whiteside, Development coordinator for Languages and Sport from the Youth Sports Trust presented on making links between sports and language. A language teacher before joining the YST, Bev talked about the obvious attractions and benefits of sport and the potential links that could be made in terms of skills, values, pedagogy and context. She presented some brief case studies to demonstrate each point, ranging from teaching handball through Spanish, the Young Language Leaders award, creating a fitness DVD in French prior to a skiing trip and a subtitled video giving information about healthy eating and sporting facilities. You can read about some of Bev’s work in a book published by YST.

Day 2 brought Steven Fawkes’ Language Learners being creative with language, including sign language, Russian numbers with actions ( I tried it out on a Russian pupil I teach and she was impressed!) and things to do with a pear! Learned lots and had a good giggle too -the mysterious disappearance of Steven’s trousers last year featured large too – perhaps they’re the same place as my hairbrush that disappeared in Oxford?? There’s a chorister somewhere with very well groomed hair ;o)

I was also pleased to hear an update on the videoconferencing project at Tile Hill Wood in Coventry where Ana Neofitou delivers language lessons to local primaries via a videolink. I attended a session last year introducing the project which seems a very effective way of building capacity in primary languages as the class teacher facilitates within the classroom and works closely with Ana and her colleagues on what is delivered, and how it can be followed up during the time between lessons.

And then the ALL London Show and Tell session – I shared the ‘stage’ with Stephane Derone (authentic resources), Nick Mair (learning styles and gender differences), Monna Brown (motivation) and Helen Myers (using song) – all members of ALL London so I was a bit of an interloper! I delivered my Top ten tips for Primary Languages in a little over my alloted 7

minutes I think (sorry -I talked as fast as I could!) You can download the presentation below (if the songs links don’t work, let me know!) And when I find the lead for my iRiver, I’ll make a Slidecast!

| View | Upload your own

But of course, there is more to Language World than the seminars! I love conferences for the ‘formal’ learning but, as anyone who has met me will testify, I love to talk. And talk I did – incessantly! I met old friends like Joe Dale, Lesley Welsh, Ewan McIntosh, Chris Fuller and Rachel Hawkes, made new ones like Nick Brown and José Picardo and generally talked to anyone who’d listen! Much fun was had at the wine tasting – I think I hold the record for the most Heinneman coffee mugs acquired in half an hour (not all for me!) followed by a quick visit to the pub before the wine reception and dinner. This was followed by bellydancing – no photos have yet appeared (thank goodness!) but I hear we were a sight to behold! Bed was finally reached in the early hours – I just didn’t want to miss a moment of the fun!

Last year I went to Language World wanting to find new ideas – and I was inspired as I told Joe Dale when he VoxPop-ed me! This year I went with the same purpose, but I reflected as I arrived just how far I’d come in a year. Last year I had just learned how to write articles on our school website. I’ve now got a blog, spoken at a number of conferences, attended eTwinning conferences as an ambassador, am becoming ever more techno-savvy and am employing all kinds of new ideas in my teaching! The pupils at school associate language learning with using technology, with doing new and exciting things, and with having fun. And several people came up to me and said how much they’d enjoyed reading my blog or hearing me speak, and how helpful the ideas I’d shared had been – that made me want to sing and dance!

Here are my pictures – started off well but got distracted by talking (surprise surprise!) so you can find more here, listen to VoxPops and read what Joe and José and others had to say about LW2008.

Roll on 2009!

Hot on the heels of yesterday’s e-mail from CILT about Europe Day (see yesterday’s post), today I received a message from Pamela Powers at the European Parliament about Spring Day in Europe;

Investigating the Spring Day website, it seems that there are various benefits to registering for the day – such as involvement with other classes and schools, taking part in competitions and receiving a certificate of participation for your involvement – always popular in schools with SMT :o)

Content is in 23 different languages, allowing for access to the site in the language studied as well as English, and the ability to compare text (and I assume activities) in different languages. At the same time, the whole day is based on the discovery of other cultures and traditions, thus covering ICU strand. There are online games, ecards to send and podcasts too which make my evolving techie side smile! You can find out more about activities, past events and how to register on the Spring Day for Europe 2008 site.

At the time of writing there are 1113 schools registered – I’m about to make it 1114.

What about you?

I’ve just received notification from Ruth Churchill at CILT of some FREE resources available. Never one to look a gift horse …, I immediately investigated!

Apparently May 9th is Europe Day (I’m afraid this was the first I’d heard of it!) and the European Commission has produced a booklet to promote the day as well as provide information promoting the EU.

Here’s the e-mail:

In order to support Europe Day (9 May) activities for young people, the Representation of the European Commission in the United Kingdom is making 100,000 copies of the Passport to the European Union available to UK schools and similar organisations completely free of charge.

You can view the booklet online and then decide if you want to order up to 100 copies per school either from your Europe Direct centre or by filling in a form online. I’m planning on using them for SODA (start of the day activity) and also for incidental work. If every class focussed on a different country, we could share notes in assembly later in the week. Kids love finding things out and with stickers and things too, it’s sure to be a hit (they’ll prefer it to handwriting too!)

So don’t hang around- there are now 100 less copies as my order’s already in!

Here’s a montage of posters used in previous years to promote the day – perhaps it’ll inspire you!

Make an on-line slide show at www.OneTrueMedia.com

To find out what’s going on in the UK, have a look at the events diary – I like the look of the Giant European Union Pub Quiz in Wrexham! And there’s also a whole page of ideas for how your school might be able to celebrate.