At the end of July, my husband and I popped off for a short break in Copenhagen in celebration of our silver wedding anniversary. We had a lovely time exploring and sightseeing, and as usual at various points my ‘teacher brain’ or as I prefer to call it ‘lifelong learner thinking’ engaged and I was struck with thoughts and ideas for the classroom.

Firstly I really struggled with not being able to communicate in Danish. I really didn’t need to as everyone spoke English but it made me feel bad not being able to speak. I found that I could understand to a certain extent if things were written thanks to having done some Swedish on Duolingo, plus managing find some similarities at times with German and/or English, but understanding speech was very problematic and speaking more so! My son (who’s studied Swedish for the last two years at Uni) and my husband (who works with Swedes and Danes) tell me that part of the problem is that people ‘swallow’ consonants in spoken Danish making it harder to understand than Swedish. However, I did persevere with my trying to understand and had some success.

And, as usual, I couldn’t leave without a book for my collection. I had a good look and decided that whilst I’d love a storybook, my level of understanding wasn’t high enough yet, so I settled on a simple word book.

Min første bog om Farver is a board book all about colours. Each page has a different colour until the last page which has a rainbow colours. I can see the likeness of farver and Farbe in German. Some colours look – but don’t sound! – like English (pink, orange), some are like French (brun) and others wouldn’t be recognisable to me without the images – sort is black and hvid is white. The last page is about rainbow colours which again reminds me of German Regnbuens farver although I wouldn’t have guessed that er flotte meant ‘are great.’

I’m looking forward to using this when I next look at colours in Spanish as children this year have enjoyed all the comparative exercises we’ve done with multiple languages, finding similarities and differences.

I’ve just got back form London and the Language Show at Kensington Olympia. A lovely couple of days catching up with people, finding out about university courses and qualifications for Stevens Junior, visiting stands and learning from others – and then some more catching up with people!

Below are sketchnotes of the seminars I attended – minus the EU one as I only attended half of it! I was travelling light and using my mini notebook plus a limited palette of black pen and six coloured highlighters so apologies that they are a little more squashed and monotone than normal!

Joe Dale’s session on Using tecnology. Sadly had to leave early as I was in pain! You can access Joe’s whole presentation here

Wendy Adeniji talking Mastery at GCSE.

The Show and Tell was full of great ideas that I quickly tried to note down. Didn’t catch all names I’m afraid! Do tell me and I’ll add them.

The lovely Catherine Cheater sharing about The Primary French Project. A great resource – that’s free! – and a wonderful presentation.

The Primary Show and Tell was also amazing, packed with great ideas about word classification, poetry, story telling, heritage language teaching and facilitating pupil understanding through framing.

Sunny Bognor Regis!

I was happy to be asked to present at the annual University of Chichester MFL Conference last week, and as I noted in a previous post, thoroughly enjoyed the positive and inspiring sessions I attended.

I delivered two sessions. You can access the resources and ideas from the session entitled Using Technology for collaboration in a previous post  Sadly, TodaysMeet no longer exists but otherwise the ideas, recommendations and apps are the same!

The second session was entitled Tell me a story! and concerned the use of stories and books in the languages classroom.

The presentation is below to view. You’ll also find the links to some helpful posts and bookmarks below. I hope those that attended found the session helpful. Please feel free to leave a comment on the post if you have questions or comments!

Storybird wiki   Watch this space for what happens to this when Wikispaces shuts later this year!

My Storybirds

ALL Literature Wiki

Pinterest links to research on Storytelling and stories in language learning

Pinterest board of online stories

Blogposts on books on ¡Vámonos! – lots of posts!

Wednesday morning saw me gazing at the sea, then moving swiftly past Butlins to speak at University of Chichester MFL Conference. I had a lovely day attending sessions in the morning and sharing some ideas about using technology and stories in the languages classroom.

Below are my sketchnotes of the sessions I attended, starting with Elaine Minett’s upbeat introduction to the conference, talking about challenges being seen as opportunities, followed by an idea packed session about using poetry by Concha Julian of the Consejería de Educación and finishing with Lynne Brackley’s session on using drama based activities in languages. I enjoyed using my dramatic skills in both of the latter sessions!

If you get the opportunity next year, I can thoroughly recommend attending as the conference was varied with sessions for primary, secondary as well as cross phase sessions, and they were delivered by a variety of people including PGCE students, teachers and representatives of organisations like the British Council, the Consejería de Educación and Language Angels. I enjoyed seeing Catherine on the Little Linguist stand once more (and buying a new book!) as well as visiting other stands including Institut Français and European Schoolbooks.

A post about my sessions will follow later!

This time last week I was mid sketch note at Language World 2018, the Association for Language Learning annual conference. After a jam-packed, fun filled inspirational weekend, my mind was spinning with ideas and coupled with the last week of term, it’s taken this long for me to get my head together and get posting! So here goes a blog-fest over the next few days!I was thrilled to be asked to be Language World’s official Sketchnoter for a second year. Armed with pens, pencils and paper, I ‘live sketch noted’ each session I attended, before the finished product was whipped away to be displayed for everyone to see. I was pleased to see that there were lots of people looking at the notes as the conference went on, and it was really amusing to hear people talking about them in the dinner queue, not knowing that I’d done them!

I took photos of (most of) the sketch notes before they were displayed, but below are my sketchnotes or visual notes that ALL have now scanned and published on their site.

Opening of Language World 2018 – AnnaLise Gordon

The Language Magician – #LMagic Steven Fawkes (Too much to fit onto one sheet!)

The Mary Glasgow Plenary – Language Futures and the future of Language Learning.
Dr Rachel Hawkes
(Again far too much to squash onto one page!)

Primary Spanish Show and Tell
It’s hard to sketch note whilst presenting, singing and playing games but I did it!

Planning for progression and transition. Liz Black once more filled my head with brilliant ideas!

The amazing things you can do with just a handful of books.
Nathalie Paris aka @nattalingo

The official launch of The LANGUAGE MAGICIAN

You can view all of Friday’s sketchnotes in one place by downloading this  – Friday PDF

Saturday morning Opening Plenary including the Primary and Secondary Language Teacher of the Year awards
AnnaLise Gordon

Putting pen to paper.
Clare Seccombe talks writing! (I learned from yesterday and used a big piece of paper for this one!)

A celebration of languages.
Danielle Dion-Jones

Language Detectives
Sue Cave

Lights! Camera! iPads!
Joe Dale

Embedding languages across the curriculum.
Richard Tallaron

Closing comments by AnnaLisa Gordon and Jane Harvey.

You can view all of Saturday’s sketchnotes in one place by downloading this – Saturday PDF

I loved sketch noting the conference. I hope that those who attended enjoy the reminder of sessions you attended and that those who didn’t get a flavour of what they ‘missed.’ I’ll certainly be having a look at Clare’s notes too as there were several clashes that meant I couldn’t attend sessions I would’ve chosen (Nigel Pearson for the second year running was speaking at the same time as me for example!)

You can also catch up with the Twitter buzz from the conference via this Storify .

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As I reported in February, at this year’s Language World conference in March I was asked to be Resident Sketchnoter and record all the fun and excitement as well as as many sessions as I could possibly attend. It was a challenge as I normally go back to my sketch notes later to ‘pretty them up’  but in this case the sketch was immediately posted on the display board so I had to just go for it! I was really pleased that people took time to look at the display and there was a buzz of discussion and excitement as people paused to discuss what they’d seen. My hand was really struggling by the end of Saturday but it was all worth it!

I’ve deliberately delayed posting them until ALL had done so (although they were all tweeted as I finished them!) and today I received notification that they are now uploaded and ready to view! And they’ve kindly made them into a PDF!

So, here’s the PDF of them all: http://www.all-languages.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Lisa-Stevens-LW-2017-Sketchnotes.pdf (too big to upload here!)

And here they are individually with comments and links to the presentations where available!

DAY 1

Tried to capture a few of the exhibitors before the conference started in the top section then AnnaLise’s opening words in the bottom section.

Assessment without tears – Jackie Rayment and Yvonne Kennedy

Now here was a challenge – sketch noting and presenting simultaneously! Also presenting with me, Jesús Hernández from the Consejería de Educación and Sara Montero, Primary Language Teacher of the Year 2016      Presentation

Mary Glasgow Plenary A period of calm and stability – Bill Watkin    Presentation

Julie Prince talking about primary language learning supporting Grammar Punctuation and Spelling (not navigation as the title might suggest!)   Presentation

Suzi and Lynn presented AIM methodology to us in this session.   presentation

The poster sessions – lots of exciting projects were highlighted here – I suggest you check out the ALL site to find out more! (scroll down to Poster sessions then click on the + for the abstracts)

How do you sketch note a wine reception? Thanks to Vicky Cooke for my inspiration, and to all my vox pops!

The national treasure that is Steven Fawkes had us all crying with laughter at his witty speech including references to jelly, taxis, triangles, and of course, his trousers!

The Conference Dinner – scribbled on a napkin then ‘done in neat’ later 😉

DAY 2

A summary of The Teaching Schools Council Review of Languages Pedagogy, delivered by Ian Bauckham. Very interesting! (Not often I have to use another sheet, and as you can see, a little hard to represent very visually!   Presentation

ALL President AnnaLise Gordon was up again to talk about Progress and present the awards for Language teacher of the Year.

The super fantastique Richard Talleron went fruity in his session on embedding languages across the curriculum.  Presentation

Starr Green spoke about Languages for ALL and gave advice on teaching languages to pupils with SEND   Presentation

The always inspiring and incredibly clever Dr Rachel Hawkes helpfully talked about creating a positive learning environment, pointing out that sometimes staff can not give or do any more than they already are so something else has to change!    presentation

Lovely Nathalie Paris aka Nattalingo shared some ideas and research on the important two way relationship between literacy and languages.  Presentation

And finally it was time for thanks yous, AnnaLise’s quiz (foiled on the last question!) and the revelation of the date and venue for next year – March 23rd and 24th at Jury’s Inn Hinckley Island near Leicester. presentation

If you want to access any of the other sessions at the conference, many of the presentations have been uploaded to the ALL site Friday and Saturday, and you can read more about it here (also more sketch notes) and here. If you were there and have any reflections, please leave a comment and I can update the post!

And here’s a summary of the tweets!

It’s one month to go until the annual Association for Language Learning conference, Language World. Have you signed up yet?

This year the theme is Progress for All (like the clever logo!) As the ALL website says:

Progression in the teaching and learning of languages is a priority for all teachers and ALL as a professional association as we respond to significant curriculum changes and developments at all levels. Progress for ALL is a deliberately broad title, as we aim to serve the needs of all conference delegates. For example, we are including sessions on promoting progress in all aspects of pupils’ learning of languages, ensuring progression in curriculum planning, sustaining progress in curriculum leadership and celebrating progress in building a culture of language learning in a school.

During the two days there will be a mixture of plenary sessions, major talks and workshops with something for everyone from primary to higher education, and this year there is a slot for poster presentations which looks really interesting too.

This year the conference takes place in Nottingham at the East Midlands Conference Centre which is very convenient for me living in the Midlands and once more in the ‘middle’ of the country.

There’s a special ‘call out’ to primary colleagues issued on the ALL page with testimonials from a range of primary colleagues. Have a look at the flyer: 

I’m not speaking this year (apart from a contribution to the Primary Spanish Show and Tell) but I have a special (albeit rather daunting) role to fulfil:

I’m looking forward to attending sessions and trying to capture them ‘live’ ready to post to the timeline in the exhibition area; a shame I can only be in one place at a time though as there are several slots where I’d like to attend two or even three sessions at the same time.

If you’re interested in attending, the programme is below, and booking details can be found here.

Hopefully see you there?

On Wednesday I took part in the Babcock 4S conference at Horsley Park in Surrey. My presentation entitled I’m a Primary Language Teacher; help me out here! was well received and can be found below.

The main points were:

• primary language learning lays important foundations
• language learning is cyclical with topics being revisited but it is a continuum; it shouldn’t start again from scratch at Ks3.
• teaching primary languages can be lonely but there is support out there.
• PoS objectives need to be split into manageable chunks or stepping stones.
• pupils need to become increasingly independent; phonics and language learning skills from comparing and contrasting languages help this.
• it’s not just about vocabulary; grammar is needed (receptive and later productive) as cement otherwise it’s just a pile of bricks.
• intercultural understanding is vital.
  

On Wednesday 22nd June I’ll be in Surrey speaking at a Modern Languages conference organised by Babcock4S.

As you can see from the flyer above, the conference is entitled The Future of Language Learning and features keynotes by Janet Lloyd and Joe Dale that ‘book end’ three seminar slots.

If you check out the conference website you’ll get a basic overview – more details can be obtained from the following PDF Programme of the day. You’ll see that there are sessions addressing assessment, transition, cooperative learning, technology and specific languages led by a wide variety of speakers including Dan Alliot and Suzi Bewell, and convened by Carine Jacquel and Helen Myers.

My session is entitled “I’m a primary language teacher. Help me out here!”

It’s not too late to sign up (which you can do here) for a day of inspiration and networking.

Language World was held in Rugby at Dunchurch Park
, a beautiful setting made all the lovelier by the wonderful people who attended the conference. As René Koglbauer said at the (misty) start: ‘There may not be sun but there are lots of smiles!’ (The sun did come out soon afterwards as well!)

Below are the sketch notes for the sessions I attended. Wish I could have attended more sessions but it wasn’t possible without Hermione’s TimeTurner.

And I’ll share my presentation on sketchnoting later in the week.

Opening Address by René Koglbauer

The Language Magician: developing a tool for assessing young learners by Louise Courtney

A window on the world – PLL and SMSC

Primary Spanish Show and tell – Clare Seccombe

Primary Spanish Show and Tell – Jesús Hernández

Mary Glasgow Plenary Lecture – Curriculum Innovation by Gareth Mills (NFER)

Curriculum Innovation:
Challenges and Opportunities by René Koglbauer

#ALLConnect KS2 Coordinator’s handbook by Katherine Monument and Kirsty Williams

Language is all around by Nadine Chadier

Tackling the issues in KS2 #ALLConnect with Steven Fawkes

What’s the point of teaching languages to pupils with SEND? by Alison and Patrick Organ

Innovation requires resilience by Anne Lise Gordon

Tartan CLIL by Fiona Moffatt

Closing remarks with René Koglbauer and Anne Lise Gordon

If you want to compare and contrast sketchnotes, and see some from some other sessions too, why not look at Clare’s post too.