MFL – ¡Vámonos!
 

Tag: MFL

I’ve noticed quite a few opportunities for upskilling in recent days, shared by the various cultural organisations, and thought I’d share some for those who may not have seen them. Some opportunities are cross phase and others are phase specific with several specifically aimed at primary practitioners.

consejeria
First from the Consejería de Educación

SPANISH DAY FOR TEACHERS IN LEEDS – Sat, 16th March: The Spanish Embassy Education Office, the University of Leeds, and the Junta de Castilla y León are organizing a Spanish day in Leeds aimed at teachers of Spanish and future teachers from secondary, university, and further education.

There will be presentations and workshops with practical ideas for the Spanish class. A Spanish lunch will be served.

Registration is free, but places are limited (on a first come, first served basis). Information and free registration: https://bit.ly/spanish-day-in-leeds

——————————————————————————

Series of online workshops: from February 6 to March 19, 2024. 4 independent and online workshops.

-Next workshop, Saturday, February 27, 2024 (16:30-17:30): «Elemental querido Watson: misterios y enigmas en la clase de ELE», organized jointly with Andalucia TRADE and with the collaboration of CERVANTES ESCUELA INTERNACIONAL.

More information and free registration (before the 25th February): https://bit.ly/talleres-andalucia-feb-marzo-2024

——————————————————————————-

Face-to-face training days in collaboration with Edinumen:

– Saturday, March 2, 2024 (9:30-13:00) in Newcastle, organized jointly with the University of Newcastle and with the collaboration of the University of Alicante.

– Tuesday, March 5, 2024 (16:00-17:30), in London, in collaboration with the Instituto Cervantes.

Free registration and programme: https://www.educacionyfp.gob.es/reinounido/convocatorias-programas/formacion-profesorado/historico-formaciones/edinumen-marzo-2024.html

——————————————————————————

Grants for an immersion course in Spain (Ávila, Segovia and Santander) – Summer 2024

14 one-week immersion courses in July or August 2024 in Ávila, Segovia or Santander aimed at British/Irish teachers of Spanish.

The grant covers the course, accommodation and meals, as well as the cultural programme.  The grant does not cover the journey to Spain or the return to the UK. Travel and/or health insurance is also not included

This call is not for Spanish nationals. Application period will be announced from March.

Further information and programmes: https://www.educacionyfp.gob.es/reinounido/convocatorias-programas/formacion-profesorado/historico-formaciones/cursos-verano-espana-uned-uimp-2024

——————————————————————————-

Immersion course in Santiago de Compostela (Spain), April 2014

Registration is now open for the Spanih teacher training course “Curso de actualización para el profesorado de ELE: lengua, cultura y didáctica” organised by the University of Santiago de Compostela.

Details

Dates: 8th – 12th April 2024

Number of hours: 20 (face-to face)

Contents:

•    Nuevas tecnologías en el aula de ELE

•    Dinámicas de proyecto, actividades cooperativas y pedagogías innovadoras

•    Lengua y cultura española( literatura, cine y música)

•    El Camino de Santiago en el aula el ELE

•    Actividades culturales incluidas en el curso:

•    Visita guiada a la ciudad monumental

•    Visita guiada al Patrimonio Histórico artístico de la Universidad

More information about registration, prices and accomodation:  gene.gonzalez@usc.es

———————————————————————

Immersion and methodology courses in Palencia, Salamanca, Burgos, Valladolid, Burgos and Segovia. Different dates throughout March, July, August and October 2024. https://www.educacionyfp.gob.es/reinounido/convocatorias-programas/formacion-profesorado/historico-formaciones/2024-cursos-mester.html

———————————————————————

From the Goethe Institut:

·  Let’s Get Started with German in Primary School (Berlin, 21.04.2024- 27.04.2024): This opportunity is fully funded and aimed at non- specialist primary teachers and their headteachers (England/ state school  only), who intend to introduce German or  strengthen the status of German at their schools. The programme consists of two strands:  A combined language and pedagogical training course (A1/A2level) and a specially curated incentive trip. Participants can apply for this fully funded course by submitting a motivational letter (application deadline: 04.03.2024).
 
·  German Teachers’ Day for secondary school teachers (Saturday, 24 February 2024): Join us for the German Teachers’ Day “Engaging Learners – Keep them keen” in London, organised by the Goethe-Institut in cooperation with ALL Association for Language Learning. Registration Deadline: 12.02.2024. 
 
·  Action-Oriented Teaching – Practical Approaches and Strategies (Online professional development): Discover the advantages of digital tools to actively engage students in this practice-oriented online course. Register by 12 February 2024. 

·  DLL – Deutsch Lehren Lernen: New courses starting in March: Would you like to expand or refresh your didactic knowledge, try out new things and expand your teaching skills? Two DLL courses (Deutsch Lehren Lernen) will be starting in March: DLL 2 “How do you learn German as a foreign language?” and DLL4 “Tasks, exercises, interaction”. Registration deadline: 27.02.2024. 

And from the UK German Connection:

Applications for Professional Enrichment Programme are now open
The Professional Enrichment Programme offers qualified UK teachers a funded opportunity to visit a German school for 1-2 weeks during the 2023-24 school year to develop skills and knowledge through intercultural exchange.
 
The programme is open to teachers of all disciplines and you don’t need to have an existing link with Germany to take part. Teachers can either visit their partner school or be matched with a German host school.
 
Application deadline: 1 March 2024 
 
On Tuesday, 27 February at 4.30pm we are hosting a Q&A webinar to answer your questions and provide guidance. You can register to attend via our website.
 
More information: https://ukgermanconnection.org/pp/programmes/professional-enrichment-programme/
 

institut français
From the Institut Français:

2024 French Summer School for Primary School Teachers

Location: Alliance Française de Normandie, Rouen, France
Date: Sunday 28 July 2024 to Sunday 4 August 2024
Eligibility: Primary School Teachers teaching French
Content: General French language group courses will be offered (20h) as well as 2 workshops focused on French phonics. This summer school is intended to help teachers upskill their proficency in the language in order to feel more confident in the classroom. Please note that the course will not cover the pedagogy of teaching French and will not provide any teaching materials or techniques.
Fees: Training fees, breakfast, dinner and accommodation in a French host-family are covered by the Institut français du Royaume-Uni. Travel expenses will be incurred by the participant.

More information and registration here

And finally the Qatar Foundation are offering the following opportunity for teachers of Arabic:

Arabic Language Teacher Training Bursary Programme

QFI will begin accepting applications for its 2024-2025 Arabic Language Teacher Training Bursary Programme in mid-February 2024. The bursary will provide £2,000 towards the costs of a language teacher training programme that offers placement in the Arabic language. In addition to these funds, QFI will provide accepted candidates additional support that includes mentorship and attendance to CPD events and conferences.

Interested applicants can apply here in mid-Feb or contact ukarabic@qfi.org with any questions.

_________________________________________________

Hopefully there’s something there that has caught someone’s eye. Perhaps I’ll highlight some other CPD opportunities in another post in the near future. There are certainly a few ALL opportunities in the next few weeks!

Yesterday I had the great pleasure of presenting at the PSB MFL conference via Zoom.

My presentation was entitled More than words with the subtitle Language learning is about more than learning lists of vocabulary. In it, I discussed my ‘idea of what ‘list of ingredients’ for language learning, particularly in the primary context. After discussing OFSTED’s 3 pillars and 3Is, I moved on to present my 7Cs!

And what are my 7Cs?
Context
Consolidation
Confidence
Communication
Culture
Celebration
Connection

I was thrilled with the response to my presentation and want to thank all the attendees for their kind words; I was floating on air all day despite an afternoon of stircrazy 10 year olds who’d not been out to play all day followed by parents evening!

If you’re interested in what else I shared, my slides can be viewed below.

What do you think? Have I missed a C? Let me know!

The annual conference of the Association for Language Learning (ALL) is fast approaching. This year Language World will be held in Kenilworth on Friday 8th and Saturday 9th March. The theme is Language – a unique ingredient of learning.

As the website says:

We will consider together many aspects of education today in multilingual Britain. What is unique about our subject? In what ways does the learning of a language support learners today beyond the classroom – from being a child to becoming an adult? What are the ingredients of a healthy learning experience?

  • Culture and International Contact
  • Curiosity and Observation
  • Connection at a personal level
  • Communication through all skills and modalities
  • A strong outward looking curriculum and external examinations

Following on from our conference last year we will continue to consider how the brain affects learning and how this can inform curriculum planning, the impact on teaching of the new GCSE and the importance of developing the intercultural agility needed to promote and support tolerance and respect for others. We are living through changing, somewhat challenging times and collaborative work is essential. We all benefit from access to research from around the world and collaboration across the key stages to university or training and jobs post 16 enables progress as we learn from each other. https://www.delegate-reg.co.uk/lw2024/

Keynote speakers include HMI Bianka Zemke and Professor Kate Borthwick, and there are more than 70 talks offered over the two days with something for every type of language learning. You can have a look at the programme here

I’m presenting on Saturday afternoon about how to make International links, something about which I’m really passionate; as a British Council Ambassador for many years and Global Schools Alliance Ambassador I do all I can to promote the value of the global dimension. You can see what I said last year when I shared the importance and impact of international links and global learning at Whitehouse Common Primary.

Whether you attend for one day or for both, I hope to see you in Kenilworth. If you can’t, be sure to follow events on Twitter/X – look out for the hashtag #LW2024 and I’ll try to give you a flavour of the event in a post at the end of March.

I’ve had a busy few weeks and I’ve finally found a moment to catch up with myself. As I have done for many years now, I took my pad and pens to #LW2023 and sketchnoted all the sessions I attended. I tweeted them as I completed them but I promised to collect them all in one place for easy access. And here they are! Thanks to all the speakers for their interesting presentations that all left me with lots to think on!

(too much to fit on one page!)
Liz Lord – A calendar of cultural activities to support language learning.
Tracy Williams – What really matters?
Isabelle Jones – Being a research informed language teacher

If you’d like to see how someone else saw the same (and some different) sessions, have a look at Clare’s sketchnotes!

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!)

Today I have spent my Saturday in Acapulco. Sadly not in Mexico but the online conference run by ALL.

Between 9am and 3pm, there were 6 presentations all on the theme of An Ambitious Primary Language Curriculum for all.

I’ve shared previously (and done whole training sessions about) how I find sketchnoting really helpful to aid listening to, processing and also retaining what is said during sessions, and today I decided to get out my pens and paper to record the day.

Obviously I couldn’t sketchnote and present at the same time (I’m clever but not that clever!) so there are only 5 in my collection but I hope that you find them helpful.

If you signed up for the conference, you will receive a link to watch the recordings. If you didn’t, this will hopefully give you a taste! It was an excellent way to spend a Saturday although I’m now going for a run to help me further process my thoughts.

My overriding thought – well, it’s actually Clare Seccombe’s thought but I’m SO with her on this!

“We owe it to the children to get this [an ambitious primary languages curriculum] right – they can’t be ambitious if we are not ambitious on their behalf for a cracking languages curriculum that really works.”

Clare Seccombe @valleseco
taking us through the rollercoaster of primary Languages over the last 20+ years and provoking us to look to the future that we owe our learners. www.lightbulblanguages.co.uk
Kate Percival Primary Languages Network offering us an insight into the role of the primary languages coordinator – what do we need to do and how can we best enable that ambitious curriculum?
Vicky Cooke @MsVCooke shared how to bring order out of “chaos” as we plan our ambitious curriculum – what do we want our learners to achieve and how will we help them get there?
Ellie Chettle Cully @ECCMFL gave us advice on how we can facilitate ambitious learning for ALL learners, those with SEND as well as the ‘high flyers’, emphasising that ‘accommodations’ often benefit everyone in the class not just those for whom they are made! https://myprimarylanguagesclassroom.com/
Marie Allen brought the day to a close explaining her model of assessment and clearly explaining the rationale behind and process of ensuring ALL stakeholders (learners, school, OFSTED, secondary colleagues) understand the progress being made.

Notes on my presentation will follow later!

A couple of months ago, Clodagh from ALL contacted me and said that Teach Primary were looking for someone to write a primary languages lesson plan for their magazine, and would I be interested? I said yes and last week, the new edition came out, complete with my lesson on p76-77.

It’s a lesson that I used on World Book Day 2016 when my school went with a Roald Dahl theme.  Whilst I teach Spanish, and the resources are therefore in Spanish, it’s an idea that could easily be done in French, German, or any other of the 58  languages into which Dahl’s work has been translated!

You can access the lesson and resources here on TeachWire .

And if you’ve come to my website via Teach Primary, welcome! There are lots of other ideas for lessons here, including more for World Book Day here.

And if you’ve never seen Teach Primary, have a look at the lesson plan for KS2 French on directions from last issue, by Amanda Barton or this lesson by Liz Black that links French and juggling!

Hopefully there’ll be another of my lessons published in the near future…

PS Thanks to Clare for sending me her copy so I have one for posterity!

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!

Mi Madrid (including newly published videos of the songs!)

Link to resources for El artista que pintó un caballo azul as a text to discuss diversity.
The book I mentioned that was recommended and demonstrated by Nathalie Paris at Language World was called Poux by  Stephanie Blake – check out the sketchnote of her session here, and follow her book blog and podcast here for more great book ideas!

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!

#LW2018 Sketchnotes

| 1 Comment


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 .

 

SaveSave

SaveSave

SaveSave

SaveSave

Continuing on my posts about books I bought in Bilbao, we come to a couple of non-fiction texts that I bought at the Día del Libro market.  I was drawn to them as they are colourful, very visual and were also very reasonably priced at €5 (always a consideration when I’m buying several!) Non-fiction texts are less readily available than storybooks and it can be tricky to find ones that are appealing as well as accessible to primary school learners. So I was really pleased to find these. There are four in the series Aula del Saber and I selected these two as I already have books about the planets, and dinosaurs is a topic that y1 cover.

Firstly Curiosidades del Cuerpo Humano, chosen as it supports the Science curriculum as well as containing pages that will be useful for Health Week.  For example, this page will be useful to Y1 who are looking at dental health in Health Week as well as Y4 who look at what happens to our teeth, completing experiments using egg shells and Coca Cola!

Y5 are looking at life cycles and human reproduction so the page above would be interesting. As you can see, even without knowing much Spanish you can understand that the table shows the gestation times of various animals. There are several pages that outline the whole process of reproduction including the female and male reproductive system so it’s perhaps not one to put in the school library but rather a resource to be used in context.

I like that the information is on bite size chunks and that there are lots of diagrams and images to support understanding. This section would be good for finding cognates.


And the second book is Insólitos Animales which has a similar mixture of short texts, diagrams, tables of information and Did you know..? sections.

I’ve selected a few pages that drew my attention.

This one could be the stimulus for a sorting activity, giving learners a list of animals to classify into groups and create simple sentences e.g. Una ballena es un mamífero. Una rana es un anfibio.

Here’s an idea of what a double page spread looks like:

Some interesting vocabulary in the tables below; learners could follow the model and complete for other animals. The short texts could be used for a ‘Find the word for…’ activities as well as simple comprehensions that guide the learner through the text, calling on their existing knowledge of elephants/frogs as well as their linguistic knowledge to respond.

Y4 will finish their unit on animals before the end of term so I think we’ll have a look at this book together! And I’ll let you know any further ideas we have to use it.

In my next post I’ll share some other non fiction texts that I have collected. In the mean time, here are some other of my posts on a similar subject that might interest you:

Muy Interesante Junior

ColoradoLibraries (the West Sussex link no longer works but there are some resources here that are based around animals and their habitats)

¿De dónde viene el yak? my own non fiction text written using Storybird.

 

 

¡Vámonos! ©2024. All Rights Reserved.
Powered by WordPress. Theme by Phoenix Web Solutions