Category: international links

It’s nearly time for the annual ALL (Association for Language Learning) conference Language World. I first attended Language World in Oxford many many years ago and it’s remained an important date each year ever since.

After a year online in 2021, Language World returns to being face to face this year. Taking place in Sheffield at The Quays Hotel, it promises to be two days of discussion, thought and learning and I for one am really looking forward to it.

This year the theme is Language Learning for Social Justice, and sessions relate to the theme of ensuring that ALL learners have access to high quality language learning opportunities, irrespective of age, gender, socioeconomic (dis)advantage, mother tongue or heritage.

The programme looks really interesting and I’m particularly looking forward to sessions by:

Hannah White
5.1 Use the work you do to support EAL pupils in the Primary Languages classroom to create an inclusive curriculum and improve teaching and learning for EAL pupils throughout your school

Eleanor Chettle Cully
1.3 Isn’t it time we moved beyond ‘diversity’? Practical strategies for decolonising the primary MFL curriculum

Marion Devons
8.2 Don’t take me out! Why children with SEND or EAL should stay in your language lessons and how all children will benefit (I feel passionately about this as you can see here.)

and this really interesting looking session
4.1 Inspiring Young Multilingual Activists through Digital Technology and the Arts

In fact, there are so many session that interest me that it’s quite tricky choosing sometimes!

I’ll be speaking on Friday at 215 about “Literature”
3.4 Using ‘Literature’ to support Primary Language teaching and learning This session will consider what is meant by ‘literature’ before moving on to explore how it can be used in the primary languages classroom as a great way to support language learning. Whether as a way into a topic, to support phonics or prosody, as a sample text to be adapted or as a way to support inclusion and challenge insularity, allowing learners to see themselves in their learning, literature is a powerful tool in our toolbox.

Want to join me? You can find out how here

Looking forward to seeing you there!

Find out about my experiences at previous Language Worlds by following the links below!

Reflections on Language World 2008
Absorbing Language Learning 2009
Language World 2010 and various posts following including Raising Global Awareness and Creativity talks as well as sessions by Clare Dodd, Liz Black Cynthia Martin Oh, and my session – Bricklaying for beginners!
Language World 2011 – my session Entitled to enjoy Primary Languages and many other sessions by Chris Harte, Jan Lewandowski and Liz Fotheringham
Language World 2014 overview     Session on apps
Language World 2015 in sketchnotes
Language World 2016 in sketchnotes  Session on Sketchnoting
Language World 2017 in sketchnotes
Language World 2018 in sketchnotes My session Using Technology for collaboration 
Sue Cave’s session – Language Detectives Primary Show and Tell
Language World 2019 – The Sketchnotes My session on Supporting learners’ understanding and enjoyment of stories in the primary languages classroom.
I was briefly at Language World 2020 but didn’t blog it as it coincided with a particularly stressful time – including lockdown beginning a few days later!
Language World 2021 My session on Take One Book v2 My sketchnotes

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!

This year at Language World I was invited to present some ideas for using technology for collaboration in language learning. I teach primary so the focus was on that age group but there are many ideas and tools that are equally applicable for young and old! In spite of some technical hitches and running out of time as there was so much to share, the ideas were well received and I hope that this will serve as a reminder/update for those who attended, and a snapshot for those who didn’t.

Below is my presentation. Whilst all the links work, the videos don’t I’m afraid but you’ll find some below to give you a taster.

A little later than planned, and with huge apologies, here are my presentations from the East Midlands Primary Languages Conference held on Nottingham on 5th December!

Más vale tarde que nunca.  Mieux vaut tard que jamais! Besser spät als gar nicht.

Firstly, my presentation on Crosscurricular links:

And here’s the presentation on Technology for collaboration:

It was a pleasure to speak, and I was also able to attend a few other sessions which are sketchnoted below.

A marvellous keynote by the ever effervescent John Rolfe.

An inspiring session by Chris Henley about being BRILLIANT – finding my WHY? and being Ms Different.

A Taste of Spain delivered by Carmen Santos from the Consejería de Educación in Manchester – loved making – and eating – my brocheta de fruta!

And Elaine Minett charing her Healthy Eating resources based around the story ¡Hoy no, Claudio!

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!

On Friday 26th June I attended the Entrust Primary Languages Conference in Stafford, organised and led by Lorna Harvey. Entitled ‘We’re on our way’, the day began with an excellent keynote from Clare Seccombe aka @valleseco and genius behind LightBulbLanguages.

Sharing a title with the conference, Clare shared her ideas on the journeys involved in primary language learning – for the child, the teacher and as a nation. I love how Clare can express her ideas so well in images. I’ve tried to capture some of them in my sketch note below.

You can read Clare’s presentation for yourself here – We’re on our way!

There were a number of workshops during the day – I attended one on a cluster of schools who use a ‘language investigators’ approach to language learning in Y1-2 and 3-4 before focussing on one language in Y6. My sketch note is below along with a few images.

Plan for Y1-2	I loved the pizza/paella Italian/Spanish numbers!

The day was very much a celebration of a project between Stafford and Burgundy, and I’d been asked to speak after lunch about a similar partnership in which I’d been involved, between Birmingham and Barcelona. It was wonderful to prepare my presentation as it sparked so many amazing memories and caused me to reflect on where we’ve gone since the (official) end of the partnership. Below you can see my presentation (although without the video clips I’m afraid) and Clare kindly sketch noted it for me.

Make it real! from @lisibo #sketchnote pic.twitter.com/6fkbnNo0sx

— Clare Seccombe (@valleseco) June 26, 2015

We had a brilliant presentation from pupils about their experiences as well as a culinary lesson based on tasting and making mustard. Great fun and with clear language goals too!

I finished the day by presenting about using technology to enhance language learning. You can see my presentation below and access the notes, tutorials etc here.

A great day – not much tweeting as I was too busy sketching or making mustard as was Clare, but here’s the Storify of the tweets anyway.

A great day – thanks Lorna!

PS Clare’s workshop – Be a crafty language teacher is explained here too!

British Council Ambassadors from across the UK assembled in Manchester this weekend to meet one another and find out more about British Council projects, strategies and plans. Starting on Friday lunchtime and finishing today at midday, the conference was ‘all go’ with early starts (first session at 8.30am on a Saturday?) and a timetable that was stretched as time passed all too fast.

I decided to continue my sketch note journey and bought a new notebook on the way to the station, one that stays open on its own (spiral bound) and is slightly larger – and square which seemed to help!

Below are my sketchnotes and links to important /useful sites from the conference. I’m sorry that I had to leave early and missed the final sessions. I’ll catch up when the final presentations are shared!

Opening session (Emma Chaplin) plus quotations from the conference.

Dr Mark Potts – Living out our values

Update on SchoolsOnline: how it works (John McMurtrie) and what it offers and will offer – exciting stuff! (Vicky Gough)

British Council Strategy presented by Stephen Hull

Connecting Classrooms Professional Development offerings shared by Katherine Walakira

International School Award – Ludmila Vávrová (and John Rolfe!)

Funding for three more years of Connecting Classrooms; Stephen Hull shares plans to spend it!

Gary Shiells and Ana Paula Booth talk eTwinning as it celebrates its 10th birthday!

Dorota Drajewicz and Bethan Dinning – Erasmus+ opportunities for schools

SchoolsOnline

Global Learning Programme

Barefoot Billion

I’ve Storify-ed the tweets with the conference hashtag #BCAmb15 too.

And finally, as part of the programme I delivered a workshop on Twitter. You can access the presentation here –  twitter manchester

And here’s the eTwinning guide I mentioned 

A bonus post today as I’ve just had this great infographic brought to my attention by @HodderMFL and @jacksfeed

I like how the names of the present deliverer from around the world are written on the map as well as information about certain countries.

Click on the map and you can zoom in!