Lingua@Com

Phonics

Apologies for lack of recent activity on this blog!  I had some uploading problems that (I hope!) are now sorted out and I'm considering a different way of making these and more resources available in a better, more easily searchable way i.e. a website!  Whilst I consider how and when to sort this out, I've been in a bit of a stasis with the blog.

However, I've also been asked a lot recently for the phonics materials in French particulary, but also the Spanish and German (author: Leigh McClelland) ones.

So I'm putting these up in this post to make them a bit more visible.  (AAaaaaaaaaaaaagh!  Still not working - soooo frustrating and I have no time to sort this out!)  Ok, so to plan B.  I also have put all of the speaking resources that I've been talking about at various events and conferences onto an easy to access wiki page and so if you go there you can download them all really easily.

I'm also involved in some really exciting projects at the moment - a film-making project, a language on film project (using film in lessons project with some resources to download that have been trialled!), a regional spelling bee and our Language Leaders Award, which has been going for a long time, but now has support from Routes into Languages East (and the materials we use to set up and run that are here)

I have to say that all of this has been set up with the support of a phenomenal woman, Sarah Schechter, who works at Anglia Ruskin University and manages projects for Routes into Languages East.  I can't give her enough credit for all of these projects.  In addition, two colleagues in my department, Jane Driver and Leigh McClelland,  have been much of the inspiration and hard-work behind them too.

Hope that's useful - all for now.

Rachel

New Secondary Curriculum Phase 3 - Verulam School, St. Albans

The key work for Phase 3 of secondary curriculum support as I see it is to build on the excellent changes we have made to curricula in Year 7 languages into Years 8 and 9, really focusing on linguistic progression, whilst keeping the relevance and freshness of the new contexts, cultural awareness and cross-curriculum links.  Arriving just in time to help steer our course in terms of progression is the new framework for languages.  As Kathy Wicksteed said: "The new secondary curriculum is the map and the new framework is the route planner"! If you haven't managed (it's only been online since the beginning of this month!) to get to grips with the new framework yet and are putting it off because of all the other urgent priorities, you might find these guidelines from Alison Edwards very useful - a quick guide to accessing the framework. 

But equally important seems to be the task of looking ahead from Year 9 into KS4 and working to ensure that what learners experience is really 'joined up'.  I've talked to a lot of teachers who are fired up but what they are now teaching at KS3 but concerned that they will need to return to something much more conservative and less interesting at KS4.  So are we resigned to it being a case of our KS3 learners being 'all linguistically challenged and highly motivated with nowhere to go' at KS4?  Or can we make suitable links between the learning to join both key stages together (without risking a dip in the all too important performance indicators)? This is a fairly big question!  But I think it's one that we need to address this year. 

Trying to make a start on it, I've begun with speaking.  Two reasons for this: firstly, it's the skill still highlighted by the most recent and wide-ranging Ofsted report (The changing landscape of languages) as both the least developed in schools nationally and the one most likely to have a significant bearing on learners' motivation.  Secondly, the changes that arrive with the new GCSE are greatest in the speaking (and writing) components and if we can therefore start with the types of speaking we are generating in our Year 7 teaching and learning, look forward to the new GCSE speaking tasks and provide a progressive route through from one to the other through Years 8 and 9, then this will have been a good year's work!  Sounds easy put like that!

I have only made a tentative start to this.  I decided to situate my opportunities for speaking (both planned and spontaneous) in four (hopefully engaging contexts) and design some tasks that would set expectations high in terms of progression in language output as well as continuing to provide real and engaging contexts for that work.  Having the new GCSE style speaking tasksin my mind from the outset has also helped in trying to make links between the two key stages.

The four contexts I chose to start with are Talking Pictures (responding to visual stimulus); Story Telling (creating narratives of different types); What's in a song (using responses to music as a stimulus for talk) and Language on Film (exploiting film clips to generate talk, both planned and spontaneous).  A few examples of these are downloadable here from the blog.  These will definitely be added to over time.  I will be working with other schools this year to refine these and create more resources that can be used to help to generate talk at KS3 and KS4 that both enhances enjoyment in language learning and achieves the progression from Year 7 to Year 11 that we aspire to.

(This is where the files will go - uploading NOT WORKING today for some reason!)

If you would like to contribute any resources to this work, please get in touch!

P.S.  Curriculum Now (publication with a lot of the new secondary curriculum practice I've been involved in developing) plus materials to download is now available.  Click on the flyer to download it.

Rachel

Northgate High School, Suffolk - New Secondary Curriculum event

I really enjoyed the warm welcome for the second time at Northgate and it was great to meet so many enthusiastic teachers again with so many ideas to share.  It's really good to have been part of the New Secondary Curriculum support from the outset too because I can really see the massive development that there has been in response to it over the course of the last 18 months.  It is really good that we are beginning to be able to think about evaluating in our schools the new curriculum that year 7 has been experiencing, with a view to taking on board the findings from student voice to enable us to be confident about changes we might want to make, and also about how to continue on to year 8 developments from September this year.  As promised, here are various documents from this afternoon's event: firstly, the Download Suffolk 110209 Twilight PowerPoint slides that we started with including the results from my student voice survey.  Here is the survey itself if you would like to use or adapt it for evaluating aspects of your year 7 curriculum with students.  Download Year 7 student voice (structured interview or questionnaire)  If this is a more useful format, here are the results of the survey in a word document.  Download Year 7 Spanish Student Voice Survey January 2009

We also had a look at the PLTS and how they might be at work in our teaching and learning with year 7.  Here is the PLTS pdf Download PLTS framework  as well as a the A4 page summary of the MFL POS Download Posataglance2 Don't forget to go to the ALL new secondary curriculum website - it has lots of guidance and helpful documents, case studies and resource ideas for teaching the new curriculum. 

For any of the lesson materials and ideas that I showed today, please browse the blog entry below this one from Saturday 7 February the ALL London Event.  I have grouped the materials and ideas around the themes that I spoke about there and things should be easy to find I hope!

Rachel

Heads of MFL Annual Conference - Hertfordshire

Thank you for such a warm welcome to this event and a really interesting day.  It was good to meet so many like-minded languages teachers!

As I mentioned, I would put both the day's sessions here for download.  The 7 lessons in session 1 have been uploaded separately!

Download a_language_is_for_life_blogversion.ppt
Download skillsbased_teaching_intro.ppt
Download 1_phonics.ppt
Download 2_song.ppt
Download 3_collective_memory.ppt
Download 4_my_world.ppt
Download 5_animals.ppt
Download 6_dictionary.ppt
Download 7_describing_places.ppt

ALL Cambridgeshire Regional Meeting - new secondary curriculum: 8 weeks in!

Thanks to all colleagues who attended this session.  The format was essentially an active sharing ideas, resources and teaching strategies session and we all got a lot from the opportunity to discuss things that have worked well with year 7 this term and plans we are developing for the rest of the year as we restructure our curricula.  You can download the introductory presentation from the session here Download 221008_ALLCambsNetworkMeeting1.ppt - it includes a lovely idea for using language for colours in an age-appropriate and timely context with the olympic rings - I got this from Neil Jones  who is a Lead Practitioner for Languages for the SSAT and Assistant Principal at Elliott School in London.  Visit his blog.  Also in the presentation is a lesson that was first in a sequence called 'mi mundo' - the aim of the lessons was to get students to learn countries and nationalities adjectives but also to develop their awareness of themselves as global citizens by mapping themselves personally through the objects most important to them and recording where they come from.  A theme that is explored in the lesson that follows is the notion of 'foreign' and the importance of seeing all people as interrelated and not different - this is explored through poem (Spanish) and a song (English).  The inspiration for the lesson was a discussion with a Geography colleage and the display activity mirrors one also done in Geography at this point in year 7.  The resulting display work from groups has been excellent and the level of interest generated really good to see. The other lessons in the sequence are on the blog in the post advertising this ALL Regional Meeting below.

The next ALL Cambridge Regional Network Meeting is on Monday 19 January at 4.30p.m. at Comberton Village College.

Rachel

New Secondary Curriculum - Phase 2!

Hi there

ALL Eastern Region Network Meeting

Lessons for the new curriculum: an active session of sharing plans & resources

Just to make people in and around Cambridgeshire aware of this opportunity!

Date: Wednesday 22^nd October

Time: 4.30p.m. – 6.00p.m.

Venue: Comberton Village College Room ML6

Directions: Turn left down main corridor, up first stairs on left, left at top of stairs, first classroom on the right

We’ll open the session with a couple of examples of year 7 lessons that have been tried this term as part of the new curriculum.  Then we will all share one lesson that we have taught to year 7 this term by talking to one person at a time for 3 minutes each.

It was said at the last meeting that we all wanted to share ideas and resources with one another to increase inspiration (and decrease perspiration!)   

It would be brilliant therefore, if everyone could email a brief lesson plan/overview and copies of any resources you need for that one lesson to me by Monday 20^th October.  If this happens, I will have a CD ready made of all the ideas and resources to give teachers at the meeting itself.  If we all do this, we will all get at least 15 lesson ideas each! 

I have done 2 lesson plans (just as samples to give an idea) as well and you can download the  resources for these two lessons here: 

Download 7spanish_animales_lesson_plan_proforma.doc

Download lesson_1.24.ppt

This lesson followed a lesson on dictionary skills that you can download here:
Download Lesson1.23.ppt

This is a lesson from earlier in the SOW - language covered is adjectives (nationality) and revision of countries but given a different slant.

Download 7spanish_mimundo_lesson_plan_proforma.doc

Download Lesson1.11.ppt

And this is the lesson that follows:

Download Lesson1.12.ppt

 

If anyone is interested to see the Scheme of Work that these lessons are taken from, please download here: 

Download Year7_SOW_2008-9.xls

BUT remember that the whole idea of the new curriculum is that there is not going to be just ONE but four thousand secondary curricula and they can all be different as long as they meet the needs of learners in each of our schools! 

So download this SOW with that firmly in mind!

Looking forward to seeing you on 22^nd.

Best wishes

Rachel

New Secondary Curriculum, Birmingham, 24th June

Hello to everyone I met yesterday in Great Barr!  I really enjoyed meeting you (was well worth the 3-hour drive owing to my ridiculous detour to Walsall on the way!)
I hope I manage to put up all the things we talked about here:
PronunciationDownload Pronunciation.ppt
MemoryDownload Skills1_Memory.ppt
Memory Assembly Download memory_assembly.ppt
Memory booklet for parent & learnersDownload learning_styles_autonomy_memory_booklet_for_parents_pupils.ppt
Sentence-buildingDownload Skills3_SentenceBuilding.ppt
Spanglovision lyrics (see below June 04 )
Guide to inserting sound into PowerPoint (see below June 17)
Guide to inserting you tube video into PowerPoint (June 17)
French Phonics (whole entry on this February 28)
German Phonics (designed and written by Leigh McClelland)Download German_pronunciation.ppt
Spanish PhonicsDownload Spanish_pronunciation.ppt

Let me know if there's anything I've forgotten!
Rachel

Cambridgeshire ALL Regional Network - April

Apologies for not posting this session before half-term but here is the presentation for session 3 on working in the new curriculum - cross-curriculum ideas and strategies.  Download RSA_session3.ppt Linked to this main presentation there were lots of examples of things (all very memory heavy) so instead I've produced the main ideas on smaller documents to be printed out and shared in your departments.  They are written in PowerPoint but are actually just single slides of text exemplifying each of the ideas and I think this will make the ideas both clearer and more user-friendly.
Download Session3_CrossCurriculum_English.ppt
Download Session3_CrossCurriculum_Geo_DescribingAPlace.ppt
Download Session3_CrossCurriculum_Geography.ppt
Download Session3_CrossCurriculum_ICT_MakingListenings.ppt
Download Session3_CrossCurriculum_ICT_MakingMaterials.ppt
Download Session3_CrossCurriculum_Drama.ppt
Download Session3_CrossCurriculum_Music.ppt
Download Session3_CrossCurriculum_ICT_PowerPoint.ppt

New Secondary Curriculum Workshop - Thurrock

It was very good to meet such positive and enthusiastic teachers today in Thurrock for this session on the new secondary curriculum, which looked at skills building within the new curriculum.  If you would like the PowerPoint to use within your departments, please download here:
Download RHawkes_RSAworkshop_Thurrock_160408.ppt

Language World 2008

Hi there.  Just a quick post.  At next week's Language World (11th and 12th April in Oxford) there will be several opportunities to get updated on and inspired about the new secondary curriculum for MFL.  As well as excellent introductory sessions by Kathy Wicksteed, there will be opportunities to hear about practical ideas and strategies for MFL learning within the revised curriculum.  On Friday there will be a workshop session on Creativity.  The part of the session I will be presenting can be dowloaded here.
Download RHawkes_RSAworkshop_LanguageWorld_110408_blogversion.ppt
On Saturday, I have a session on KS4 opportunities entitled "A language is for life not just for GCSE: alternatives and additions to KS4 MFL provision".  A copy of the presentation is also here for download.
Download languageworld2008__alternatives_to_gcse_blogversion.ppt
There are a million and one opportunities at Language World to extend your professional knowledge and just get inspired about your practice all over again!  I believe it is still possible to get tickets for the event - if you want to, please download the brochure and register.  http://www.languageworld.org.uk/register/All%20brochure.pdf
I look forward to seeing many of you there!