Comenius Northeast Good Practice Guide

Sadly, on the 31st March the Comenius Network officially but to go out on a high, the Northeast Good Practice Guide has been published for the last time. It's a great place to find out about all of the great projects going on in the Northeast of the England in MFL. There is a lot of great stuff in there with loads of Primary and Secondary projects featured.

Oh and I'm in it of course...

ALL Language World

This year I was lucky enough to be able to attend part of the Language World event "Grasping the Nettle" run by ALL. The event took place in Leicester, so at 6.00 am on Saturday morning I got into my husband's car (how posh) and headed off down the M1. Three hours later I arrived in at a sunny Leicester University after following some rather dubious directions!

I was really good to see familiar faces and attend some inspiring workshops. However, I must apologise to those who I did see, due to the events mentioned in my last post, I was not in the most communicative of moods and was actually wondering why on earth I was there and not at some "how to be a better teacher" course!

I was really curious about CLIL. I'd seen the intials but had no idea what it was about, so I chose to attend two workshops covering this topic. CLIL stands for "Content and Language Integrated Learning", which is basically teaching other subjects in French / German etc... I have always been fascinated by this idea and thought it a fantastic opportunity to get pupils using TL in real contexts. I am also aware of several school in other parts of Europe that have a bilingual section so listened and made notes intently.

Firstly I went to a workshop run by Mike Ullman of Hockerill Anglo-European College. He spoke about how the idea of teaching History in French had come about at Hockerill and the success that they had seen both in History and in French as the course developped. He commented in how attainment was not affected in History by the bilingual lessons ( something about which most Headteachers would be concerned), in fact the opposite was true and attainment actually improved! He also spoke about how it was important to start small and get bigger, quite rightly pointing out that it had taken a decade to get to the postition that they are now in. Altogether a really thought provoking workshop, which left me wanting to know more. So...

I headed to another workshop on CLIL to get a slightly different approach. This was led by Judith Woodfield of Chenderit School, who is Geography teacher. This session looked at the practicalities of CLIL and Judith took us through a typical series of lessons on Tropical Rain Forests  for Year 7. It really was amazing the level of language the pupils could understand and produce even at such an early stage in Yr7. We took part in activities that Judith uses with her classes and watched some of the videos that she and the pupils watch. What fascinates me is that Judith isn't even a Modern Linguist, yet she is still happy teaching Geography in French. Chenderit are also beginning to teach ICT in German, which really interested me, as someone who is about to embark upon teaching some ICT next year (but that's a topic for another post when things are more concrete!).

I can't see my Headteacher wanting to go right down the CLIL route at the moment but what I could see is the possiblities for cross-curricular Units of Work that couldfit right in with the new KS3 Curriculum. In fact I'm currently thinking about something on the French Revolution or similar for later on in the school year.

In addtion to my CLIL-filled day, I also attended a workshop run by Rachel Hawkes of Comberton Village College. She took us through her new Yr7 Curriculum looking at the cross-curricular features and their phonics activities. I have to say that I was thoroughly inspired by her. After my "less from hell" on Thursday, Rachel's workshop gave me renewed motivation and I really felt that I could go away and use some of her ideas to enthuse my pupils (although I'll have to translate it into German!). Rather than duplicate what Rachel talked about, here is a link to her blog post  about the conference where you can see the resources she used and read about it "straight from the horses mouth", as it were!

The conference finished on a high with a speech from Steven Fawkes. He was hilarious and inspiring at the same time. I can't even begin to describe it, as I couldn't do it justice. Needless to say, after an awful week, Steven's speech was just the tonic I needed to pick me up...and this time the tears were of laughter! (Good job my mascara was waterproof-ish!)

Das Hokey Kokey

I have a tendancy to watch too many comedy shows on Dave or GOLD or even on the BBC.  Most of the programmes are (kindly) chosen for me by my husband (if I'm REALLY lucky, he even lets me watch the cricket - and not just England losing either...Australia, New Zealand, South Africa) and he, in return, allows me to watch the occasional CSI episode.

Yesterday, as a Mothers' Day treat he picked out a Bill Bailey live show that he'd so thoughfully Sky+ ed for a special occasion (yes, we "live the dream" in our house) and I discovered a treasure!

Now I'm sure that many people have seen this before but I'm a bit slow on the uptake with these things and found it hilarious. It's Bill Bailey doing Kraftwerk doing the Hokey Kokey all in German, of course.  I think is ideal for parts of the body (if not a bit basic really) but it's good to be daft from time to time and have a bit of a laugh.  Logo 2 Unit 3 "Topfit" is where it could fit in for me, how about you?

Just one of the reasonsI love being a mum

My little girl, who is 6, must have been writing poems for Mothers' Day at school this week because this morning she wrote me this gorgeous poem before going to school.  It just goes to show how children see things through rose-coloured spectacles but here it is, it's absolutley beautiful. (Oh by the way, I've left in her versions of spellings!):

"My mum is terrific and thoughtfull

My mum is fashenebell and fantastic

My mum is beautifull and best

And thas way I love my mum"

Absolutely wonderful!

Another GMTV Diet on the horizon

Last year I blogged about the GMTV Bikini Diet that I followed for 6 weeks with great results (I lost just over a stone). Well, during my daytime TV viewing due to my my coughing fits this week, I discovered another diet is underway.  The "Get Motivated" campaign is being fronted by Mr. Motivator  - yes, he's on Twitter -  (who'd have thought it, I believed he was doing something other than motivating!) and again has recipes to follow.  So, I've decided to have another go (as I've regained some of the weight lost last year) and see how I go.  I won't update that regularly about it for fear of boring you but I will keep you informed of any success I have.

Peanut butter toastied for me for breakfast in the morning!...

Spanish Mike is back

I was really pleased to notice last week that Spanish Mike, of "One Semester of Spanish, Spanish Love Song" fame is back with a new Spanish video.  Called "Second Semester of Spanish, Spanish Love Song" and featuring a special guest, it lives up to the standards of the first song very well.  I'm hoping to nake my Spanish classes laugh with it in the coming week (it will give them something other than my lack of Spanish to laugh at!!!)

Here it is...



ps. Please note the lack of "odd" exclamation marks in this post!!!!!!!!!

eTwinning workshop at Stockton CLC

[caption id="attachment_191" align="alignleft" width="79" caption="eTwinning"][/caption]

Today, I was privileged to be invited to our local CLC to speak to Stockton's GTP (Graduate Trainee Programme) trainee teachers about our school's eTwinning experiences.  It was nice to work with Jenny Compton of the British Council and Val Brooks, Deputy of the Stockton CLC and fellow eTwinning Ambassador as well as to meet some of the new talent coming through from our local LEA Graduate Trainee Programme.

I promised that I'd upload my presentation onto this blog for the participants to look at in more detail at their own leisure and thought it would also be good to put down some of the areas that I ellaborated more on, as I spoke.

I covered how I got involved in eTwinning initially, as a part-time teacher to give me some focus and how now it has become an integral part of my teaching life.  I think it's important to stress, particularly for Secondary teachers who don't seem as widely involved in eTwinning across the UK as they are in the rest of Europe, that it is quite easy to mould your eTwinning projects into the curriculum without it being onerous and without it impacting negatively on exam results.  Infact, I firmly believe that eTwinning can enhance exam results as well as enhancing enjoyments of subjects.  It is also something that is ideal when thinking about ways of delivering the new KS3 curriculum and it can be cross-curricular and be something where pupils really can try out their creativity and love of the internet and all things computer-based.

I think that the presentation probably speaks for itself.  There are links to our highly successful prject from last year, Je blogue, tu blogues...let's blog! as well as various projects that our pupils did whilst involved in the project.  In addition there are links to one of our current projects that involved no MFL at all "How green is your world?" .

I think it's really important to remember that, whilst ideal for the MFL teacher as a way of stimulating real contact with native speakers of a similar age, eTwinning can be used in many creative ways using English as the means of communication (just about everyone wants to got their pupils practising English if at all possible).   One of our most successful international projects is one with a school in the Netherlands that covers Victorian England and the First World War through our History department and doesn't involve the use of Languages at all.   Also, a little idea I have in my head for cross-curricular links...to work with a department in school on a project from that curriculum area but work in French or German or Spanish (maybe with schools from across Europe, whose language learning is on the same level as our pupils).  That's just my sneaky way of getting pupils to use the language they learn without even knowing that their doing it!

Here is the presentation...

Ian Ramsey’s eTwinning Experience

View more presentations from Langwitch.

I have also add this presentation to my Langwitch Wiki  and you can find it here.