Ready,steady,go! Setting off together with Primary Language Learning

Making first steps to progress together in primarylanguages. A report from the chalk face 

It's a case of Ready! Steady !Go!

This morning I have had the great pleasure of helping aschool to set off on their Spanish learning journey.

Here is the picture so far .....

The school has a Year 3teacher who has a degree in Spanish and has decided to embark on Spanish forthis reason plus the fact that the school feeds to a local High school whichoffers Spanish.

The audit of staff skills showed that there were that otherstaff had a limited knowledge of Spanish and would need support to deliver a programme of study With support the school is about to set off on an excitinglanguage learning journey where class teachers will deliver the language learningand draw support from each other.

We have begun to put some simple tools in place today tohelp school to set off on this journey!

Step One: 

Getting to understand the new PoS from the DfEfor Primary Languages and unpicking the Purpose of Study section to create aschool vision.(This has already happened and the POS was used as a discussion tooltoday to forward plan)

Step Two: 

A clear and simple guide by the subjectcoordinator during staff CPD time to set the staff and children off on theirlearning journey together (after half term) 

Step Three: 

A shared learning experience

School will hold a celebration of the World Cup using thegames and activities from the JLN World Cup Football Seasonal Specials with a focus on the WorldCup PE games  downloadable folders with lessons with support sound files in Spanish for the staff , using limited language in a familiar curriculum area- Sport. What a giftthis year too as the World Cup focus moves to South America!

Step Four: 

Follow up discussions

How did the children react to PE in Spanish?

How quickly did the children remember the language?

How easily could the children lead the PE games ?

How did the sound files support the staff?

These discussions will pave the way to a simple understandingof how teachers can develop- their language lessons in the early stages and howthey can be learners alongside the children, facilitating learning too.

Step Five

Planning for a European Day of Languages Celebration inSeptember.

We felt one way of stepping off and setting out what be tolook at languages around us  as way tosupport the children , mainly mono-lingual, to appreciate languages around them.The coordinator will ask the staff to investigate some of the Commonwealth  languages materials (Welsh, Manx, Gaelic andthe Scots reading of Peter Rabbit) plus investigate the target language countryof their chosen language- Spain

Step Six

Establishing tools to help the school progress together.

I love these! The ideas developed from the discussionsbetween the subject coordinator and myself and are so simple, so primary and soeffective!

Suitcases to pack and unpack

This idea came from our conversation about my blog A journey worth the taking………………(otherwise known as Miss Hilton’s suitcase. 

Creating real suitcases per year group or stored as a virtual class memento suitcase on the school VLE, that can go up with thechildren to the next year group and can be unpacked by the next  teacher. 

So for instance KS1 children learningsongs and rhymes in the target language can share threes with the Y3 teacher atthe start of the year.

Year 3 moving into Year 4 can unpack their Year 3 songs,games and memories with their new Year 4 teacher. 

Effective transition and atime to reflect and learn with or from the children as they move into a newyear group! 

Step Seven

Building knowledge of grammar together. 

The new POS asks us to teach all four skills of listening,speaking,reading and writing and to develop the children's understanding of basic grammar. 

We discussed howthis could be seen as a  big challengebut how really the grammar that young learners  meet in the target language is that of SPAG(nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions). 

The first focus weidentified are NOUNS! 

Simple – let’s have treasure boxes for each KS2 class , linkedto my grammar blog about noun collectors.

Each lesson or when appropriate,achild that has worked well, joined in well, shared etc can be asked to draw aspecific noun they have met in the lesson as picture treasure record and place it in one of two class treasure boxes.The boxes are for either our masculineor feminine nouns (and of course neuter if you are working in German). In return for the picture the child receives in  a card papergold coin – for work well done!
It’s important right from the start that thestaff and the children understand that masculine and feminine don’t refer tomale or female and that these are “tags” to help us to use the nouns in messages in the target language in different ways( el/la in Spanish mean "the" which are referred to as definitearticles by you and me!). 
Guess what half way through the year inthe treasure boxes the  coordinator willadd “un “ and “una”   stickers on the inside lids of the boxes.Thechallenge from the coordinator will be to ask the teacher and the children in the class to spot whenand how these words are used …. Hence they will explore indefinite articles. Later she can change or add two new boxes for plural masculine nouns and plural feminine  nouns. everyone moves forward together and the coordinator can support.The year one , stage one grammar target will be to work with the children on their knowledge of target language nouns.

Step Seven

Ah I hear you ask …. But what about the teachers and the childrenwhen they get stuck in their language explorations! Well the coordinator is goingto put up a Spanish letterbox outside her classroom – indeed she showed me thespot- and  the teachers and children canpost her questions to ask, thoughts the class have had to check , good workdone, creative ideas, facts they find out! Simple, effective and this helps tobe able to access the school coordinator as a point of reference!

Step Eight

QR Codes!

The school wants to celebrate the fact that theirchildren are developing the WOW factor (liberation from insularity!).This isa mainly mono-lingual school so the QRs help the mums, dads, carers and widercommunity get the WOW factor too – by being able to hear their children speakon displays that are 2D but become talking walls! 

Simple greetings to start with on a picture linked to Spain and Spanish culture in classrooms and in the foyer.

Everyone has to start at the beginning and build on solid foundations.

I look forward to going back to school to help them buildsome more !