A year in a network
Our annual conference is next week 17 June and it will beour 11th conference …since 2011 as Janet Lloyd Network and before asWarrington LA.
We have grown and developed together. There are mini –groupswithin our community: the “Upskillers, the Spanish teachers, the Co-ordinators,the supportive SLT, the links abroad schools, the whole staff training andtrainers, the JLN associate language teachers, the bloggers and tweeters (!!),the transition groups and the children.
Have you considered the impact of your commitment and hard work?
How many children learn a primary foreign language locally?
A few weeks ago I worked out that for example on an average Wednesday, 2,000KS1 and KS2 children in our network learn a primary foreign language!
Aremarkable achievement ,which is verymuch all down to the network member schools and their commitment to primarylanguage learning.
We have schools that are enhancing learning, schools thatare steadily developing their language learning and schools that are beginningor restarting their language learning. Each school contributes to the wholenetwork and the subject coordinators are definitely key.There are now 90 of you in total!
Thisyear we set up Network News to share within and outside the network, practicaland creative approaches to a whole year’s language learning.
Up to this pointit was just the associate language teachers and myself who could watch the whole picture take shape every academicyear.
Here is a just a taste of the activities and ideas the network members have developed to engage their children in purposeful language learning between September 2013-June 2014…. And I am certain we will do more yetthis year and I am looking forward to all the wonderful ideas still to come ,based upon the World Cup, Tour de France the Commonwealth Games, the beach, thecircus, the puppet shows, Summer celebrations etc!
Thanks to all network members!
Subject Coordinators ' CPD
Throughout the year you have met in your mini-groups and kept in touch by email, Twitter and the website. The three Subject Coordinators’ CPD sessions have been hugely successful and informative with 52 schools attending the three sessions over the year.
Local support group twilights
We have held our regular local support group twilight meetings, this year about Playground
So what has happened this year?
September
Many of us celebrated European Languages Day by launchingour learning aspirations revisiting simple language , making and flying kitesand investigating international kite festivals such as Berck sur plage
From KS1 to Year 6 you shared your kite displays!
Thanks to St Elphin's for the original idea !
St Margaret’s CE learned and sang the chorus of “Let’s gofly a kite” in French for a whole school performance!
Other schools held whole school celebration daysand parents’ assemblies.
Alderman Bolton for the second year running invited the parents in to school to try out some language learning.St Lewis' linked up with pupils from the local high school to set up a French market in the school hall and many of you had language investigation days !
October
Rainford CE held Spanish spooky goings on in their language lessons.Lots of you took your children on virtual autumn walks with our colour and sound poems and St Philips Year 5 produced a wonderful display of their own Autumn term poems
Some of our schools focused this year on developing grammar with UKS2 and in October we worked on wizards potions with the verb to have….and the children created their own poems , like this one above from Cinnamon Brow CE.
November
Schools with links abroad were busy getting their Christmasgifts ready or developing learning projects via Skype.
St Oswald’s involved the whole community in gathering localdocuments, photos and evidence to share what the area they live in, looked likein a by- gone time and shared this with their Spanish link school for their "My home,your home" project.
We held our first of the three LSGs... and were filmed at Stockton Heath by the BBC!
December
The creative ways to celebrate Christmas in a target language that you all came up with,were amazing. You can read about them all here on Network News!
StBridget ‘s combined their Christmas carol fundraising with their French language learning, St Ann’sCE Warrington held their annual whole school ”Bûche de Noël with French instructions session.
The KS1children at Bruche CP and Evelyn Street put on their Spanish performancesof Goldilocks and the Three Bears.
StElphins created their own versions of the chocolate Spanish clapping game,changed to café au lait and we tried it out at our Associate Network TeacherChristmas party as a Saint Nicolas forfeit!
So many of you made your own descriptions of Christmas famous characters too ......
January
Everyone loves the alien family and they arrived in Year 4as usual during January. Cronton CE ontheir first day back were treated to a Roscon de Reyes made by Mr Thomas ,
himself
...and many of us woke up one morning in January tofind out we had been on BBC Breakfast News , filmed during one of our AutumnLSG CPD sessions!
February
It’s carnival time! There were monsters and masks and fancydress .
Westbrook Old Hall and Plantation CP went to town on monster descriptions and grand monstre vert story, performance and displays.
Birchwood CE created Arcimboldo fruit faces.
Dallam created their ownSpanish omelettes as part of their Spanish healthy eating unit !
And Broomfields CP went on a virtual tour to the Winter Olympics practising their French and learning some Italian on the way! At the end of the virtual tour they received their own gold medals too!
March
Well it was World Book Day followed quickly by Mother’sDay. Emilie’s Year 4 atCulcheth learned and performed rhymes about the family ,which they made in toraps using Autorap and shared these with a school in Kent!They loved appearing the local press too!
April
Throughout the year the HODs at University Academy andBirchwood High have been getting to grips with what transition means to them.In April we had a fabulous cluster meeting with the Birchwood cluster to planfor Summer Year 6 and to begin to move one more step forward with what languagelearning in Autumn Year 7 will look like.
We held our own Show ,Tell and Share in April at StocktonHeath and the simple ideas from eight different schools helped us all to buildour own bank of ideas and activities! Thanks to everyone who took part – nomatter how nervous you were, you were fantastic!
Easter to end of May
After Easter Latchford CE Year 6 who had have spent the year gettingready for their trip to Malaga,went and had a great week with their partner school! It was a huge success and as I write theYear 6 from Malaga are here on their return visit.
Twiss Green with Miss Browne have been on a virtual trip to SouthAmerica and linked their geography with their language learning….
This is just the tip of the iceberg !
You have shared andachieved so much this year!
And now we are in June …. And it’s conference time again!
Here’s to another successful academic year !