How PLN Supports Small Schools
Good News! There is a special price for school with less than 100 pupils. Just contact Tess@primarylanguages.network to find out more.
Many of the challenges that you will face in a small school with primary foreign language learning are also addressed in the Primary Languages Network Mixed Age podcast and blogpost too. It’s worth looking here too.
We have tried and tested approaches to ensure that your learners will make progress in content, phonics and grammar plus language learning skills and the four core skills of listening , speaking , reading ,and writing.
The KS2 Video2Teach and Click2Teach schemes have been devised to offer schools options to tailor the learning to allow schools to develop rolling programmes of learning that naturally suit a Year 3/ Year 4 class split, and Year 5/Year 6 class split. Core language, key phonics and grammar are introduced and revisited throughout the units.
So for example in Year 3 and Year 4, we practise simple greetings, personal information questions and answers, core vocabulary (so numbers , colours, days, months, feelings, likes, dislikes) , we focus on practising core phonics which we find easy to access with core numbers and colours, and the grammar focus is upon recognition and exploration of nouns and also adjectives in simple sentences. In Years 5 and 6, we continue to revisit this core language, phonics, and grammar, and we begin to explore extended sentences with a focus on how to use nouns, adjectives, and verbs in descriptive target language sentences and short texts.
The first units of every stage of V2T or C2T , from Stage 1 to 4 ,are the key foundation stone units, and thereafter there is flexibility of use within individual school’s learning programmes with the other 5 units in each the learning stage .We often work with small schools where 3 units per year are the maximum they achieve , or where some units, using stage 3 and 4 as an example, are taken from Stage 3 and used in Stage 4.
Plus our EYFS and KS1 Language Explorers units allow schools to pick and mix units as our focus is upon limited core language and lots of activities to explore how we access, investigate and begin to learn a foreign language.
We do not expect you to have to do this alone. Firstly you are entitled with membership to a 1:1 Meeting with our Network Manager or PLN Consultant. You can email us with additional questions at any time, and there is a growing group of small school users with whom you can be put in email contact.
Our highly experienced Network Manager, Catherine Simms, and the PLN Consultant, Kate Percival , are able to support your school to build bespoke programmes of learning using either the KS2 Video2Teach or Click2Teach schemes. This bespoke programme will be discussed at your first 1:1 virtual meeting with Catherine or Kate, as part of your annual membership. In each following academic year ,you are entitled to a follow up meeting, and will be able to further discuss any challenges that you face as a small school at your annual free 1:1 virtual meeting.