What’s it all about? What will my school get as a network member?
So welcome to the world of the “PLN Language Detectives”.
Our founder, Janet Lloyd, wants to ensure foreign language learning is accessible to all children, and that the success they feel in primary school becomes the foundation stone to success as they progress through language learning in secondary school and beyond. As a team. we truly believe in opening the window on the wider world of languages and cultures, and offering every child the opportunity to explore and develop their own skills of learning a foreign language.
Our methodology is based upon introducing, practising, consolidating, revisiting, and re-using in later learning and in new contexts the knowledge and skills of the young primary foreign language learners. You learners will: “Explore and learn, practise, consolidate, recall, and re-use, and celebrate their language learning”.
The digital platform hosts the schemes of work for your KS2 (junior) learners in your chosen school foreign target language. The schemes in each language run in parallel, so for example Video2Teach French, and Click2Teach French run parallel to each other and mirror each other in learning objectives, activities, and outcomes.
In all our materials, our focus is on the primary child, and we make purposeful links where appropriate across the primary curriculum. The core schemes are created by the whole team with key input from our native speaker teachers to ensure the language we use, and pronunciation we share, is correct every time. Throughout the scheme we have planned for opportunities where the language learning can make links with, and reinforce Literacy focuses, celebrate home languages and your school’s wider community, look for similarities and differences between languages, and build cultural capital.
The learning programme has been created by experts in primary foreign languages teaching and learning. Throughout the schemes there is consistency in activities, challenge, support, differentiation, and patterns of learning. We have planned carefully for the introduction, practise and revisiting of core language. We do not overburden the learner with unnecessary content but also practise the skills required to access and use unfamiliar language. We introduce and practise the phonics of the language. Grammar is carefully staged and woven through the four years or stages of learning from nouns, to nouns and adjectives in simple sentences, to the use of common verbs in the present tense in descriptive sentences and short texts. We focus on all four core skills, listening, speaking, reading, and writing, and explore, develop and strengthen language learning skills to enable learners to apply these skills in the future when learning another language.
Video2Teach enables less experienced colleagues in your school to teach their classes using the virtual in- class native language primary skilled teacher, who guides and supports every teacher and learner through every lesson throughout the academic year. Our founder, Janet Lloyd, describes the V2T scheme as the “magic ingredient she wishes she had been able to offer all schools when she first started supporting schools in the 2000s to deliver primary foreign languages”.
Click2Teach is the parallel scheme with all the native speaker sound file support every teacher needs to deliver primary foreign languages without the video virtual teacher co-teaching every week in the classroom. The lessons are PowerPoint based. It’s the scheme that allows teachers with language knowledge, experience of teaching languages, and your “bought in” specialists to have a spine to the learning, and the time to add the sparkle, and creativity they want to bring to their language teaching.
Every lesson in the all the schemes have downloadable editable lesson plans, all the resources, additional games, songs where appropriate, and each half term has an assessment lesson called Puzzle It Out if required. The assessments are in line with the common European Framework of Reference skill descriptors . The planning package for each unit has knowledge organisers, medium term plans, progress charts for content, phonics, grammar, language learning skills, built in tracking and assessment, and examples of work that have been shared with us by network schools. There’s a short video overview to give every teacher the heads up at the start of a half term about each unit, which also shares content, learning goals, and outcomes are for each unit. LTPs, “Golden Thread” planning, year on year progress and even more are in the MFL Coordinators area. As a team we want to ensure that you as the teachers in your school can feel you have the time and the space to deliver the lessons, and be assured that the planning, progression, and overviews are there at the press of button, can be tailored to your individual school’s needs, and offer quality assurance.
Each Stage from 1 -4 is in line with the stage of the language learner. Your free bespoke planning session at your first 1:1 consultancy meeting with one of our highly skilled primary teachers will allow you to decide how you can adapt the stages should your Year 6 for example (top juniors) be beginner learners of a foreign language. It is very important to the whole team when creating the materials that the age and stage of the children is considered along every step of the learning journey.
Planet Languages APP. We are currently rolling out the in-school, class and child centredAPP, which consolidates learning, and can be used as an individual child follow up , or home learning opportunity.
Seasonal Specials, and Cross Curricular areas on the digital platform enable teachers throughout the academic year to add special moments to the core learning. The lessons you will find here mean that your language learning will become an integral part of your whole school curriculum. Take a look and see how the lesson PowerPoints mean that from the moment your school becomes a member of the network you can plan for whole school language days, global celebration days,PE and Sports activities in the foreign language, school calendar celebrations with a foreign language element, and so much more.
The KS1 Language Explorers offers every school simple native speaker primary teacher video led lessons. In EYFS we have built in the use of puppets, and continuous provision. In Year 1 and Year 2, all the units are interchangeable with a focus on exploring the skills of becoming a language learner, and through the EYFS and Year 1 and Year 2, a common thread is the memory makers. And of course, we provide all the planning too.
Our WhatsApp PLN Forum, and/ or our Members Zone FB private group are open for you to join, and this is where children’s work, questions, challenges, successes, and solutions can be shared between network member schools. Plus, you may wish to attend for free as part of your membership the Effective Coordination or Outstanding Coordination CPD and/or become a member of the Primary Language Leader Group and attend the twilights. Maybe we will also see you face to face at our annual members’ conference?
We look forward to you joining Primary Languages Network, and being part of the exciting, effective, and successful learning journey so many schools are already participating in with us.