Article Details

Article Details

North Ayrshire update

Author: Angela Noble, North Ayrshire Council

This year, a focus of the 1+2 team has been to support upper primary classes with reading and writing in French/Spanish. We are working alongside teachers to introduce sentence building games, close procedure, reading comprehensions, mapping and labelling. As we teach, the links with literacy are emphasised, highlighting aspects of pronunciation and teaching adjective agreement.

Each class is visited once per term and our 1+2 team leave a follow-up lesson for the class to complete independently. Pupils are really engaged in the subject matter, and reading and writing is evolving as a thought-provoking exercise rather than a copying activity. Feedback has been very positive.

CLPL sessions in grammar will help boost teachers’ confidence further. Staff are becoming more confident orally, having covered the vocabulary in our 1+2 Framework. Pupils are also taking ownership of embedding the language on a daily basis through Stacey Arneil’s ‘Lingo Leader’ initiative.

An additional aim was to help probationers feel more supported and prepared for 1+2 in a classroom setting. Our Development Officer gave a presentation on the importance of 1+2 as part of North Ayrshire’s Probationer Support Programme at Greenwood Conference Centre, followed by a workshop offering a sample of activities which could be easily transferred into the classroom. Both primary and secondary practitioners attended. This training will be offered as a regular slot to all new probationers and our aim is to develop this further and set up a focus group next session.

University of Strathclyde Education Scotland British Council Scotland The Scottish Government
SCILT - Scotlands National centre for Languages