Article Details

Article Details

Clackmannanshire update

Author: Rona Grant, Clackmannanshire

Clackmannanshire may be a small authority but our outlook is very much focused on opening doors into other cultures for our pupils – the world is bigger than our wee county! There is a lot of work going on in the authority to progress the implementation of 1+2 and the roll out has seen some exciting approaches, all of which are based on collaboration. 

S3 Language Leaders at Alva Academy are enjoying the opportunity to work with each of the P7 classes in the school cluster as part of their extended induction programme. We felt this was an excellent opportunity to highlight the importance of languages and develop our young workforce. The S3 pupils teach taster lessons in both German and Spanish, and their creative lessons are overseen by their languages teachers. 

As with everything we are striving to do in Clackmannanshire, the focus is on collaboration, creativity and harnessing digital solutions. Lessons take cognisance of previous learning, use fun interactive activities to engage the P7s, as well as using iPads for some quick games to check on the learning that has taken place. Really quite impressive lessons planned by our S3! It is heartening to see P7 pupils so engaged and excited by Modern Languages; they are keen to take part, as well as recognise and discuss the importance of languages in their lives. 

Like many authorities, we have seen great results when Modern Language specialists help out in primaries, but this is understandably time onerous. In order to maximise the collaboration we are now planning to use a digital solution – Google Hangouts. We can't wait to start this and already have some enthusiastic S3s ready to link up with primary classes via Hangouts. This will allow meaningful collaboration without the hassle of travelling. It will allow older pupils to consolidate their learning and pass on their enthusiasm for languages to younger pupils, and we’re hoping it will capture the imagination of primary pupils and motivate them to learn. 

Stay tuned for how this progresses...

  

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