Author: Judith Boulton-Jones, East Renfrewshire Council
As we march towards spring, here’s what’s been going on in East Renfrewshire (while we dodged the rain!)
L2 in all 22 East Renfrewshire primary schools is French. We offer French CLPL for beginners and have just introduced a ‘Next steps’ class. Training is available as an eight-week twilight for 90 minutes after school. Evaluations have been positive, but the main factor that has been identified as crucial is the need to build teachers’ confidence in French, whilst also looking at the methodology of teaching a language. Teachers try out all of the games and songs that they can then go on and use with their pupils. There is also a dedicated CLPL Glow page, which supports the teachers’ learning and where they can find all the resources and vocabulary booklets from the course. A list of useful web links is key to supporting staff – these are accessible and easy so there are no excuses for not giving French a go!
In session 2014-15 we rolled out our programme of L3 language learning in P5, P6 and P7. L3 languages are Spanish, Italian and Chinese. Teachers were commissioned to develop resources for all three languages, including a pupil workbook and teacher guide and this programme has been evaluated and further developed for session 2015-16 as we were much too ambitious to start with! We are now embedding sound files into the pupil booklets as a support to class teachers who are still building their confidence in the languages. CLPL for Spanish and Italian was offered to all staff and Meryl and Jude from CISS provided three great sessions for Chinese. Our Hanban exchange teachers deliver the Chinese language, while class teachers deliver the cultural element of the course. However teachers are keen to learn more about China and challenge themselves with a little bit of Chinese learning… Zài jiàn!
Return to March 2016 newsletter