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Author: Laura McEwan, Falkirk Council

This session has seen Falkirk Council extend its CLPL training programme at both cluster and authority level, offering a variety of CLPL opportunities.

At authority level we offered two rounds of our early and first level CLPL training programme in French, which lasts 11 weeks. The first round took place from September to January whilst the second round finished in May. The programme is run on a twilight basis. To support our cluster approach, authority trainers also delivered this programme within two of our clusters. The Larbert cluster, the only cluster to have Spanish as L2, continued to offer their own very successful Spanish CLPL training to cluster staff.

This session saw the introduction of a six week L3 Spanish course, which proved to be very popular. We continued our CLPL in Scots, offering three courses, one led by author Matthew Fitt. Four of our teachers attended Gaelic Primary Language Training and we also offered a Gaelic taster session to encourage teachers to consider Gaelic as L3.

In August and September we offered support sessions in French and Spanish to P1 teachers in delivering Primary Language Learning (PLL). We also offered a 1+2 Storyline course, which examined how PLL can be incorporated into the Storyline approach.

At cluster level, we have a number of ongoing, cross-sector projects where secondary colleagues support language learning in primaries. This helps build confidence amongst staff in the delivery of PLL in both L2 and L3.

We continue to develop our Glow 1+2 Resource Bank, which contains training materials, resources and web links in French, Spanish and Scots. There are also links to our Falkirk 1+2 YouTube channel as well as our packages for reference and on-line consolidation in French and Spanish. In addition, we have a Falkirk 1+2 Pinterest account.

We use our @Falkirk1plus2 Twitter account to highlight good practice and share news about up-coming events, new ideas and resources. An ever-growing number of Falkirk primary practitioners are tweeting about how they are introducing and embedding PLL within the classroom, reinforcing and sharing in-class language learning.

Next session will see the introduction of our French second level CLPL through either a standard or accelerated route. We also plan to offer teachers who have completed our PLL courses the opportunity to study for an SQA qualification in French or Spanish. Finally, we look forward to increasing our L3 provision by offering BSL training.