Carol Taylor
MFL Coordinator at a Primary School in ST Helens
During the academic year, there is a date on the calendar that I always look forward to in June and that is the Primary Languages Conference. The content is always inspiring with quality speakers and it’s a great chance to network with like-minded colleagues. When I heard that PLN were continuing with their conference in the virtual world I felt as though the team were carrying out their super supportive ethos: they provide invaluable resources but also you feel as though they are ‘there for you’.
After minimal contact with other humans it was lovely to see friendly faces appear on my screen. I enjoyed the structure of introductions from Janet Lloyd and Kate Percival to lead into the content of the session. When I first started my role as MFL lead, I was apprehensive about the best way to approach an Action Plan. Will’s session on this was clear and reassuring. Sometimes we get hung up about making an Action Plan what we presume others want to see but it has to be real and relevant to your school’s needs. It was good to have the message from Will that you are showing in your plan the awareness of your school’s current MFL situation with a view to saying how you will move this forward.
The Czech Challenge worked very well as we linguists have a fascination with learning new languages and seeing the links with other languages. The reason this session was particularly interesting though was because it reminded us what it is like to be a beginner and to feel how our pupils might feel when starting a new language.
Week 2 was full of information on how MFL might fare in an Ofsted Deep Dive. Michael Wardle, HMI Subject Lead for languages, told us what might happen from a languages point of view and what I found particularly interesting was the showing of report comments on schools who had been through this. I mentioned to the team that what stayed with me most was that delivery in school might be of a high standard but pupils might not be storing the skills and knowledge in their long term memory. Following Lockdown I am wondering how much my pupils will come back remembering from previous sessions.
This was addressed in Janet’s follow up as well as Catherine and Kate’s sessions. And after all the theme of the conference this year is ‘Reigniting Language Learning’ so anyone else with the same worries as myself would have benefitted from the CPD. Speaking of Catherine and Kate’s sessions, these were both great for the day to day experience of a languages teacher.
Catherine thoroughly went through the VLE and ensured that if anybody didn’t know where to find certain things they came away fully understanding. Kate helped from a coordinator viewpoint and skilfully drew all aspects of managing our subject together with a specific focus on how we move forward in September. Input from Susanne Wilson on CPD and training was informative from the point of view of making sure that courses are available not just for the MFL lead but other staff who cover languages. In fact I will be pointing staff at our school in the direction of the ‘Learn a New Language’ resource for European Day of Languages this year. I also intend to ask them to upskill in French using PLN resources with a view to this supporting our Erasmus funded trip to Rouen. The conference reminded me of the wealth of resources like this to be found on the VLE. In terms of delivery of lessons in an engaging way, ideas aplenty were to be found during the conference from Robert, Joanne, Emilie and Irene. We deliver French at our school but ideas for activities in Spanish are always welcomed in our school too as we have a link with a Spanish school and Y1 will be looking at Spain during ED of L.
A big thank you to all of you for your part in producing activities which are perfectly pitched for the primary learner. No wonder the pupils at our school look forward to languages lessons so much. The inclusion of Global Learning through Environment and Sustainability was welcome too as we carry out international projects of this type frequently. I hope I have shown that the virtual conference was a success in my eyes and if I were to say what really got me excited...? As ever it was the way we came together but this time through the magic of Facebook Live. There is something very special about languages teachers and the supportive, kind attitude to be found amongst fellow members leaves me feeling full of positivity. Thanks again for all the hard work that went in to organising this and here’s to next June!
