All things Christmassy

Merry Xmas everybody! How very well deserved are the Winter school holidays. Whether you have been in a bubble, several bubbles, or teaching online this picture sums up how teachers everywhere have been ensuring that teaching and learning continues and Xmas celebrations are still in the classroom.

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Joanne in the photo above found herself in the middle of delivering lessons online to one of the Primary Languages Network Language Teacher schools. A focus on prepositions still took place, with guess what? The elf on the shelf, except he was next to Santa, under the tree, on a present etcetera.

We’ve made the elf on the shelf work for us this year and Emilie, our Language Teacher Manager, has created a short reading activity everyday in French as a brain break ,morning meeting or reading challenge.

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It’s certainly been quite a learning curve during Covid19 .We are learning and sharing all the time.Here’s Natalie, another of our Language Teaching Team , sharing today how she took what Joanne did and made it her own, teaching festive style online and at home in a primary school in Sheffield..

Sharing and learning from each other is at the centre of Primary Languages Network and Catherine ,our Network Manager’s tweet this week demonstrates this beautifully.

This year we are delighted to be able to run a competition to raise some money for FareShare and fill our office Christmas tree with foreign language seasonal greetings baubles designed by some of you network schools

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All along the way our talented learners have shared their own home language knowledge too . Take a look at the photo of Xmas baubles and find “Merry Xmas” in Arabic,Turkish,Urdu, Kurdish and Somali.

We love to share some of our resources with everyone within Primary Languages Network or via our YouTube PLN Kids channel. Looks like lots of schools have enjoyed showing our simple Nativity stories in French and Spanish and we’ve been thrilled with the follow-up activities that schools have shared with us too.

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And we have seen how many visitors to our Active Lingo shop have downloaded our ever popular Rudolph Bookmark corners.

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So here’s to 2021. Watch out for our activities and resources to help you with language learning in primary schools throughout next year and thanks to each and every one of you who has taught in schools this term and enabled children to enjoy their primary language learning.

"Banarama Effect".It's the way that we do it!"

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Meet Emilie, our Language Teacher Service Manager at Primary Languages Network. She leads the PLN team of 30 teachers in 50 primary schools within our network.

Emilie has been working as a primary language French teacher for over 10 years. She’s become quite an expert! Like me, Janet Lloyd,the founder of PLN, Emilie can see that “it’s the way that you teach and deliver” primary languages that get the best results.

Take a look at these two examples from Emilie’s teaching this last half term.

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The team of language teachers’ goal is to keep work primary and accessible to as many learners as possible. This is achieved often with limited time. Plus add in the additional challenge of home learning in 2020 too!

Below is a celebration of some ways the team has delivered effective learning since September and how Emilie and the team are continuing to develop as “experts in primary language teaching and learning”.

We hope what you see below inspires you too.

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Creative learning for a purpose from the beginning! Year 3 beginners, “Popcorn Personality” writing (see picture above) at word level about their own favourite characters in stories

Year 5 ,stage 3, establishing a long lasting writing for purpose. introducing themselves in Spanish to penfriends in another local school.

Active learning.Being part of “outdoor learning days” (nature trail photo)with our target language nature trail activities:

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Finding ways to keep language learning fresh and purposeful even during self isolation periods with “talking about feelings” activities:

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Taking the time to celebrate European Day of Languages with our “Rainbow of Love”, French/Spanish and BSL song and activities:

Just love this, reading the Rainbow of Love song in French and translating into BSL!

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Reading comprehension with a wider community purpose.

Adding context throughout the school year, that is meaningful to primary learners, practising and recalling familiar core content.Our new examples this Autumn term include:

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Autumn, colours and sound spelling

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Harvest time and pumpkins and spooky lanterns.

Ensuring progress in learning. Revisit, retrieve, scaffold- just like you would do in other areas of the primary curriculum.

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The PLN team’s Autumn celebrations of Bonfire Night demonstrate this.

From Stage 1, (familiar words in new contexts) to Stage 4 learners, who attempt an analysis of sentence structure and basic grammar (nouns, adjectives, verbs) and write several sentences both independently and creatively

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It takes time and team work to become experts in primary language teaching. Can’t wait to see what the team produces next!

Network members everything you see is available on the PLN VLE.

Not a member? Then get in touch with us, the primary language experts, and find out more about becoming a member of our network and how we can support you.

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PLN in the Spanish classroom

Spanish Lead at a Primary School in Birmingham

Spanish Lead at a Primary School in Birmingham

PLN in the Spanish Classroom
by Melody Morell

After 6 years teaching GCSE Spanish in a Secondary School, it took me a few months to settle into a Primary classroom. I had different trials on a variety of languages websites and PLN was, by far, the most creative, comprehensive and broad of all. When I explored all of the activities suggested by PLN per topic and stage,I could easily imagine how I would utilise those tools with my students.

“Primary students are active learners”

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One of the first things I learned when teaching languages in Primary is: students are active learners who must bring the language to live. After attending Susanne Wilson’s PLN CPD last year I got a very important message: I am not teaching grammar for GCSE anymore,neither am I teaching for a national exam. But instead, I am teaching to learn and enjoy Spanish through projects, activities and games.

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The moment I started using VLE resources in my lessons, students were thriving in their Spanish learning. Let me begin with one of the most successful activities: “La marioneta habladora”, the chatty puppet. I got this brilliant idea from Janet’s envelope Paper puppet from Year 4 Autumn 1 Be creative video. I couldn’t possibly find 130 envelopes (I teach in 3 different schools) so I taught the students how to create an origami puppet just with an A4 paper.


Since I did this with my Year 3, I let them choose what to write in the inside part of the puppet. It worked really well with lower KS2 but I think this could also work really well in KS1. Students took this home during half term to practice at home with their families or just to play with by themselves.

“Adapting resources”

“El acordeón” is also a very enjoyable activity that I carried out with my Year 4s at the end of a term. Another great idea I took from a the BeCreative video from Janet. I adapted this to make it more challenging. I asked students to write full sentences and include as much information as they could in each part of the accordion. I grasped from them how much they appreciated making the languages their own including extra words and talking about themselves. This could be used as an end of term show of our work, as a display in the classroom or as homework. I found with higher KS2 classes it worked best when done at home with the vocabulary learnt rather that in the classroom.

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“Superhero Utility belt”

Another of my favourite activities has been the “Superhero belt”. Great resource to practice the pencil case items. I used this after 1 lesson teaching the items (games, whiteboard writing, speaking practice) and one more lesson of sentence writing (air writing, sharing sentences, role play).

After these 2 lessons, most students could recall 7-10 items from memory and spell, at least, 5 items accurately. We only used colour card and felt tip pens. 

 

“Talking about aliens”

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In Year 5, students really enjoyed creating their alien school. The alien school story (Teach by Story) works extremely well as a project or sequence of lessons. After working on the story, keywords and key phrases, students can work in groups writing a story of their own. We also did a pop up school where they wrote sentences describing the rooms and using connectives. This could work great as a display in the classroom, however since, unfortunately, we don’t have an MFL classroom in my school, students stuck it in their books. You could also create a comic with the aliens describing each room and use the speech bubbles to write the sentences in.

In the story there are many verbs and nouns to explore, the use of dictionaries was welcomed but not compulsory. By watching the story and its actions, the majority of the class guessed what it meant so they were encouraged to use the same or similar words.

“Creativity with Year 6”

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I always find my Year 6 students are the ones who enjoy creating something new the most. Due to a very demanding core curriculum, in Spanish they appreciate having some freedom of using the language learnt from Year 3 to date in a variety of contexts and settings. An example of that is writing a comic about their daily routine – following the Superhero video in Click2Teach. Some of them wrote the times and other wrote the colour of their pyjamas! I loved reading all the different ideas they came up with.

To sum up with, PLN has given us so much more than resources; a platform where we can deliver fantastic lessons with great ideas that make our students thrive when learning Spanish.

To see if your school would beneift from using PLN resources, click on the button below to recieve a free trial!

Circuit Breakers

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Circuit Breakers

Interactive & independent home learning

Need to offer “home learning”?

We’ve created our “Circuit Breakers” in primary French and Spanish to help you do exactly that.

FREE resource to all Primary Languages Network members. (Accessed in “home learning” on your VLE dashboard).

Circuit breakers found under this button on member dashboards

Circuit breakers found under this button on member dashboards

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There are three access points. Stage 1 (beginners), Stage 2 (second year of learning a language in KS2), and Stage 3/4 (for primary language learners who are ready for an extended challenge).

How does it work?

The resource can be popped on your own school intranet, or links can be emailed to parents and children and the Circuit Breakers can be downloaded and used on school or home devices.

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There is a maximum of 5 components (Listen, Speak, Learn, Play, Remember) and behind the interactive buttons are activities designed and presented by native speaker experienced primary language teachers.

Themes are core elements of language learning and are linked to the PLN Click2Teach Schemes of Work.

Each focus practises familiar language and also has built-in challenges to maintain and boost language learning knowledge during a period of home learning.

From beginners to children with greater language learning skills and knowledge:

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  • Children practise sound-spelling with our native speaker videos.

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  • Listen and speak about themselves using our native speaker video clips:

  • Play interactive language learning games to recall and retrieve language .

  • Explore at every stage, appropriate grammar points, from nouns to adjectives and common present tense verbs.

Consolidate language practised, in creative reading and writing activities.

Circuit Breakers are here to help your children keep up with their language learning when they are out of school for a period of time.

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To find out more about Primary Languages Network and Circuit Breakers you can contact PLN here.

B:M 2020: Dig deeper, look closer, think bigger

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During Black History month 2020, we are launching our “B:M 2020 language and culture detectives” activity resources.

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Our first language and culture detectives activity pack is all about the life, culture, and language of Uganda. It’s a step by step KS2 resource, with your very own Ugandan tour guide and fantastic follow up activities developed by our expert primary practitioner, Jo Hornby.

What a fabulous primary resource to “dig deeper, look closer and think bigger” to explore the culture and language of Uganda and to consider similarities and differences between two cultures of our British Ugandan guide, with many thanks of course to our guide, Carol Smith.

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The resource can be used as one lesson or can be broken down into investigation and learning components, all leading to engaging hooks and tasks that the children will really enjoy. All Primary Languages Network members can access this in Seasonal Specials, Hot topics.

Take a look at the learning objectives first.

Our Ugandan guide and the short child friendly video clips explain simple facts about Uganda.

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The resource includes learning opportunities to link across the curriculum, from food and landscape to wildlife and tribes. All the way you are supported by our Ugandan “tour” guide. Be culture and country detectives. Engage the children with our tour guide and her love of Uganda, and her life as a mum of children here in the South of England.

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Don’t forget to learn some language too, and encourage the children to be language detectives. Try greetings, numbers, names and feelings in Lugandan.

And then, thanks to Jo Hornby,our expert primary practitioner, exploration activities encourage the children to be creative with the facts and language they have learnt.

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Take it further, dig deeper and look more closely… Get the class to “Think bigger” and explore the cultural similarities and differences between Uganda and the home life, country and culture of the children in the class.

This resource can be found in our Active Lingo Shop, click here to find it.

Pumpkin Harvest

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End of the first half term of learning and time to revisit and reflect on learning. This year we are “harvesting” our primary language learners’ knowledge using our “Pumpkin Harvest” activities and resources.

Let’s harvest learning.

There is a range of activities and resources from beginners, Stage 1 to Stage 3 and 4 learners who are now able to write descriptive sentences with nouns and adjectives, share emotions and feelings, and produce sentences with opinions.

Pumpkin Picking

A sequence of activities for new starters (Stage 1) that encourages language detective skills.

Listen out for sounds, recall and practise basic numbers 1-10 and play with the sounds of the new nouns.

Link this learning to “growing and ripening” sounds and knowledge and play a simple voice control game with sounds.

As the teacher listen to and observe how your young learners are developing their new language learning skills and retaining core language and content. Reflect on the next steps.

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Pumpkin Maths

Follow up activities to reinforce numbers and link language learning in a purposeful way to Maths. Practise either addition or multiplication and re-use French or Spanish spoken language. Take this further and practise subtraction and division, extend the target language number range to suit your learners’ knowledge.

Create your own pumpkin vegetable plot diagrams to show their understanding of addition and multiplication. Write number sentences in the target language for your classes to show as pictures.

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Pumpkin Pages - Read all about it!

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Generate “Pumpkin Pages” booklets that allow you to take a look at the core content children have already met and see what they can remember. Explore some common sound links shared in different target language core words.

Create “Pumpkin Personalities” which allow the children whether they are beginners or more advanced to imagine and create their own written pumpkin personalities and explore how they can use limited language creatively. Share and display the children’s “Pumpkin Pages” booklets as a celebration and “harvest of language learning” display.

Pumpkin Lantern Parades

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And finally, read, mime, play charades, design, and write a description of your own “pumpkin lanterns.

In this activity there is a focus on writing descriptive sentences, using feminine nouns and adjectives that agree.

Why not take the activity a stage further in French and the placement of adjectives of size (grand /petit) too and how these adjectives come before the noun.

Parade those lanterns! Get out in the playground and hold a pumpkin lantern display, where the children show each other their pumpkin lantern designs and read aloud the descriptive sentences they have written. Why not film the children too and share them with other classes?

Primary Languages Network members can access these resources in French and Spanish in Seasonal Specials Autumn 1 on the VLE .

Non- network members can download the free resources and activities from the Active Lingo Shop on the PLN website. French Pumpkin Harvest Pack Spanish Pumpkin Harvest Pack

Rainbow of Love 2020

European day of languages 2020

Every year we celebrate the joy of learning languages on European Day of Languages. We always create a theme and a song. This year is no different and we want to share the theme, our ideas and resources with everyone, both network and non- network members. Welcome to “Over the Rainbow”!

Network members can access the materials in Seasonal Special Autumn 1 on the VLE and non network members can download for free the video, transcript and the two Rainbow Writers activity sheets from our Active Lingo shop here.

Joanne Hornby, in the pictures above, composed our very special network song ”Rainbow of Love” which she recorded as a video and shared with delegates at the virtual conference in June ‘20. It’s all about looking for hope and joy in the natural world around us in these bizarre times. This year, due to Covid 19 restrictions, each school and setting has its own rules about singing.No problem. The music video is a song in parts, to watch and enjoy, to listen out for the French and Spanish and to practise some simple British Sign Language too.

Below is a simple guide to how we suggest that you could use the free resources, follow our theme and create a whole school focus on a “Rainbow of Love. All the activities mentioned have taken into account social distancing and teaching in bubbles.

Step One

Watch the music video and ask the children to listen out for the colours of the rainbow in the language, French or Spanish that they are learning in school.

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Listen a second time and ask the children to identify the colours in the other target language and potentially the BSL actions for each colour.

Network members can access the online videos of our native speakers, Emilie and Irene, speaking the words too.

Step Two

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Using our resources Rainbow Writers and Rainbow Writers Poetry, look at the similarities and differences in the two target languages of French and Spanish from the music video. Looking for links between languages, play drama and “in your seat” games. Focus on colours and creating rainbows. The beginners’ activities lead to colour adjective word art and rainbows……

and the more advanced activities in “Rainbow Writers’ Poetry , look at nouns and simple sentences with adjectives and support the learners to write their own “Rainbow of Love” poetry.

Step 3

Network Members, take the learning a step or two further…..

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Primary Languages Network members can take the theme beyond just one lesson with the following resources. Listen and read along to the Teach by Story Autumn 1 story (French / Spanish) and practise numbers , colours and items “over the rainbow”.

And children can design their own imaginary worlds “over the rainbow”, David Hockney style with….

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resources from the VLE in our “Home and School Resources” area. Use the Autumn LEAP package (French and Spanish), Stages 1-4 “Over the Rainbow “ materials to create and describe “imaginary worlds over the rainbow “ which the children can then draw and /or paint in the style of David Hockney and his landscape paintings.

'What I got from the virtual Conference' Carol Taylor

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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’.


Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.

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.

Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.

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.

Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.

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.

Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.

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.

Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.

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.

Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.

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!

Let the "language genies" out of their bottles.

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Start of the new academic year and none of us are quite sure what the year might look be like. One thing is for certain that we all want to help our young learners get back on track and make progress.

At the start of this school term, we need to spend a little time recalling and retrieving prior learning to offer learners a platform to help them move forward in their language learning. Think genies trapped in bottles! It’s time to be “language genies” and let your learners fly free! Here’s the link to our start back freebie in French and in Spanish. Download for free from the PLN Active Lingo Shop.

Find out ways to use the resources and to develop creative simple language learning in this blog post too. We hope it’s useful for everyone.PLN members will be able to access the resource on the VLE at the start of term.)

The resources are at three levels. Answers are provided so that all staff can use the resources and they can be used at home independently or with parents/carers leading learning too.

For near to absolute beginners, there is a simple “sequence solving” set of activities for the learners with numbers, days of the week, and greetings/name. Solve the missing letters and release the language learning genies from the bottles.

For learners who can already speak and write some simple full sentences about themselves, well then there is a sequence of activities to create your genie personalities and to free the trapped genie in the bottle.

For learners to be more creative and independent, recall familiar language and explore unfamiliar language using online word tools or bilingual dictionaries there is a “magic potion ingredients” activity to set the genie free.

Remember the activities are there to lead you in. They are just the beginning. In whispered voices, the potions need to be read aloud, the genies the children create need to be read quietly and recorded with “genie voices” and the simple sequences of language can be extended and practised, spoken in genie whispered voices too. Make a genie book, create a language genie display, produce your own genie avatars, hold a local lockdown language learning genie class online learning session etcetera.

Come back to your genies throughout the academic year and add to your genie in a bottle set free as a language learner and see how you can use this device to help your learners fly (again!) in language learning.

Share with us what you make and send your results by email to coordinator@primarylanguages.network or contact us via our contact form on the Primary Languages Network website.

'What I got from the virtual Conference' Lauren Boon

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with Lauren Boon

Trust subject specialist leader - MFL

Having attended the PLN conferences in person in 2019 and 2018, I was curious to see whether I would get as much out of a ‘virtual’ conference as I had from the previous ones. I can now say with certainty that I got so much more from the virtual conference than I expected.

For myself, there were two key benefits of the conference being delivered virtually. Firstly, I was able to watch all of the pre-recorded sessions in my own time. As a Yorkshire-based teacher, I found being able to take part without the long drive to and from the conference was useful as it meant that I was fully alert and engaged. The problem of missing key points in a rush to make notes was also eliminated, as I was able to pause and rewind at my leisure.

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Complementing the pre-recorded sessions were the Facebook Live sessions mid-week meant that I had ample time to think about the ideas that the keynote speakers had conveyed, which led me to being much more active in the discussion than I would have been at the usual conferences. The live sessions meant that hundreds of teachers had a chance to put forward their questions and ideas within a single hour! All network staff were on hand during the sessions to reply to any of my questions immediately and even invited me to direct message them to discuss some points in detail.

One of the sessions I feel like I benefited the most from was Kate’s Reigniting Language Learning session. Like all teachers out there, I was feeling some anxiety about how to get started again in September with my classes and it was so reassuring to hear the different paths that I can take depending on ‘what is left in the sieve’ when they return to school. The second part of the session was full of useful practical ideas to aid recall in language learning, something that will be more important than ever next year!

I also enjoyed Michael Wardle’s session, reflecting on MFL deep dives. The way he highlighted good practice in all areas of language teaching and learning made me feel more confident about my delivery of MFL, but also gave me realistic goals to work towards next year, e.g. making sure that phonics is taught systemically throughout KS2.

Ultimately, the Facebook Live sessions were the stars of the show for me. They were a treasure trove of ideas and inspiration. In Will’s session, I got some great ideas for my SEN and HA learners and in Janet’s session I loved contributing towards a discussion around Language Ambassadors. Catherine’s session was a great reminder of where I can find different resources and documents within the VLE, and Kate’s session had me wishing the summer holidays away for the first time in my career so I can get back into it in September!

A huge thanks to Primary Languages Network, you have absolutely succeeded in reigniting my love of teaching languages and I cannot wait to share my enthusiasm with my pupils!

A big thank you back, Lauren, for writing this blog!

'What I got from the virtual conference': Natalie Cox

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Natalie Cox

Personal reflections from a Visiting Teacher of Spanish for PLN

The answer: a huge amount! This was my first Primary Languages Network conference and the entire 4 weeks has left me buzzing for September!

An example of one of the live sessions

All the sessions were insightful and useful in many different ways and I feel much better prepared for September as an Associate Teacher.

The Facebook live sessions were incredible with knowledgeable staff able to answer questions either as the presenter or the staff behind the comments during the Q&A

I would like to share my thoughts on each session:

Rainbow Of Love

I feel I have to start with the beautiful "Rainbow Song" for European Day of Languages. I love the way Joanne has included a rainbow as it has become a symbol of the recent situation and it crosses all stages of language learning - even the newest learners to a language can be included via the colours.

For me as a new associate teacher I felt I had only scratched the surface of the VLE so the session run by Catherine 'the VLE guru' was so insightful and showed what a fantastic range of resources PLN have created, the great CPD on offer and how many documents there are to support the MFL coordinator in schools. I literally cannot wait to do some of the topics including going to the seaside, jungle animals, alien families and so much more!

Catherine Simms offering of the VLE

Dr Michael Wardles presentation

To receive knowledge on what OFSTED are looking for from MFL teaching at primary from Michael Wardle was amazing. What is left in the sieve is something that I will certainly be considering moving forward. The session was full of the facts that all primary MFL teachers and coordinators need in order to ensure they are providing the best MFL learning experience for their pupils and are 'OFSTED ready!'


Following this Janet went into even more depth of how Michael's advice can be put into practice. I particularly felt that the in-depth look at cultural capital and what that could look like in a primary MFL classroom was great. All delegates who watched this must be feeling so much more prepared should OFSTED look at MFL in their school.

Robert's session was so inspiring. I finished watching and immediately wanted to try out the ideas he had given me. KS1 teaching is new to me this year so seeing how it can be done well was brilliant. MFL teaching at primary should be primarily about enjoyment and engagement and Robert's session captured this fantastically!

I am a very organised person who loves creating plans and lists so Will's Action Plan session was great as it made me think about where my classes are going and what I need to do to ensure they get there. Showing how the MFL in a school has progressed over time via an action plan is so useful and allows you to see where work still needs to be done to reach the objectives.

The Czech lessons from Sylvia were so much fun. My children and I had fun trying to pronounce the unfamiliar words. I love a language challenge!

Finally Kate's session on Reigniting Language Learning again was full of great ideas to kickstart MFL teaching in September and it has left me excited for MFL teaching and learning in 2020-21!

I am proud to be a part of the PLN team!

Remarkable primary language learning!

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Covid19 has created so many challenges for everyone.

What’s been remarkable and so positive for us here at Primary Languages Network has been how much primary children have enjoyed learning languages at home!

Take a look below. Enjoy and celebrate the remarkable language learning journey shared by some of our network schools with us on our Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and What’s APP support groups.

We hope that the examples will inspire you to access and use these resources in June/July and possibly Autumn 2020 too.

March 2020 - School closure meant that we had to act fast to support our network schools.They required home learning for school websites. We created“ online home learning” linked to prior learning across stages 1-4 (years 3 to 6) in French, Spanish, and German, including native speaker core language videos, games to play at home, and knowledge organizers.

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It’s been rewarding to see how teachers across the network used these resources to create challenges appropriate to their learners

Key Stage One colleagues wanted to join in too. (We love this fact by the way).

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March onwards - #Languagehopscotch

An activity between PLN associate teachers’ children we tweeted just grew and grew. From our team’s children in their own back gardens…

to network schools finding it a great way to involve different age groups of key worker children and get outside! They made it their own!

It became a game to take home and share languages with the local community and chalk target language hopscotch grids on the pavement for passers by to try.

Schools and teachers across the country got involved.

And we received videos from children in other parts of the World too. We found this video from Italy really moving to be honest as it was right in the middle of Lockdown.

Throughout “Lockdown”

I am so fortunate to work with the PLN team. From home they’ve shared videos and photos of how they have been home teaching.

Every new idea that the team has generated has been shared on our Instagram account too.

April onwards

Free YouTube clips from C’est Emilie and Es Irene and there are more to come. Accessible on our YouTube channel for everyone to use. Emilie and Irene have been creating one short , simple video per week loosely linked to our SOWs and intended to inspire everyone. A huge thank you to both Emilie and Irene.

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What fantastic responses from children too!

April onwards and “Keyworker” children

The teaching team is working in schools with keyworker children. The France and Spain Space Miles Explorer packs came in really useful.

April to May and onwards

The challenges in schools continue in the Summer term. Our first set of home learning booklets, one per stage of learner or year group in KS2 in French, Spanish, and German take prior knowledge of vocab, grammar, and phonology and add creative twists.

Our young learners have not disappointed us. They have brought the home learning booklets to life!

And for Summer 2

The LEAP packs (Language Explorer Activity Packs) address the challenges you are going to face with socially distanced bubbles and non-returners plus key worker children. They allow you to introduce some creative language learning into your Summer 2 and possibly Autumn term too. On the VLE for network schools in the “Student Home Learning 2 area with a simple “how to use” video guide the LEAP packs are thematic, staged, and differentiated with activity sheets and outdoor learning plus the target language resources for non-specialists to be able to deliver the lesson activities. We look forward to seeing your classes’/bubbles’ and home learners’ work.

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June 20 - the first virtual conference.

Every year we hold a conference. In March this year we asked network school teachers would they like to hold a virtual conference. The answer was a resounding “Yes”!

Here we are at the end of May and it’s fantastic that we now have 700 plus delegates registered for our PLN “Reigniting Language Learning” conference throughout the month of June 20. Thank you to everyone.

Remarkable!