What a fantastic day I had on 6th October 2018 at the Institut Français de Londres for their training day, as organised by Benoît Le Devédec, his team, Philip Campagna and Steven Fawkes! If you were there too, I am confident you will agree a lot of learning was done in a lovely atmosphere; if you were not able to attend… here are some of the great ideas and resources my good friend Helen Lawlor and I wrote down!
If you want to know more, this was the programme of the day: FTD 2018 programme + Access info
Helen Myers MBE highlighted to benefits of being part of a network and joining the Association for Language Learning (for which I am a volunteer and member of the North East committee, in case you did not know!).
Bernardette Homes MBE inspired us to make language real and to make it live; she suggested the Momes.net resources Fathers’ Day activities .
I led my own workshop in the morning: you can access my presentation and the linked documents below:
At the same time, an inspirational lady, Catherine Cheater, was presenting her Primary French Project for KS2 which is freely available on the Culturethèque website. Again, you need to register with an email address, but that registration gives you access to free schemes of work and resources which can even be used by non-specialist primary teachers. You can also access lots of free authentic books etc, so do have a look if you have not already!
In the second session, Valérie Laplanche-Ferguson showed us a kit, free to print, to use in conjunction with the new free amazing resource for younger pupils which is Tivi5Monde!
You can also use the kit with the TV5 Monde Jeunese cartoons which are freely available.
We do not have to use whole cartoons, as they may be too long for our children, but we can freeze frame and use parts of them very easily: repérage de mots, ponctuation, descriptions, vidéos sans son, demande d’hypothèses etc.
Here is another section of the TV5 Monde website which she recommended, where the programmes are levelled and come with free resources too!
Finally these short films for little ones by little ones can be downloaded and come with free resources too!
During the second session, my friend Helen was with Jenny Carpenter who was showing how to use the Primary French Project (the Tricolore section, on the Culturethèque website) for effective transition from KS2-KS3.
Jenny recommended a particular document called the transition document guidance notes and the UNICEF unit about the rights of a child. I have checked them out and they look fab!
After lunch, I attended an inspirational workshop by Pippa Jacobs about CLIL (Content Language Integrated Learning). It was fab to watch a dear friend and fellow primary languages teacher in action, Noelia Rivas! CLIL is about re-contextualising language into something real and meaningful to our pupils as they learn new information too.
Helen was with Steven Fawkes demonstrating the ALL literature wiki (to which I contribute nearly weekly!). You can register for free and contribute your ideas too!
Steven was talking about interacting with authentic text and also suggested using videos to freeze frame and describe, for practice for the picture card at GCSE. Why not start this at primary level? You could show them the frame their remove it to make the children think even more!
Steven suggested that using authentic texts contextualises the learning and gives confidence, expands vocab, exposes to idioms and new grammatical forms.
Some of his other ideas were: using a poem and reading it in 2 voices; predicting what is going to happen; using text to work on a grammar point; asking the children to punctuate it; using tong twisters and having the children compete against the clock, in pairs; letting the children choose a poem from an anthology, record themselves reading it and say in French why they chose it.
In the plenary, we found out about: the Institut Français school activities (some used as alternatives to trips to France, including the Quentin Blake children’s library, Virtual French Days, French Box), the IFCinema, the Arsenal Double Club, DELF Prim and Junior diplomas, French Language courses and summer camps, IFprofs (where all of the day’s presentations will be uploaded; this is free but email registration is required), and the Institut’s teacher training grant programme.
What an amazing day! I am looking forward to the next one already, whenever it may be!
If you were there and attended other workshops, please share with me what you got from them and I will add it to this blog! What was your favourite part of the day?
All the presentations are now available here on IFProfs! Registration is free!!
This is such a helpful blog – THANK YOU
You are very welcome! Thank you for taking the time to share what you think. Have a great day!