Teaching
These are simple links to other websites and small summaries of activities or materials that people have developed themselves or have found useful to pass on to others. Please help us build the collection. If you have anything that you would like to share that might be useful for foreign language teaching or research in primary schools, do please get in touch.
ELAPSE (Embedding Languages across Primary and Secondary Education) has now published its Resources online, free of charge to schools and teachers.
The project provides a wealth of information and classroom materials for teacher interested in integrating broader curriculum content with language learning at primary and secondary levels, and for transition.
A toolkit aimed at teachers delivering Modern Foreign Language (MFL) lessons to multilingual primary pupils in Key Stage 2.
Created by Katy Finch as part of her PhD thesis, this toolkit offers evidence-based tools and resources for teaching MFL to learners of English as an Additional Language (EAL) and promotes a ‘joined-up’ approach to languages.
The Premier Academy Spanish
Jesualdo Martinez is the Spanish and Computing Coordinator at The Premier Academy, a primary school in Bletchley, Milton Keynes. Technology is used as an integral part of Spanish language lessons. He created his own website filled with Spanish resources to support his students and with useful ideas and tips for teachers.
NCELP shares news relating to their Year 7 and 8 schemes of work. All of the documents below are now freely available on the NCELP Resource Portal.
· Updated Year 7 scheme of work for French, German, and Spanish. These now include url links to all of the lesson resources (powerpoints) for the whole year, now including the summer term. The resources include links to ‘Textploitation’ lessons and assessments. They have also added these urls to the Year 7 resources logs tabs in the sheet. Please note that homework sheets and their audio files are currently being updated and will be ready by around mid-September.
· Year 8 scheme of work ‘overview’ for French, German, Spanish. This two-page document summarises the key specifications of the Year 8 scheme of work for each language.
· Year 8 scheme of work (a main ‘scheme of work’ tab and a ‘grammar tracking’ tab) for French, German, and Spanish. This document outlines the vocabulary, grammar, and ‘sounds of the language’ that are planned for the year. Please note that this is a draft and is subject to change in the process of developing the year 8 resources to accompany it. The first half-term of full lesson powerpoints (14 lessons in each language) should be available on the Resources Portal in 2-4 weeks.
*Please note that these schemes of work are the only up to date versions currently in circulation.*
NCELP thanks those who have offered feedback on the Year 7 resources and those who are helping to video-record the lessons in collaboration with Oak Online National Academy.
Cave Languages
Check out the ‘Sharing Good Practice’ area of Sue Cave’s Cave Languages website – useful for teachers: resources to download on assessment, policies and teaching and learning. In addition, Sue posts on this page links to interesting information, resources and sites and a monthly update about what is happening in the world of primary languages.
Grammar teaching is perceived to be a substantial challenge and many FL teachers in the UK would like more digital resources for grammar teaching. Click here to see a presentation on the design and evaluation of a new digital game. The game uses ‘Form-Meaning Mapping’, that is listening/reading activities designed to focus attention on the grammatical form and its meaning, and teaches verb inflections (tense, number) in French. Findings were very encouraging and show the potential of digital games, informed by learning theory, for facilitating explicit grammar learning at primary level.
An article in The Conversation, an independent online magazine featuring articles sourced from the academic and research community written for a general audience.
The Primary French Project from the Instut Français provides free teaching materials that aim to train all who teach French at KS2. Suitable for all practitioners, including those who have no prior knowledge of the language, and also specialist linguists who are new to teaching children in KS2.
Light Bulb Languages has over 6000 free resources for teachers of languages in all key stages. For teachers of languages in primary schools there is a comprehensive scheme of work for French, which includes detailed lesson plans and all resources, and there is also a series of upskilling podcasts to support non-specialist teachers. There are also hundreds of resources for primary Spanish, as well as some resources for German, Italian and Latin.
At nattalingo.co.uk, you can access free book recommendations from Nathalie who specialises in the use of picture books in language teaching. Every week, Nathalie chooses a story and adds to her book blog : she tells you about the story and how you may exploit it with your pupils. She also records a short monthly podcast aimed at supporting primary languages practitioners on a variety of topics. Do tune in!
A group of primary foreign language researchers and teachers who are collaborating to design, implement and evaluate foreign language teaching resources. Like RiPL, they are committed to raising the profile of primary foreign languages, and to supporting schools to meet the challenges of the Primary National
Curriculum.
The Language Magician is a computer game for assessing language learning in the primary school. It has been developed as part of a European partnership, funded by Erasmus+, led by the Goethe Institute and involving partners from four European countries. The game is available at two levels of difficulty: Level 1, suitable for use after 50 to 70 hours of instruction; Level 2, after 70 to 100 hours of instruction. It is available in English, German, Italian, Spanish and French.
The Spanish Embassy offers a wealth of authentic and fun resources. New Primary Spanish Guidelines – Primeros pasos is a teaching guide for learning Spanish at Primary level in both Spanish and English. These are a general guide which will assist with any MFL teaching. Primary teaching materials on offer are listed in this PDF download, supplied by Jesús Manuel Hernández González, Spanish Embassy Education Office.
The Embassy has also developed a Moodle Platform where teachers can not only download activities and resources but are able to share ideas and materials with others. This is a free tool and access to the site will be given once teachers have registered a few basic details.
