The Language Perfect Championships are starting again running from 18th to 28th May and breaking news is that Education Perfect will donate money to help people in Nepal for every student that achieves a Gold Award this year. Language Perfect see themselves as a global community. The 8.1M earthquake on 25th April followed by another two weeks later hit Nepal leaving thousands dead and countless injured and homeless. The fundraising meter will be updated daily during the Language Perfect World Championships. They are also suggesting that students could get creative and organise a fundraising event at schools during the championships. Students can throw down a challenge to other schools. Students can challenge any school in the local area, or any school that they have links with anywhere in the world. They should contact [email protected] with names and the list of schools that they would like to challenge, and then a mini scoreboard will be created.
There has been an important update this week about the A level exams this summer and there have been more details emerging about the GCSE examinations, we will look at this soon, as well as primary assessment from the Expert Subject Advisory Group – Foreign Languages, which has just been released.
I attended the Primary Special Interest Group meeting last week at Manchester University and found out a lot about what the cultural institutes are doing to support primary and secondary language learning. The Niveau bleu, blanc, rouge materials are being completed by Catherine Cheater and training is being provided in various regions of the country. Joe Dale has produced the IT support and Joan Dickie is working on mixed age planning. This will help us all so much. See the Culturethèque website for more details. Roma Schulz at the Goethe Institut is expanding the KS2 German materials with two new characters, Klara and Kai for year 5 and year 6. I was very impressed with the new ebook on their YouTube Channel Die kleine graue Maus.
The Spanish Embassy Education Office are running two great courses soon, one for secondary teachers on Saturday 20th June and one for primary teachers on 27th June. They cost £45 and are packed with interesting workshops. I went to one recently on using music – it was great. A Spanish footballer at Newcastle has been interviewed and new listening material is being created. I’ll add details of this to a later post when they are ready. All of these teaching materials will motivate and inspire our learners. They are all free.
How about a day out in London on June 13th? ALL London has organised a great day at the City of London School. You can register here.
Have a good bank holiday and half term.