After the constant changes of the last two years, I know that many of us are excited about getting back to school and experiencing more ‘normal’ lessons. It is liberating to think that we (hopefully!) will be able to incorporate activities which were previously restricted, such as speaking. At the time of writing, it seems […]
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Keep the bigger picture in view The image of the Reading Rope is a powerful one. As a primary school teacher for 20 years, I worked to twist together the fibres to build and strengthen the rope with the aim of sending pupils to secondary school fully able to access the curriculum. Now, working at […]
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Paradoxically, being at home for twelve months has made the world more accessible for those students, who have access to a solid internet connection. Virtual field trips, virtual concerts and museum visits have opened the doors of possibility for intercultural understanding. Nowhere is this more relevant than in the language classroom, where an insight into […]
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Following months of screen gazing, limited interaction and working in isolation, our students are ready to come to life and to feel the buzz that our lively and dynamic MFL methodology brings. A foreign languages lesson is a social event where interaction and communication are essential, just what our young people need, having been starved […]
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I believe that learning languages is not just about the language itself. You learn about culture and our differences and similarities, making you a more open-minded person in everyday life. I think this opens up different and exciting life opportunities, like being more willing to travel and live in different places.
Read more Meet Leyla the second language lover in our series introducing you to inspirational individuals with real-life tales of language-learning journeys that have changed their lives for the better. We hope these stories will help inspire your students to opt for a modern language (or two!)
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It might seem obvious, but language is all around us. In fact, I’ve bored my classes to tears for years by reminding them of this fact. It’s in the conversations we have, the things we watch and listen to on our phones and in the messages we send each other. “Yes, we know it’s there,” […]
Read moreLanguage is acquired through imitation. It’s kind-of obvious, but it bears thinking about: different children have different levels of vocabulary (and, indeed, different capabilities with putting that vocabulary together, AKA grammar) because of the language they have been immersed in over the length of their lives thus far. So what are we giving them to […]
Read moreLast year I blogged a couple of times on dictionaries in the classroom (see the links below if you missed them) A picture is worth a thousand words: Dictionaries in the classroom (part 1) Word origins: Dictionaries in the classroom (part 2) Since then, I’ve been chatting to Vineeta Gupta, Head of Children’s Dictionaries at Oxford University Press. I wanted to know more about how dictionaries are put together. How do children’s dictionary publishers establish criteria […]
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