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Teaching French in New York (Tyneside)
The delivery of primary languages can come from many sources; secondary colleagues doing outreach and the involvement of Foreign Language Assistants are just two examples. Increasingly schools are finding that among their staff they have knowledge and expertise to deliver the language themselves. Whoever delivers the language will find it an immensely satisfying experience. Here a report on the work of a teaching assistant from the North East.
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My name is Rowan Gallon and I currently work as a level three teaching assistant at New York Primary School in North Tyneside.
As a child I was lucky enough to live in Canada between the ages of eight and sixteen and studied French as part of the curriculum. When I returned to England I sat French GCSE and then left school. After doing a variety of jobs and starting a family, I began a classroom assistant course when my youngest son started nursery and then started work at New York Primary School. |
During a skills review with the Head Teacher I mentioned that I spoke a little French. She then asked me to do a French SMART club on Friday afternoons with Year 4 pupils. Following this, I started to attend North Tyneside training sessions for primary French and then spent a year teaching Year 6 French, being trained by one of the Primary Language Consultants from our local Specialist Language College. This gave me confidence in teaching and assessment as well as classroom management.
Consequently, I am now the languages coordinator for the school and from September 2007 I have been delivering French to years 4, 5 and 6. Each class receives one hour a week in curriculum time.
My confidence has definitely increased and I’m enjoying every challenge that comes my way. I’m thriving on the new responsibilities and standing in front of the class and working with the children doesn’t unnerve me anymore. Modern languages was a focus of an Ofsted inspection and my teaching was inspected as part of this. I was given a favourable report as languages did within school.
I thoroughly enjoy delivering interactive lessons. The children and I love the songs, games and role plays. We have recently been experimenting with some new parachute games. There are many fantastic French ICT resources available online and on CD ROMs and as we are lucky enough to have interactive whiteboards throughout the school I can make full use of these in my lessons. We particularly enjoy the interactive whiteboard DVDs because they include clips of French children and games that our children can see and then do themselves. We also love to play our own games at school. One of the children’s favourites is simply using a sponge ball and asking questions, to which they can reply and pass the question on.
The school was recently awarded Artsmark Gold and we enjoyed using drama and singing in French to contribute towards this award. Year 6 students also recently took part in the North Tyneside Celebration of Languages.
One of the most rewarding parts of my job is when the children come up to me and speak French to me outside of lessons. It’s using languages for real purposes!
The school and the LA have supported me tremendously over the last three years and I’m amazed at how far I‘ve come. I never dreamed I would be teaching whole classes of children a modern language, and I’m looking forward to seeing what the future holds.
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