Longton Lane School

Terry Bond is Headteacher at Longton Lane Primary School, Rainhill, Merseyside. The school has 396 children. They are developing the teaching of French and German with upper KS 2 children and have formed partnerships with schools in France and Germany.

Longton Lane Primary School has had a partner project with a school in Germany for three years and a partnership with a French school for one year. The school is involved in the Department for Education and Employment ELL (Early Language Learning) initiative promoting primary modern foreign language learning. As part of the ELL initiative, Terry Bond bid for funding to develop the school's teaching of modern foreign languages.

"We were offered funding to develop a Web site which would enhance our foreign language work. We already have been exchanging materials and resources with our two partner schools for some time and saw having a Web site as the next stage," he says.

International partnerships

The school has been video conferencing with a partner school in Germany every half term for about two years. The school has established good links with the local business community. The business centre at the local college has made their videoconferencing facilities available to them. The German partner school has a similar arrangement with the University of Leipzig.

Terry's aim, when the project first began, was to develop European cultural awareness for the pupils at Longton Lane school. "We looked at how people live in other countries, similarities and differences in customs. Very quickly we saw this as an opportunity for our children, who are aged between 9 and 11, to develop their modern foreign language skills. So, they are now learning German as part of this partnership work. They speak in German, asking questions and explaining things about themselves. Some of them respond in German to questions asked of them. It is a reciprocal arrangement, as the German pupils are looking to improve their English language skills.

The purpose of the Web site "We had been looking at developing our own school Web site for some time, but the trouble was finding the technical expertise to do this. We have links with the local chamber of commerce and they approached us to see if we would take on two of their ICT students. Both students, Jonathan Kerr and Kevin Turner (aged 19), have been working in the classrooms developing ICT skills with our children. The Web site seemed a good place to make use of their talents. I know there are people who will do this for you at a cost, but budgets being what they are, we needed to get the best value for money," says Terry.

The site is now nearly ready to put on the Internet. Terry is encouraging the partner schools to do the same, so they can access information from one another's Web sites.

"The purpose is to have materials relating to the development of foreign language teaching and international partnerships. We want to be able to put together projects about each other's schools. Of course you can send a booklet in the post, but accessing the same material from a Web site adds to children's ICT skills. It is also a much quicker process than waiting for an envelope to arrive," he adds.

The trainees

The British Educational Communications and Technology Agency (BECTa) has offered assistance. " BECTa arranged for Steve Williams, IT Consultant, Leicestershire County Council to come in and work with Jonathan and Kevin for one day. They had already begun to set up the Web site, but Steve offered training on how to present text and graphics in an attractive way. He got them started and they have been adding to it since . We intend to have school information, projects, sporting events, all our range of activities," says Terry.

It is planned that Jonathan and Kevin will maintain the site for the time that they are there. The school is hoping to appoint an ICT co-ordinator from the Autumn term, who will take on the site development.

The training Kevin and Jonathan both found the training very valuable. "The trainer, Steve Williams, explained the process in a step-by-step way," says Kevin.

For Steve, the aim was for the trainees to learn ways of presenting the existing content, using graphics and to consider ideas for the future.

"They used Web authoring software and put graphics on the Web using a specialist graphics package. They learned to crop images and file sizes. We also looked saving pictures so that they don't take up too much file space," says Steve.

They also discussed the structure of the site and the advantages and disadvantages of having one Web page per topic.

"Steve even gave us a computer tutorial which explains how to use the Web authoring software, so that if we get stuck, we can look things up," adds Kevin.

Both students felt they learned a lot from it. Kevin says: "I'd never done a Web site before and now I have the confidence to do one again from scratch."

Next steps

"We will use the site to work with schools from other countries to continue our modern foreign language development. There is scope for scanning in documents such as photographs of the local area, menus, recipes and so on. We want to focus on information which will help pupils in other countries learn about us. In the same way, we want to develop projects which will help us learn more about their cultures and languages," says Terry.

The site will be up and running in May 2000.

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