Bishop Rawstorne CE Language College
Spring 2000 Update

Michaela Howard - Community-based languages teacher

Bishop Rawstorne CE Language College first gained Language College status in 1996, and has recently entered Phase 2. We have 870 pupils on roll, across KS3 and KS4. The Primary Languages programme is now well established. Feedback from both staff and pupils has been very positive. Each school has a tailor-made programme adapted to the individual needs of the school to ensure that pupils gain the maximum benefit from their language lessons.

Mawdesley school have particularly enjoyed doing display work for other pupils in their school to see - they now have a display of 'Cartes d'identité' in one of their communal areas. Eccleston St. Mary's have benefited greatly from the additional support given by our French assistante, Céline Berger. Céline takes the St. Mary's students in small groups for intensive oral work. The progress made by these students is excellent. Céline is also helping us to establish links with a primary school in her home town of Marseille, and pupils from St. Mary's will then be able to exchange letters with other children in France.

A 'hands-on' lesson at Eccleston St. Mary's C.E. Primary School

Bretherton students have been learning French from Y1, so they already have an extremely good grasp of the spoken language. This has enabled us to make rapid progress, and the focus of their French lessons has been reading and writing skills - although games and fun are always an integral part of every lesson!

Eccleston Primary School children have been using the very latest technology to help their progression in language learning; we have carried out successful video-conferencing sessions, and hope to continue this work. Once again, Céline made an invaluable contribution to our primary work, as the Eccleston children spoke to her via the video-conferencing link. They were able to use the language they had acquired in the classroom for real, didactic purposes, and at the same time developed their ICT skills.

Y6 children at Eccleston Primary School video-conferencing in French with Bishop Rawstorne French assistante, Céline Berger

Trinity and St. Michael's children continue to attend the French Club after school on a Wednesday, in the MFL teaching suite. They have access to all our facilities, and every child who comes to the French club has their own logon name for the Bishop Rawstorne network.

We are fortunate enough to have acquired some of the latest technology, which we are able to incorporate into our teaching of MFL. Resources include 6 interactive digital whiteboards, two of which are based in our specialist languages suite, two overhead computers, video-conferencing facilities, Internet access and e-mail links.

The interactive digital whiteboards enable us to carry out whole group video-conferencing, use power-point presentations and CD-ROMs in our lessons, and they are a 'hands-on' resource, which allow students to write on the board and introduce work they have already prepared and saved on a disc. Y6 pupils use the whiteboard on a regular basis, and have used the digital camera to import photos into a PowerPoint presentation about the group.

Trinity and St. Michael's students enjoying using the interactive digital whiteboard

The children are now adept at using CD-ROMs and the Panda software installed on the board, and a favourite activity is when we use the overhead camera on local video setting to freeze pictures of the children on the screen and adapt them to incorporate the language we are practising.

Pupils from Trinity and St. Michael's will also be joining us for a new venture at the end of the summer term - a 'primary languages summer school' week. This will give them the opportunity to immerse themselves for a week in the range of languages and language-based activities we have to offer.

A sample slide from the French Club PowerPoint presentation

Many of the Y6 children currently involved in the Primary French scheme came to look round Bishop Rawstorne on the Open Evenings in November, and they were particularly pleased to see a display of their own work and photos of themselves involved in French lessons on display in the main entrance hall. This gave them a certain sense of 'ownership' which is to be encouraged, and it is to be hoped that the primary languages scheme will help to ease the KS2-KS3 transition.

Since the beginning of the Good Practice Project, French has been the focus for primary language work, but that has just changed! We have been studying German, initially for a course of six weeks, since February half-term. We have been invited to take part in a trial of new materials for primary German, 'The Language Mine" which focus particularly on the links between MFL and literacy. The project is supported by the Goethe-Institut in London. We are keen to give students the opportunity to try German as both French and German have equal parity in Year 7 at Bishop Rawstorne, and the response from students has so far been enthusiastic. 

Non-specialist MFL staff have been encouraged to see a scheme in action that they would feel comfortable teaching with relatively little knowledge of the language, and the links with literacy provide useful consolidation and sound under-pinning of the work already taking place in the primary classroom.

'Language Miners' at Bretherton Endowed C.E. Primary School

Mining for language at Eccleston St. Mary's C.E. Primary School

We are firmly committed to the future success of primary languages, and we look forward to sharing good practice and ideas with other schools as the interest in primary languages grows. Our next step is to analyse the progress of children currently in Years 5 and 6 when they join us at Bishop Rawstorne, and we will use this information to inform future planning to enable students to gain maximum benefit and maximum enjoyment from their primary languages experiences.

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