City of York LEA

Therese Comfort from Headlands School in York writes:

My focus for the second phase of the ELL initiative is lesson plans/schemes of work, resources, identifying ELL opportunities in the primary school day and suggestions to incorporate ICT into ELL teaching. As a primary practitioner, I plan to offer ideas that will be motivating, realistic and workable. The majority of examples will be in French although there will be some German. However, the ideas and suggestions should be transferable to other languages.

Lesson Plans/Schemes of Work
The schemes of work and lesson plans will be closely linked to QCA Guidelines and the schemes of work/lesson plans developed for the Haxby cluster of schools. Topic areas will include for example: my family, myself, animals, number, local study, my school.

The lesson plans will be quite prescriptive with the understanding that they can be followed step by step or simply "dipped into", offering help, support and ideas to both the less confident and the experienced teacher.

Each lesson plan will be designed to last for thirty minutes or used for two fifteen minute sessions. Primary class teachers may find "little and often" more convenient and more conducive to ELL - finding two fifteen minute sessions per week can be easier than one thirty minute session. However, if the ELL is delivered by someone other than the class teacher, thirty minute sessions will be more appropriate. Each lesson plan will offer a reinforcement activity to refresh/reinforce the focus of individual sessions and also hopefully involve the class teacher if he/she is not the person delivering ELL.

Resources
Suggestions will be based on using materials and resources available for other curriculum areas. For example, the Numeracy Strategy has provided teachers with some superb resources for teaching number in a foreign language. There will be suggestions for games and resources that can be made by pupils. There are talented and creative pupils in primary schools who can help to produce attractive, effective and long-lasting resources.

Copyright permitting, I also plan to suggest good published resources which tie in with the schemes of work. To help reinforce classroom vocabulary in the target language, a series of black and white drawings (A4) with labels, for display in the classroom, around the school e.g. levez la main, lentement.

Identifying opportunities for ELL in the primary school day
The primary school classroom and curriculum offers many opportunities to teach and reinforce ELL. The following suggestions will be made:

• classroom routines/instructions which offer daily practice in the foreign language
• classroom displays to provide opportunities for reading/reinforcing the written word
• linking other curriculum areas to ELL - e.g. QCA ICT Unit 6a Multimedia Presentation - pupils could give/design a presentation in a modern foreign language