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Redcar and Cleveland Regional Support Group |
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Regular sessions are held at different venues around Redcar and Cleveland. Our first session was entitled “An International Christmas”. We sang Christmas carols in Czech and French and played snakes and ladders on the interactive whiteboard with the ladders leading to prizes. We looked at some primary school websites to see how children in different countries celebrate Christmas, and these gave us lots of ideas to use in school. Andrea Kerr from Saltburn Primary School made us laugh with her French version of the Twelve Days of Christmas, which she intended to offer as her school’s contribution to the Redcar and Cleveland festival of primary languages. Session 2: Wednesday 17 January 2007 We were pleased to welcome Vivienne May, representing the British Council, who talked to us about the benefits of hosting foreign language assistants and Comenius assistants. The session attracted a number of primary head teachers who particularly wanted advice and information and they, like everyone else, were inspired by some of the video clips of assistants working with teachers and children. Some of us thought that a young Spanish assistant was actually a class teacher, and we were amazed by the professional relationship between a group of year five children and their Mandarin Chinese teacher. The children had no problem understanding how tones worked. We hope there will be enough assistants to go round next year. Session 3: Wednesday 7 March 2007 Redcar welcomed Darlington in the shape of Victoria Stewart who ran a lively session on developing speaking skills with games and songs. It was ninety minutes of action with energetic delivery and complete involvement of everyone. Vicci showed us how to use song and games to help children retain language. It reinforced the message that a mixture of visual, oral and kinaesthetic activities can help all children to participate and enjoy their learning. Session 4: Wednesday 2 May 2007 A large and enthusiastic turn out for David Hicks who joined us to lead a workshop on developing grammatical understanding and sentence structure through music. We realised just how powerful music and movement are to promote deep learning in an enjoyable way. Everyone joined in with the singing and movement. We didn’t want it to stop! It is very difficult to get some of David’s tunes out of your head once they are in. Session 5: Wednesday 27 June 2007 For our final session this year, we were delighted to welcome once again Therese Comfort who demonstrated the newly launched Training Zone. Therese managed to show all the features of this massive resource, accompanying her talk with clips and materials that whetted everyone’s appetites for more. There was a really positive atmosphere and indeed, colleagues didn’t want to go. We were pleased to show some new Spanish additions to our library, and people were very impressed by the visualiser which was used to demonstrate them. Perhaps a bit pricy at the moment, but wait till schools can afford them!
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