Cambridgeshire Regional Support Group

Coordinator: Mark Oliver, General Adviser for Modern Foreign Languages and International Education, Cambridgeshire County Council, Box No: ELH2001, Stanton House, Stanton Way, Huntingdon, Cambs. PE29 6XL
Tel: 01480 375802
Fax: 01480 376142
Email: mark.oliver@cambridgeshire.gov.uk

Regular sessions are held at different venues around Cambridgeshire. To register your interest in a meeting, please call 0845 196 2967.

Date: 13/11/2007
Title: Christmas Around the World
Venue: Cambridge Professional Development Centre
Time: 16.15 - 17.45
Speaker: Caroline Herring, KS2 Consultant

Date: 14/11/2007
Title: Christmas Around the World
Venue: Godmanchester Professional Development Centre
Time: 16.15 - 17.45
Speaker: Mark Oliver, MFL Adviser

Date: 15/11/2007
Title: Christmas Around the World
Venue: Oliver Cromwell Hotel, March
Time: 16.15 - 17.45
Speaker: Debbie Abs, KS2 Consultant

In these three repeated sessions on 'Christmas Around the World', participants valued the activities and resources demonstrated along with useful web addresses. They started to consider how they might use some of the activities in their own schools. The two principal areas covered were language and intercultural understanding. Ideas for language-based activities included songs in French, German and Spanish, Christmas greetings, key festivities in Europe, foreign language instructions for making a snowman and a French version of Raymond Briggs' The Snowman. Activities to develop intercultural understanding included exploring festivities across European countries, web sites with information on similarities and differences in festivities both within Europe and beyond and how to say Christmas greetings in a range of languages from around the world.

Date: 21/02/2008
Title: Practical Language Activities for KS1
Venue: Oliver Cromwell Hotel, March
Time: 16.15 - 17.45
Speaker: Mark Oliver, Adviser for MFL

Date: 26/02/2008
Title: Practical Language Activities for KS1
Venue: Cambridge Professional Development Centre
Time: 16.15 - 17.45
Speaker: Mark Oliver, Adviser MFL

Date: 05/03/2008
Title: Practical Language Activities for KS1
Venue: Godmanchester Professional Development Centre
Time: 16.15 - 17.45
Speaker: Mark Oliver, Adviser for MFL

Through practical examples and demonstrating resources the session explored some exciting ways to enthuse young learners about languages. The session included fingers rhymes, games played by children, lullabies, songs and activities to get the heart rate up. Resources demonstrated included commercial resources and authentic on-line resources. Participants particularly enjoyed doing the finger rhymes, playing the games and singing a Chinese lullaby.

Date: 20/05/2008
Title: Languages in Our Community
Venue: Cambridge Professional Development Centre
Time: 16.15 - 17.45
Speaker: Mark Oliver, Adviser for MFL

Date: 04/06/2008
Title: Languages in Our Community
Venue: Godmanchester Professional Development Centre
Time: 16.15 - 17.45
Speaker: Mark Oliver, Adviser for MFL

Date: 05/06/2008
Title: Languages in Our Community
Venue: Oliver Cromwell Hotel, March
Time: 16.15 - 17.45
Speaker: Mark Oliver, Adviser for MFL

The session started with participants feeding back on what they had introduced as a result of the last session. They shared activities they had tried from the last meeting which the children had responded well to and talked about resources which they had tried which staff in their school liked.

Cambridgeshire has the largest traveller population in the country so it seemed appropriate to start the session on Languages in our Community exploring Romani. Practical activities were based around the numbers 1 -10 and information provided for a unit of work investigating where Romani comes from. This unit links ICT with language work and considers how languages change.

The meeting considered other resources to support teaching of community languages through resources available on the Internet such as The Newbury Park Primary School website, BBC Quick Fix, Omniglot and Cambridgeshire's Celebrating Language. Participants valued discussing issues related to community languages, although some particpants would have valued more time exploring the resources.

NACELL Regional Support Groups are funded by the DCSF and co-ordinated by CILT, the National Centre for Languages in support of the National Languages Strategy.