Bringing the languages classroom to life!

Using Diigo

I was lucky at the IoW Conference to be introduced to Diigo by Isabelle Jones who raved about how brilliant it is during the Show and Tell. This weekend, whilst preparing for my SSAT Lead Practice Seminar, I joined Diigo and created a group for colleagues in my area and delegates at today's event. I think it really helps to think of Diigo as a way of 'carrying around' your Favourites from Internet Explorer and being able to add tags to categorise your favourite sites is great! Today during the session it was clear that so many colleagues had websites and videos they would like to share - so let's do it! The Diigo group I set up is here!Thanks Isabelle for inspiring me and thanks Joe as ever for organising the fabulous conference.

If you would like to download some very simple notes I made to show delegates how to use Diigo, feel free!Download Usiing Diigo

LanguAges - A Young Enterprise Company

I was delighted to work with LanguAges, a Young Enterprise Company, at my school last year. They had tremendous success in this competition which is entered by over 3,000 groups! The languages / enterprise link was devised by my colleague Linda and I, who had previously worked together on a project called Enterprise in any Language for Y5 and Y10. The group of Sixth Formers won the Area and Regional Finals, before finally winning the Award for Best Financial Management at the National Finals in July. The project gave us a great opportunity to showcase the ease with which languages and enterprise work together.

You can read more about their success at Lisa Steven's blog: http://lisibo.blogspot.com/2008/07/young-enterprise-winners-languages.html

Thanks Lisa!

Exciting Events for More Motivation!

After a long wait, I am finally able to post the link to the PowerPoint I presented at Language World in Oxford on the 11th of April.

I apologise to anyone who tried to access this earlier - I have been struggling with a blog issue and it has only just been resolved, despite my best efforts!

Language World was a fantastic event - it was lovely to catch up with some familiar faces (and friends from the North!) and to meet new people, all of whom were equally passionate about language teaching. Being a member of ALL allows you to meet like-minded people to discuss the issues that really matter! I hope to see some of you again next year! Download exciting_events_for_more_motivation.ppt

With Good Candidates Success is Easy...but how do we get them there?

Final preparations are underway for my Lead Practice Seminar 'With Good Candidates Success is Easy - but how do we get them there?'

I am really looking forward to what I hope will be a really inspiring day of good practice, with great sessions from Eva Lamb, SSAT Lead Practitioner and Language College Director at King George VII School in Sheffield and Bernard Clark, Language College Director at Durham Johnston School.

There are still some spaces available and you can book online at www.ssatrust.org.uk/lpseminars

I hope this agenda gives you more food for thought..Download with_good_candidates_success_is_easy_agenda.doc   

What a week!

It's been an absolutely mental week, as I have attended two Specialist Schools and Academies Trust Lead Practice Seminars in my role as SSAT Lead Practitioner Coordinator.

Cath Fitzsimmons' great seminar 'Coaching Borderline Candidates in MFL' raised a numebr of interesting points and gave me plenty of ideas of how to promote languages both in my school and further afield.

Then today, Neil Jones' FANTASTIC seminar at Elliott School in Putney took place and I was delighted to see how many delegates turned up! Neil's work in CLIL is absolutely amazing and all delegates were delighted to receive a CD with lots of resources on it.

And of course, Chris Fuller's fabulous session at the seminar gave me the final kick I needed to move to typepad, having tried my hand very unsuccesfully on edublogs and failing miserably to make it look nice (I couldn't even get my only hyperlink to work!)

So better luck with this one...

And roll on the weekend....