I have been absent from my postings for quite a while as I have been very busy with a Sing Up funded project here in Derbyshire. The aim has been to foster links between the MFL department and pupils at the Secondary School with all their feeder primaries.
All the Primary Staff were invited to a central MFL singing training at the secondary school. I have then been to do primary school assemblies, have demonstrated how to exploit rhythm and song as an integral part of teaching any language point in primary lessons for yrs 5 / 6, and the yr 7 pupil are now visiting the schools to teach yrs 5/6 some of the songs they will be singing as they move on to secondary school.
This has to be the most fun thing I have ever done as a teacher! If you haven't discovered yet as an Mfl teacher how useful leading whole classes, whole year groups, whole schools, in unison chanting / singing can be, find out how to do it! I truly believe there aspects to this which should be part of every teacher's bag of tricks.
The response from colleagues, especially from the primary sector, was initially pretty sceptical. As non specialist language teachers, they have a lot of concerns about their ability to step into the gap and pick up the requirement to teach languages from September. A big concern has always been lack of subject knowledge combined with the feeling that their pronunciation is poor. I am pasting some comments here from attendees at a training as I felt that they should encourage everyone to think that perhaps these techniques might be the kind of tools to help far more hesitant staff to really believe they can do this.
There is one sample comment plus a zip file containing all of them
Bear in mind attendees at these trainings were reluctant participants as they attended under direction from their Heads as the training replaced a Staff meeting.
I'll try and post more details about what we have been doing and some example clips of songs and activities later.
