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1+2 Professional Language Learning and Development in Parkhead Primary School
Start date: Jun 1, 2016, End date: May 31, 2017 PROJECT  FINISHED 

Parkhead Primary School is a non-denominational school serving the community of West Calder, Polbeth, and the surrounding farming communities. The school was built in 1951 and in March 2008 benefited from a nursery extension. The school has a head teacher, depute head teacher and a principal teacher. The roll of the school is 403 and the school is in band 6 of the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD). Pupils are currently organised into 14 classes from P1-7 and 2 nursery classes of 36 morning and 25 afternoon children. All teachers are now delivering the 1+2 Professional Language Learning programme. Each class teacher is building their own skill level in French and Spanish through effective, relevant West Lothian Council training. Our Principal Teacher, our lead learner and an impact group have led and are developing the embedding of French throughout the school and our upper classes benefit from some Spanish. We also have a Junior Leadership pupil group for Spanish.The children are becoming more aware of the principles of learning additional languages.Staff are committed to improvement and are prepared to be innovative and inventive in their approaches, through their role as strong facilitators in orchestrating children’s learning. Children are challenged in learning beyond their comfort zone and respond positively and enthusiastically.The pupils now need consistency and structured progression to ensure they use their language learning confidently with less prompting. The teachers are motivated but need opportunities to use an additional language more.Parkhead Primary School is committed to the development if 1+2 Professional Language Learning for every child. To this end we are providing quality resources, training and support to all our teachers.Staff have engaged with the 1+2 initiative this session and have taken positive steps to using language both informally throughout the day and through stand alone lessons, this has been well supported by our lead learners. We have several staff who have undertaken Spanish training and they have introduced the children in their class to this language. Staff are currently engaging with all the West Lothian curriculum pathways to ensure depth and progression across the curriculum.We now need to develop the 1+2 approach to language learning within the cluster.Our Principal Teacher is committed to the development of the 1+2 PLL programme from Nursery to Primary 7, embedding French so that every child speaks confidently at opportunities throughout the day and at home and many of them use the same literacy skills to converse briefly in Spanish. As a manager who teaches art at every stage, she is ideally placed to incorporate daily French and some Spanish as well as monitoring the developing skills. She models embedding French to enthusiastic staff and pupils. She originally trained in MLPS French and led the CfE planning and implementation from P1 to P7. She participated in a previous immersion week in France in 2000 which impacted on pupils and staff in her previous school as well as enabling her to teach French in Parkhead Primary School to some then all classes prior to the class teachers doing so this year.She completed the WLC 14 week course in Spanish last year and is very keen to make progress with this. Through this immersion week in Spain, she will model effective learning and using 1+2 to all the pupils. Another teacher completed the WLC 14 week Spanish course recently and he has been implementing L3 with developing confidence. Five other teachers at this school are participating in the current WLC 14 week course in French and are embedding the language in their classes with a range of current, recommended resources. Our lead learner is disseminating information and WLC advice. These teachers hope to participate in the LFEE immersion course in 2018.Professional dialogue with Principal Teacher, Head Teacher, Depute Head Teacher, Staff, Junior Leadership pupil group, Impact group, Parents' Association and Council, Cluster, PLL Network, Malaga partners will contribute to action points in our Action Plan and to our school policy.Action points will impact upon every pupil, every member of staff and influence the language skills locally, across the cluster, nationally, across Europe and globally. This will be observed, monitored and evaluated with ongoing communication with all stakeholders.Good practice visits, motivating workshops, 1+2 training and events and online meets will be used. New ideas arising from pupils, staff and the whole learning community will be assimilated and evaluated.The benefits of the higher priority of 1+2, arising from experiential learning, will be confidence and enjoyment in communication with others across Europe.Validated self-evaluation will be central to assessing the outcomes from this course and the subsequent actions.This will be communicated to all our European partners.

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