School European Professional Development
Start date: Jul 1, 2016,
End date: Jun 30, 2018
PROJECT
FINISHED
Surrey Square Primary School is a two-form entry maintained school in the central London Borough of Southwark. We currently provide weekly French teaching by class teachers to all children from the ages of 7 to 11 (Key Stage 2). In 2015 we applied for, and received, funding to provide overseas residential French training for up to 9 teaching staff in order to improve their subject knowledge and confidence in teaching French lessons. This residential course is due to take place during May 2016.In order to further consolidate French teaching at the school, to introduce Spanish as a second MFL option and potentially to introduce MFL teaching across the Early Years Foundation Stage and Key Stage 1, we would like to apply for funding to send more staff on residential courses in both France and Spain over the course of the next two years. Prior to July 2018, we would like to send: - a group of 5 class teachers and Higher Level Teaching Assistants (HLTAs) from Key Stage 2 to undertake a residential course in France; and - a group of 4 class teachers and HLTAs from Key Stage 2 and a member of our reception staff to undertake a residential course in Spain. There may be some overlap between the two groups.These courses will enable teachers to improve and/or refresh their existing subject knowledge, immerse them in the language and culture of France or Spain (as applicable), provide teaching ideas and examples of teaching in the native country and will boost the confidence of individuals in a subject area in which many primary practitioners are non-specialists.Within the school, there is already a small number of French and Spanish-speaking staff (of varying levels of proficiency) who we would like to form a core team of MFL specialists at the school and who would lead these trips. Given that providers of such residential courses differentiate their training according to ability, such staff members would take part in higher-ability training whereas other staff without an MFL background would take part in beginners' courses. Our goal is to ensure that, as a minimum, teachers across Key Stage 2 (and ideally across the school as a whole) will feel confident in meeting the primary MFL curriculum. We believe that the increased teacher confidence and subject knowledge that these courses provide will help teachers and HLTAs to immerse children in languages in the classroom, provide fun, interactive lessons to engage children, improve pronunciation, and help children to diminish any barriers to learning by showing their own self-confidence in speaking in another language. In order to maintain the impact of the project the school language specialists will be able to provide ongoing continuing professional development (including in-school training sessions, auditing and updating resources and planning) and day-to-day support for non-specialists. In addition, we believe that training our reception staff in Spanish will significantly benefit the families of the many Spanish-speaking students at the school whose numbers have been increasing over recent years.We will closely monitor both the short and long-term impact this project will have on language learning at Surrey Square. This will be done in a number of ways including via regular half-termly ongoing subject leadership monitoring to verify that MFL curriculum targets are being met and via staff and pupil questionnaires (both pre- and post- training) to capture staff confidence and pupil responses to MFL teaching.As Surrey Square is a teacher training institution, we will seek to use our core specialist language team as role models and ambassadors for other schools in the area with whom we have a relationship and who are seeking to improve their MFL provision. We will also be able to provide specialist MFL teacher training to those students and NQTs who conduct their training within Surrey Square.As a multi-national, multi-faith school, children and adults at Surrey Square see themselves as global citizens and this project will undoubtedly help them to consolidate their understanding of the world around them through an understanding of other languages and cultures.
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