Wednesday 3 December 2014

Friday 14 November 2014

A level Conference 2014

Over 100 students from schools across the region, lecturers, professors and student ambassadors from Aston University, University of Birmingham, Warwick University and Coventry University - what a day!





Tuesday 7 October 2014

AS and A level changes and suggested changes

Sources: ALCAB report on Modern Languages and DfE "Modern Languages GCE Subject Content"

As and A Level Changes and Suggested Changes

Changes to GCSEs in MFL (from Sept 2016)


(Sources: Ofqual and DfE)
  • all four skills weighted 25%
  • all exams are final
  • Higher and Foundation tiers for all four exams (including writing and speaking)
  • either Higher OR Foundation for all four exams (no mix and match)
  • all exams to be marked by exam boards
  • speaking exams are final “non-exam assessments” which means that they are not all at the same time but during an exam period (same as oral exams for Alevel and as the previous speaking exams)
  • Translation (from English-TL and TL-English) will be part of the Reading/Writing exam at Higher AND Foundation
  • Listening: 20-30% questions in TL
  • Reading: 30-40% questions in TL (adapted literary texts will be included)
  • New Topic areas: 
         1. Identity and culture
         2. Local, national, international and global areas of interest 
         3. Current and future study and employment


Current Year 8s will be the first to start the new GCSEs in Sept 2016 and sit the new GCSE exams in June 2018

Thursday 2 October 2014

FREE CPD courses for the new KS2 curriculum

Sign up to our 2 new FREE primary languages courses - one for Subject Leaders and one for class teachers (Y3-6). Courses run from November - March, are accessible online and all training sessions are scheduled as twilights (4-5pm) except for the subject leader launch conference. There is a big focus on progression and assessment with clear reference to the new KS2 curriculum for languages AND English.

Friday 26 September 2014

Going Places with Languages on #EDL2014

We had a fabulous #EuropeanDayofLanguages week culminating in our second Going Places with Languages Year 11 Careers Conference. Thank you to our partners, the European Commission (via VC from Brussels), COMTEC Translations, SIEMENS and the University of Birmingham!

...

Sunday 14 September 2014

FREE primary MFL training courses

We successfully bid for funding from the Department for Education in partnership with Howes Primary School and Warwick University last June to plan, resource and deliver two CPD programmes: One for primary subject leaders and one for class teachers, both to meet the demands of the new KS2 curriculum in MFL comprehensively and systematically covering the age related expectations by skill and year group. Have a look and sign up here!

www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/cpe/professionaldevelopment/primarymodernforeignlanguages


Saturday 19 July 2014

What a way to end the year: Flexi Day 2014

We ended 2013/14 with a whole-school Flexi day where all KS3 students worked in vertical groups on the theme of commemoration. We offered two workshops in languages: "In Flanders fields" students learned about the history of the poppy tradition and created a field of poppies with words such as friendship, love and hope written in different languages on the poppy stems. In "Sadako and the 1000 cranes" we looked at the story of Sadako, a young girl who survived Hiroshima but later died of leukemia. She folded over a 1000 origami cranes to get a wish granted from the gods and this is now a symbol of peace and hope. We were particularly privileged to work with trainee teachers from Hiroshima who helped our students during the Origami workshops.


Thursday 17 July 2014

Hiroshima Teacher Trainees @ THW

We've had the privilege again of working with 15 enthusiastic and inspiring trainee teachers from Hiroshima via Warwick University again. The 10 week teaching programme culminated in a carousel-style morning of cultural and language-related activities: ありがとう!


Our Young Language Leaders 2014 in action

Teaching our Year 7s about recycled fashion styles, pets, Schultüten ...!


Year 7 Restaurant role plays

Here are some of our highly creative restaurant role plays - well done Y7s!

Final Languages Club of the Year

Thank you to the Year 8 Languages Forum girls who ran Languages Club this year! We played the year out with a Flamenco taster:



Tuesday 8 July 2014

Los bizcochos

Our Year 8s have been busy baking bizcochos(traditional yogurt cakes) in their Spanish lesson - Sabrosísimo!

Monday 7 July 2014

Normandy 2014

Primary French Morning with St John's Year 5

About 30 Year 5 students from St. John's Primary School worked with 30 of our Year 7 students on the topic of "Exploration and Storytelling". They were taught by our Year 9 Young Language Leaders and other enthusiastic Year 9 students and created a range of amazing online picture books using www.storybird.com. See their results here!


Sunday 22 June 2014

Success at the prestigious Nihongo Cup 2014

We are proud to announce that Cynthia was awarded second place in the KS4 category at the highly prestigious Nihongo Cup - the annual Japanese speech contest at the Japanese Embassy in London. There were 6 other finalists in KS4 from around the country. Cynthia was the first to give her speech and although she looked slightly nervous, she spoke absolutely freely (of course!) whereas many finalists used notes. Cynthia received a silver medal, a digital camera and Japanese reading books for her to improve her Japanese even more!

Wednesday 11 June 2014

World Cup Songs

France: Allez les bleus!
Germany: Mister Santos
La copa de todos:
Italy:
Japanese fan song:

Tuesday 10 June 2014

World Cup trailers in different languages

French trailer 1
French trailer 2:
German world cup team - promo trailer:
Spanish: World Cup song by Shakira in Spanish
Japan: team profile:

Friday 6 June 2014

Rotkäppchen II

Here is a second writing sample of our students' independent work on Rotkäppchen:







Tuesday 3 June 2014

... the Language Perfect World Championship results are in!

A massive well done to all our competitors in this year's Language Perfect World Championship! We can't wait to hand out the certificates in assembly and announce the overall winner whose name will be the first to be engraved on our trophy (see previous post).


Two new awards/trophies

Our brand new shiny trophies - for the West Coventry Sixth Form Language Awards and the Language Perfect World Championships: Winners to be engraved annually!






Visitors from Japan



Our Y8 and 9 students have had a great time getting to know the 15 trainee teachers from Hiroshima, Japan. The teachers are completing a 3 month placement at Warwick university and are helping out in our Japanese lessons with all sorts of activities including origami, kanji writing, speaking and listening work and a variety of cultural exchange activities.