John Bald/language and literacy

Training for Teaching Assistants - Frederick Gent and Abbs Cross Schools

Many thanks to the teachers and assistants at Frederick Gent (Alfreton, Derbyshire) and Abbs Cross (Hornchurch, Essex) for their warm welcome and excellent participation in two training days this week (April 08). As promised, here is a link to the updated powerpoint file that was the basis of the course.

Download synthetic_phoncs_and_the_child_with_special_needs.ppt

Some colleagues asked for more guidance on helping children with modern languages. Here are some key points on that area:

1. Try to make sure you understand the aspects of the language you are supporting. You might find Collins' Easy Learning grammar books helpful. If you're not sure, ask.
2. Get the clearest possible idea of what the child does and doesn't understand.
3. Slow things down, unpack and explain. You may well find a Language Master (Drake Educational) helpful. Colleagues may call this an old fashioned device, but it is amazingly versatile and useful for this purpose. I'll do a separate post on it over the next week, but check to see if your school has one. It may well be stuck in a cupboard.
4. Develop little practice routines for children to work on - don't go on to one thing before they've learned the last.
5. You'll see from other posts in this weblog that I have grave concerns about the National Curriculum for languages, and that I have no confidence in the ability of the QCA and DCFS to improve it. The basic problem is going too fast and not explaining things enough. I've given a presentation to heads of department in Havering on the subject, and am happy to do more work in this area on request.

Thanks once again for making these two of the most satisfying days' work I've ever done.

Institute of Education, London.

I'm very pleased to have a new client in the Institute of Education, which has asked me to offer the following two day courses:

Using Phonics to Tackle Literacy Problems           Friday October 10th

Using ICT to Teach Languages                             Friday October 3rd

For details, contact the Institute of Education CPD department, cpd@ioe.ac.uk
Tel: 020 7612 6589/6987

Current activity

I've contributed seminars on languages to The Education Show and BETT this term, and have several days' work training teaching assistants to teach reading, as well as a day with a primary school on classroom observation techniques. I'm offering a course next term with the Lighthouse organisation on teaching languages to dyslexic students. I've recently helped an Academy  recruit a head of modern languages, and continue to lead on primary languages for The Learning Trust (Hackney).