Early Start Spanish: Tu y Yo

Introduction - getting started

Early Start Spanish 1: CONTENTS | HOME

Your checklist before you start teaching Spanish:

1
Get support of head, governors, colleagues, parents

2
Review your own language skills

3
Prepare a scheme of work

4
Make contact with a link school

5
Get a support network around you

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1
Get support of head, governors, colleagues, parents

If you first have to persuade your colleagues and the school authorities that it's a good idea to teach Spanish to your class, our page Why PMFL? sets out some reasons that you and they may find persuasive.

CILT (Centre for Information about Language Teaching) has recently produced a video which gives an excellent presentation of the sort of work and standards of results that are possible.
CILT - information, resources, conferences, courses, publications - http://www.cilt.org.uk/.

The Spanish Embassy Education Office has leaflets which give good reasons for choosing to teach Spanish as your language.
http://www.sgci.mec.es/uk/english.html

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2
Review your own language skills

If you did study Spanish, but need to improve, most areas offer a local adult education course which may prove useful.

More targetted to your specific needs are the language courses and other support for teachers of Spanish available from the Spanish Embassy Education Office:
http://www.sgci.mec.es/uk/english.html
Spanish Embassy Education Office
20 Peel Street
London W8 7PD
Tel. 0171 727 2462 / 0171 243 8535
Fax: 0171 229 4965

If you prefer some self-study, Michel Thomas has an interesting approach to language learning that appears to have had successes with some adults who failed to learn with other methods. You might find it worth examining as a possible way of brushing up your own language.
He claims to provide "in a few hours a functional working knowledge of a language without books, note-taking or conscious memorizing." - but we have no personal experience on which to judge.

The CD costs about £54 + delivery (when bought on-line with up to 10% saving) and provides an eight-hour course to get your Spanish up to speed - other languages also available.

We are DEFINITELY NOT recommending using it with primary school pupils. But some people speak highly of the effectiveness of his methods with older students , so......

Click to find out more: Spanish With Michel Thomas

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3
Prepare a scheme of work

England: Key Stage 2 Framework for Languages

The Framework document sets out an approach to content and methodology for language teaching in primary schools in England. It isavailable to download from the DfES Standards website at: http://www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/primary/languages/.

Part 1 - Learning Objectives and
Part 2 - Guidance on implementation)
Part 3 - More detailed planning and guidance will be published in Spring 2007.

Copies can be ordered from the TeacherNet online service for schools at http://publications.teachernet.gov.uk/ or DfES publications at e-mail: dfes@prolog.uk.com, tel: 0845 602 22 60, textphone: 0845 60 555 60 or fax: 0845 60 333 60

See first the summary on this site: KS2 guidelines

Scottish Consultative Council on the Curriculum
Modern Languages 5-14 Guidelines

These have been published for consultation, and the consultation period ended in December 1999. Visit the Modern Languages website for more information.

http://www.svtc.org.uk/modlang/

Official Schemes of Work
for primary schools (KS2) in England & Wales

These materials, the advice to teachers, and the course structure have been carefully updated to fit with various official (but not compulsory) guidelines - see above. The QCA/DFEE schemes of work and teacher's guide were released in mid-2000, and you can view and download them from the Standards Site in either Acrobat PDF or MS Word format:

http://www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/schemes3/subjects/primary_mfs_new/?view=get

The non-compulsory schemes have been designed to support those primary, middle and special schools that are currently teaching, or planning to teach, a modern foreign language at key stage 2.

The scheme provides a flexible framework designed to help schools to develop or adapt their own schemes for a 4-year course. It comprises an overview and 24 units for Spanish.

Non-specialist class teachers may find some of the suggested work too demanding, but the Scheme of Work does offer a useful benchmark against which to compare what you decide to do - and it does contain some interesting lesson ideas!

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4
Make contact with a link school

Links with Spain:
The following support and information is available through the Central Bureau in London.

Finding partners and case-studies
Schools can find partners and see case studies by visiting the new 'one-stop-shop' Global Gateway website http://www.globalgateway.org.uk/

Those seeking partners specifically for EU funded programmes such as Comenius projects might find Partbase more useful (http://partbase.eupr.se).

ICT Projects
The PICT (Projects using ICT) network website (http://www.europict.org) has information and suggestions as to how to use ICT , particularly pupil to pupil, inside Comenius Action 1 projects. It contains examples from schools in Ireland and the UK involved in various activities. In the future it is intended that it will be an interactive website.

The Montage website (http://www.bc.org.au/montage) offers a range of user-friendly curriculum project ideas focussing on the use of new technologies for use internationally across all age ranges.

Design Projects
Designit is an educational links project which enables young people from around the world to complete joint design projects using new technologies. Its website is on http://www.designit.org

Grants & help for links with Spain - the Central Bureau: http://www.britishcouncil.org/cbiet/
Find link schools and colleges in Spain - free service: http://partbase.eupro.se

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5
Get a support network around you

It's good to meet with colleagues who are tackling similar tasks to swap ideas and discuss how to do things better.

You may be lucky to have such a support network if your school is part of a project locally organised by an adviser / consultant, or if a local secondary school or college is setting out to be a "centre of excellence" for languages by working with its feeder schools.

Even if you are "on your own", there are ways of exchanging ideas with colleagues who are interested in teaching languages to young beginners....

Network by e-mail with others interested in teaching languages:

For primary school teachers & MFL:
Join the (very useful) ELL-Forum mailing list, to put you in touch with lots of other teachers and educators interested in early language learning:

Simply send an email to: mailbase@mailbase.ac.uk
Leave the subject blank,
and for the message, put: join ell-forum first lastname

(Type your own personal names instead of firstname and lastname).

For MFL specialists:
If you are a MFL specialist, you may also be interested in joining another discussion group for language teachers generally: join at http://www.linguanet.org.uk/forum.htm

Sources of on-line advice & info about language teaching
The National Advisory Centre for Early Language Learning (NACELL) website is at: http://www.nacell.org.uk

CILT - information, resources, conferences, courses, publications.

"Tecla" - on-line Spanish teaching resources

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Assessment & recording
On the NACELL website you can now find an electronic version of the European Language Portfolio which can be used as a photocopiable record of achievement for Primary pupils learning languages plus a teacher's guide to using the Portfolio.

We recommend this as a potentially very useful record of achievement to pass on to the pupils' next teacher; if properly used, it's a valuable aid to ease transition to secondary school.

You are free to download these documents and use them with your own pupils.

European Language Portfolio
(L) Pupil's document & (R) Teacher's Guide

DOWNLOAD the European Language Portfolio from the Resources section of the NACELL website, at http://www.nacell.org.uk/resources/pub_cilt/portfolio.htm

There are detailed instructions on the web page of how to save and download the documents.
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