Did the team at Primary Languages Network in January- February 2020 expect to be “teaching emotions behind the mask” or re-settling primary language learners on the return of all primary schools to in-school learning in September 2020 with our Rainbow Song, originally intended just for European Day of Languages? The short answer is no!
I’ve been challenged by the PLN team to share my ten most significant steps/ memories of PLN and 2020.
I think I must start by saying what a team and what team effort and this includes every member of 620 plus schools and teachers we work with too. Thank you to everyone.
Mid-March and we realised that schools were about to close. We produced our first home learning grid with online resources for all our network school children working at home.
By the end of March, nearly all our young primary language learners were being supported by class teachers in schools, delivering distanced learning,using our learning resources.
By end of March/ early April, we were up and running with our home learning YouTube channel “ PLN Kids” and the C’est Emilie and Es Irene videos, accessible to everyone regardless of whether or not schools and children belonged to Primary Languages Network.
Schools, teachers, and children kept us inspired and keen to share more with the wider teaching and learning community.
By early May our Instagram page had become a way to share the joy and the ideas that have kept us motivated and determined to support everyone.
Every year we hold our face to face PLN conference. Behind the scenes, a network school survey confirmed that teachers wanted to hold a virtual conference. We are very proud to say that we were “the first” to offer a virtual primary languages conference as a free CPD opportunity to the whole teaching community.
What we didn’t realise , was that we would have over 900 delegates per week and that as a team we would quickly have to become masters of Facebook Live for weekly questions and answers live chat about the week’s focus.
Missed the sessions? Here’s the link to the Youtube clip of HMI Lead for MFL Michael Wardle’s presentation on Pillars of Progress and Ofsted’s expectations. And if you want to catch up on other sessions then you can still access these in the three network member reviews of the conference in the PLN blog. Just search for blog posts with headers like Natalie’s below.
From March onwards, our team of class language teachers, led by Emilie, our Language Teacher Manager. have worked alongside schools to maintain primary language learning. It has kept our finger on the pulse and helped us to create suitable learning resources for key-workers, home learning, bubbles, socially distanced learning etcetera. It’s the “banarama effect”.
In May we began to make home learning booklets for home and in-school side bye side learning, informed by our own team’s experiences during Covid19.
And yet again we have seen how what we do,has a positive impact in schools beyond our normal reach.
And by early Summer we were busy training and sharing as a team in Zoom and Microsoft Teams and delivering online lessons. Until look at us now, able to beam lessons into the classroom that are just right!
and able to continue to deliver online successfully and creatively our menu of CPD, led by our CPD Account Manager,Susanne, for all our ITT provider, MATs and TSA partners.
End of the calendar year and where are we now?
Well,all the experience we have gained from March until now has led to the creation of Circuit Breakers to enable everyone to step into 2021, confident that young language learners in or out of school can access high-quality language learning that matches their stage and needs in primary French and Spanish.
