Getting on board with primary language learning! A whole staff learning experience

Getting on board with primary languages can seem really challenging and especially when you want everyone on the staff in individual schools through staff CPD  to practise simple language, know where to find sound files to support and to try out some transferable activities using simple language.


Short Activities to help teachers and children
The short activities which can help to build staff confidence and also engage young learners are based around greetings and feelings , using simple greetings and personal information, colours and colour games, numbers 1-10 and games.

Start up activities that can become the route to favourite 5 minute activities 
Remember these are start up activities and they will also help teachers to develop favourite activities that can be played for five minutes when teachers have time outside of the language learning allotted time. Revisiting core language helps everyone!

We understand that there is so much more that school will want to do with language learning but here is a starting point for all your staff.

Start Up Show and Tell
If your school is starting up language learning altogether then plan for a whole school "Show and Tell" with each class taking responsibility for an element. This will work because the whole school in the first half term will be focusing on similar language content maybe with different age appropriate approaches e.g:

Year 3: a greetings song 
Year 4:colours and a song to a familiar refrain
Year 5: numbers and a game for the whole school
Year 6: simple dialogues  in the target language

Record the individual elements and share these on your VLE and create a display called "Start Up!" where you can share with the wider community what your KS2 and teachers children have just started to learn!

When you are ready then investigate more .....have a look here 

Displaying what we can do Getting started rocket mobiles

Practising commands Five little commands and so much more
Simple songs and listening skills simple songs and activities 
Games with numbers Fantasy football teams
Building dialogues Totem pole sticks as a dialogue tool

Colour and drama and creative games colour mimes and word association
Listening with colours and numbers Listening sticks
Practising nouns with guessing games Open and reveal four corners

Moving on together
So how can you move on together and share good practice? 
Well maybe a SOW may be required that demonstrates progression over time and stages of learning .If you are a network school then you may already be accessing the SOW and if so make sure that all your staff can access the podcasts, sound files and the key word charts to support them with new language.
As a staff set off together and develop a sustainable and supportive learning continuum.Maybe the ideas here will suit your school too Ready Steady Go  

Creating sequences of learning
Be aspirational and look toward making sure all four skills are practised and that the children learn with the staff about the basic grammar or the language.Be creative and keep the primary in the learning. 
Have a look at ideas colleagues have shared on Network News and the ways Emilie takes the simple lessons and makes something  achievable and creative bonjour madame blogspot- easily transferable to German and Spanish or any target language too!
When you are ready as a school then consider sequences such as these here using all four skills and an authentic rhyme .

Getting on board with grammar and learning tools
You may find the blog post about bilingual dictionaries  really useful too. 
You may find the blog post about nouns, definite and indefinite article games  really useful too.