Ute Offermann, Language College Director, Moseley School

Moseley School is a large 11 – 19 inner city comprehensive school with over 40 feeder primary schools. As a specialist language college we have been involved in teaching and modelling lessons and coaching and training primary staff since 2000. Last year, we took part in a CILT funded transition project, part of which was on the use of stories.

In our school, students’ experience of language learning in Key Stage 2 is still patchy, ranging from no languages at all to a few taster sessions to continued language learning over a year or even more in very few cases. The range of languages our students have encountered also varies greatly. Overall though, we find that their Key Stage 2 language learning has been a very motivating experience for the children and that they come to us with high expectations and increasingly greater language awareness.

To cater for this situation and sustain motivation we are using a range of strategies alongside active teacher led practice of language:

• independent ICT based learning
• skills based projects, linking with our year 7 competencies curriculum
• peer teaching
• using stories
• student voice questionnaires on their KS2 experience and learning preferences.

For the stories project we selected Aladdin and the magic lamp and Petit poisson blanc.

Aladdin was chosen because of its familiarity, which is in itself an aspect of intercultural learning. We chose a simplified version and focused on a variety of techniques:

• reading out loud
• predicting the story through comprehension of familiar words
• miming along with hearing the story
• story boarding
• re-writing the story as a play and acting it out
• videoing plays and developing peer assessment skills

Later on, some of our year 7 students took part in a year 5 International Day where they taught short Aladdin plays.

Petit poisson blanc was used with a group with very low reading ages in English. They read the book and re-wrote the story using a range of different animals, and produced lovely story books for primary school children. Their confidence in language learning, group work and presentation skills benefited enormously to keep up their motivation in languages.

Both staff and students feel using stories is a great way to build on Key Stage 2 reading and language learning experience, and we have now made available a range of stories and methodology to all teachers in the department, and included this in schemes of work.

Our schemes of work are sufficiently flexible to allow teachers to work to their strengths and pitch the work to the ability of their class.

Students’ soundbites:

• I enjoyed the story and the play. It was really fun.
• It was fun because we could make up the play from the story as we wanted it to be.
• I enjoyed it a lot because it was fun to watch other people’s plays. Wearing the props was fun, too.
• It was great making booklets for the kids.
• I would like more time to prepare the plays for the year 5s so I can teach it better.
• The year 5 kids loved our stories.
• It’s better than learning from the teacher.

To find out more about the project and download the scheme of work and associated resources, visit the transition pages of the CILT website.