Identifying a teacher

If you are planning to offer a local community language within the KS2 curriculum, you may well have a speaker of that language already on your staff, whether in a class teacher or learning support role.

Alternatively, a local secondary school may be able to suggest or share a language teacher. The Our Languages schools directory offers a searchable database on which mainstream schools teach which language. The British Council also runs Foreign Language Assistant programmes across a widening range of languages, which could offer useful support for a primary languages initiative; FLAs may be shared across up to three schools.

Your school may also consider creating a partnership for mutual benefit with a local supplementary school already teaching the community language. See the forging partnerships section.

See the professional development section and networking below for ideas on supporting colleagues teaching a community language. Case studies in the Key Stage 2 Curriculum models section will give ideas for how Local Authorities can support initiatives.

Planning the curriculum

With some additional thought and planning for mixed experience learners and developing literacy skills in the case of non-Roman script languages, the Key Stage 2 Framework for Languages should form an ideal basis for curriculum planning.

The Curriculum Guides from CILT offer a model for progression in a number of languages (including some non-Roman scripts) aligned with the KS2 Framework and which focus on community language profile learners; see the Classroom practice section for more information.

The Curriculum Guides also offer guidance on tracking progression, referring to the Asset languages qualifications scheme. The specification content given on the Asset languages website for each of the 25 languages available may be useful alongside the KS2 Framework when planning a scheme of work.

The Our Languages Resource File, produced by clusters of schools working with the SSAT, offers schemes of work, lesson plans preparing learners for Asset Languages tests and teaching resources in a range of community languages; some of these relate directly to learners in primary schools. The contents are free to download from the Our Languages website from late summer 2009.

Identifying resources

The CILT Library collection includes a significant range of current teaching and learning resources produced both in the UK and overseas for community language teaching and learning. Search the online Library catalogue to find out what is available in your language.  

Visit the Community Languages Bulletin archives for the InfoDirect Resources updates, which detail new resources as they have arrived in the library and give specialist publisher details. The Curriculum Guides  also offer lists of suggested resources for those languages covered.

See the Choosing resources section for suggested criteria when identifying suitable resources. The Using and Researching Dual Language Books for Children website from the University of East London offers particular guidance on dual language books.

The Languages ICT website offers guidance on setting up computers in school to operate in a number of non-Roman script languages, particularly useful where teachers wish to create high quality or electronic teaching and learning materials.

Web-based resources

You will find annotated links to a selection of free web-based teaching and learning resources across a range of languages in the Online resources section. The Languages ICT website also offers useful web links for Non-Roman script languages.

An increasing number of websites are offering free access to children’s stories in other languages, such as the BBC’s CBeebies Around the world dual-language stories. The International Children’s Digital Library offers free access to many published books across a very wide range of languages – just click on the Read books button. Mama Lisa’s World of Children and International Culture website includes a significant collection of songs across many languages, some with accompanying audio files and, where relevant, presented in the original non-Roman script.

Websites created by schools to celebrate the multilingual talent amongst their children are also proving to be useful teaching resources. Celebrating languages from Cambridgeshire County Council offers video clips of children teaching their home language. The Language of the month website from Newbury Park Primary School offers video, audio and paper –based resources and a teacher ideas handbook which could be particularly useful for use by class teachers across the curriculum and in between specialist language lessons.

Networking

With limited teaching and learning resources and language-specific national guidance available, networking is particularly important in the building of confidence and skills and sharing of materials and ideas in the teaching of languages other than French, German and Spanish.

The Community Languages Bulletin goes out in hard copy to around 4000 colleagues in all sectors of education and includes a regular feature focused on primary phase initiatives, as well as highlighting new resources and opportunities for colleagues. Register to receive the Bulletin free of charge. The termly Primary Languages Ezine offers up-to-date information and language teaching ideas focused on the primary sector.

The Primary languages forum keeps colleagues in very regular contact by email and facilitates the sharing of ideas and information, including on global dimension and community and lesser taught languages issues; the Community languages forum offers a similar free service across educational sectors. The CILT enquiry service welcomes individual queries on primary languages, including community languages.

Your Local Support Group will offer guidance and support on working with the KS2 Framework; it may include a community languages focus in its event programme. Your local Links into languages centre may also offer relevant support. The Specialist Schools and Academies Trust offers networks for teachers of Arabic, Japanese, Mandarin Chinese and Russian, with a focus towards foreign language teaching, as well as a Community languages network; some of the freely available information and resources are aimed at the primary sector.