Facing the currently unknown

Say it with feeling! – Raising attainment and cultural understanding in MFL

When I present at sessions I like to make sure that I include as many ideas from as many sources as possible. After all, although I have my ideas, there are lots of people out there with lots more (and invariably far better) ideas as well. One of the people I often end up mentioning is Neil Jones, a SSAT Lead Practitioner working in South East London. Now, to put it bluntly, Neil is an inspiration. His resources are of the highest, highest quality. His ideas are so simple yet so effective, but crucially it was Neil who really got me thinking a few years ago about the nature of the content that we teach. His work completely changed the way I think about language teaching, about the need for cognitive challenge and beyond that the need for pupils to learn more than just language. As such, it was with great delight that I agreed to present at his Lead Practitioner seminar day which will take place at Barclays Capital, Canary Wharf on Friday 3rd December. I'll be presenting on using ICT to enhance the re-envisioning of topic and theme work which is somethintg I'm really looking forward to. Anyway, if you're in London or anywhere nearby then I can guarantee you a really thought-provoking day so please, please come along!

Download SSAT Lead Practitioner event DECEMBER 2010

Lead Practitioner seminar, 28th November

Those of you who know me well will know that I get REALLY nervous before presenting. So you can imagine how I was feeling before my first big event with my name at the top of the banner- eek!

However, I felt that the day went really well, and a huge thank you for that not only has to go to all of the delegates, many of whom had travelled for over 3hours, but also to Jane Full, Neil Jones and Val Dixon from Pilton, without who the day wouldn't have been possible in the slightest.

Anyway, here's my presentation as promised and hopefully Neil and Jane's will follow soon. However, I have a HUGE apology to make here. I don't know why, but the slideshare engineers are tearing their hair out because I seem to have discovered a major glitch in their system. Oops. But it does mean that the presentation has the audio over the top, but it won't move through the slides automaticaly. As such, if it doesn't seem like the audio's talking about that slide, press next. If you're planning on using this for training purposes can I recommend that you use the functioning slidecast from the Language Show (a bit further down this page) as it covers similar ideas to Friday.

As soon as the problem is sorted I'll update this post with the corrected slidecast. I'm really sorry it's not perfect, it's caused me a very sleepless night.

If there are any things which we discussed on the day which you'd like me to add detail to then please leave a comment below and I'll get onto it!

Cheers,

Chris

Thinking Outside The Classroom Box

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own.

SSAT conference with Louise Crossley

Firstly, apologies for how many times I say the word "ok". Oops.

Secondly I don't seem to be able to count. All of the numberings on the slides seem to start at . Mmm.

Thirdly, Juliet, I am NOT a geek.

ICT- thinking outside the classroom box

Lead Practitioner, the outcome

Cripes. I've just had to add a new category to this blog- that of Lead Practitioner. Eek.

Been quite an afternoon, to be honest- my cat's been missing since Wednesday, which has been cuaing both Ali (my fiancee) and I a huge amount of consternation. This evening when we got in, he strolled down and demanded food, the best noise we've heard in ages, having started to suspect the worst... So to then casually open my e-mails and discover an invitation to be a Lead Practitioner, well, I'm stoked!

In October 2006 Joe Dale inspired me on a route to opening eyes and opening doors. Since then I've been immensely fortunate to work with some fantastic teachers, and to be honest, steal many of their ideas. Many of them have been Lead Practitoners, such as Joe, Neil Jones, Lesley Welsh et al. And now, somehow, they've made a giant whopping mistake and let this muppet be one. Ha ha, they'll learn!! So if anyone has any suggestions for things they'd like to see happening down in the West Country, PLEASE PLEASE give me a yell!!

But for now, back to editing my Ten Tors video and playing with Animoto- rock and roll lifestyle. After a trip to Wembley yesterday to see mighty Exeter City in the playoffs, I NEED SOME SLEEP!!!!!!!!!

Cheers again to one and all, especially for some immensely kind support and kind words.