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Introduction
| Overview
| Becoming an LC
| CILT support
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CILT-SLC case study |
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The Earls High School, West Midlands |
Primary |
Project Croissant
BackgroundThis initiative has been developed in French following the success of The Algebra Project at the Earls High School. The US project was brought back to the UK by teachers at the school who went to Baltimore and saw it in action. It is a way of promoting ability and confidence in mathematics, by Year 6 pupils working with Year 9 Mentors and Year 10 Leaders on 5 topics over a 20 week period.
Project Croissant involves Year 5 pupils (20) working with Year 9 Mentors and Year 10 Leaders on 4 topics over a 20 week period for an hour after school each week. The secondary pupils are given the materials and they deliver the language content each week, working in 5 small groups.
The mentors (10) and leaders (5) are paid at the end of the 20 week period depending on the number of sessions that they have attended (£4 per session for the mentors and £5 per session for the leaders).
The project aims to address some of the following questions:
Will the project…
… promote a hunger for learning languages amongst Year 5 pupils?
…alter Year 5 pupils’ feelings/confidence towards secondary school?
…help improve teamwork and communication skills?
…alter pupils’ opinions of languages as a subject?
…improve the confidence of Year 9/10 pupils both socially and linguistically?
…motivate the Year 9/10 pupils to study French at GCSE or Post 16?
…interest pupils in a career in teaching?
Topic 1: Haricotville
Pupils spend 5 weeks learning and practising specific transactional language in order to be able to speak to natives in a simulated town at the Europa Centre for Modern Languages, Havering, Essex. Pupils spend time in the simulated town, also seeing a puppet show.
Topic 2: Mon Anniversaire
Following the puppet show at the centre the pupils will spend 6 weeks designing their script and making their puppets in order to produce their own show.
Topic 3: La Météo
Pupils learn the basic weather structures and north/south/in the Alps/in Paris etc. They then produce their own weather news using ICT and design their weather map using Kudlian Software specifically designed for this. Trilby Multi Media then film the pupils using a “green screen” and produce a DVD for each of them.
Topic 4: Tarte Tatin
Pupils research the history of the tarte tatin, visit a French restaurant in Birmingham and watch a demonstration (frogs legs, snails, muscles, crepes & tarte tatin) and get to taste each of the dishes. Pupils then come back into school in order to make the tarte tatin.
The project was set up last year with the help of Creative Partnerships funding and also the Halesowen Learning Network Consortium. This year, since gaining a second specialism we have used some Language College funding as well as funding from other sources.
Melanie Olver, The Earls High School, Dudley, February 2007
