Tag » Lisa Stevens « @ The Langwitch Chronicles

Annual eTwinning Conference, Prague

Posted on February 24th, 2009 Langwitch View Comments

I was really fortunate to be invited to attend the Annual eTwinning Conference last weekend. The event took place in Prague and it was really amazing to be involved.

I began my journey with eTwinning nearly 2 yrs ago, in a search for a French school so that we could set up an exchange. Once I made my first advert for a school I was hooked and found it very hard not to accept every offer of a project that I came across. However, one of the projects I set up with a French school was highly successful and even got into the short-list for the European eTwinning Prize (though not to the finals) and that was how I ended up, last Friday heading to Prague rather than taking part in our usual LEA-wide CPD Day that was taking place.

Several delegates, inlcuding Lisa Stevens, were blogging on the conference blog throughout the weekend, so I’m not going to go into too much detail about workshops etc…, as I think that they are very well written about there. I thought that I might just write about some of the highlights for me.

One of the main things I was looking forward to was the Key Note Speech given by Dr. Edward de Bono. I must say that he didn’t disappoint. His presentation style was unique, using a webcam to project the writing he was doing throughout his speech he spoke about how we can learn and teach creative thinking. I found this most inspiring and it certainly gave me some ideas as to how I can harness my creativity and how I can help my pupils to be more creative with their language work.

There were plenty of other activities aimed at helping us develop our creativity and also think about how we can “spread the word” about eTwinning in our local areas and further afield.

Another major highlight for me was a coach tour of Prague. Unfortunately is was at night but even so, it was amazing to be visiting such a beautiful city. The Czech CSS had provided coaches for all 400+ delegates and guides to give us a comprehensive description of their beautiful capital city. It was a very pleasant experience, made even more pleasant to have the opportunity to leave our coach and walk into the Old Town. Only three of us from my coach took up the opportunity to brave the cold of the night but I was pleased we did.

I also came away with a fantastic moto; “What we learn without joy, we forget without regret“. I have forgotten (with regret) the name of the lady who said this but may of us thought how apt that was!

I had a really great time at the conference, not least because I got know and spend time with some really lovely people of differing nationalities and backgrounds. Thank you, eTwinning for inviting me!

I took very few photos, so here’s a short video I made in Moviemaker with thanks to Smetana for the appropriate backing music…

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7 things you may or may not know about me!

Posted on February 7th, 2009 admin View Comments

I love a challenge (:o$) and earlier this week, Lisa Stevens gave me a huge one by tagging me in this meme. Curiously I was also tagged for a “25 random things about me” thingie on Facebook this week too and I found that rather easier than this to do! Anyway, if you’ve read that, then you may find that I’m repeating myself is some place, but really I’m not interesting to enough to have over 30 things that are random or that people might not know about me! So here we go:
1. I always start with this one, I’m deaf in my right ear after having had meningitis 3 years ago. At least that’s the worst thing that happened as a result of that.
2. I’m a control freak and hate not being in charge of things. I really dislike that fact that at work I’m always at the mercy of other people’s decisions.
3. I have absolutely no will power at all, which is why just about every diet I try fails.
4. I find it really hard to say “no” and therefore end up taking far too much on and rushing to get things finished.
5. My favourite colour is wine red (hmmm, curious that!)
6. I hate doing the housework and would have a cleaner if my husband would let me! (I even thought of getting a secret one but he’d probably figure it out when the house was clean and tidiy for a change!)
7. It really, really, really frustrates me that most of the kids I teach see no value in the subject that I teach. I can’t understand that people don’t see the importance of being able to communicate with others and that learning a language can add so much value to one’s life. There are so many things in my life that I could not have done and so many people I would not know, if I couldn’t speak French and German (oh and a little bit of Spanish!).
OK, so now I need to tag some people…maybe they’ve been tagged before, maybe they haven’t. So here goes, Amanda Salt, José Picardo, Marie-France Perkins, Isabelle Jones,

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Progression and fun in Primary Languages

Posted on November 9th, 2008 admin View Comments

This was the final session that I attended at the Isle of Wight Conference and unfortnately I actually had to leave a little early so missed some of it. Nevertheless I gained a real insight into what I should be doing when I go to teach my Primary Spanish lessons every fortnight.
This, inspiring session, was lead by Jo Rys-Jones and Lisa Stevens, both Primary MFL teachers.
They used as their basis how to teach the book “Dear Zoo” (those with small children will probably be familiar with this pop up book about a small child who writes to the zoo for them to send a pet and they send various unsuitable animals until the perfect one arrives).
To me it was a revelation, I’d never have thought about doing that and also, they didn’t even look at the book with pupils until well down the path of teaching animals, phonemes and having lots of cross-curricular links. The whole session made me re-evaluate what I am doing in my Primary school and also I felt sad that I am going to teach languages in Primary schools without knowing what being a Primary School teacher involves and therefore doesn’t it mean that I’m “selling my Primary pupils short” by going in and teaching like Secondary school teachers? I feel it’s a real shame that some Primary School pupils are being taught Languages by properly trained Primary teachers like Jo and Lisa while others are being taught by “any old” Secondary teacher (like me). It somehow doesn’t seem fair.
Anyway now, maybe at least my Primary pupils might have a flavour of what their language teaching should really be like…it’s also led me to attempt a brave move with my Yr 9 top set and use a topic on teaching household chores to work on the story of Cinderella..
You can find the slideshow and other resources on the Talkabout Primary MFL Ning here

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