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Once again CILT Cymru staged a successful series of free
roadshows across Wales, dealing with key issues facing MFL
teachers. This year’s event focussed on Assessment for
Learning, the forthcoming new orders for the National Curriculum
and raising take-up at Key Stage 4.
During the session on Assessment for Learning, participants
discussed ways to include pupils in the discussion of their
own and others’ progress, thereby making them more independent
and effective language learners.
CILT Cymru Language Teaching Adviser Kristina Hedges gave
participants an overview of the developments in the draft
new National Curriculum for MFL and proposed strategies for
adapting existing schemes of work and activities to fit the
new orders. The key message from the session is that there
will be no need to scrap schemes of work and purchase new
course books. Tweaking existing practice to ensure a focus
on language structures rather than overemphasis on teaching
topic vocabulary is the key to improving progression in language
learning. CILT Cymru’s CPD programme over the next few
years will cover all aspects of the new curriculum design,
so make sure your department gets its share of the school’s
training budget to ensure that all MFL teachers in Wales are
up-to-date with developments.
During the afternoon the roadshow looked at what successful
Compact schools have been doing to raise take-up at KS 4 and
beyond. Unfortunately there are no ‘quick fixes’
to the problem of falling numbers, but schools in the project
have been introducing innovative strategies to improve motivation
throughout KS3 and keep pupils ‘on board’ at KS4.
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