Teaching and learning

The Our Languages project ran from 2007-2009. Please note that this website is no longer maintained. Content and links in this section, including linked pages, may be out-of-date.

Today’s children are growing up in a very different world in which instant communication is the norm and two year olds can switch on the DVD player. Their schools are employing a range of strategies to engage their interest and motivate them to learn.

Exploring 'good practice'

Pupils themselves expect to find learning rewarding, fun even. It is a far cry from the transmission model of teaching which older generations have experienced and sometimes see as the norm: that is teacher as controller of knowledge which is imparted in pre-determined chunks and copied, then reproduced. Nonetheless, in language learning there is a place for learning by rote. Content, too, surely matters.

We will be investigating a variety of approaches to teaching in these pages in the future, where possible illustrating some techniques with video clips. The complementary sector has much to bring to this exploration of 'good practice', notably in making the link between language and culture seamless.

We hope this website will stimulate the creation of a 'community of practice', a network of community language teachers across the two sectors who share a common purpose and common values, whatever the language they teach and wherever the location.

We also hope the material we post up will be of interest to beginning teachers – of any subject – who want to understand better the strengths bilingual pupils bring to their classroom and to their learning.

And we would like teacher trainers to consider ways in which our filming might help explain some of the aspirational thinking that lies behind the Every Child Matters agenda, namely the right of every child to be understood in a holistic way.

The new National Curriculum emphasises the role of creativity in language learning and suggests more cross-curricular approaches in mainstream schools. We will be developing new schemes of work and project schools will be involved in trialling new resources.