NACELL best practice guide

Introduction

The Early Language Learning initiative

Since 1999, the Centre for Information on Language Teaching and Research (CILT) has managed a project, funded by the DfES, to promote and develop early language learning (ELL). This project involves a considerable amount of work with schools and local education authorities, as well as all the national agencies which have an interest in ELL.

As part of the development and dissemination of successful practice, CILT set up a Good Practice Project in 1999, involving eighteen partners in a range of schools and settings. Since September 2001, the Development of Early Language Learning Project, also managed by CILT, has been continuing this action research, firmly rooted in current classroom practice.

The NACELL best practice guide

CILT's work with schools and LEAs has provided useful information about different models of provision, as well as numerous examples of best practice in planning, teaching and learning. The NACELL best practice guide brings together possible curriculum models and a selection of examples in the form of case studies, guidance and schemes of work.

The materials in this guide represent only a small sample of some of the work currently going on around the country. They have become available thanks to the very generous support and hard work of many individual teachers, schools and local education authorities across the country, who have agreed to share their work.

The NACELL best practice guide contains:

• models of provision, which can be applied to different schools and situations, including community languages;
• complete schemes of work and lesson plans for use in Key Stages 1 and 2;
• information on aspects of staffing and training;
• case studies and advice on planning and teaching;
• practical ideas for introducing and practising new language and games;
• guidance on planning and transition to secondary schools;
• case studies and advice on linking with schools abroad and using ICT.

The contents are shown below. Click on whichever area you would like to see.

• Sources of support
• Curricular models
• Who will teach MFL? (case studies now available)
• Planning the curriculum (case studies now available)
• Effective methods (case studies now available)
• Schemes of work and lesson plans (case studies now available)
• Cross-curricular links (case studies now available)
• Assessment and recording (case studies now available)
• Smooth transition to secondary (case studies now available)
• Making links abroad (case studies now available)
• ICT (case studies now available)

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Acknowledgements

CILT is grateful for the generous support of the many teachers, schools and local education authorities across the country who have agreed to share their work. They include:

• Tara Deevoy, Vikki Schulze, Alison Wright, Frances Chiverton and Gloria Van der Woude and schools in the DfES Best Practice Research Project, Kent;
• Primary MFL Advisory Teachers, Liverpool Education and Lifelong Learning
  Service;
• London Borough of Enfield LEA Advisory Service and Middlesex University;
• Marion Vincent, French teacher and Simon Burch, ICT Co-ordinator, Hadley Wood School, London Borough of Enfield LEA;
• The Inspection and Advisory Service, London Borough of Richmond upon Thames;
• Susan Brown, Stewart Headlam School, London Borough of Tower Hamlets;
• Jamal Uddin, London Borough of Tower Hamlets LEA, Mother Tongue Education;
• Ted Last, former Headteacher, Buckland CoE. School, Oxfordshire;
• Mary Love, peripatetic German and Music teacher, Oxfordshire primary schools;
• Christina Skarbek, Oxfordshire Comenius Centre;
• Cynthia Martin, Universities of Reading and Southampton;
• Jo Cole, Rosanna Raimato, Mary Rose, International Learning and Research Centre and teachers in South Gloucestershire who contributed to a centre-based QCA research project (2002);
• Rosemary Bevis, Marple Hall School, Stockport;
• Therese Comfort, Headlands School, York.