3 minute read
Modern Foreign Languages
- Gregory S. Williams
Advertisement
… after two years of careful navigation through the COVID storm, we now stand stronger and prouder than before, ready to raise our sail and begin a new teaching era…
The Languages department at Sherborne has always been proud of its interactive and kinesthetic methods of teaching, as social distancing and remote learning unexpectedly continued for a second year, we continued our battle to maintain the fun in MFL.
In the midst of all this, we welcomed a new addition to our department, Ms Martin, who soon became an integral and invaluable part of the team.
We continued with the impossible challenge of modelling good pronunciation or checking pupils elocution, all from behind a mask. We taught without using books or textbooks whilst, of course, maintaining social distancing…
With pupils rooted at their desks, no sharing of resources or group work making kinesthetic activities virtually impossible, the languages department has been, at times, unusually quiet… no running or getting out of chairs, no cuddly toy flying across the classroom, no treasure hunt… but this did not last long… But not ones to be easily deterred, the MFL department once again demonstrate its creativity, finding novel ways to deliver fun lessons and adapting to never ending restrictions. Soon Miss Cobo’s Year 8 class were filming a virtual cooking shows, Ms Arándiga’s pupils were playing the ever so popular ‘chair game’, Ms Martin’s Year 7 were playing ‘touch the colour’, Ms McKend’s Year 8 were taking us on a virtual guided tour of Qatar, and Mrs Khayari’s Year 9 pupils were enhancing their brain power developing their growth mindset! Proving once again that in MFL, where there is a will, there is a way!
But, far from being defeated by a global pandemic, for the second year running, Sherborne’s pupils and teachers rose to the challenges and truly supported each other through it all and learn many invaluable skills, as well as languages along the way, as reflected in these pupils’ quotes: “This year hasn’t felt like a compromise. I believe that we have taken advantage of every chance we were given to make this year an academic success”
“Through this year, we had to learn to adapt to a completely different style of learning languages. While this included some negatives, we were still able to grow our love for the French language and culture through the teaching techniques of our teacher”
“We have had a fairly different year, from when we could write on the board, play card games, and have other forms of interactive learning. Despite this, I feel that the MFL, and the school as a whole, has adapted to an amazing extent. One thing that I loved particularly about this year is how lessons are still kept interesting and how we have discovered new yet effective methods of learning as a class.”
“Throughout the year, we have done many things in French. When I started Year 10, I thought that I would simply learn more advanced French. As time progressed, we did more than that. My Favorite activity was the project on food, we were simply asked to create a mind map on all the food classes. It was a fun and simple activity and I found it fairly interesting.”
“It has been very difficult adjusting to the new way of learning, but I think we have managed with the new situation well and have learnt countless things from this. for example, all teachers and pupils have learnt a lot about technology which has improved our learning drastically because we can have all our notes organised online.”
Miss Mckend Head of Modern Foreign Languages
