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How to learn French with a Premier League footballer
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he football season may be finished, but the exam season is in full swing and one Premiership star, Bacary Sagna, has teamed up with O2 Learn today and released a GCSE French revision lesson video.
The video lesson, which is hosted on O2 Learn, the free video sharing website aimed at helping students prepare for exams, focuses on spoken French, which remains a crucial part of GCSE French, accounting for 30% of the exam, and in particular question structure, which students often struggle to master.
Conceived by the Year 10 students from Haberdashers’ Aske’s Boys’ School, Hertfordshire who feature in the film, the lesson shows Sagna joining the school 5-a-side football team for a big match and being questioned in French by his new team mates. After revealing who his best friend is on the team, who he thinks is the funniest player in the Arsenal dressing room and what he’d like to do when his football days are over, Sagna then asks the students a series of questions in French (to be answered by any viewer of the video lesson) including what they would change in their school if they were headteacher for the day. The brains behind the lesson, French teacher Peter Thackery, explained the
New research shows teachers remain weighed down by administration
L Bacary Sagna with french teacher, Peter Thackery
inspiration for the project: “Positive role models can really help to generate an interest in learning French, particularly with boys, and language learning needs all the support it can get to help boost student’s engagement at the moment. By creating video and putting it on O2 Learn I hope that it can be a useful resource for students across the country.”
abelling solutions provider Avery has produced research indicating teachers are still carrying out a high volume of administrative work, despite the previous introduction of the teaching assistant position, designed to take over the paper work and preparation duties of a teacher. Avery’s research found that in the last ten years, the number of teaching assistant positions has increased with the purpose of the role being to support teachers in the classroom and to assume responsibility for many of the coordination tasks that are required on a day to day basis. However, Avery’s study, which spoke to 900 teachers in the UK, France and Germany, suggested that the role does not seem to be meeting the desired objectives. Asked if they felt that having such support has had a positive impact in the classroom, 20 per cent of teachers surveyed in the UK said there had been no change in the time spent on administration, and 35 per cent of teachers in France and Germany had seen no change. Overall, the results determined that time spent by teachers on administrative tasks has been reduced by 13 per cent, but 5 per cent of the UK teachers that participated in the research felt that administrative tasks in the classroom had actually doubled since the introduction of teaching assistant support.
Climate Week Challenge 2012 gets youth ‘thinking green’
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inners of the Climate Week Challenge 2012, the UK’s biggest climate change campaign, endorsed by eminent individuals such as the Prime Minister and Sir Paul McCartney, as well as by organisations including the National Association of Headteachers and Eco-Schools, have been invited to attend workshops where they will work on turning their ideas into prototypes.
The challenge, which took place in March saw 135,000 children and adults take part to come up with creative ideas to help the environment. This year’s challenge was ‘Green Your Space: develop an idea to change a place you know to make it better for the environment.’
Teams of 4 to 6 people competed within age categories, although everyone was given the same core challenge. The Challenge was only revealed at 9am and teams had until the end of the day to submit their entry. At the end of the day judges including Autumnwatch’s Kate Humble, adventurer and TV presenter Bruce Parry and Spooks’ star Sophia Myles decided on the most creative entries from each of the seven age categories.
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Winners included eight-year old Amy Charlotte Sanders, from North Downs Primary School in Betchworth. She came up with Water Pebbles, based on the traffic light system of green, amber and red lights to help people save water when taking a shower. A green light means carry on showering, an orange light warns that you should start rinsing off the soap and a red light means that you should be finishing your shower.
Four Year 11 pupils, Danielle Chesney, Paul Thompson, Ben Brooksby, and one Year 10 pupil, Chelsea Randlesome, all from Douglas Bader School, Norwich, came up with the Olympic Eco Rings. The pupils created a working monument based on the Olympic rings that each carries a particular ‘green’ function. The rings would be erected in an unused space at the front of the school as a visual, informative and functional green model. The blue ring on the left would collect rain water to be used to flush toilets and water plants. The yellow ring would be a composting facility, the black ring would host solar panels and the red ring would be a wind turbine to supply the school with green energy. Finally, the green ring would
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provide a vegetable plot to encourage the school to grow their own fruit and vegetables. Other winning entries included a new fridge design for UK supermarkets, developed by pupils from Prince Henry’s, Otley, in the 16+ category. There was also Recos, a roller skate that charges a battery when it’s on the move to power other devices – this came from pupils at Putteridge High School in the 11-14 age category.
Kevin Steele, chief executive at Climate Week, said: “The Climate Week Challenge enables young people to develop their skills of innovation and team-working to help combat climate change, which is one of the most important issues they will need to address as the emerging generation. We were hugely impressed with the response from schools and many of the ideas developed by this year’s 130,000 participants were brilliant.” The Climate Week Challenge for 2013 will be launched at the beginning of March. Registrations for next year’s challenge will open from the beginning of the new school year, and can be done on the Climate Week website
www.climateweek.com/challenge
June 2012
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