International Leaders

 At our school, the International Leaders are a group of Year 9 pupils who meet each week to work on projects for other pupils in Modern Languages and other areas of the school with an international dimension. It is a first step into leadership roles, such as becoming a prefect. And at the end of the year, if they stay the course, they get their International Leader badge. Which is a great badge to have because it contains the words International Leader and is therefore a very large badge!

I know Language Ambassadors or Language Leaders is something that other schools have put in place. Ours has been running for 10 years now and is completely integrated with our curriculum. Some of the things that we do, couldn't run without the International Leaders.

This week, they spent a hectic lunch hour mounting the Year 7 Windmill Exhibition onto display paper. Making choices about which artworks worked well together, and on what colour backing paper, reading the French and matching it to the picture when pupils had forgotten to put their names on their work. Ready for me to take to the Windmill next week. (Watch this space.) In previous years, the International Leaders have hosted a Vernissage on the opening night at the Windmill, welcoming guests with drinks and canapes.

Meanwhile, they are also simultaneously running the Year 7 vocabulary competition, devising tasks for the pupils to tackle in their Houses, marking them, and maintaining the Leader Board. These happen in French lessons, but with the International Leaders supplying and marking the tasks. It's a good way to bring in low-stakes tasks which go back over previous content.

And then there's the Domino Badge Conga competition which is also almost ready to go. Each pupil in Year 7 gets a badge. The badges come in different colours for the different Houses. With two words on. One in French and one in English. Each pupil has to find out what the words on their badge mean. And then over a couple of days, they have to look out for the pupils in their House who have the corresponding words in the other language. So the pupil who has sugar and arbre is looking for two pupils (in the same House), one with sucre and one with tree. When they find them, they can then help find more pupils to make a long domino conga chain. Something like: sugar / arbre - tree / chameau - camel / pain - bread / voiture - car / sucre. The forming of the conga chains usually happens in a very unusual assembly. Where they try to form the longest unbroken chain (or loop). This year, with pupils still in their own zones of the school, we will do this outside at break time. (Again, watch this space - we are nearly ready to go.)

You can see we are very busy. When you launch International Leaders or Language Ambassadors, you do need plenty of things for them to do. They do also get involved with creating displays, trialing materials, making videos, writing articles, giving presentations, showing visitors around, open evening... But it's running events for younger pupils that they really enjoy.

In the past we have run Are You Smarter Than a Year Seven as the on stage live final of the Vocabulary Competition. Which when lockdown hit, was being re-invented as "The Dog Ate My French Homework". The formats are designed to have pupils up on stage, but with their form Tutors ostensibly as the ones being tested or made to do silly things in French. We have also run TV gameshow themed language competitions for Primary pupils. With games such as The Chase, Pointless, and Million Pound Drop for pupils to compete in. 

It is especially lovely when the Year 9s are organising activities that they remember being part of when they were in Year 7. Projects do come and go, for example the French staff café or the Farm Stamper Trail, the Francovision Song Contest... I definitely recommend it, even though you have to keep a balance between having enough for them to do, and not running things just to keep them busy!