NPP 4: A Languages Department reacts to the idea that you can have too much creativity and too much communication.

 Our Year 7 French Exhibition is centred around the idea that communication and creativity should spark motivation, drive language learning, and allow pupils to grow as language learners in a multilingual and intercultural world. But what if injecting the demand for creativity so soon is harmful? Might it lead us to gloss over the important nuts and bolts of nitty gritty language learning? Might it sweep accuracy under the carpet? Might it lure pupils into saying things they can't, and things that they will never see or need again? These are the questions we are asking ourselves in our National Priorities Project. And if we can debate them in the context of the French Exhibition, can we also draw useful conclusions for elsewhere in our curriculum?

So first of all, how do we react as a Department to the idea that you can have too much creativity and too much communication too soon? Do our values clash with this idea? Does our classroom experience bear it out?

I asked the other members of the Department to fill in a survey, in order to document our initial thoughts as we start the project and to kick off our discussions:

I hope this survey sets down a baseline for our National Priorities Project. Not in that I want to see people's ideas change. But in setting up a challenge to our ideas that will stimulate us to question and justify them. And which will lead us to document experiences, insights and implications. This post starts out on that journey, with an in depth interview with the remaining member of the department (apart from me) whose views weren't documented in this survey. It's a great read!

As I write this, I can see that already as a department we have made strides beyond these initial thoughts. This survey saw people's answers very much focused on the French Exhibition, rather than on the lessons for the rest of our curriculum, but I will need to write another post on how we have already taken the next step.

Next Post: Listen to an interview with a member of the department who loves the Art Exhibition project.