NPP 21: Using our Y7 French Exhibition as a Lens to Sharpen our Vision

 The brief of this National Priorities Project was to use our Year 7 French Art Exhibition as a lens to sharpen our vision of key questions in language learning, and to apply this to our curriculum as a whole.

We love our Year 7 French Exhibition, and felt strongly that it is an important part of our curriculum. But could we go beyond a vague feeling that of course it's a good thing for learners to do? Can we answer the following key question? Does asking our pupils to be creative overwhelm and lead to error, distract from the learning of the language itself, and lead to incidental "one off" learning that is all soon forgotten?

We didn't set out to definitively answer the question of grammar/vocabulary versus communication. (Except maybe to question whether there's any incompatibility there at all.) We set out to generate in-depth thinking and concrete examples, and to see if what we learned could help sharpen our shared vision of language learning in our school. And to apply this to our decision making around our curriculum, resources, inclusion and the intercultural opportunities we offer our pupils.

Here's a summary of what has emerged from our department meetings so far:

• 1. Communicating meaning is central to language learning. We can’t separate out the nitty gritty learning of the language now, so that some time in the future the learners will be able to communicate. For things to be learned, they have to be meaningful from the word go.

• 2. There is a cognitive load to asking pupils to communicate, interact, be creative. But this doesn’t mean we avoid or delay these areas. It means we tackle them head on as elements to be explicitly taught and developed. Learning to use the language is as important as learning more language. This also applies to oracy and literacy where interaction or text might be barriers to learning. We identify and remove barriers but without removing the level of challenge needed for pupils to learn and develop.

• 3. Asking pupils to express themselves, rather than to rehearse accurate sentences, can produce errors. But these errors don’t create the underlying misconceptions. They reveal the learner’s emerging conceptualisation of the language and allow us to engage with it.

• 4. The Art Exhibition may lead to pupils learning incidental “one offs” which allow them to say things they want to say but which may not fit with the planned accumulation of a repertoire of language. But often these “one offs” are the things that allow pupils to imagine themselves as speakers of the language. It applies to transactional role plays, classroom language, self expression, creativity. These moments can give agency, purpose and intercultural identity in a way that grammar and vocabulary don’t.

You can see that for a project that didn’t set out to definitively answer questions, we have come a long way. From a vague feeling that we didn’t want a focus on the core learning of the language itself to mean taking away intercultural opportunities, we have arrived at what almost looks like a set of four shared principles. These ideas have sharpened our decision making around every aspect of our curriculum from inclusion to resources to opportunities and outcomes. And another aspect is CPD. CPD doesn't mean going on a course. Professional Development means sharing and generating ideas as a department, putting them into practice, learning and having an impact on teaching and learning.