Teacher and
Staff Development

All professional development seminars and workshops are based on the latest research about languages in education, and tailored for each individual school and their language context and needs, including state, international, and bilingual schools. Each school is asked to complete an intake questionnaire and schedule one Skype meeting, to ensure that the courses can be developed in accordance with the context of the school and the goals for language development.

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Sample courses

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Bilingualism in Education: Understanding your learners

Language diversity in schools is a growing and complex issue, both in state and international schools. Teachers are at the forefront of support for language learners, and this session is designed to provide critical knowledge for supporting language learners and language development in school. This includes theoretical knowledge about bilingual development in schools as well as practical knowledge about the challenges language learner students face. The overall goal of this session is to inform and inspire all staff to better understand and support language learners in their schools.

 

Languages in the classroom

This session looks at classroom practice and interventions designed to better respond to the needs of language learners in mainstream education. Issues examined will include teacher input, resource adaptation, homework, and the collaborative relationship between language support, mainstream teachers and parents. The overall goal of this session is to give participants the opportunity to critically review classroom practice and resourcing, and to implement and adapt key strategies to better serve language learners.

 

Whole-school Collaboration for Language-Integrated Teaching (LIT)

This module serves as a springboard for creating an effective collaboration between staff within and across year groups and subject areas. This includes structuring language objectives across the curriculum and planning a language development trajectory for the whole school. Teachers will be introduced to key resources and planning methods to be used in the implementation of LIT.

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Assessment with empathy and accuracy

This module focuses on building understanding of the different issues arising from assessment in a second language, and provides a model of fair assessment based on the stages of language learning. Staff will leave with a renewed vision of the different types of assessment available, and needed, and how to adapt them to allow language learners to show progress independent of language skills. This module is available in early, middle or secondary school specialisations.

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Pedagogical translanguaging

Languages are not used in isolation in the real world, and need not be used in isolation in classrooms and schools. Translanguaging is the practice of using languages in a dynamic way in education, to support learning, cognitive development and language growth in multilingual populations. This module introduces translanguaging theory and provides concrete methods for planning for use in classrooms and schools. This module is generally combined with continued (in-person or distance) coaching for implementation.

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