Key Eductional Concepts
Who's it for?
All children are interested in language in some form: as code breakers, poets, thinkers, artists, historians, storytellers, singers, performers, translators, creating links with their family heritage or speaking other languages at home.
I currently run my ‘Language Explorers’ after-school club in a South London state primary school, where it is offered as a paid-for extracurricular activity children and parents book at the start of the term, with 20% of spaces free of charge.
I teach children from 6-11 years old, but the content would easily be suitable for KS3 and beyond, and can also be adapted to standalone workshops.
If you are a school or educational setting, and interested in my work, get in touch, and we can discuss how we can facilitate Language Shapes for you.
Approach
Language Shapes welcomes both multilingual speakers and monolingual learners, offering a diverse, creative curriculum.
Lessons combine a recall activity, a deepening of the topic, discussions, sharing (knowledge, observations, poetry, stories, codes,…) and exploring the theme through art, play, music or free writing. I will typically encourage children to follow their own imagination, but will provide a scaffolding or templates for younger years, or those who prefer this.
The termly plans incorporate links to their regular curriculum where this fits in, such as geography, history, PSHE, a particular foreign language they are learning, artists or writers.
Format
Weekly after-school clubs follow a broad theme each term, such as: ‘scripts around the world’, ‘non-verbal communication’, ‘Around the world in 5 languages’, ‘Inventing a language’ which is explored over ~10 weeks.
Groups are usually blended across two or three year groups, which is a nice way to create new friendship dynamics and for younger and older learners to grow together.
I create my own content, curriculum and lesson plans, and the termly theme is further tailored to the children’s interests and abilities and additional languages they bring – heritage and home languages, or languages they’re interested in from music, films or self-study through an app. Sometimes a trip to Japan gets rerouted to Korea…
For workshops, details are to be discussed on a case-by-case basis.
Outcomes
I want to celebrate all forms of curiosity in language, and create a space where we learn together, invite children to explore and get exposed to different ways of approaching or thinking about languages, while nurturing their imagination and curiosity in a wider world.
The lessons follow a specific structure the children quickly become familiar with, which requires them both to focus and listen, while then creating a more relaxed space for exploration, conversation and activities.
We work with pen and paper (or other tools), the children practice their hand-writing, they gain confidence in speaking, sharing and broadening their vocabulary. They collaborate with children from other year groups, and reflect about how we communicate and interact socially and globally.
The goal is not to become fluent in any one language, but to learn about many languages, learn about language families, grammatical patterns, word origins, different writing systems and sounds, and how to approach new languages with these tools.
The children also do regular painting and crafting, to support the week’s topic, and explore words, culture or storytelling in a more mindful, creative way.
The goal is to remove a fear of language learning, and also feel more confident, reflective and creative with English or other home languages.
