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Guidance on implementation of the KS2 Framework for languages
Successful transition between key stage 2 and key stage 3 is crucial if pupils are to realise their full potential during the years of secondary schooling. From September 2005 it will become increasingly important for teachers of secondary pupils to know what they have learnt, understood and achieved during key stage 2 if they are properly to provide for progression and continuity in language learning.
Contact between key stage 2 and key stage 3
Communication is the key to effective transition. Through direct communication and contact productive relationships between primary and secondary teachers and co-ordinators of languages can be established. Representative staff from partner primaries, often the subject co-ordinator, and staff from receiving secondary schools and Specialist Language Colleges need opportunities to meet, discuss and understand each others' aims and perspectives. It is particularly helpful if arrangements for reciprocal visits and observation of each others' classes can be made.
Such fruitful contact can be facilitated in a number of ways. Local authorities can play a valuable role in setting up fora and networks in order to establish contact and agree policy and practice. Headteachers and senior managers can make good use of existing networks for this purpose. Secondary schools and their partner primary schools will already have in place arrangements for the transition of Year 6 pupils into Year 7 covering general educational issues and specific curriculum subjects. It may be possible to incorporate information about achievement in languages into these established structures.
Examples of productive and innovative approaches to ease transition have been developed in a number of local authorities as part of the Key Stage 2 Language Pathfinder Initiative. These included:
- primary and secondary teachers working together to produce a bridging unit of work straddling the end of Year 6 and the beginning of Year 7;
- Year 6 primary and Year 7 secondary teachers working together devising schemes of work which incorporated features of both the Key Stage 2 and Key Stage 3 Frameworks for languages;
- secondary teachers planning ICT activities for Year 6 and Year 7 pupils.
Coordination of effective transfer arrangements between key stage 2 and key stage 3
Secondary and primary colleagues working in partnership will need to understand how language learning is organised in each phase. Approaches are likely to vary from one authority to another. Cross-phase clusters will need to agree on the following issues:
- what kind of information about key stage 2 teaching is most useful for key stage 3 staff?
- what kind of information about key stage 3 teaching is most useful for key stage 3 staff?
- what kind of pupil records are most helpful to pass on from partner primaries to the teachers of pupils in Year 7?
- what opportunities Year 6 pupils might have to meet Year 7 teachers before transferring?
- what kind of opportunities there are for cross-phase curriculum developments?
It is helpful for key stage 3 staff to see any school policy documents or statements about primary language provision just as it is useful for key stage 2 staff to know how the teaching of Year 7 is organised. In this way issues of continuity can be addressed directly and all stakeholders are part of the process. The children themselves and their parents will need to understand how the transferable skills which will have been developed in key stage 2 will help progress in Year 7. This is particularly relevant if children will not be continuing with the same language from primary to secondary school.
If individual pupil records are to be transferred they need to be informative, reliable and manageable. They should not be an excessive burden for primary teachers to compile nor constitute an unrealistic mass of information for secondary teachers to assimilate. They should add a language dimension to the pupil data already transferred to receiving secondary schools and indicate what the pupil knows, understands and can do in the language(s) learnt.
Further exemplar material on assessment and transition will be available on-line and in part 3 of the Framework documentation, Planning for entitlement.
Responding to increasing diversity in the Year 7 intake
As primary schools gradually work towards language learning across the whole of key stage 2, secondary schools are likely to face an increasing diversity in the character of their Year 7 intake. Some pupils will have studied a single language for four years, some will have studied two or more languages, and, in the early stages of implementation, some will have only just begun. The language(s) offered by the receiving secondary school may not be the same language(s) that pupils have learnt in their primary school.
This is a serious challenge which will require sensitive management. Secondary teachers will need to adopt an inclusive approach to language teaching based on assessment for learning strategies. They will need to use information about what their pupils already know and can do in order to involve them directly in subsequent learning. Approaches that encourage peer-to-peer teaching will be very helpful. For example, in a Spanish class of 25 where 10 have already learned colours and 15 are learning them for the first time, the more advanced group can demonstrate the language actively in various ways. While the new learners practise and reinforce their learning, the more advanced group could begin to analyse letter strings and gender implications, beginning to reuse the language they know to make fresh meanings. In this way, prior knowledge can be revisited in greater depth and all pupils make progress.
Where pupils begin to learn a new language in Year 7 it is important to recognise and celebrate the transferable skills they have mastered during language learning in the primary phase. The new language needs to be presented in a way which enables them to put into practice the language learning strategies that they have acquired, and to draw on their knowledge about how language works. Year 7 pupils beginning a different language should be reminded and praised for being plurilingual learners. Crucial tasks for the secondary teacher will be to help learners build on and apply their existing knowledge and to involve pupils in assessing their own performance so that they are involved in deciding about the next steps to be taken.
This will mean that secondary teachers need to be flexible and willing to move on more quickly through their existing schemes of work. By closely observing, monitoring and assessing pupils they will discover that pupils may bring abilities which can accelerate learning. For example, incoming pupils may know how to use a bilingual dictionary or know about high frequency words. These abilities are there to be utilised to promote progress both for the individual learner and the class.
Encouraging partner primary schools
Secondary schools and Specialist Language Colleges already engaged in supporting primary teachers have encountered a range of responses to the introduction of language learning. Many are enthusiastic and keen to get going, others express concerns and anxieties. Common concerns are:
- the primary curriculum is very full and there is no time to teach another subject;
- primary school priorities are literacy and numeracy;
- there are no specialist linguists on the staff.
While recognising that these perceptions are based on genuine concerns, secondary colleagues can help their primary counterparts to see these challenges from a different angle.
The primary curriculum has been modified over recent years and schools have more freedom to decide what to teach according to the interests of particular pupils. Language learning carries many benefits for children, helping them to develop their own oracy and literacy and making a major contribution to their understanding of their own culture(s) and those of others. Language learning can be integrated across the curriculum and taught flexibly through a range of subjects. It can be embedded in daily classroom routines and across school life. In this way, time can be found for languages without putting undue pressure on other subjects. Language learning can enhance pupils' achievements in other subjects, as children reflect on their learning and engage more actively with new concepts and content. Teachers without prior experience and with basic knowledge of another language can achieve much that is worthwhile for their pupils by planning carefully, using high quality resources, including ICT and applying their existing primary expertise.
Primary teachers should be encouraged to think about the skills they bring to language teaching. They have extensive knowledge of how to teach Literacy and a solid expertise in teaching a whole range of subjects. They understand how young children learn and how to cater for their differing needs and abilities. Starting with a small amount of new language and some good resources they can be encouraged to experiment with some language teaching. Little by little working in partnership with secondary colleagues and other providers, primary teachers can improve their own subject knowledge and in time build progression from simple routines to more sustained language learning.
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