Reorganising the modern foreign languages resources in our library at Lytham St Annes High School in Lancashire was one of my roles within our school development plan for raising achievement in languages, an aim which is co-ordinated with our whole-school plan for improved literacy.

This whole-school plan, masterminded by our curriculum manager Philip Birch, aims at developing and improving general literacy across the curriculum and is initially targeting a group of Year 7 pupils. The key methods used by the languages department are:

* languages teachers deliver pro-literacy teaching and learning styles to classes in the target group

* achievement of literacy targets set by the English department are also monitored in language learning, for which languages staff use checklists

* pupils in the target group are actively encouraged to use the library for private reading and independent research.

The target group was assessed for literacy levels in 2000 and the plan got under way this September. The pupils will be assessed again at various points during the academic year to chart their progress in literacy across the curriculum.

For languages teachers at Lytham St Annes the implementation of the main methods of the school literacy plan requires only a fine-tuning of normal practice. Many languages teachers have been practising pro-literacy teaching and learning styles in their day-to-day teaching, and their work in the classroom already echoes the primary literacy hour model in many ways, such as breaking up lessons into chunks with a variety of activities and levels of participation - whole-class, independent and group work.

The development plan also outlines the need to supply pupils with writing frames to support language work. In modern foreign languages, we found pupils needed guided tasks for written work in the target language rather than open essay titles, in order to organise their learning. Otherwise, dictionaries tended to be over used with little understanding of language structure.

We also recognised the need to achieve grammar progression within a scheme of work based on developing communication skills. Grammar is to be explicitly introduced through topic work and then reinforced repeatedly in different topic areas and contexts, so that the pupils’ understanding of grammatical concepts is not restricted to their association with particular topic areas. These grammatical concepts can be introduced, practised and adapted through various classroom routines. For example, to get pupils using the past tense a routine lesson-closing question such as “Wie war Deutsch heute?” (“What was German like today?”), and the guided responses, may gradually take the form of “planned spontaneous” dialogue around “Wie war deine letzte Stunde?” “Wie war die Ferien?” (“What was your last lessonyour holiday like?). This enables pupils to see grammar and language at work beyond the topic areas.

Let us now come to what has been described in languages teaching and learning as the neglected skill - reading. Our school literacy plan states that there must be an improvement in the readability and variety of reading materials available and that pupils should be actively encouraged to use the library for independent reading.

As a department we considered various methods of improving the reading materials used in the classroom, such as text varieties, personal choice and ICT. My key role in the development plan was to encourage reading habits beyond the classroom.

I once heard an OFSTED inspector comment that his first port of call was the languages section in a school’s library - he was often disappointed to see the date stamps indicated that this section was hardly used at all. My task has been to look at our available resources and reorganise them in ways that encourage pupils into the library.

We have discarded much of the older material and bought in a lot of new attractive books and resources. One example is the La Loupe and Die Lupe series of readers on famous people, illustrated with photographs (Hodder and Stoughton). Robbie Williams is a popular choice and features in the posters we have put up around the school declaring “We’ve been expecting you... in the languages section of the library!”.

I divided the task of reorganisation into sections to make the job seem less insurmountable: key stage 3, KS4, sixth form, books, periodicals and videos.

We began by getting to grips with KS3. The available books were separated into “levels”, which we set according to difficulty, and the cover of every one was labelled by our librarian Penny Kaluza with its appropriate level, to make the search for a suitable read easier for pupils. This included magazines available for our levels 1-5 in KS3 as many of these had short articles appealing to boys.

We are now holding induction sessions during which groups of pupils are shown what there is to interest them on the shelves and helped to feel confident in searching for and selecting something to read.

To accompany each of the five levels, a booklet was produced for pupils to take out along with a book from their chosen level. The booklets explain what we require of them to pass each of the levels. For example, our yellow booklets titled Lire, c’est super - French: Level 1 explain how the pupil must read two books in this level and complete a review in the target language on each of the books. The reviews are completed on a matching yellow pro-forma and are handed in to a staff member. The form includes space for a few sentences of resume in English and a more guided resume in French. Pupils also write down three new French words they have learned from the book, including their meaning, with a score of “excellentbienOKnul”. They award a tick to show whether reading the book was “interessantdrolepassionnantennuyeaux”. Once these pro-formas have been looked at by a teacher, the pupil is rewarded with a certificate with a bookworm logo.

There is still a long way to go in carrying out the whole-school plan and staff across the curriculum will be involved in assessing the benefits to literacy.

Teachers know that reading is a fundamental skill that shapes a child’s education, but getting all young language learners to appreciate this will take some time.

* Die Lupe is reviewed on page 15

Sarah Davies is assistant head of modern languages at Lytham St Anne’s High School, Lancashire

LANGUAGES SHOW

THE London Language and Cultural Learning show will be held on November 2 and 3 at Novotel London West Exhibition centre. Admission is free.

The sponsors include CILT and The Association for Language Learning and the 60 exhibitors range from embassies to publishers and examining bodies. There will be talks and special activities on both days, organised by CILT and The European Year of Languages, with events of particular interest to teachers on the Saturday.

CILT sessions include the challenge of learning an alphabet in 20 minutes or cooking a national dish.

Saturday brings practical sessions for teachers. The secret of getting pupils at key stage 3-5 to do extra work voluntarily is explained by Andrea Osborne.

Stephen Fawkes, past-president of ALL, talks about using songs in the classroom. Stephen Glover, creator of The Really Useful French Site, looks at a group of websites with facilities for creating games and quizzes.

Language promotion sessions on Saturday start with David Winter on marketing languages post-16. Gladis Garcia-Soza makes plain that while Spanish was last century’s option, it is this century’s necessity.

ALL president Terry Lamb, of the University of Nottingham, will report on the training of community languages teachers.

Friday offers Helen Vandervelde on career pressures on individuals and competitive pressures on employers.

Graham Davies explains why he believes machine translation will increase, not diminish, the need for flesh-and-blood linguists.

For more details , contact Sophie Treasure at Brintex Ltd, tel: 020 7973 6401 or visit www.language-show.com