Projects

Progress reports 2002 - 2003

Stretford High School Community Language College / College Le Cedre & College Gounod

Staff

Claire Thompson, Juliet Scholes / Cedric Loos, Céline Folâtre

Background

Following a very successful first meeting in London in January all teachers were very keen and committed to making the project work for all participants. It was decided that we would pilot an e-mail project with Year 8 English pupils and Year 9 French pupils. The next phase of the project would therefore be based on the evaluation of the latter. A questionnaire was designed by the pupils and completed in the respective target languages. The purpose of the questionnaire was to match pupils with similar interests. This worked very well and all teachers matched pupils over the telephone!

Progress to date

Correspondence has been sent to England via e-mail and returned by post, as e-mail accounts had not yet been set up at Stretford. Unfortunately each school was only able to send one set of letters due to the difference in length of the academic years in both countries. Also on account of a strike in France and technical problems in England correspondence was slowed down. It was hoped that more letters would have been exchanged.

Future plans

Claire Thompson (Director of Language College) and Juliet Scholes (Head of Spanish) are going to France at the end of July to work with the French teachers. It is our aim to evaluate the project to date and plan the next phase. It was felt that by face-to-face contact, it would be a lot easier to progress than rely on e-mail which has been a problem for us. We intend to continue with the same group of pupils and widen the project to include possibly Year 7 pupils after Christmas. College le Cedre intends to visit England next March and there is the possibility that both schools could get together. This will be discussed along with other ideas at the meeting in France.

Recommendations

Do not try to be over ambitious at the start. Focus on one Year group and ensure that the aims of the project are realistic

Set achievable deadlines and try to stick to them

Maintain regular contact with partner school and keep them informed of progress to date. It is very reassuring to both parties!

Ideally it would be better that one teacher has the responsibility of the project with their line manager monitoring progress. If there has to be constant communication between teachers, due to busy schedules this can become difficult and the project can disintegrate

Choose pupils who work well independently

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