Jan Lewandowski

Pam Banks, Luton’s PML co-ordinator, had already asked me to present some of the activities that I had done at CILT Central London RSG at Luton’s first RSG back in November, so this was a return visit for me to the Bedfordshire RSG.

There was a very large turn-out for this session on ‘Big Books and Stories’. I showed them some electronic ‘big book’ resources including ‘Eric a Faim’ from Bolton LA, a variation on ‘the Very Hungry Caterpillar’ (La Chenille qui fait des Trous’).

I read a story or two including ‘Va t’en Grand Monstre Vert’ by Ed Emberley and domoed some extension activities that can be done with this very popular book. We talked about choosing and using books and I took along about 60 books (not my whole collection!) for people to peruse and assess for suitability.

See the synopsis here:

“We had a full room of thirty-four people for this workshop. Before Jan began her presentation, Jenny Dempsey from the Luton Chamber of Commerce gave us some very useful information about free European Union materials she can supply to local schools. Jan Lewandowski had brought an enormous number of books in French for us to look at, and everyone enjoyed hearing some of the stories and thinking about how they could be used in class. There were some old favourites as well as some unfamiliar titles, and Jan sent us away with a comprehensive list of suppliers and websites as well as notes about the session. “Pam Banks

Karen Pearce (from Newham LA) and myself are busy planning the workshop we’re going to be doing at the Primary Languages Show, organised by CILT, in Manchester (16th & 17th March 07).

We’re planning a very active, hands-on and multi-sensory approach based on a couple of well-known stories including Handa’s Surprise (La Surprise de Handa / La Sorpresa de Handa) published by Mantra Lingua with whom I have worked in some language posters for the Talking Pen. As the Mantra Lingua books are bi-lingual (French & English) I’ve actually produced some monolingual caption overlays in French and simplified it slightly so that it can be read entirely in French. Contact me if you would like me to send you a copy of my captions.

Caroline Conlon, CILT RSG manager, asked me to put together a workshop on `Ideas for the Festive Season’- given the number of different languages, faiths and cultures in London she asked me to make it suitable for as many languages as possible and cover other festivals, not just Christmas. Quite a tall order, but I enjoyed the challenge and the research was really interesting.

I demoed activities for French, Spanish, German and Italian though most would work equally well in any language. I gave suggestions for `Winter’ festivals from October to February- Eid, Hannukah, Christmas and Chinese New Year.

We sang songs, made puppets and generally had some festive fun through the medium of the different languages.