Jan Lewandowski

La Poste in France has just issued a pack of 2 ready-stamped postcards which is ideal for primary children to send back to home &/or school in the UK.

It looks really easy to complete in simple language with boxes to tick for the weather and word and symbol stickers to add. Price 4,20 €

I’m off to France soon so will buy a pack and send one to myself; that leaves one spare, anybody want me to send them the other one? I promise to fill it in in very simple French so your class can read it easily. You’ll need to send an address!

Colleagues who are planning school visits to France may be interested to
know about the `Happy Packs’ that are available from the Eurotunnel desk
inside the Eurotunnel terminal. They contain stickers, pencil, coloured
pencils, activity book, pairs game, other games, word search and a postcard.

All of the activities are easy and suitable for KS2 age range.

All instructions are in both French and English and the pack is free of charge.
Contents and activities vary from year to year, so, with luck, the children won’t get the same pack on subsequent visits.

I have been told that it is not possible to order the packs in advance
therefore they have to be collected by children or staff on the day from the
desk. It seems a pity that teachers can’t build these packs into their
planning for the trip; nevertheless they are worth having if you can get
them and should certainly occupy the children for the length of time they
are actually in the Tunnel!

I’ve spent a few days in Brussels where I added to my collection of children’s story books at Bibliopolis which is one of my regular haunts in Brussels and where you can find the most amazing bargains sourced I imagine from bankrupt stock, publishers’ remainders, etc.

En route for home I spent a very interesting day at Ashcombe School with Helen Myers and Jenny Clark. I already knew that Ashcombe provided a high level of support for primary languages but, being curious, I wanted to see for myself exactly what they did so I went along to one of their information days. Helen Myers , very well known in MFL circles and President Elect of ALL and Jenny Clark (primary outreach teacher) were really welcoming and gave us a very thorough overview of what they do there. I was very impressed; this a model of good practice that should be shared by every SLC. We were even taken to visit some of the feeder primaries so that we could see the French teaching in action, which I thought was really generous of the schools and teachers involved.

I was invited along to the very first Regional Support Group (RSG) in Milton Keynes to talk about ideas and resources for primary teachers who are just getting started in teaching modern languages in their schools. I took along a variety of resources, some commercial and some I had made myself to use in my own teaching. I included many of the items that I had put into the first Modern Languages catalogue which I had worked on for TTS.