The ALL London June Event 2024

Many thanks to everyone who contributed to another successful ‘June Event’!

This page includes the programme, photos, thanks to our hosts, committee and sponsors, and finally, a brief description of each session.

Those who paid to attend this event have been sent a private link to a page from which they can download the new GCSE language-specific presentations.

 

Here’s the final programme for the day ALL-June-2024 programme on the day and below is an album on our Flickr account to give you a flavour of the event.

ALL London June Event 2024

We are so grateful to organisations who allow us to take over their precious London spaces for a morning, and this year we took up camp at the Instituto Español Cañada Blanch in the vibrant area of Portobello Road. Many thanks to the Spanish Education Office who enabled this, and generously gave considerable financial and practical support.  Maria Antonia Garcia and the Headteacher met up with us at the school earlier in the year to plan logistics, the team had checked the things we needed the day before, and José Jiménez, María Luisa Martínez and Gabriela Alonso were there at 8 in the morning, ready to do anything to help us:  shift tables, carry water, lend us equipment and generally mingle.  What a lovely group of people!

Nearly 100 ‘Saturday morning Keenies’ registered for the event.  What commitment to get up early on a Saturday morning and brave the various tube closures.  But it was really worth it to see such a happy bunch of language teachers buzzing with enthusiasm.  A special mention must go to Dr Jennifer Eddy – all the way from NYC (admittedly as part of an England tour!)  who has recently written the most beautiful piece on her appreciation of ALL in our most recent ‘Languages Today’ magazine. Thank you, Jennifer!

The event just could not function without the ALL London Committee members. We plan events in our online meetings, Helen puts together a massive ‘WHTBD’ (What has to be done) list, and as members arrive on the day, they turn their hand to whatever needs to be done: collecting stuff from Helen’s car, welcoming, scanning, directing, giving out corporate sponsor leaflets and goodies, sorting refreshments (-this year we increased the chocolate offer!), photographing and generally being happy and helpful! Massive thanks to Sharon Mangion, our wardrobe mistress, who ordered and provided our smart new outfits: T shirts and hoodies with embroidered logo and printed QR code leading to our website.

ALL Corporate members brought colour and a buzz to the event with their stands. We know that this benefits companies and attendees: providers like to meet teachers to finds out what their needs are. Teachers like to meet providers to see what is on offer, and, of course, to collect any freebies! Thank you to Angela who coordinated the exhibition and raffle and to the organisations which participated this year:

  • AQA
  • Consejería + raffle prize
  • Goethe Institute
  • Japan Foundation
  • Languagenut + raffle prize
  • OUP + raffle prize
  • Pearson / (Edexcel)
  • Voyager Travel + raffle prize
  • CGP (lots of revision books for the new GCSE)
  • Institut Français
  • Linguascope Talking Dice (loads of them!!)

And thank you also to the ALL office who gave us lots of things to hand out, including past copies of the unique ALL magazine ‘Languages Today, notebook, ‘To do’ pads and pens!

The reason for holding these events is to give a chance for ALL members to meet face to face in their language home and to come and listen to speakers talking about topics which interest them.  June’s programme covered a wide variety of topics, and we hope that everyone had something to take away from it.

Session descriptions

Helen kick-started the event with a welcome and introduction, including reference to the many ways in which you can keep in touch with ALL London.  In particular we hope that people will follow us on the professional LinkedIN platform as well as X/Twitter, Facebook and Insta, all of which we use to  share information, alongside the regular ALLnet which members receive as part of the ALL service.

Helen’s presentation here: HEM Introduction June 2024 as posted

We were delighted that  Dr. Fernando Bartolomé Usieto, Spanish Education attaché (Spanish Embassy Education Office) was able to join us at the start of the day.  He reminded  us that our business of teaching  and learning languages  can be painful as well as pleasurable, and while the product can be  functionally useful, the process can bring much joy.  (If you were there, you will remember the entertaining medical and relationship metaphors ..!) Gracias, Dr Usieto!

Joe Dale then gave us an excellent presentation on how AI can help us in our teaching, especially when combined with other online tools which can transform engaging texts into interactive games. It really is remarkable just how accurate the texts produced by ChatGPT are and how quickly you can create gap-fill exercises, targeting your chosen language point. He gave really useful advice on intelligently structuring the prompts for ChatGPT and the need to check for accuracy.

After the break he gave a more detailed follow up to this presentation, and we are so grateful for all the work he shares with us.

Joe’s livelihood is training others – he is available for INSET on the use of AI both for language departments and for school wide training–  and we are delighted to learn that some of the participants are following up his offer to present at events and schools, as well as attending and downloading his webinar series. Thanks to Joe for sharing his presentations with us on his Google drive:

Presentation 1

Presentation 2

Nadine Chadier and Imogen Bond then introduced us to the potential for cross-curricular projects supported by the Royal Opera House.  What a fantastic way to combine languages with the arts and introduce pupils to an area which may be new to them.  We will shortly add their presentation here.

2 parallel sessions followed:

Helen Myers gave a summary of shared issues regarding preparing to introduce the new GCSEs in  French German and Spanish (planning, teaching & learning, assessment) and serving as an introduction to secondary resource sessions after the break.  This included a spot for David Blow who stressed the need to think carefully about the use of data in assessment for exams which are NOT criterion related and where results are calculated according to comparable outcomes.   His recent webinar goes into this in much more detail.

Sue Cave, Independent Consultant and leader of ALL’s Primary Forum. made her début at ALL London, and we were delighted with her sesion.  She talked about the importance of teaching phonics in her session ‘Embedding phonics in KS2 language lessons’.  This session was useful to primary and secondary colleagues alike and draws on her fantastic work and series of ‘Physical Phonics’ series.  Thank you, Sue!

Here is her presentation: ALL London – Top 10 Tips Phonics – Sue Cave 2024


The exhibition gave us a chance for refreshment, chat, information-gathering from stands, but also the excitement of the raffle with some lovely prizes.

After the break there was a chance for more in-depth sessions following the morning’s themes, and we took advantage of the many classrooms available to allow for language and sector-specific work.

For secondary, each new GCSE language [FGS] had a separate room to focus on how to resource lessons, led by an experienced curriculum manager who contributed and encourage others to share. Nathalie Blondeau from Harris Federation led for French; Susannah Porsz (a GEM and leader at the NCLE Beeleigh hub, as well as being one of our newest ALL London committee recruits) for German and Adam Lamb (currently Mossbourne Academy and about to join United Learning) for Spanish.  The sessions went down brilliantly and we are just so grateful to the speakers for their incredible generosity in their preparation and shared resources which are available via a private link sent to those who paid to attend.  We think that this might be a formula which we can repeat in the future.  Susannah will be repeating her session online in a webinar soon.  We will announce the date via the usual channels (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIN, Insta – see above!)

 

Primary colleagues were led by Sue Cave and Steven Fawkes, who shared highlights for ALL’s popular online PHOrum group (open to ALL members). As always, there was a great sense of community on the room, and some interesting titles…!  Here is their presentation including some  links to video clips which are accessible  to ALL members only: ALL London June 24 PHOrum Sue Cave and Steven Fawkes

Meanwhile Joe Dale gave some more in-depth idea on using AI strategies to use.  Please see description above.

We had planned to have a group picnic in the cloister at the end of the morning, but sadly the showers made this difficult for all but the hardy few …

By 2.15, the clearing up team was quite hungry, so some of us repaired to a lovely local Italian restaurant, recommended by Elisena.  A lovely way to end a successful morning with friends.

We very much look forward to seeing you at future events!  We are planning our January  event for Saturday  18th January 2025 and will announce this via our usual channels.  Please save the date!

All details on our website https://all-london.org.uk/all-events/ and ALL’s  website: https://www.all-languages.org.uk/events/

Archive

Link to registration (Ticket Tailor)