Share, Celebrate, Participate - VLN Primary School Newsletters

May Update

In our latest newsletter we update you on our recent AGM, talk about our small rural schools, share the buzz on Prince Harry's recent NZ visit, give you a heads up on whats coming up and a shout out for teachers to join us in teaching online. 

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June Update

In this newsletter we update you with a great story of online meets face to face at Orewa Estuary Arts Centre, share the excitement about the VLN Primary School supporting Asian Languages learning in NZ, make a call for enrolments for Second semester online programmes & projects, introduce two new members of our Governance team and congratulate two of our wonderful eTeachers. Please share this newsletter with your colleagues and follow us on our social media channels - we just can't fit all the good news in here!

Opening of the My Story, Your Story, Our Story  exhibition at Orewa Estuary Arts Centre 

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Online Learning Opportunities 2015 #Participate!

From our latest newsletter:

Tēnā koutou katoa

Welcome back to the 2015 school year! Here is a heads up on the year ahead for the VLN Primary School and an invitation for all interested students & teachers to participate.

VLN Primary School activities - online classes and projects are open for all NZ schools to participate. Please read our Protocols of Participation for specific details on how to participate and what costs are involved.

This year we have a wide range of languages available - te Reo Māori, Mandarin, Japanese, Korean, French, Spanish, German; also Extension Maths, Science (Chemistry - Mixing things). Over the Back Fence  & Rural & Remote Schools, are long running projects that are welcoming interest from new participants.
 

There are several programmes under development, that are yet to be confirmed for 2015 - Tokelauan, Ngā Pūrākau, Asian Studies, Science (Plant Biology) and we welcome expressions of interest for participation in these. We would also love to be able to offer Cook Islands Māori, Astronomy, Extension Literacy, Coding & Minecraft challenge and are looking for teachers who are keen to run these programmes. (We have run some of these programmes before and have supporting resources available.)
We are keen to support new projects or classes getting started so please make your suggestions!

All schools wishing to register for online programmes for Semester 1 (classes begin mid March) should do so on this online form as soon as possible. For expressions of interest in anything mentioned above or queries please Contact Rachel. 
 

Check out our 2014 year's highlights

VLN Primary School - Semester 2 call for participation.

Schools are invited to enrol students in online learning programmes beginning in Term 3. Te Reo Maori (beginners to fluent), Mandarin, Japanese, French, Spanish, German, Afrikaans, Te Reo Maori Cook, & Maths Extension.

Teachers are warmly welcomed to participate alongside their students in our language classes, this is a great PLD opportunity for Learning Languages & teaching online.

Expressions of interest are invited to participate in ‘Over the Back Fence’ Health Project & DayTime Astronomy. Small schools with very low numbers of Y7 & 8 students are invited to cluster and join our Rural & Remote schools Project.Enquiries to primary@vln.school.nz

The French Connection

ULearn is a great place for making connections and in a round about way through those connections I have made contact with Pascale.

Merci beaucoup Pascale for profiling learning languages online!

Pascale shares examples of our TaraNet Y9/10 French class and the VLN Primary languages programme.

http://www.french.ac.nz/blog/French+via+Video+Conferencing+/

This is a great website for supporting NZ French teachers.

Screen Jelly – record your screen from your browser.

This would be very handy for our students to quickly and easily record themselves and share their work. Can see great potential for learning languages online.

Learning Languages Taster Classes

As part of the VLN Primary initiative i am working on, i run ‘Taster Classes’ to showcase to schools who want to know more about our project. I also run this class with students who are enrolled with us before they begin their language classes to prepare them for learning online. We cover such things as learning to use our online learning tools – the Adobe Connect classroom, our audio connection, and Moodle site. We also learn about effective ways of communicating with each other online and talk about the benefits of learning languages also.

I had a great session with the students from Auroa School today to prepare them to join their Spanish & German classes. If you are interested in you and your students attending a Taster Class, and interested in joining the VLN Primary initiative contact me :-)

 

Social Networks for Learning Languages

Learning Languages is now a separate learning area in the new curriculum and compulsory for schools to provide the opportunity for Years 7 – 10 to learn an additional language. Primary Schools are now collaborating to offer languages across their schools & this project is now growing from 3 to 7 schools offering introductory French & Spanish (from small acorns grow… :-)

The following are some social networks for learning languages, that with supervision & guidance, be a useful addition to the language teachers toolbox.

http://www.livemocha.com/

 

http://www.italki.com/

 

 Guide to these & other sites

 

  “Learn a language with the Radio Lingua Network by downloading our free materials to your computer or mp3 player …” http://radiolingua.dyndns.org/