European Language Leaders Erasmus Project

Project Title

European Language Leaders

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : School Exchange Partnerships

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2019

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Creativity and culture; Teaching and learning of foreign languages; Cultural heritage/European Year of Cultural Heritage

Project Summary

This project builds on the Language Leader programme that is currently delivered successfully at Queen Katharine Academy. It aims to develop students’ language, leadership and team-working skills as well as to promote inter-cultural understanding and improve language competences and motivation for language learning.
The project links schools in the UK, France and Greece. These countries are particularly prevalent to Queen Katharine Academy as French is a taught subject, and there are a small, but growing, number of first-generation migrant EAL students who are arriving from Greece or having lived in Greece. The project aims to help students to retain their cultural heritage and to share and celebrate their language and culture with the wider student body, as well as to provide real opportunities for students to develop their language skills with native speakers who are their peers.
International Language Leaders will consist of a series of Language Conference Weeks, where students from the three partner schools will run their own language courses. The language courses will be broken down into three strands:
• Language Learning – this is where students will deliver language learning modules (that they have created) to teach each participating language (English, French or Greek).
• Cultural Heritage – these sessions will be delivered in English (as appropriate) and will explore the important aspects of cultural heritage and traditions in each participating country (UK, France and Greece). These sessions will incorporate local visits and excursions to bring that heritage to life.
• Language Roots – these sessions will be delivered in English (as appropriate), and will allow students to explore the roots of the language(s) that they are learning as part of the project. It will allow them to investigate the similarities between different languages, and how this can aid them in their current and future language learning.
The project will run over a two-year period and will include a week-long movement to each participating country.
Prior to each movement, there will be a series of Skype Language Leader Training Sessions where student leaders will undertake Leadership and Teacher Training -These sessions will be adapted from QKA’s successful Language Leader programme, and they will be delivered by QKA staff in conjunction with Routes into Languages East at Cambridge University.
In addition, prior to each movement, host students will prepare a series of lessons and workshops for their visiting partners covering the three strands: Language Learning, Cultural Heritage and Language Roots. In addition to preparing the lessons and workshops, they will task the visiting partners to carry out research on specific aspects of the host country’s language and cultural heritage. Visiting students will then carry out research on the specified aspects of the host country’s heritage and language and will prepare an introductory presentation of their findings to be delivered on the first day of each movement.
At the end of the project, there will be a digital bank of language lessons, cultural resources and videos that will be shared digitally on E-Twinning, MS-Teams and Padlet. These resources will be open source and may be used to support language learning in other schools as well as independent language learning projects such as Language Futures, as well as further Language Leadership schemes.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 96128 Eur

Project Coordinator

Thomas Deacon Education Trust T/A Queen Katharine Academy & Country: UK

Project Partners

• Collège Roqua Aubenas
• GYMNASIO ARCHANWN