Course Overview
creative teaching, sustainable learning
In this introductory course to sustainable foreign language teaching and learning, participants are invited to join a learning community of foreign language teachers who are interested in creative ways of language teaching and learning. We understand learning as a relational and multidimensional process. Hence we will look at the subject, the teacher and the child.
In videos, texts and tasks we will look at child development with special focus on natural language acquisition as well as basic thoughts about language learning in school. It is the aim of our courses to foster an understanding of the underlying processes of language acquisition and learning. Moreover we will introduce you to a variety of methods that can help children and teenagers to learn new languages in school according to their own capabilities, motivated by joy and interest. With a holistic (Waldorf) perspective on the human being we work with inspiration and imagination towards creative ways of teaching and learning languages in a globalized world.
With the help of the basic tools of action research and collegial conversations participating teachers will be enabled to not only discover the world of FLL through theoretical texts and examples of good practice, but also to learn from their own teaching as well as from and with each other.
In this first part of the course you will also be introduced to the usage of the tools of online learning which we use in our courses.
This self-paced course is meant as preparation for the course ‘Sustainable language teaching and learning part 2’, which will start again in September 2018.
The whole course (part 1 and 2) offers material for six to eight weeks plus some additional time for finishing the tasks and assignments.
Course Content
- Overview of the first week
- Voices: The importance of language learning
- The Waldorf view on foreign language learning
- The evolution of languages
- Journaling
- The idea of sustainable education and language learning
- Understanding learning – understanding elewa
- The power of listening
- Journaling
- Conversation frame
- Voices: Learning and forgetting
- Assignment week 1: observing learning processes
- Welcome to week 2
- Journaling
- Voices: Childhood memories on language acquisition
- Voices: Informal and formal FL settings
- Journaling
- Voices: The role of interest in FLL
- Learning languages in context
- Conditions of language acquisition in the classroom
- Journaling
- Voices: Starting the lesson – preconditions of learning
- Creative classroom activities
- Voices: Classroom activities and TPR ( ‘Total Physical Response’ )
- Practitioner research – material and assignment week 2
- Looking ahead: part 2 of the course
Instructors
Ulrike Sievers was born in the North of Germany. She studied English and Biology and has taught both of these subjects in Waldorf schools with great enthusiasm for over 20 years. Her main interest is in how school education can create a space in which children and young people can grow up in a healthy way, develop a love for nature and the living world and become interested in other people, their cultures and their languages. She has also contributed nationally and internationally to teacher education and offers courses for students at the Waldorf seminar in Hamburg and Stuttgart.