For the past 6 weeks, Greenfield’s subject leader for Performing Arts, Alison Dixon has been working in France as part of professional development opportunity following her work on a Comenius project last year.  The placement which was grant funded by the British Council took place in the Picardie town of Méru, which is around 40 km north of Paris.
Mrs Dixon, who speaks good French, wanted to develop her language skills further and experience teaching in Europe. She has an idea to teach French through dance and is eager to start developing language learning in our local primary schools after the Easter break.
Mrs Dixon, who found her time in France to be extremely valuable and inspiring, said ‘It was a real challenge planning all my lessons in French, but I learned an awful lot and was very well supported by my French colleagues. If I made mistakes, the pupils helped me and for many of them it was their first experience of dance in education.’ Alison also led professional development sessions for the teachers whom she believes will continue their practise. ‘The teaching day is much longer in France with classes beginning at 8.30am and ending at 5.30pm but they do take 2 hours for lunch which is very different to the 35 minutes I’m used to. I also picked up some other interesting approaches to reporting and assessment and I will be sharing these with my colleagues and members of our leadership team’
Greenfield has for some time prided itself on the success of its International dimension; last year the school was involved in as many as 16 initiatives including the Comenius project which saw 25 young people working in partnership with a French school developing language, culture and dance skills. In addition we hosted a French teacher who worked within the PE and Performing Arts departments and this year we were successful once again in hosting a Jules Verne teacher, this time working in our Science department. This provides our young people with a number of opportunities including the chance to learn languages through other subjects and be inspired to get involved in global learning.