As many of you probably know, the EU is heavily into promoting languages at the primary school level. The often quoted aim is to have all kids to have three languages by the time they leave school. So along with lots of research they also provide lots of very nice resources. These are sometimes of the “designed by committee” style of being a touch over done, but are mostly very good. One new project they have is a “my languages portfolio” which you can download to have a look at.

The idea is that students will use their portfolio and in a fun way keep a record of what they’ve done. It’s also a great way to keep parents up to date with how the kids are getting on. If you’re teaching outside the EU there are a couple of things to keep in mind with the one I’ve linked to above:

* It has to be in the students native language. i.e. don’t try giving this one as is to your Japanese students!
* It reflects the language learning situation in the EU e.g. in the UK some schools have up to 50% of students already bilingual.

But apart from that it contains lots of useful ideas that you could probably adopt for your lessons e.g.

* Languages I know
* What you can do in those languages ( e.g. watch TV, write to pen friends, speak to guest teachers)
* How I learn languages ( e.g. what I find fun, what I find difficult. )
* My progress in learning a language ( e.g. “I can match words I hear with pictures”, “I can understand the teacher’s instructions” etc.)

It also has sections on speaking, listening, reading, writing and intercultural understanding with examples of things the kids can do or work up to with a list to check off and advanced topics to work towards. Overall a good read that should give you plenty of new ideas.