London

Win a chance to perform in the L Factor Festival* and take part in a unique music workshop! 

Between September 2012 and July 2013, Capital L will be holding a languages and music competition aimed at London’s secondary school pupils aged between 14 and 19 years old: “The Language Factor Song Competition”.

The theme of this year's competition is 'citizens of the world', to reflect the EU's European Year of Citizens 2013.

Visit our YouTube page for some of last year's entries and testimonials: http://www.youtube.com/user/routessoas

Entries should:

• consist of a song written by the young performers in any language other than English.
• be submitted as a DVD video of the young people performing the song.
• last no longer than two minutes.
• explore themes around young people's position in the world and their relationship to others.
• be accompanied by a sheet with the full lyrics in the original language and translated into English.
• be submitted by post by Friday 28th March. Please see the competition guidelines for submission details. 

There will be two categories for the competition: 

a. Original music (composed by the performers)
b. Royalty-free music (pre-recorded music widely available online)

We strongly encourage schools to make this a cross-curricular activity between music and languages departments. For more information on the competition rules, please follow the link to the document 'L Factor Competition Rules'. 

• Registration must take place via schools.
• Teachers and pupils will be offered the support of Music Mentors to help with the various aspects of the activity.
• Teachers and pupils will be offered guidance from SOAS Music Mentors with non-western music and text composition.

Please register here to receive the teacher pack, and for further information about the support available. To request copies of the poster, please contact: routes.admin@soas.ac.uk

*The L Factor Festival will take place on the evening of 4th July 2013 (please note amended date) at the SOAS Brunei Theatre. Teachers, parents and classmates will be welcome. All shortlisted songs will be uploaded onto a private YouTube page.
 

 The aim of the Spelling Bee is for students in Year 7 to practice and improve their vocabulary, spelling and memory skills in a foreign language (French, Spanish and German) and to raise the profile of language learning through a class, school and regional event.

This year, the Spelling Bee is being delivered by a national team based in Cambridge. To register, please go to: www.flspellingbee.co.uk

For information on previous Routes Spelling Bees, please visit http://www.routesintolanguages.ac.uk/national/news/2372

Arsenal Double Club is an award-winning education programme run in collaboration with Arsenal football club.

Following last year’s success, we are launching the Arsenal Double Club Portuguese Ambassadors Programme 2012-13

As part of this project we will train Portuguese speaking  Year 12 students to deliver the Double Club Portuguese resources to younger pupils in Years 8/9 and local primary schools.

The training will take place at the Emirates on the 9th of November.

Ambassadors will be encouraged to bring their group for a tour of the Emirates upon completion of the six lessons. 

Deadline for application is 15 October 2012.

This project is free of charge but teachers’ support is essential for its success. Teachers/school staff are strongly encouraged to attend the training with students.

This project is suitable to all year 12 heritage speakers of Portuguese.

Please see attached a recruitment flyer, role description and application form. For more information, please go to the Double Club website on: http://www.arsenaldoubleclub.co.uk/news-events/news/.

The DVD promotes the value of language and cultural skills for careers to 14-19 year old students in London schools and colleges. It focuses on the importance of languages for Media, Creative Arts, Leisure and Tourism, Health and Business and includes a series of lively interviews on location with businesses and schools. Participants include BA, BBC, Bouygues, Hotel la Place, Newham Language Shop, UK Trade and Investment, VSI, a UCL student, Bishop Thomas Grant School, The Compton School and Hampton Community College. The DVD was produced for Capital L by Regional Language Network London and students from the University of Westminster’s School of Media, Art and Design.

The DVD is designed to be viewed as part of a presentation led by one of our specially trained language Ambassadors whose role it is to lead a discussion and deliver a quiz about the film as well as to enlighten students on the benefits of language learning and show how this can impact their lives.

For more information and/or to request a workshop, please write to: routes@soas.ac.uk

Please note that in the case of no-shows or late cancellations, we reserve the right to invoice your school for the costs we have incurred.

Due to funding restrictions, we are now obliged to charge schools that have less than 15% free school meals a small fee to cover the costs of some of our activities. Please get in touch with us for more information.

The aim of the Spelling Bee is for students in Year 7 to practise and improve their vocabulary, spelling and memory skills in a foreign language (French, Spanish and German) and to raise the profile of language learning through a class, school and regional competition. :

December 2010 – Individual class competition
February 2011 – Whole school competition
16 March 2011 – Regional Competition
6 July 2011 – National Competition (PLEASE NOTE CHANGE OF DATE)
 

How it works:
Students will be given 50 words to learn at the first stage of the competition and a further 50 words will be added at both subsequent stages of the competition. Vocabulary will be relevant to the curriculum. For the National Final words will be 2012 related. The competition should be launched in school in the autumn term and time should be spent teaching and practising the alphabet in the foreign language (paying attention to describing letters with accents, etc..)

Unlike in a monolingual Spelling Bee, students will be given the word in English, They will first have to translate it into the foreign language and then spell it out correctly using the alphabet in the foreign language.
When participating, students will be given one minute to correctly spell as many words as possible.
Words should be allocated in random order.
The names of the winners at each stage of the competition should be submitted to routes@soas.ac.uk so that they can receive acknowledgement for their achievements via a certificate.
Finalists will be entered into the National Spelling Bee Final to be held on Friday 8th July in Cambridge.
 

If you’d like your year 7s to compete, please complete the registration form attached and email it to routes@soas.ac.uk

 The application deadline for the Spelling Bee is Wednesday 29th September 2010.

CrossRoads is an online language support for 13-19 year old bilingual pupils.

More specifically, the project will support individual pupils who wish to develop their skill in a language of which they already have some knowledge but which they are not learning in a mainstream class. They may have no formal lessons at all or may be taught it in an extra-curricular or supplementary class. It is envisaged that participating pupils will apply for a qualification exam in the language studied.

Programme of activities, include:

Sept to October 2010
Teachers in secondary schools to refer up to 20 pupils.

November 10
Face-to-face meeting to match pupils to trained undergraduate mentors and train them to use UCL Moodle.
Pupils' self-evaluation in writing, reading, speaking and listening skills to be followed by developing a work-plan with mentors.

Dec 10 to Mar 11
The project will last for 8 weekly on-line meetings, followed by an end of project celebration.

April 2011
Evaluation

All undergraduate mentors will be CRB checked and trained for this project. On-line communication between mentors and pupils will be supervised by British Council Language Assistants and Language Lecturers.

For more information and/or to refer a student, please contact Terry King on: terry.king@ucl.ac.uk

Please note that in the case of non-show or late cancellation, we reserve the right to invoice your school to contribute to costs incurred.