Agreed, I would much rather students' first experience of MFL teaching come from subject specialists.

Absolutely. Had a conversation with a Year 11 at 6th Form open evening last week who would struggle at A-Level, but who is desperate to continue studying Spanish.

Essentially there are no options at all for students like them.

It really is a huge leap from Year 6 to Year 7 isn't it.

Definitely routines for learning around student talk. It was highly purposeful and embedded and expectations of pupils were sky high.

That is a huge advantage and it is tricky when you only see groups for an hour or two at times. That being said, I think there's a lot we can learn from primary colleagues.

Hearing Gianfranco Conti talk about cognitive load in language learning for the first time and how to account for it, was a revelation for me.

Summary:

T&L is hard
One thing at a time
Don't move on till your sure
Don't bewilder your team with a bazillion things

Thanks for this, some really good ideas, particularly about avoiding the "backwash".

With the current difference in levels of challenge between foundation and higher GCSE levels, I feel that meeting the needs of both in mixed-ability classrooms is challenging.

Will be interesting to see if this is the same with the new spec.