By Heike Bruton

 For information about the Consortium, contact details, and instructions how to register for a workshop, please see the ‘About’ section.

The first Professional Development Consortium in MFL workshop took place on Wednesday 13 June at the Willink School in Burghfield Common.

Despite flooding of many roads in the area, delegates arrived numerously and raring to go! Professor Suzanne Graham and Professor Ernesto Macaro of Reading and Oxford Universities, together with Consortium teachers Sarah Rae and Jenny Skinner (both from the Willink), presented a session each on Oral Interaction and Listening, Reading and Writing. The feedback for the day was very positive- here are just some selected quotes:

Really good and useful day. Lots of food for thought. Definitely recommend! – via twitter

Discussed the training with my current dept today who are all v keen. Have passed on the flyer too and hope one of them could join you at another date. I really want to launch it to my new dept too! – via email

Thank you for the workshops yesterday. We have always been very keen on developing skills in our department but so far, we have been missing a coherent and coordinated approach. So this is fantastic! – via email

Many thanks to you and the rest of the team for a fantastic workshop today. It will take me a while to digest all the brilliant ideas that
Ernesto, Suzanne and the other speakers gave us, but I’m looking forward to sharing with my department and having a good think together how we can implement some of these ideas. I hope the rest of the workshops go just as well as today’s did! – via email

Back at school today, have been v positive about PDC- my HoD is interested- hope it’s not too late to register for another workshop?! – via twitter

I really hope the project will snowball – many of the colleagues in the audience seemed strong, reflective and enthusiastic practitioners – so I can’t wait to hear more! -via email

Very useful to see video clips with examples for all skills. Very good to have the teachers involved deliver the workshops- via evaluation form