Language Teacher Toolkit: Steve Smith's blog

In my previous blog post about curriculum reform in England, I referenced the idea of decolonising the curriculum. Like me, you've probably seen many references to decolonisation. But also like me, you may not have been entirely clear what this means in practice. What is it beyond working on a text about slavery? In this post I'll try to explain what it might mean. I'll also address the question of whether this is about fundamental long-term reform or just a temporary bandwagon, the type of which we've seen many times in the past. The decolonising the curriculum movement starts from the idea that what we teach and how we teach it are never neutral — they reflect certain values and worldviews. It recognises that education today is still shaped by long-standing influences such as racism, colonial history, and unequal power structures. Because of this, teachers and schools are being encouraged to think carefully about the ideas, values, and assumptions that guide the way c...

The DfE in England has been conducting a general review of the curriculum, including assessment, and published an interim report in March 2025. This suggested that evolution, not revolution, would be the order of the day — which probably comes as a relief to most teachers. For example, it has been stated that the exam regime is basically fit for purpose. However, in the world of languages, there is clearly a case for something more revolutionary. Before I summarise various findings from a recently published set of articles in The Language Learning Journal , let me offer my own view of things. There is a lot to be celebrated in terms of achievement, enthusiasm, and curriculum development. In many schools, languages thrive with motivated pupils and teachers. This is often the result of pupil intake factors and SLT support. Grassroots curriculum initiatives such as EPI should be researched, recognised, and celebrated. Primary languages provision is very mixed, with (according to the recen...

Over the last couple of years I've built up a good collection of resources on frenchteacher.net to support teachers and pupils. As well as the many other resources, such as audio and video listening, 'correct the transcript' tasks, texts with exercises, parallel readings, sentence builders, dialogues, lesson plans, 'spot the differences' listening and traditional grammar drills — I have resources specifically written to match exam board tasks (all boards). Teachers will no doubt find other resources on the site useful, inlcuding those on the Y9 page. Here is the list from my Y10-11 page. Foundation Tier 10 reading aloud passages AQA-style Reading paper 8 AQA-style role-plays to read and adapt AQA photo-card conversation booklet  Knowledge Organiser based on AQA topics  8 Edexcel-style role-plays to read and adapt 10 Edexcel-style photo card/conversation tasks 10 AQA-style photo card/conversation tasks 6 photo cards for display, modelling and practice (Foundation). A...