March 2010 - CILT Primary Languages Show, Liverpool

Once again we would like to thank all those who visited the Orangery Education Stand and our presentations at the CILT Primary Languages Show in Liverpool. We received very positive feedback about the Primary French Resource Suite, and look forward to working with those local authorities who have adopted the materials.

January 2010 - Orangery Education on YouTube

We have joined the many millions of YouTube users by launching our own channel. Already uploaded are two animations for French storytelling - 'Les quatre amis' and 'Jacques et le haricot magique', along with demonstrations of our primary French product range. Planned uploads for the future include more free resources and ideas for using interactive technology in the classroom. The Orangery Education YouTube channel can be found here.

December 2009 - Latvia online

A request for SmartBoard training from a colleague at the University of Latvia in Riga led to the establishmet of a video-conferencing link between our office in Durham and 18 Latvian students completing a Master’s programme in English language teaching methodology. The event was arranged over two consecutive weeks as a Skype video conference with live video presentation on SmartBoard applications in foreign language education, followed by a live question/answer session and discussion. A report on this collaboration will be included in a publication by the European Centre for Modern Languages (ECML) in 2010.

November 2009 - The Language Show, London

The launch of our interactive whiteboard resources for primary French was a great success, attracting lots of attention from teachers, LA advisers and teacher trainers. Comments included "Certainly the best so far" and "The most user-friendly resource I've seen". Also on show were OnTarget French, the French Image Bank, and the Chante avec nous DVD. Many thanks to everyone who visited the stand, particularly those who provided feedback. A special thanks to all those who have already ordered the materials! For more information on these materials please click here.

October 2009 - Cher region, France

The Orangery Education team has just spent a lovely week in France collecting materials for our new interactive resources for primary French, to be launched at The Language Show at the end of this month. Following months of planning we were able to visit a primary school, where the children had been practising their singing and dancing, so that we could record the songs suggested by the QCA schemes of work for Key Stage 2 French. We returned with plenty of video footage, hundreds of photographs and lots of authentic material to put into the resources.

September 2009 - German Sommerfest

Steve Mulgrew of Orangery Education was pleased to be invited to the 'German Sommerfest' at Manchester Town Hall yesterday evening. The event, hosted by the German Embassy, is a celebration of the teaching of German in the UK and it was good to see so much enthusiasm for what is fast becoming a minority subject in schools. Following the presentation of the German Teacher awards we were treated to a light meal of Wurst und Kartoffeln, with entertainment being provided by the visiting Bläserensemble Riesa (pictured). Congratulations to the four winners of the teaching awards, whose work is invaluable to the survival of German language teaching in our schools.

September 2009

This news page will be used for updates on where we are and what we're up to, including new information which has been added to the site.