On Thursday 5 March, St Catherine’s Junior School hosted 30 French and Mandarin teachers from around Victoria for the Accelerated Integrative Methodology (AIM), Beginners’ Workshop.

Hosted in the Barbreck Auditorium, the workshop, included a visit to the Barbreck Languages Lab and a ‘live demonstration’ of a Barbreck French class using the AIM methodology.  This lesson was conducted by Junior School French teacher, Andrew Gold with 10 students from class 3B.

The day-long workshop was a fantastic success, with many of the visiting teachers commenting on the fantastic new facilities, welcoming staff, and delightful and engaged students. It also provided an opportunity to demonstrate to the wider community, the St Catherine’s approach toward ‘best practice teaching’ and outstanding learning outcomes within the Languages and General classrooms.

The AIM approach is used exclusively within the Barbreck French program, pairing high-frequency vocabulary with gestures and contextualizing them within stories, drama, songs and dance.

AIM is a methodology underpinned by kinesthetic-based learning, an approach supported by educational theorists ranging from Piaget (1962) to Goldin-Meadow (2001). Kinesthetic movement and ‘Learning by doing’ has been shown to engage learners who favour auditory and visual learning styles as well, allowing a wide range of students to achieve rapid levels of oral and written fluency in a short period of time.

If you would like to learn more about the AIM approach to language-learning, or the Barbreck languages program, please contact Andrew Gold (Barbreck French Teacher) at agold@stcatherines.net.au or 9828 3062.