Arabic on Curriculum – Beginners

Teaching Arabic to beginners is a privilege and it is a very important opportunity for teachers to instil positivity and a ‘can do’ attitude from the outset. Furthermore, student excitement at learning a new language online neatly gels with our teachers’ enthusiasm to teach Arabic in new schools. As a Dragons teacher, the goal is to make Arabic learning fun and engaging for the students. We ensure our teachers excel by providing an in-house training programme focused on student engagement. With a team of 20 online Arabic teachers, the large majority are keen to teach beginners and to see them advance to a higher level, both in primary and secondary schools. Whilst the majority are native speakers, we also provide non-native teachers who are bilingual or at or beyond degree level.

There are 2 Arabic curricula for beginners: Level 1 and Level 2. Dragons Teaching has developed ArabicConnect, an interactive online Arabic teaching platform, enabling schools to fully immerse their students in Arabic language and culture via independent asynchronous learning. The Beginners section of the Platform is aligned to the newly launched ISEB’s Global Online Assessment in Arabic. The Platform, which comes with interactive teacher access and teaching resources, provides beginners with many hours of individual learning, which provides detailed results and teacher feedback to the school. AmigosConnect works on the majority of devices and just requires an internet connection. Students will be able to collect ‘Ramadan lamps’ and attainment & effort badges as a record of their progress in their studies, which gives the teachers and schools a valuable insight into progress at the early stage of their Arabic journey.

We are committed to making sure that our schools and students feel safe reassured from the outset. We are a child-focused organisation, and we expect that all our staff and partners are too. Whilst all our teachers are required to sign our Safeguarding children & vulnerable adults’ policy as part of their onboarding, we remain ready and prepared to respond to the bespoke requirements of our partner schools. Every school will receive a Dragons Teaching Safeguarding Checklist at the outset of the assignment plus a wide range of documentation to confirm identity and entitlement to work in or with UK schools. All our teachers have an Enhanced DBS or the equivalent from their country of origin (if teaching online).

As important as the lessons being fun and engaging for beginners, it is really important for Dragons to be able to clearly demonstrate progress. All results from the student asynchronous learning in AmigosConnect is saved real-time in a clear and attractive results area. Teachers can see how their students are progressing online and academic leads at schools can keep an eye on overall progress in line with other areas in the beginners curriculum.

GOAL is a new global assessment series aimed at promoting language studies in schools around the world. It is endorsed by the Independent Schools Examinations Board. Initially launched in Arabic, Mandarin and Arabic, GOAL is a celebration of students’ efforts to learn a language at a basic level. The Arabic assessment is open to students aged 8+ years and is written in alignment to an initial basic Level 1 i.e. the Level 1 curriculum. Level 1 is based on 10 sessions of teaching & asynchronous learning. The assessment is online and can be sat by any school at any time.

Our students require a Mac/PC, Chromebook or iPad per student with the Chrome browser enabled. If individual device access is not viable, we can teach whole or split classes via an interactive whiteboard.A webcam, microphone and headphones per student should be provided wherever possible but, if not viable, we will teach via the interactive whiteboard. We run the programme via a school’s chosen video conferencing platform, e.g. Zoom, Teams or Google Meet. We ideally require a member of staff from the school to supervise the lesson. This adult does not need to speak any languages. Dragons Teaching will liaise with the school’s IT department to provide guidance with regard to pupils accessing AmigosConnect, our Online Teaching Platform for Beginners. We require a list of pupils (in alignment with Dragons Teaching and the school’s data protection policy). We like to receive these in a protected file and we will then upload them onto our secure password protected Online Learning Platform.