Modern Foreign Languages Morning

A morning of language and culture with visiting pupils having inter active taster sessions in French, German and Spanish.

Aims

The aims of these partnerships is to develop an interest and excitement for learning foreign languages.  Whilst French is sometimes studied in primary school, with the experrtise of our specialist language teachers we are able to futher develop and support our partners' language curriculum.

For them to be successful our teachers need to be available to facilitiate these sessions.

Whilst visiting pupils clearly benefit from the sessions, visiting teachers report that these pupils will definatley be able to share their new vocab and enthusiam with their fellow pupils back in their own settings.

Background

MFL Language and culture mornings have been included in our partnership calendar of events for a number of years now as they allow children to approach a new task and achieve visible results in a relatively short period of time.

With our specialist senior school teachers we are able to support the primary school language curriculum to a much higher level.

Resources

MFL events are always subject to the senior school language specialists being available and use of the school’s Langauage Lab in addition to MFL Classroom availability. 

Marketing staff operate the event in terms of logistics working with the Langauge specialists who deliver the academic element of the event.  An MFL event usually lasts for 2-3 hours with themed refeshments served half way through.  The financial contribution from the school is £65 approx.

Impact

All teachers attending Partnership Events are asked to complete a feed back form either at the end of the event or by returning the form in the post.  Replies are then logged and used to inform future similar events.

Some of the comments that we received on the feedback forms for this specific event are as follows

'They will have grown in confidence, widened their horizons, and shown courage experimenting with a new language totally unfamiliar to them'

'I have watched a few new language games and strategies that I will be able to transfer to my MFL practice' 

'The primary French curriculum is based on speaking and developing conversational skills rather than writing it down.  This morning has helped to develop their speaking and listening'

Pupil Involvement

The visiting 46 pupils were all in years five and six and a mixture of girls and boys.

Frequency

Due to its success and benefits to our state school partners, MFL events are now run two or three times in the academic year, and whilst it is likely that there will be different schools in attendance at the next event we would look to continue the partnerships with these schools in other areas.