Judy Hawker, Primary Languages Consultant for Brighton and Hove

Learning a language is about communication, creativity and recognising diversity. These themes place languages at the heart of the primary curriculum, providing exciting opportunities for cross-curricular teaching. As part of a CILT project, teachers in Brighton & Hove have been exploring approaches to teaching languages alongside literacy and global citizenship, using stories in English, French and Spanish from around the world.

We first explored how our language classes could impact on literacy, and we developed creative activities in English alongside work in the new language.

The original idea

Janice Dykes from Coombe Road School, Brighton, used the French story Chapeau. The book’s premise is simple: with different hats go different roles. So Janice got her class to brainstorm a poem in English based on the adjective + noun formula: With this hat, I am a ...worried witch, etc. The class then practised using adjectives in French to describe different hats and learned nouns for different roles before reading the story in French. They returned to their original English poem with an enhanced understanding of adjectives and nouns, and a real enthusiasm for verbal creativity in two languages.

Going global

Stories are a wonderful resource for getting children to think about similarities and differences between people around the world. As part of a Local4Global project, we’ve linked up with Brighton Peace and Environment Centre to develop resource packs that both primary languages specialists and class teachers can use to work on languages, literacy and global citizenship.

Nino’s Mask, for example, tells the story of a Mexican boy who makes his own mask so he can take part in a traditional Festival. It’s set in rural Mexico, but deals with a child’s dreams and aspirations, and the celebrations of a community. The story is written in English but includes lots of Spanish vocabulary (and a glossary), so it can easily be used by classroom teachers.

A classroom teacher model

Debbie Pradhan, Downs Junior School, Brighton, used the story as a focus for a one-off Mexico Day. Her Year 4 class researched the country and produced models, masks and illustrated fact-sheets. Debbie then used the children’s own experience of the Brighton Festival Children’s Parade to explore the idea of festivals and mask-making, before reading the story with her class.

Nino’s Mask provided a motivating context for Spanish work on animal names and parts of the face. Pupils also filled in Spanish conversational phrases on a storyboard, based on illustrations from the book. The story-board in turn provided support for re-telling the narrative in English. The class then labelled masks they had designed, using Spanish phrases such as tengo dientes blancos y negros, tengo una nariz rosa, and these masks served as props in a re-enactment of the story for a buddy class.

After a lot of fun, Debbie’s class had not only consolidated quite a bit of Spanish, but had worked intensively on literacy skills such as presenting, listening for specific detail, understanding the structure of a story and story re-telling.

A specialist teacher model

Specialist Spanish teacher Maggie Morgan at St. Paul’s CE School, Brighton used Nino’s Mask to focus on verbs and adverbs, after consulting with her literacy colleague. Using the animals familiar from the tale, she taught the phrase puedo (I can) and a range of Spanish verbs. She then introduced adverbs with their characteristic –mente ending. Year 4 pupils quickly noticed the parallel with the English –ly.

With the help of a writing frame, the children were soon able to build up a complex sentence: Soy un tigre y puedo correr rapidamente. One girl, Leanne^*, who normally struggled with literacy tasks, confidently produced six such sentences in correct Spanish! The pupils then performed their sentences with the animal masks they had made.

When Maggie evaluated her pupils’ knowledge of language four weeks later, she found they had retained a confident understanding of verbs and adverbs. She was particularly impressed by Leanne, who was able to define a verb correctly. Leanne chose to provide her examples - jugar, matar and cazar – in Spanish: an inspiring case of how foreign languages can work to promote literacy!

The way forward

Following a highly successful Brighton & Hove training day, complete with a performance from a Senegalese story-teller, we are now developing these ideas with French stories from West Africa. We know stories can motivate pupils to be creative with language – both in English and in the target language. We want to build on exploiting them further to help children think more about themselves and their world, both locally and globally.

Resources

You can find out lots of ideas for developing the global dimension from:

Developing the global dimension in the school curriculum (pdf)

Oxfam Education

Global Dimension

Chapeau by Dominique Maes. Editions Magnard

Niño’s Mask by Jeannette Winter. Dial Books for Young Readers/Penguin

^*This pupil’s name has been changed.