
Building upon the fantastic progress of teachers at Dunston Hill Primary School who have successfully introduced Spanish as a subject this year, Modern Foreign Language teachers from Kingsmeadow Community School are making weekly visits to support the delivery of teaching a new language to primary school pupils.
The collaboration between the two schools is raising pupil aspiration, attainment and outcomes, as well as supporting staff in a partner school with their teaching of a new subject.
In the Spanish lessons pupils are learning about the language’s vocabulary and grammar. Teaching has also helped pupils to speak phrases such as ‘I have,’ ‘brothers’, and ‘sisters’, with pupils now being able to talk to each other, entirely in Spanish, to learn how many siblings their classmates have.
Modern Foreign Languages (MFL) Teacher, Mr Turner said: “I was truly amazed by the pupils’ enthusiasm and talent in Spanish. In the weeks leading up to my visit, the pupils had been learning Spanish numbers from 1 to 10 with their class teachers. When I arrived, they impressed me not only with their memory but also with their excellent pronunciation.”
Mr Sutherland, Headteacher at Dunston Hill Community Primary School said: “We took the decision to move away from French and begin teaching Spanish after discussions we had with colleagues at Kingsmeadow Community School and, after a term of hard work, have absolutely no regrets. Our MFL Lead, Miss Strike has led two staff meetings to set out our aspirations as a school and look at progress and she, as well as all our staff are absolutely delighted with outcomes. Thanks to their enthusiasm and inspiration, and the invaluable “hands-on” support from Kingsmeadow, the children absolutely love their Spanish lessons and use every opportunity to show off the words and phrases they have learned. This is testament to the collaboration between our schools and we are delighted with progress so far”.
Mr Barrett, Kingsmeadow Community School’s Headteacher added: “At Kingsmeadow Community School, we are proud of how well we and our local primary schools work together to create opportunities for the children of Gateshead. Staff from Kingsmeadow and Dunston Hill have worked hard to make this a rewarding experience for the children. The payback is to see how much the children enjoyed it, how well they embraced the Spanish language and how much they learnt.”