The Marple Hall Primary Languages Partnership

The Marple Hall Primary Languages Partnership is part of the Good Practice Project. Marple Hall School was the first High School in Stockport to organise the teaching of a foreign language in its cluster of feeder Primary Schools. There are now two more clusters and a number of other Primary Schools, bringing the total to 50% of the LEA's Primary Schools that now offer PMFL.

The Marple Hall project has been running for four years, after a year's trial period in one school (Romiley Primary). This says a great deal about the commitment and enthusiasm of the headteachers involved when you consider the funding implications.

A specialist linguist from the high school is responsible for the teaching of each language in a group of feeder primaries; for the academic year 99 - 2000, French and German, but hopefully Spanish will be included again next year. Inset has been provided by us for both Primary and Secondary teachers in the authority.

The class teachers are very supportive, putting up relevant displays and often joining in the lessons, which is important as it underlines the importance of the subject in the pupils' perception.

Most Primary teachers in the cluster are reluctant to take over more than a tiny amount of the FL teaching. We are currently working to improve support for teachers who wish to take this further.

We teach one year courses in French, Spanish or German in Year 6 (sometimes mixed with Year 5) which cover topics suitable for Primary e.g. Myself. Where possible work is related to the National Curriculum, eg Maths (Mental Arithmetic), Geography (matching maps and flags of EU countries). It is not possible, however, always to match work to each Primary School's' topics at the time they are taught; the visiting teacher has to teach in several schools and so, bearing in mind the practical problems of sorting and transporting large amounts of materials, and in order to keep sane, must teach more or less the same content in each school. Language is recycled and broadened as much as possible e.g. Term 1 - colours; Term 2 - colours and sizes of animals; Term 3 - colours and sizes of ice creams.

The current Year 7s from all the feeder Primaries have learnt Spanish, French or German in Year 6; some have learnt another of these languages in Year 5. In Year 7 they continue with the language of Year 6 and also start a second language. Perfect grouping is not possible, but with care progress is satisfactory and skills are transferred between languages.

When the Year 5s with one year of FL change to another FL, continuity is provided by continuing with language learning rather than continuing to learn a specific language. We aim to enable pupils to acquire tranferrable techniques and develop good language-learning skills. We find this works extremelly well. We are certainly enhancing the children's literacy skills in general and improving their listening skills in particular.

We already have Primary Schools using ICT to join or set up links with other European schools. We should like to participate in the development of ICT in Primary FL to provide opportunities to encourage independent learning.

As the pupils only receive one year of the FL the emphasis is on the skills of listening and speaking, delivered mostly via songs, games and rôle-play. Our resources for teaching in all languages include puppets, realia, props, flashcards, worksheets, card games and song tapes, e.g. 'Chantons Tous ' (LCP) and 'Wer? Wie? Was? In German the video resource '1,2,3, Los' (Kent) is also used. The children participate with whole-hearted enthusiasm and enjoyment, often to the mystification of their parents. We always try to teach at KS2 according to the tenet - If it isn't fun it shouldn't be done!

Find out about the schools in the project

What's Happening | Spring 2000 Update