Sans frontières! – French/Sin fronteras! – Spanish/ Engaging with the Wider World

A 3-year language project funded by The Department for International Development (DFID)

The objective of this project is to work with primary school teachers of Spanish and French to embed the global dimension into their existing schemes of work. This will enable pupils to develop their language skills while raising their awareness of the wider world and promoting a sense of their own role as responsible global citizens.

Main target group

KS2 teachers and pupils of Primary Modern Foreign Languages (French and Spanish)

Main Aims

• To stimulate and expand pupils’ understanding of the wider world by focusing their language learning on French and Spanish - speaking countries other than France and Spain, such as Mali, Morocco, Martinique, Bolivia and Chile
• To enhance the planning of primary language teachers of French and Spanish by helping them to use and adapt existing plans to include a global perspective into their schemes of work.
• To encourage language teachers to use their lesson time creatively by trialling exciting, informative and challenging materials which can be used across the curriculum
• To empower pupils to build up their language skills while raising their awareness of our global interdependence, making connections between global issues such as poverty and climate change
• To encourage pupils to develop curiosity and empathy, by comparing their lives with the lives of children from cultures and contexts different from their own
• To incorporate the eight concepts of the global dimension – global citizenship, conflict resolution, diversity, human rights, interdependence, social justice, sustainable development and values and perceptions

Key objectives

• Use the KS2 framework for languages, integrating the intercultural understanding objectives into language materials which can be taught through other subjects
• Support Key Stage 2 Teachers of French and Spanish in primary schools in Yorkshire and the Humber region to create alternative lessons with a global dimension which fit into their schemes of work.
• Promote greater confidence and understanding of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), such as health, poverty and sustainability, through the teaching of French and Spanish in a global context.
• Implement the MDGs through language activities focusing on topics such as - universal primary education (goal 2), promote gender equality and empower women (goal 3), ensure environmental sustainability (goal 7)
• Put into practice the recommendations of ‘Every Child Matters’, by helping pupils to ‘develop positive attitudes to linguistic diversity within their school’, ‘recognise and challenge stereotypes’ and ‘be ambassadors for their school when communicating with partner schools abroad’.
• Embed the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child through a range of interactive language materials.
• Work closely with the official teachers’ websites to ensure that these global language materials are integrated into the existing language units at the end of the project.
• Focus on countries in the wider world like Mali and Bolivia to enhance pupils’ learning and understanding of issues relating to social justice such as poverty and the causes of poverty.
• Encourage pupils to value cultural diversity and question stereotyped views and assumptions in order to overcome misconceptions
• Support teachers to develop partnerships with schools in the wider world, based on the principles of equality, mutual learning and reciprocal curriculum development

Key activities

• Singing, reciting rhymes and poems, responding to stories, creating sketches and role-play focussed on the target countries
• Puzzles, counting, greetings, gestures, labels, toys, comparing money, food & drink
• Inquiring into the history and geography of the target countries, using ICT
• Working with positive images, photos and authentic materials that challenge myths and stereotypes about the wider world.
• Using simple French and Spanish to give tips of how to reduce our ecological footprint
• Applying diamond ranking to explore development issues such as the Rights of the Child, cultural diversity and sustainable food such as fish, chocolate, milk and bananas
• Using traditional tales, music, drawings and games in French and Spanish to reinforce intercultural understanding.
• Experiencing art, literature, music, film and artefacts from the French and Spanish-speaking world, for pupils to explore their own values, ideas and identity.