Bridgewater Primary School. - Languages and International Blog

Languages and International Blog

Welcome to our Languages and International Blog. At Bridgewater, we have chosen Spanish as the language we teach, as it is widely spoken. This is taught to all children in years 3 to 6 by Mrs Hsu. We engage the children through playing games, singing songs and stories as well as developing their grasp of grammar and the written language. Please celebrate the children’s learning with us by commenting on the blog posts below. ¡Hasta luego!

We embrace international links and are working towards the ISA (International School Award). We have worked in partnership with Erasmus and many of the staff have enjoyed taking the opportunity to travel abroad to experience primary school practice in other countries. International links are interwoven throughout our curriculum. We hope you enjoy observing these on our blog.

European Day of Languages

To mark European Day of Languages, we looked at some interesting facts about languages.

For example, more than half of Europe is bilingual and La Gomera has a traditional whistling language called Silbo which is still taught in schools!

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We focused on cognates which look and sound similar to English so are very helpful when learning new languages. These include Fisch (German), Calculatrice (French), szponsor (Hungarian) and fforc (Welsh). How many can you think of?

Here are some in Spanish.

cognates

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Playground Games around the World

We have been enjoying our outside space this term, playing a range of playground games from different countries. Our Language Ambassadors have supported our younger children with lots of enthusiasm at lunchtimes with traditional games, including the Spanish game Pañuelo, where they practised their numbers from our Numbers around the World activity.

All classes across the school have had an opportunity to explore a range of games, before going outside to try them out! The games included a ball game that our staff experienced in Sweden; Mar y Tierra jumping game from Spain; a Dominican Republic chasing game practising clothing items; and clapping games from Italy learning the days of the week. We have also found out about Chilean and Greek circle games. Children have loved sharing their own experiences with the class, helping the adults develop their knowledge! We have also found out more about the city of Malaga and our link school and their games.

As part of this activity coincided with our Sports Opportunity Week, we looked at sports from other countries. Some of our Year 6 children created a very informative presentation about the game of Futsal from Uruguay and Brazil, and supported the games brilliantly!

We will continue exploring new games and encouraging children to play them due to the positive impact on their health and well-being. Please let us know if you have a game that we could teach the children!