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These schools came together when the link co-ordinators met at a British Council-funded school linking seminar in Sheffield in September 2005.
The link co-ordinators returned to their schools full of enthusiasm to develop their initial ideas for taking the new link forward. At first, the schools began by exchanging information, with pupils corresponding via email to introduce themselves and send photos.
Of particular cultural and historic interest to the Spanish pupils was for them to learn from their UK counterparts about Bonfire Night celebrations. For the UK pupils, this was an opportunity to further their own knowledge of the celebrations before producing work for a real audience in another country – an excuse to raise motivation and standards! Regular communication between the co-ordinating teachers was easily achieved by e-mail and by using free internet call providers.
By the spring term 2006, the main thrust of the link had moved on to focus on the use of art as a tool to develop cultural awareness and language learning. By taking a project idea being developed by Creative Partnerships in Nottingham in conjunction with other partners entitled The Language of Art, the UK school co-ordinator was successful in applying to the British Council for a Joint Curriculum Project grant to take his pupils to Madrid!
In March 2006 12 pupils from year 5 and year 6 travelled to Spain to meet their Spanish counterparts. Many of the UK pupils had never been abroad until then. Before the visit to Spain the pupils had been looking at selected works of art on the museum website in class. For the UK teacher, this was a chance to start slowly building up the children’s vocabulary in Spanish, using colours and shapes, for example, before moving to more complicated language – asking questions, expressing opinions, inventing new titles for the works, and exchanging all this with their Spanish friends by e-mail.
Once in Madrid, the UK and Spanish pupils met at the Reina Sofía Contemporary Art Museum to see the works of art in real life!
On the second and third day of the visit, the UK pupils then spent 2 days in the Spanish school taking part in workshops with the Spanish children to produce their own artwork in response to the pieces they had seen in the Reina Sofía. Other getting-to-know you activities were also included in the visit programme, as well as opportunities for the pupils to practise their Spanish!
The UK pupils were joined on the trip by the travelling school mascot, Robin, of whom they took photos each day in different locations in Madrid to e-mail back to school with a daily update of activities. This was shared in assembly so the rest of the school could feel part of the visit, as well as to parents of the children.
The pupils also had the chance to take part in filming aspects of the visit to Madrid, which they were able to edit and put together as a DVD at the Nottingham City E-Learning Centre.
The impact of this project has been huge on not just the pupils but the staff who took part as well. Real, genuine friendships developed between the co-ordinating teachers, for whom the initial personal contact via the school-linking seminar was invaluable. Overall, the school has been able to achieve the aims it set out on its school development plan of providing its pupils with a direct experience of another culture as well as providing a real context within which to provide entitlement to a foreign language at Key Stage 2.
In September 2006, the UK project co-ordinator teacher moved posts to a school in Nottingham but has maintained the link with CEIP Juan Pérez Villaamil. The schools are currently taking part in a joint, whole-school project called “Jugamos”. The aim is for all the children in all classes in both countries to learn about their own traditional playground games (eg skipping, French skipping, clapping games) and toresearch the rhymes that accompany the games. The idea is for each school to write and film the instructions to the games in their own language to upload onto the joint project website on E-Twinning. These short film clips can then be used as a learning tool in the other country and introduced into a range of curricular areas – from literacy to numeracy to PE.
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