UPDATED 4 February 2021:
The Spanish Embassy Education Department delivered a free training session on their resources and support for teachers of Spanish in primary schools, as well as support available for UK-Spain schools’s links and further training opportunities.
See information below and links to the presentation on Spanish Embassy resources, the online form for UK-Spain School links, further free CPD for teachers of Spanish from the Embassy and on Phonics training, from Colegio Delibes.
This activity was arranged as a result of requests from teachers joining Newcastle’s Modern Foreign Language Network for schools which launched in January 2020 – part of our Newcastle City of Languages initiative.
Spanish Embassy Primary Spanish Language Teaching Resources
Learn about the wide range of tools and resources, with weblinks to online and downloadable classroom resources and activities (click here to download the presentation).
Schools to school links with Spain
Our friends at the Spanish Embassy are supporting UK school to Spanish school links. Simply complete the online form to express an interest in a school partnership. The form is in Spanish and English and asks you to give details of your school and pupils who would be involved, as well as the types of links you are looking for in a partnership, as well as any preference for different regions of Spain. Our friends at the Spanish Embassy will help match you with appropriate Spanish schools and provide support for the relationship.
Free Spanish Embassy training for teachers of Spanish Jan-March 2021
Find out about and sign up for online training sessions here on different aspects related to the teaching of Spanish. Most of the workshops will take place on Tuesdays at 4:30 pm and will last one hour. There will also be a half-day training programme focused on the teaching of Spanish at Primary level on Saturday 20th March, that will include three one-hour workshops. This half-day session is. At the end of the workshop, there will be a raffle of SCHOLARSHIPS. The prize is a TRAINING COURSE in Castilla y León.
Spanish Phonics Sessions with Colegio Delibes:
Our partners in Durham have organised these free sessions which are open to Spanish teachers from Newcastle and Durham (book early as places are limited). There will be four consecutive online sessions after school on 1st, 8th, 15th and 22nd March. Sessions will guide participants through the Spanish phonetic alphabet and provide materials for staff to use with pupils (primary). No previous knowledge of Spanish is required. Further details below and sign up for the session with brian.stobie@durham.gov.uk
Classroom hardcopy resources – posters:
The Spanish Embassy is offering schools paper posters to support language teaching and learning. These will be posted to Sarah Edgar at Newcastle City Council for distribution to schools, as soon as the Embassy’s London offices are open again.
To join Newcastle’s Modern Foreign Language Network for schools, contact sarah.edgar@newcastle.gov.uk
Spanish, to start with! Making the most of Spanish resources from Consejería
15.30-17.00 4th February 2021
The session provided information about available resources from the Education Office of the Spanish Embassy (Consejería de Educación Resources), as a starting point to help embed Spanish in the first steps in the primary school. (Click here to download the presentation)
It offered and introduction to basic Spanish language along with methodology and resources to support Spanish teaching to young learners, using the posters and resources from the Spanish Embassy Education Office to develop language learning and support literacy in the primary school.
The workshop was be delivered in English with specific interventions in Spanish.
Conducted by Eulalia (Laly) Alonso Nieto, who is currently an Education and Moden Foreign Language Adviser at the Spanish Embassy Education Office (Consejería de Educación) in London, where she held the same role in 2013-14 academic year.
From 1992 to 1998 she worked as Spanish Education Officer for the Consejería de Educación in Northern Ireland and Scotland, promoting Spanish teaching and supporting teachers of Spanish.
She is an experienced Primary school teacher and has always been involved in language learning and teaching, mostly in bilingual and multicultural contexts in Spain, USA, Italy, Switzerland and the UK.
About the Consejería de Educación
The Consejería de Educación (Spanish Embassy Education Office) provides support to the teaching of Spanish in the UK.
A regular line of professional development programmes for teachers of Spanish is offered on the basis of the collaboration with local, regional and national authorities and associations.
On the Embassy website, there is available a number of publications and teaching materials specifically created for the context of British schools.
The Education and MFL Advisers team, based in London, Manchester and Edinburgh, is ready to advise and collaborate in any initiative to promote Spanish.
There are lots of resources available to promote and support teaching of Spanish and you can find out more here: Learn Spanish! It makes a difference!
Spanish Phonics with Colegio Delibes
1st, 8th, 15th and 22nd March 2021
Spanish phonics will be delivered online over four weeks in four 45 minute sessions.
Colegio Delibes in Salamanca will introduce participants to phonics in Spanish to help with pronunciation and reading. Spanish is a phonetic language and it is important that pupils learn how to form sounds, recognise phonemes and link these with graphemes from the earliest stage in their learning.
The four 45 minute sessions will guide participants through the Spanish phonetic alphabet and provide materials for staff to use with pupils. Sessions will cover pronunciation, how to place the correct stress in a word and to share rhymes, songs and activities which are suitable for the primary classroom.
No previous knowledge of Spanish is required.
The sessions will be run after school on 1st, 8th, 15th and 22nd March.
Places are limited and early application is recommended. To register for a FREE place, email brian.stobie@durham.gov.uk
Newcastle City of Languages and the MFL Network
As part of the Newcastle City of Languages (NCoL) initiative, we wanted to support teachers of languages in the city and for schools, the City Council agreed to support a Modern Foreign Language (MFL) Network, with a primary teacher as lead (full details here). This launches officially on 14th January and will work with teachers to share good practice, as well as identify challenges and needs. From there, the NCoL partnership will bring in resources and support. It was teachers signing up to this network asking for Spanish CPD for primary teachers, which led to the development of this session.
Our latest data (2019) is that there were 27 primary schools and 9 secondaries teaching Spanish in Newcastle.
We are grateful to Javier Ramos Linares in Edinburgh, Vicky Gough at British Council (Schools), Sarah Edgar, Co-ordinator and Alex Reid Milligan, Lead Teacher for the Newcastle MFL Network and Steven Fawkes from Association for Language Learning NE for their help in developing this initial, session for primary teachers of Spanish in Newcastle. Further sessions can be developed, as we move forward.
International links for schools
We can also help link to partners who can support international links to add value and support schools to develop international perspectives to learning, bring benefits across the curriculum and the whole school, as well as support language learning.
We already have partnership arrangements with French, German and Chinese partners to support school links and will work with the Spanish Embassy to support links in Spain.
Schools can also benefit from signing up to the International Schools Award, which we are also supporting, with help from the British Council and their regional Schools Ambassadors.
Other language resources and support available for schools
- We have a number of webpages with links to different partners offering languages support for schools, as well as a growing range of online resources available for schools, wider language learning and English as an Additional Language. The resources pages are updated regularly.
- We provide links to information through the Newcastle City Council Services to Schools webpages for Modern Foreign Languages/International.
- You can also follow us on twitter to find out all the latest opportunities linked to languages and internationalism resources for schools. New opportunities come up all the time and this is the best way to find out about them.