Spanish and English food project – June 2025

Year 7 students have been learning about how to give opinions about food in their recent Spanish lessons.  They have worked on using a range of impersonal expressions and extending their sentences with adjectives in order to develop justification for their opinions.  This is a linguistic skill which they will continue to develop as they head towards GCSE.

In order to develop the quality of this learning, the Food Technology department has shared their curriculum time with us in order for the pupils to make a traditional Spanish dish, paella.  In their lessons, they have researched the recipe and then done a practical lesson to cook the dish in pairs.  Afterwards, they shared in eating the paella and using their Spanish language skills to describe it in both English and Spanish.  The food was shared with the school community in an open-air tasting session, which attracted other pupils, teachers and maintenance staff!

At their request, pupils made a Capcut video about food in school, which shows them speaking Spanish and giving their views on food at school.  There was value in this because it gave pupils a chance to express themselves orally instead of always writing to the Spanish children.  We will send this video to the Spanish partner school.  In addition, the pupils created some recipe cards for their Spanish counterparts in the partner school in Pinto, Madrid.  These focused on explaining how to make traditional English dishes such as toad in the hole, fish and chips or trifle!  

To link with their own Spanish food tasting, the pupils also wanted to send some traditional English food to the partner school so that the Spanish friends could taste some authentic English food.  Their suggestions included Marmite, so we wait to hear whether the Spanish love it or hate it!  These have gone in the post along with some cards from Year Nine pupils who sent letters to their penpals about their holiday plans after the school year concludes.