Christmas Card exchange with Partner School in Pinto, Madrid

December 2024

RGS pupils have taken time out of their normal languages curriculum to make contact with their counterparts in Santo Domingo de Silas, Pinto, Madrid.  After a successful visit to the school earlier this term, the pupils were keen to get in contact with their penpals, or in the case of younger pupils, to establish a new friendship and share some festive wishes!

It was great to have a clear purpose for writing letters in Spanish, and it was a lovely opportunity to put our language learning into action.  Pupils in Year 7 wrote about their houses and where their Christmas decorations go, Year 8 about their leisure activities and Year 9 about the festive traditions in their families.  This is a genuine way to share cultural knowledge with their friends and peers, and also to make some rather lovely Christmas cards.

We look forward to hearing back from our partners…

January 2025

Much excitement in the Modern Languages lessons today as the letters arrived from Spain responding to our Christmas cards.  It was fabulous to see the enthusiasm over opening their letters and finding out the answers to their questions.  We received pictures of pets, photos of Spanish homes, and lots of descriptions of Christmas celebrations in Spanish families.

The letters have been mounted on a display in the Modern Languages Classroom and featured heavily in the conversations with visiting families on Open Day.  

The core value of this task is in showing that learning languages can have a genuine communicative outcome.  Writing in the target language has obvious benefits for language learning, but receiving letters helps the pupils to understand that perfection is not the goal; rather, being understood and showing empathy and compassion towards others.