Our language and culture curriculum is reflective of our local community, enabling our pupils to celebrate and communicate with their peers.
At Hillside, we have a richly diverse community with a variety of different first languages spoken. The main three languages spoken at Hillside other than English are Romanian, Polish and Portuguese with one third of our community speaking Romanian as a first language and Polish and Portuguese as equally another third. In order to build community cohesion, we teach these three languages to all our children rather than introduce another common Modern Foreign Language (MFL) such as French or Spanish.
Children in KS2 learn these three languages, one per term from Y3-Y6, with a supplementary weekly lesson about the culture of the people from Romania, Poland or Portugal. This curriculum approach has developed the pupils' understanding of each other's similarities and differences and celebrates these.
“When you teach my language, you make me feel it is important and it makes me feel special.”
Romanian child Year 5.”
Tuesday 26th September 2023
Hillside are delighted to be holding their first "Wow" day of the new school year. European Day of Languages is on Tuesday 26th September and is the perfect opportunity to both celebrate the wonderful diversity of European languages spoken in our school and beyond, and to launch our new Modern Foreign Language of French and the fantastic resources which teachers and pupils will be using to learn it. At Hillside, our aim is to foster a love of learning languages, so what better way to start our new language and culture curriculum than by celebrating European Day of Languages with the whole school? On this special day, the children will all be participating in fun, language-based learning, from singing songs from other European countries to learning about their geography, cultures and traditions. Indeed, we will also be delighted to continue this appreciation of languages with our chosen 'Language of the Month' so that we can continue celebrating the different languages which make up our fantastic Hillside community.
