How Parents and Carers Can Help – MFL

How parents can help

You don’t have to be able to speak Spanish to support your child with their learning at home. Simply talking to your child about what they have been learning in their language lessons and asking them to teach you some key words or phrases is a fantastic way of helping children recall previous learning. Perhaps they have a younger sibling or other family members that they might want to teach some key words to as well?

Hunt for bilingual books at the library

Many libraries have a bilingual book section where children might find simple stories in Spanish. They can have a go at reading the Spanish parts whilst you provide the translation in English.

Keep your eyes open when out and about in town or the supermarket.

Challenge your children to find Spanish products on the supermarket shelves and see if they can read the packaging or work out exactly where the item is from. Do they recognise any ingredient names in Spanish? Perhaps they could make their own list of things to buy in Spanish.

On Holiday

If you are lucky enough to spend any time in a Spanish-speaking country during the holidays, encourage your children to be the ‘translator’! Can they practice some of what they have been learning? Perhaps they could order a drink in Spanish.

Encourage older children to create a resource for younger pupils in the school to use.

This could take the form of a ‘Knowledge Organiser’ (which presents all the vocabulary for a particular unit of work), a game or a poster with key words on it.