Children in Northumberland primary schools are having to work a bit harder for their stories these days. The children are being told all their favourite traditional tales but with a linguistic twist: they are all in a foreign language. Through a collection of well produced and attractive, animated stories narrated by native speakers the children are set the challenge of understanding and translating the tales into English. They work in groups of four and are given a set of picture cards which convey the main characters and events of the stories.

Based on the principles of first language acquisition they are asked to sequence the pictures and look for words that might represent them. The process is continued until all the main nouns of the story have been identified.

Language(s): French, German, Italian and Spanish

There are currently over 100 first and middle schools within Northumberland Local Authority. Many of the schools are rurally isolated and a few have less than 10 pupils.