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Introduction
| Overview
| Becoming an LC
| CILT support
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CILT-SLC case study |
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Hele's School |
International dimension |
Hele’s School Mini-Exchange
Brief outline of project:
All Year 7 French pupils are involved in a pen-pal exchange with a French pupil, and this is followed up with a 24-hour exchange visit.
We embarked on this project three years ago, using a long-established link school in St. Pol de Léon in Brittany. The project was set up to provide an opportunity for pupils to experience at first hand aspects of French society, particularly life at school and within a family, and therefore to make our youngest learners aware from an early stage that French is real!
During lessons and as homework pupils write 6 letters to their pen-friend in French over the course of the year, and also design their own cards to send at Christmas and Easter. The French pupils (in Sixième) reply to the letters in English, and also send cards for special occasions.
This is followed up with a mini exchange visit in June for all interested pupils – this has involved between 60 -75 year 7 French pupils each year since the project has started. We travel on the overnight ferry from Plymouth to Roscoff, arriving in time for a typical French breakfast with pen-pals, then attend lessons in school, and spend the evening 
with families before returning to Plymouth overnight. The French pupils return to visit us for a similar programme of events with families and in school the following week, the highlight of which is the full English breakfast in the school canteen! This gives us an opportunity to show off our school, and the French children particularly enjoy the drama lesson and the science class, where they are treated to handling rats, chameleons and lizards, as well as an experiment which “explodes”.
The final stage of the mini exchange is for pupils to write to their pen-pal to thank them for their hospitality and to explain what they most enjoyed about their stay.
In addition to the huge impact on motivation, we have found many benefits in terms of creativity and independence. As pupils are writing for real purposes they want to write very individual letters, and this has encouraged more active use of dictionaries as well as good transference of language in sentence building.
Andrea Ayres, Hele's School, Plymouth, November 2007
