Institution: Franklin College

Context
Franklin College offers a range of vocational courses, as well as A levels and GCSEs. It also provides an extensive range of part time courses for adults, currently including nine foreign languages. The College’s 2008 Ofsted report rated the college’s approach to educational inclusion as outstanding. This programme, in which parents and children learned Spanish together, is a good example of an imaginative approach to eliminating barriers to learning. 

How the programme was organised
Franklin had contacted local schools about putting on a languages course for parents after school hours, and found that parents were more interested in a course if they could bring their children. The group consisted of five adults who were enrolled on an ABC Spanish Entry Level 2 course, with their children. All the learners undertook the same work: the young people underwent informal formative assessment and the adults carried out the formal assessment tasks in speaking and listening. 

What made it successful?
The course allowed adults to take part in education without the need for childcare.  The mix of parents and children worked well and they all interacted with one other.  Ice breaker style activities encouraged the learners to mingle and this, in turn, helped the dynamics of the group. They also did lots of role play using realia.  The topics covered were food and drink, and shopping so the learners practised lots of dialogues in the contexts of the café, the restaurant, and the market. 

The learners
The learners were happy with the course and all want to continue learning Spanish next term. All were successful in the assessment tasks, achieving the qualification.  They loved the fact that parents and children could learn together.

The benefits
‘It was enormously rewarding as the learners all responded well to the teaching and learning activities.  It also allowed me the opportunity to think of different teaching and learning methods to use with younger learners and I found that these worked well with adults too’. Louise Coo, Head of Department

Future developments
The department plans to offer the continuation course in Spanish in the autumn term; the learners will work towards a qualification in reading and writing at Entry Level 2.  With 100 percent success rate, they now also plan to offer other languages such as French and Japanese to similar groups.

Author: Louise Coo, Head of MFL, Franklin College.