The Department

As our ability to travel and work in other countries increases, so does the need to have a greater understanding of global cultures and languages. To this end, we offer students a range of languages at Callington.

We have long-established links with schools in France and Germany through Callington's twin town links with Guipavas in Brittany and Barsbüttel near Hamburg.  In Spring 2011 the long running French Exchange was successfully restarted for students in Years 7 and 8. We are developing links with partner schools in Spain and China.  We have a Spanish partner school - IES Huerta Alta in Alhaurin de la Torre near Malaga.  The two schools have a WIKI so that students can share their work.  In 2010-2011 we ran our first exchange visits with our Spanish partner school.

Reciprocal staff visits have taken place between Callington and our partner school in China - Middle School Attached to Teacher Training College, Yuxi. This school is in the city of Yuxi about 90 minutes south of Kunming in Yunnan Province, South West China. Students now have the opportunity to share work and ideas, with a visit planned.

As a Department, we also offer language teaching to our feeder primaries.  Teachers from the department go out to local primary schools to teach Spanish, French and Mandarin Chinese - depending on the requirements of the individual primary schools. We also work with primary colleagues to support their development of language teaching skills. This initiative enables Key Stage 2 pupils to start learning about language learning and helps with their transition to Callington Community College.

Resources/learning spaces/equipment...

The Languages Department is is situated in the centre of the college in 5 specialist classrooms. Each room is equipped with an interactive whiteboard which can be used for a wide variety of teaching and learning tasks. We also have a couple of smaller rooms which can be used by Foreign Language Assistants when working with small groups of students or for students to film role play and conversation work.

Our languages courses at Key Stage 3 and Key Stage 4 are based on core textbooks - ¡Asì! and Voilà! for Spanish and French at KS3; KS3 Chinese uses a range of resources including the textbook jin Bu. Edexcel GCSE for Spanish, French, Chinese and German at Key Stage 4. At AS/A2 level, students are taught using a range of resources - textbooks, on line resources, magazine articles etc.

Students and parents can also find help and information relating to language learning on our VLE.