St Peter the Apostle High School brought together three different projects for this submission.
Project 1 – Language & Enterprise (S2 – Spanish)
Working with a national company, an S2 class combined Spanish and Product Development (PD) to launch a range of products at our Christmas Market.
Leading Results UK specialise in Business and Leadership Development and worked with the class to upskill them on various areas of PD. This included a video call with Director, Anita Doulas, and follow up Q&A and final feedback sessions.
There were three areas of recognition across all classes taking part in the Christmas market and this class came 1st for product creativity. They offered chocolate marshmallow reindeers, vegan reindeer poo (chocolate balls) and glitter reindeer dust. They made all signage for their market stall in Spanish and also any packaging used for their products (including ingredients). In addition, the class used signs to encourage pupils, staff and parents to use Spanish when buying from the stall.
The class were the only bi-lingual stall at the market, which was very popular.
Project 2 – Employability Do’s & Don’ts (S3 - Spanish)
Working with a local Nursery, an S3 class combined Spanish with Employability skills and qualities (SQ) to create vision boards to illustrate the aspects they hope to possess in the future. This class was composed of pupils who had indicated that they did not want to continue with languages into S3. Following the project, around 50% of the class opted to take Spanish into Senior Phase.
AllTots Ltd. Owner, Angela Gill, visited the school and presented her advice on what to do and not do when starting out in the world of work. She then spent time discussing the SQs she looks for in employees and why these are so important, including fun sessions on testing listening and team working skills.
The class then translated these aspects into Spanish and worked on describing S&Qs they already possess and what they want to be in the future. They then picked out images and these were used to make vision boards, incorporating Spanish vocabulary.
The vision boards were reviewed by Angela and a member of Modern Languages, and a winner was chosen. Feedback and a prize was given to the winning pupil.
Project 3 – Employability & Resilience (S6 Spanish and Gaelic)
A group of S6 pupils took part in the Saltire Volunteering Award and worked with a national company to recognise their current levels of resilience and how these can be increased. The pupils already had a depth of knowledge in Spanish and were learning Gaelic as a new language. They were responsible for creating resources and lesson plans to enable them to teach these languages at various feeder primaries.
Owner of Gail McPake Consulting, Gail McPake, visited the school and conducted an afternoon of Resilience training to the Saltire group. This consisted of a presentation, workbook and various interactive tasks. The pupils were then given some time to reflect and were asked to make either a digital poster or a video of how the sessions impacted them and their ability to teach Spanish and Gaelic in our feeder primaries.
Many of the pupils found teaching in primaries daunting, not to mention teaching a new language that they had only recently learned themselves. They felt that the resilience training was extremely effective in allowing them to approach these new situations more confidently. They felt they personally handled a range of unexpected elements during their lessons with a calmer approach and evaluated lessons with a more pragmatic mindset. They also felt that the primary pupils had a greater language learning experience because of this. They believe that resilience training in something that should be offered to more senior pupils as a way of giving them ‘more tools in their box’ when entering the world of work.