Caterham links with Academia Fonética in Madrid

The Spanish Department are very excited to have set up a link with Academia Fonética, an English language academy located in Alpedrete to the North of Madrid. Via Edmodo we are sharing videos made by the students to enthuse our pupils and the pupils in Madrid to learn authentic Spanish/English from students of a similar age. So far, the project involves Caterham pupils in the First to Fourth Year and we hope to include the older year groups soon. We have been delighted to receive videos from the Madrid school introducing themselves and telling us some Spanish phrases that the pupils use regularly. Caterham have responded with videos about our school, our lives in lockdown and some common English phrases. Here is an example of a video that Madrid sent to us recently and which sparked our Fourth Year to reply with a similar video.  

Natalie Mountain is teacher and director at Academia Fonética and commented that:  “the project is a resounding success, and my students are loving it”. She continued to say that both students and staff have welcomed the Bilingual programme set up with Caterham School. “It’s a wonderful initiative to promote cross-cultural awareness for all the students involved. Our students are keenly participating through a variety of activities, namely recording and filming themselves both in English and Spanish. This has exposed the students to authentic language produced by their peers in the other country. The students are thoroughly enjoying the experience and are asking for more autonomy to interact with their counterparts directly. Here are some of their comments: 

“We love the activities, much more fun than normal homework!” 

“It’s really interesting to hear the students speak English but also to see how good they are at Spanish too!” 

“Making Tik Tok videos for English class is really cool!”  

Let’s see how the project develops!”