International Activities
MFL Centre of Excellence
At Outwood Primary Academy Bell Lane, we believe in fostering global citizens who are knowledgeable, compassionate, and engaged with the wider world. Outwood Primary Academy Bell Lane is the MFL Centre of Excellence for the Outwood family of schools. This leads to our academy undertaking international activities above the normal curriculum and also supporting other trust schools with their MFL teaching and curriculum offer. We have been awarded the immediate British Council International School Award and are working towards accreditation.
Below are some of the projects and events which we have taken part in this year.
MFL Ambassadors
Every year, our pupils are given the opportunity to apply for a student responsibilty to be a MFL ambassador. They then promote MFL and international work throughout the year to their peers, visitors and support our international links. This year we have taken part in getting to know our new German school link and met some of their pupils online. We also took them on a virtual tour of our school. The ambassadors also took a key role during our MFL Showcase day when MFL subject leads from across the trust came to spend a day in our academy, finding out about what we do at Bell Lane and ideas which they could take back to their own academies. The Ambassadors have also done various assemblies across the year about key cultural festivals and events.
International partner schools
We have 3 partner schools who we work with regularly in Germany, France and Norway. We have shared information, letters, videos and video calls with these schools and the pupils have thoroughly enjoyed and gained from these amazing links! As you scroll down, you will be able to see some of the different projects we have worked on together.
International week of languages
In the week of 26th September, all pupils took part in a week long set of activities celebrating languages and cultures. This included food tasting, international menu, learning how to greet people in a different language, researching different countries and cultures, a whole school dance set to an international song, an assembly and many other exciting and informative events!
As part of the week, every pupil in the school was taught how to ask for French breakfast in the target language. We were very grateful to our wonderful PPA who funded and helped with this. The pupils all did a fantastic job asking for the food and drink and being polite and respectful.
We complete activities which are both cross curricular but also reinforce our curriculum knowledge. Here we are taking part in some activities which were fun and we learnt lots too!
Diploma - international citizens
Year 2 took part in the Hello challenge, finding lots of ways of saying hello in different languages. All year, we have used these to answer our registers, choosing different ones and furthering our knowledge.
Community languages penfriends
After some of our pupils spoke to Outwood Primary Academy Green Hill online during a community language swap activity, they were so pleased to hear other children speaking the same language as they do at home.
Norway project - “Children worldwide face a variety of risks, challenges and opportunities'
Throughout the year, our year 5s have been involved in a project with a school in Norway. They have started by sending penfriend letters to each other, culminating in a piece of work looking at the different challenges and opportunities which they both experience. Pupils created posters, wrote letters, made videos and explained what their daily lives look like and what they experience on a day to day basis. They have then contrasted life in Norway and the UK.
Bookmark exchange
Before Christmas many of our classes took part in the international bookmark exchange. This is a programme where schools from across the world are paired up to send bookmarks and information about themselves. This was so exciting as we received post from many diffferent places, including Lithuania, Croatia, Romania, Slovenia and Portugal. Our children took time to create some fantastic bookmarks to send to the different schools and we loved receiving them back from the countries as well. Some of our packages also had information about the country in them and the children had written letters to us. We really enjoyed finding out where they were in the world!
Year 5 Spanish taster transition project
We have strong links with Outwood Academy Hemsworth's MFL department and they have visited our year 5 to give them a taster session in Spanish. This was run by 2 of the high school teachers and all the pupils learnt so much and experienced a high school type lesson.
German week - March 2024
We took part in the Goethe institute German week, with teaching across the school, German food and also the year 5 and 6 spoke to a Young Goethe ambassador online. She was able to tell them all about culture and what it is like to be a young person living in Germany.
The impact of this was seen when our German teacher visited ( see below) and the children were able to use their phrases to speak to her.
Partner school - Grundschule Miesbach
In November, Mrs Groves was privileged to be able to take part in a UK German Connection seminar in Mainz which brought together German and UK Schools who wanted partnerships.
Through this we have our new partnership and have enjoyed finding out more about the school and the local area. This has tied in with our KS1 local area topic and also our other projects about learning German and the German club.
We are looking forward to welcoming Frau Kerstin Kamm to our academy soon to further the plans which we have for our partnership!
Frau Kerstin Kamm visit ( 8.7.25)
We have been so happy to welcome Frau Kamm to our academy. She has spent some time getting to know the school and today we had an afternoon tea for Kerstin and our staff!
Germany assembly
Frau Kramm visited our school in July 2025 and took an assembly all about her school in Germany. Pupils were really interested and asked some great questions.
Wo wohnt ihr? - Local area bilateral project
As part of KS1 topic of local area, Year 2 have been looking at their own local area and recapping physical and human features. They have sent information to Germany about Ackworth and its surroundings. When Kerstin Kamm came to visit us from Germany, she brought with her information about Miesbach and the pupils researched and spoke to her about it. They then created pieces of work which compared the areas and then explained it to the rest of KS1 in the form of an exhibition.
Looking forward to next year!
Next year, we are looking forward to furthering our contact with our partnership schools - we have a timetable of activities which we have planned with our partner teacher in Germany.
We are also making plans for international week in September and also German week in March. Our assembly plan will also include celebrations of different festivals from across the world. We have also purchased some international books which we looking forward to sharing with our pupils. This links with our plans for reading and MFL.
New MFL Ambassadors will be chosen in September - we are looking forward to seeing your applications!