Young Interpreters

The Young Interpreters club meet after school and is open to all pupils in KS2.

A Young Interpreter is someone who:

• helps new arrivals with English as an Additional language.
• They help newly-arrived pupils feel welcome and settled in their new school environment.

The scheme also develops the confidence, communication and leadership skills of the Young Interpreters.

Another role that the Young Interpreters help with is giving new families tours around school. It’s a way of valuing multilingualism whilst acknowledging and celebrating the skills of our learners. 

At the beginning of the year, we provide 6 sessions training the children up to develop their skills in becoming a Young Interpreter. This involves:

• finding out about each other and the languages we speak,
• looking at different qualities a Young Interpreter needs to have,
• listening to a story in Italian and seeing how to make it more accessible and role-playing different scenarios that a Young Interpreter can help in.

The Young Interpreters are then given a badge and encouraged to support the new pupils in our school. It is a delight to see them supporting and playing with the new pupils. The children are really proud of their role as Young Interpreters and it is something that they talked about to the Ofsted Inspector as being an important part of our school. 

The Young Interpreters lead a whole-school assembly to explain about Christmas traditions from different countries (or other traditions in countries where Christmas is not celebrated).

I look forward to training up the next cohort of Young Interpreters in the Autumn.

Mrs. Kerr-Wilson