International community

Newnham Croft Primary School is situated in an area of Cambridge City, close to the University and the River Cam. Our proximity to the University means that the school is attended by children of visiting scholars as well as people from over-seas working in the field of technological research. This results in a wide diversity of cultures being represented in our school community and has enabled us to develop a curriculum which recognises other cultures, faiths, heritages and languages.

We encourge the involvement of the children and their families to enrich our Pupils' experiences. The International dimension of our curriculum has earned us the Internatinal School Award which we have held since September 2000. At this point in time we have children who have their origins in forty countries, who can speak twenty seven languages within our school community.

Countries of Origin

At present we have children from: Australia Bangladesh Belgium Brazil Canada Chile China Denmark Egypt England Finland Germany Greece India Ireland Iran Israel Italy Japan Korea Madagascar Malaysia Mexico Norway Poland Romania Russia Scotland South Africa Spain Sri Lanka Sweden Switzerland Taiwan Tasmania Turkey USA Uraguay Venizuela Wales

Languages/dialects spoken

Currently we have children in school who can speak: Arabic Chinese(Hokkien) (Mandarin)Danish English Finnish Flemish French German Greek Hebrew Hindi Iranian Italian Japanese Korean Malagasi Malay Matatti Norwegian Polish Punjabi Russian Sinhalese Spanish

International Week

To celebrate our International Community, we held our International Week from June 2nd - June 6th. We studied four countries this year with one class from each key stage working collaboratively for a lot of the week. Year 6 and Year 1/2 looked at China, Year 5 and Year R/1 chose Spain, Year 4 and Year R learned about Sri Lanka, and Year 3 and Year 2 spent the week investigating Russia.

Some children's thoughts

The children from Year 1/2 had this to say about their week.

• "The Ribbon Dance is fun because you can make good shapes and patterns with the ribbon like a number 8 and the stairs."
• "We read the story of the Willow Pattern and we painted plates using patterns and pictures from the story. We had to concentrate hard."
• "We have been learning how to count in Chinese and how to paint our names in Chinese. It's really difficult."
• "We did a Chinese puzzle using a square cut into different shapes"
• "We enjoyed reading the story of 'Ma Liong and the Magic Paintbrush'. The paintbrush made things come alive."

Year 5 children had the extra bonus of having 3 Spanish speaking class members. Here are some of their thoughts about their experiences.

• "When we learnt some Spanish it was good to have people who could tell us whether we were right or wrong."
• "I really enjoyed working with Miss Pannell's class. We went on the computers together and made information sheets."
• "We read about Don Quixote and then wrote our own adventures. We made 2 books with them."
• "We decorated ceramic tiles - they look really cool."
• "We were taught some flamenco dancing and had to sit on the boys knees and shout 'Ole'. There was a lot of giggling!"

The Year 2 children wanted to share their thoughts about the week.

• "I really enjoyed making my Russian bowl"
• "I enjoyed everything because we are learning about the country I come from"
• "I really enjoyed the Russian dancing"
• "It was interesting finding out about Russia"